Knives & Levels - Chapter 101

That night was a restless one.

It was hard to find sleep in the depths of a cavern with cold pressing against his side. A chill would creep in whenever Colt thought he had found comfort in the cavern’s dark recesses. And with it came the reminder that time was passing ever forward. Second by second, they were drawing closer to their deadline. Yet, to maintain any ability to survive in this place, he needed rest and balance, with the ever-increasing knowledge that he had to grow.

It created a frustrating paradox: the harder he tried to sleep, the more difficult it became. That sensation only continued as he tossed and turned. It didn't help that they had packed only the bare essentials for camping. Knowing they would be in a dungeon for God knows how long, they had, of course, come supplied with things they might need. But there was a vast difference between bringing some bedrolls and pillows and the frozen reality of sleeping on cold stone.

Still, he managed to find a couple of hours of sleep. By the time he woke up, he could see in his companions' tired eyes that none of them had fared much better.

"Bright and early, morning all," Nick said, shaking the grogginess from his voice.

In the corner, Colt smelled something amazing. Julia hunched over a small bottle of water, its contents wafting to Colt's sleeping bag not far away.

"Coffee?" he said, amazed.

Julia nodded, smiling. "I found that I can manipulate the temperature by charging my water with enough mana. This means, for you lucky soul, and me, we can start our days with some coffee and tea, like it was meant to be started."

Colt let out an expression of pure joy as she handed him a warm cup of coffee. Despite the awfulness from a night of tossing and turning on cold, hard stone, this little joy made everything worthwhile. He smiled deeply, his energy soaring as Nate prepared their meal.

There wasn't exactly wood in this place, in the form of trees to cut down. So, making a fire would be all but impossible. With their limited packing space, bringing fuel for a fire was out of the question, and they’d have to rely on whatever they could in the dungeon. They sacrificed fire-making for pre-prepared food, which Nate dutifully divided. He was in charge of rations, being the most disciplined and calculating among them. Colt trusted Nate with that decision more than he trusted himself. Had it been his way, with his stomach already growling up a storm, he might have eaten way more than he should. 

Though they had slain a wolf, the fire issue persisted. Eating raw meat wasn't on anyone's list of desirable activities without an easy way to cook. Still, when Colt got his jerky and hardtack, bringing to mind the life of an ancient warrior, he felt content enough.

With coffee and food in their systems, they were ready to face the challenges ahead. And so their second day in the dungeon began as normally as possible when you're in an ice tundra of a dungeon, risking your life. After Julia's rejuvenating water barrier, they headed to the surface and began their day.

Colt trekked through the snow with his companions, slowly meandering through the icy slope, keeping keen eyes out for potential trouble. He felt relatively safe. With a few more levels from the previous day's fighting, his personal strength had already grown by leaps and bounds.

The environment had changed with the crimson looming in the air. Accompanied by the taxing feel of heavy edicts infusing the mist, the landscape had transformed the day before into a hellish journey through red snow and a terrifying black sea in the distance. 

This was amplified by the discovery early in the day that finding wolves had gotten tougher.

After two hours of searching, they found nothing. Three hours passed with no tracks. Four hours in, Colt discovered another unexplored cave wolf den, expecting to find a pack to fight.

Yet inside was completely empty. Aside from the occasion, massive tracks that were thrice the size of a human’s foot. A sign of what they assumed to be the roaming boss… Wherever they saw those, they would try to stray far away.

But the tracks weren’t consistent, appearing and vanishing without rhyme and reason.

It took about ten hours before they managed to find a wolf. When they did, it was in a wounded condition, with scars covering its side and flanks. Blood dripped from its maw, looking half-dead already.

Using their superior coordination, Nick peppered it with arrows. Colt went in for the kill, with Nate restraining the creature to give Colt a clean hit. The fight concluded with little ceremony, even if it was still a risk. The only notification was a single level up with no attached skills. It had been far too easy with the wounded creature, and the system seemed to reward both effort and level disparity, leaving Colt confused.

———

You have leveled up!

You have 3 Stat points to spend. You have gained 1 point of Dexterity and 1 point of Soul.

———

Good, at least it gave a level. He assigned the points to dexterity, now focusing on balance after getting his Soul above 200.

They studied the wolf's corpse, then looked up at the blood-red sky above.

"Do you think the boss attacked it?" Sarah asked. "That thing was fucked up."

"It's possible," Nate responded, examining the corpse. "The wounds appear to be claw marks. Something with deep, dagger-like weapons mauled this thing half to death. Whatever it is, I wouldn't want to run across it."

The wolves were formidable enemies. It had taken all five of them before to take them down, with each encounter a dance with death. The fact that a single creature had so thoroughly destroyed this wolf was an ominous sign. Whatever was capable of this would also be a significant danger to them, and it was roaming not that far away.

Colt pondered whether this might be the first boss—the Abominable Snowman. Or as he had come to think of it, the Yeti. Recalling previous encounters with Cerberus and Jack the Ripper, he remembered the tales of this legendary creature. A large, furry white creature with massive feet, bigger than a man. If such a creature roamed here, it would need to eat. A wolf, penguins, and magic rabbits would be a good food source for a boss like that. But even then, it would need a lot of food to survive. If he learned anything from the Endless Alleys, it was that even monsters needed to eat.

"It's no use being troubled over something we can't change," Colt asserted. "We'll just try to avoid it if we can and keep moving forward."

After the discovery of the half-dead wolf, Colt returned to hunting with the rest of their group.

Crawling through the crimson-laden snow and ice was a scathing affair. After being unable to find much else for the rest of the night, they called it a night after feeling discouraged.

After scouting and expeditions around the slope, they had a better idea of just what kind of landscape they were dealing with. This place was large, simply put. In fact, just getting down to the Academy itself would take a significant amount of time.. The sheer act of transportation and the care one had to take when stepping down through this icy surface, lest they slip, fall, and then end up skewered, was mind-boggling. But by necessity, it's what they had to do.

The next day began with the same frustrating pace. Not discovering much, but with warm coffee courtesy of Julia's salvaged supplies, saving what would otherwise be an awful morning.

Around midday, or what Colt figured to be midday since the sky was a permanent scar of red eclipse. They found what appeared to be the remains of a battlefield between wolves and something else. Blood joined the crimson snow, tainting it a richer shade of red. It was spilled wildly as wolf corpses glittered on the tundra, some of which had huge bite marks.

Twisted ribs and mauled bodies told the story of a desperate battle between these monsters and something much bigger and more fearsome.

Colt looked at it coldly as some of his companions shuddered.

Some of the wolves were still alive. Whatever had done this had done a sloppy job and hadn’t bothered to finish what it’d started. At least three were struggling, unable to move as they slowly bled out in the cold.

“I’ll handle this,” Colt said, wanting to end their suffering. Colt took his dagger in his hand, and with the precision of a doctor, he used the Edict-laden blade to put an end to the dying wolves.

There was no delight in this, in comparison to the other battles against the foes that tested his limit.

His mercy wasn't wasted, though, as ending the three wolves yielded results.

———

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

You have 6 Stat points to spend. You have gained 2 points of Dexterity and 2 points of Soul.

———

Once again, though he hadn’t put in much effort to end the beasts, the system still gave him a pittance.   The way that it divvied out experience continued to puzzle him, but he accepted it for what it was, watching as life faded from the last wolf on the ground.

An eerie sensation washed over him. It wasn't fear—he didn’t feel fear here—but how it looked at him, the anger, the wild, caged look in its eyes. He knew what it was to struggle to survive amid a harsh environment; the apocalypse had seen to that.

These wolves were no different from a beast than he was at points in his journey along the way. Within them, he saw himself. Within their struggle to cling to life, and their desperate anger at the end of their uselessness, unable to toil against a foe stronger than themselves, Colt saw his potential fate too. What were these wolves struggling with if not a mirror to his own issues that he had faced throughout this awful expedition?

Just as they walked away from the corpses to return to their cave once more and get some well-needed rest after a frustrating day, they heard something. There was a low roar in the depths of the swirling mists. The intensity of the cold in the air increased, and without warning, spines of that frost of death erupted from the ground like exploding glass from below.

Colt moved fast, barely stepping out of the way of an erupting mound of ice that threatened to skewer him. His allies were slightly less coordinated, and one paid the price.

Nick let out a cry of pain as a spine of ice shot through his foot from below, spilling hot blood into the ice as it kept skewering through the limb, pinning him in place.

As the roar around them reverberated and intensified, mist parted away, revealing in the distance on the slope above, crashing out of a mound of snow, the hairy human form of what appeared to be a giant man twice their size. Its white fur gleamed with ice and blood.

"Fuck," Colt said, knowing just from a glance what they were dealing with—the hunter, the ones who had killed these wolves, the one that had been plaguing this land for the last two days since the sky changed. It had found them before they had found it, and they, Colt knew, were not yet ready to deal with a boss.

His hand wrapped around his dagger, and his resolve firmed in his chest. He knew that no matter if he was ready or not, it had come.

Nate smashed the spine of ice that had torn its way through Nick's foot, freeing him. 

The archer didn’t run; instead, his light bow flashed to life, and he sent an arrow flying at their foe, screaming angrily as he did.

It made it half the distance before a wall of ice tore out of the ground, forming a barrier between the boss and them. Predictably against a foe this strong, the arrow simply plinked against it. Unable to pierce whatever ice-related Edicts this thing was using. For a second, though, thanks to the wall, they had a reprieve.

"Shit, shit, shit," Colt thought, looking around, his eyes scanning. He didn’t need to Inspect it to know this was too much for now.

So what?

The plan was obvious. He looked at his group and said, “We need to get out of here."

There was no alternative, and there was no way that they could counteract it now. It was pure survival, and survival, in this case, meant fleeing.

“Nate, get Nick and drag him away as fast as possible. Find a cave, and hide the blood trail; Julia—can you do anything about that?” Colt said, his Edict gathering on his knife.

“Maybe?” Julia frowned at the blood from the foot wound leaking into the snow, even amid the crimson colored light. If the Yeti caught the trail, it would take Nick down wherever they went.

Maybe had to be good enough.

“We can’t run fast enough,” Nate reported, already moving into action.

“No, we can’t. I’m going to buy us time. Your goal is to get as far away as possible.” Colt said, tossing away any doubt about this. Sometimes, you just have to full send it. If they could get distance, then he could pull away after buying enough time for them to survive—at least that was his game plan. He felt the thrum of his Edict run through him, intoxicating with its power.

There were protests against him staying—Sarah saying she wouldn’t leave him behind, but he ignored them, focusing on the here and now and trusting Nate to keep them all together.

Maybe it wasn’t enough to win, but he’d leave that boss with a reminder that it wasn’t the only thing that could hunt in this arctic waste.