Wish upon the Stars chapter 50

I stared at the mounds of garbage in annoyance. "They didn't  make...like roads through this nonsense or something?" The trash bags  were piled higher than some buildings I'd seen. Granted they were in  piles, so we could still kind of get between them, but the piles pushed  right up against each other. "Hey Benny, stick close ok?" I activated my  overlay, hopefully to catch any attacks before they got launched.

There  was a shuffle and Benny squeezed into the trash pile behind me. Callie  and Jessie were behind us. They had their coat and cloak wrapped around  themselves respectively, but Impact would have protected them from  pretty much any of the trash anyway. It was still gross, and I was  beginning to seriously regret coming here. I heard a sound and spun to  try to catch sight of what made it. There was nothing there.

The  overlay predicted attacks, but I couldn't use it to see hidden things.  That was a second level skill on the diviner tree. Mostly the first  level was stuff like finding mines or rare plants and predicting  attacks. It was hands down the most useful utility skill I could  imagine, but much like my other trees it didn't get extremely effective  until down the line. Most of the monk skills that I could use at first  level were similarly useless in game, I'd gotten them for the unlocks  later on down the line.

I  turned to Callie. "Any chance you have some way to spot them? Does your  tracking skill work out here?" Because there was a LOT of trash, and I  honestly wasn't sure if we would be able to search through all of it  even if we had months. Plus the little bastards could move so even if we  did they might be able to to avoid us. That sewer rate bounty was  beginning to look a lot more tempting. On the upside apparently my mask  had a filtration effect for scent, something to thank Zeke for if the  grimace on Callie and Jessie's faces were anything to go by.

The  black clad brunette shook her head. "No. Or rather, it does, but it  works too well. This whole place is full of random trash. Anything that  they touch leaves a trace, and they've been basically swimming in it.  Minor Tracking shows the whole damn garbage pile lit up like a  spotlight." I cursed under my breath. That was inconvenient as hell. She  narrowed her eyes  off in the distance. "Might have another idea  though. Looks like there are clear spots every so often, I bet we find  some around there."

Which  would have been a terrible idea for anyone else. Those clear spots were  the perfect place to ambush us, luckily my overlay meant that was  unlikely, and my perception was my highest stat which seemed to really  clarify the arrows. I made a mental note to lean more into perception if  possible, my overlay was one of the biggest advantages of the  Fatewalker build. Though there were a few other abilities down the line  that were helpful. Danger sense was going to be a big one when I got it.

We  managed to struggle through the trash to a nearby clearing, it wasn't  exactly hard with our Might and Impact, but it was annoying, and we kept  having to stop and spin around to look for the source of noises.  Finally though, we got to the nearest clearing and stepped out onto hard  packed dirt. The area around us was about thirty feet in diameter,  which gave us some room to maneuver. As we settled in the sounds of  moving became louder and started coming from more directions.

I  frowned slightly. "It occurs to me that it's weird for there to be  little islands of clear space in this giant sea of trash. Don't suppose  there's some valid reason for this based on the way trash is handled  here?" They couldn't just leave it all, with the megaplex's so huge this  alley would have overflowed into the street within a few days. I didn't  know how many people were in those things, but going by city size it  wasn't a small amount.

Callie  shook her head, trying to stay within sight as we circled up, looking  around at the shifting trash heaps. "Nope. They clear the alleys out  three times a week. Not sure how, probably some kind of gravity  compression power or something. But there would be no reason for anyone  to take just a small portion of the trash here like this." Her voice  became tense as she saw what I was wondering about.

My  frown became a full on scowl. "So...these empty spots were probably  made recently. Most likely by someone other than the people who are  supposed to dispose of the garbage? Because it occurs to me that these  make excellent funnel points for slightly weak creatures to herd  stronger targets towards so they can surround them." The rustling trash  became louder, as gleaming yellow eyes began to appear in the shadows  between the bags. I sighed in annoyance.

I  wasn't worried about us, we would be fine, but a whole sea of the  bastards was going to put Jessie and Benny in danger. Luckily they had  gear, and also us. "Benny, Agria, get behind Nightstrike and I, we're  going to try to box you in. Nightstrike, can you set up some kind of  barrier for them with your shadows?" I knew her shadow material was kind  of brittle for combat, but a thick enough chunk of it should be a  passable shield.

I  stepped forward and so did Callie, the two weaker members of our party  falling in behind us. Callie brought up her hands and two massive blocks  of black material rose on either side of us. She clearly noticed where I  was going with this. Once she had those in place (five foot tall blocks  so they would be too big for the trash pandas to jump, but short enough  for even Jessie to see over) we both braced for the coming tide of raccoon monsters.

A  tide of the little bastards began to slink out of the trash, I counted  at least two dozen. Still easily manageable for a pair of G rankers.  Still, they were weird looking little things. They were called raccoons,  but they looked more like gremlins. Big heads, huge ears, tiny limbs,  and muzzled recessed. They were like some sort of fuzzy raccoon goblin.  They were bipedal, with legs too tall and wide for their bodies, bending  their knees as the crept forward so they were in a constant crouch. All  in all they were...

"Cute!"  Jessie's squeal broke the silence, and I sighed. We all looked at her  and even under the mask we could see the blush. "What? They are! They're  little fuzzballs. Do we really have to kill them? I don't want to hurt a  bunch of tiny raccoon gremlins." One of the arrows on my overlay  flashed as it indicated an incoming attack, and I swung around and  lashed out with one of my tonfas, smashing into the raccoon gremlin midair as it hurled itself at me. Jessie paused. "Huh. Well that was less cute. Proceed."

I  laughed a bit at that. She wasn't wrong. The elongated naturally  crouching legs were apparently perfect for springing at prey, and those  recessed muzzles were packed with razor sharp teeth, probably recessed  so they could bite into flesh, because unlike normal raccoons THESE  weren't scavengers. They weren't very tough though. My casual swat with  my tonfa had broken the leapers neck and sent it sailing into a trash  pile like a fastball.

Unfortunately  the thing landing seemed to be like the starting shot of a race for the  little bastards, and they swarmed us. Callie dropped another five foot  block of shadow on top of the existing ones, clearly worrying about  their jumping abilities and we both went to work. I triggered Flurry of  Blows. A short burst of fast attacks was perfect for these things, even  without Touch of Tears to put them down. My tonfas licked out, smashing  skulls and breaking spines with every blow. I kept the daggers Callie  got me in my belt. I didn't feel like dealing with all that blood until I  had to.

Which  sadly was going to be soon, because my tonfas were made with Minor  Enchanting, which meant they were temporary gear. Even as I had the  thought the two of them exploded, able to last longer than the original  bat but still not anywhere close to proper weapons. Still, it was lucky  for me they even did damage considering they were technically I rank  gear. I assumed the combination of my Might and the explosive force from  the runes pushed my hits up into the H rank easily enough.

Once  they broke I pulled the daggers, which while not enchanted were H rank  and more than up to handling the strain of my second Flurry of blows and  I mowed down another six or seven of the things. That left me open for  the last one to get in close and try to tear my throat out.  Which...failed. It's claws scraped off my skin without even leaving a  scratch. It felt pretty great being on the other side of that rank  difference. Flurry of Blows ended and I skewered the last one on my back  swing, dropping the tiny corpse to the ground.

I  turned to check on Callie and she'd calmly mowed all hers down with a  bunch of shadow imbued hair tendrils and her shadow imbued coat. I was  pretty sure conjuring material took time and concentration, but her  shadow touched gear and hair worked just fine even without any  conjuration. We looked around. "Huh. Well we should gather the bodies,  have to turn them in for the bounty. Benny, you're the one doing the  collecting for reputation so you can pick up all the dead raccoons."

He  snorted and started walking around to pick them up. I pulled the one on  my dagger off and looked it over, seeing nothing I could use material  wise. "Hey Benny can you use any of this for anything? Because if not I  say we just sell them to the guild for some chits. Not worth the time  stripping them for parts if you can't use them for anything." I'd kind  of expected them to be...bigger. Maybe have some decent sized bones I  could enchant or carve, but they were way too tiny for that.

Callie  chuckled at that. "Yeah, these things were barely H rank. Most of the  good stuff shows up later on. There are a few parts that are decent from  what I read when I was looking into monster activity. The eyes are  valuable as an Alchemy component." I kept my eye out but didn't spot any  upcoming attacks so I stepped out to help gather. Jessie was  surprisingly fine picking up bodies, given her desire to let them live  before, and after only about five minutes we had them all grouped  together.

Now  the only thing we needed was to figure out how to move them. We ended  up dumping out sturdy garbage bags and filling them with bodies, which  was gross, but much less gross than carrying bleeding and broken bipedal  raccoons to the skyride one at a time.

As  we got started packing them up though, we heard a telltale rustle from  the bags around us and I groaned. "So...what are the chances this giant  ass trash dump only has twenty four of these things total?" My question  was answered as another wave of fifteen or so started to creep forward  from the piles. I groaned. Great, well, at least we could make some  money, and it was looking more and more likely that Benny would be  getting some points, because we were going to have to turn in a bunch of  these I was pretty sure. I cracked my neck. Back to the grind I  supposed.