Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO AND PLEASE PUT DOWN THE TORCHES!

ANYWAY, AFTER WHO KNOWS HOW LONG, I FINALLY FINISHED THE CHAPTER! I could now throw some excuses how the holidays and new year preparations were kind of screwing up with me, but that’s not true. I simply had no drive to write IO and it ended up spreading to my other RRL fics. So the fault is entirely mine and I won’t deny it. ON the bright side, now that IO is done, I at the very least should get out of this inertia… Hopefully…

ALSO(2), For whoever it is that’s still following my wordpress, I should post an update I finished on Project: Hero a couple of weeks ago soonish.

Glad to be back, hope I don’t get a riot, and have a nice read!

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“Dang it. So close to escaping.” I complained while making my way back to the group. Lily looked at me with a wry expression, getting used to seeing me respawn after the second or so time I died. “Oh well, at least I’m getting the hang of it.” I said while throwing a glance back and seeing as the matriarch drank from the puddle of magma to recover its health.

“Well, you did last a lot longer than before at least.” Ozzur said with a solemn tone while noting something down on his notebook. Since a couple of tries ago he stopped doubting my ability to kill the damned arachnid. “It was down to what, one thousand hitpoints?”

“One thousand, one hundred twenty six.” I replied with a proud nod before frowning. “I always hated when monsters make combos and don’t let me drink my potions.” I complained while some memories of a certain monster in Monster hunter came to mind. One that was scarily similar to this one.

I had a trauma for monsters with explosive attacks before thanks to a certain slimy boxing wyvern. Right now I’m in a state of mixed fury and sheer terror thanks to this freak spider and it’s explosive web. To be honest, at the moment that’s my biggest problem when it comes fighting it. I can deal with how freakily silent it is and how easily it escapes my sight with it’s three dimensional movement. Also, although the fire attacks are scary as hell, my armor protects me most of the damage, so for me it isn’t a great problem.

As long as I don’t get thrown into lava. My armor doesn’t have enough resistance to survive that blasted liquid.

Tis be but a matter of time, and soon I shall have my revenge! While smiling evilly to myself thinking of how I would take my revenge on this bloody liquid.

“Master. You are making an evil face again.”

“Whoops.” I replied to the exasperated Crys who was shaking her head. “Sorry about that, I was planning revenge on molten rock.”

“I see…” Lily said with a wry smile while gently caressing Rio’s neck. “And… Well… How exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“Well, first I’ll get myself a set with enough fire resistance so I can swim in magma.” I told her my plan with a proud smile. “Then… Well… I don’t know. Drink it or something?” I shrugged while telling the joke, but froze for a moment before turning to Crys. “Actually… Would that even work?”

“…” The crystal maid stared at me blankly for some seconds before widening her eyes in surprise. “That’s… Actually quite a good question Master!. Please do try when you have the chance!” She told me cheerfully.

“Are you by any chance completely ignoring my well being for the sake of finding a piece of information that left you slightly curious?” I asked with a doubtful tone.

“You would revive anyway!” She shrugged off the idea.

“Now I’m remembering why I took you with me.” I said with a satisfied nod before turning to Lily, who had an exhausted look on her expression. “What is it?”

“It’s just…” She stopped while looking at me with conflicted eyes. “After all this time I’ve spent with you in this travel you are starting to look a completely different person.”

“Define: Different.” I said while raising an eyebrow and falling to the ground so I could think of some new strategies of how to deal with the spider’s annoying threads.

“Less serious than what one would expect.” Ozzur said while casting a cure on me to recover my little health from just having resurrected. “Actions that walk a strange border between reckless and genius, and a surprisingly foolish, but straightforward attitude.”

“Praising me won’t get anywhere, you fool!” I said while faking an embarrassed tone.

“Teacher… I’m almost sure that wasn’t a praise.” Lily said with a wry smile.

“I’m sure that Master knows that already.” Crys said with a sigh while sitting on my shoulder, soon being followed by Aura who rested her head on my lap.

“Huh? He wasn’t praising me?” I asked in a fake surprised tone while widening my eyes. She replied with a brief slap to the back of my head, making me laugh a bit at it. “Anyway, so I’m not exactly the serious minded individual you thought?” I said with a taunting tone while looking at the duo who followed me.

Both of them moved their eyes away in a slightly embarrassed expression which I took as all the answer I needed. Shrugging at that, I turned back to the cave and decided to focus my mind on the spider.

Right now my biggest problem was the spread net. I could try and dodge them all, but it was extremely difficult to do when there was net literally everywhere which could explode from all directions at the same time. Another idea I started trying was to cut them all down before it could ignite the biggest part of them, but that also was a bad idea, because I would lose focus on the spider and all I would do was make the net spread itself on the ground, limiting my walking area. There was also the option of ignoring the explosions and charging right in, but that wasn’t an acceptable choice seeing how ridiculous was the damage I could take from those hits.

I could try and change my weapon for different tactics, but the time I tried going at the spider with either the bow or the sword and shield proved that my damage output was too low compared to what I could do with the long sword to the point that the change in strategy wasn’t worth it.

I need to upgrade those two weapons fast.

Grimacing, I opened my status window and frowned at the sight of my level, that had dropped by one thanks to the times I didn’t manage to escape from it in time. Luckily, the biggest hit was to my HP that had dropped by ten points and now rounded to an actually satisfying 1000 hit-points.

Going over my whole skill list whose some parts had even escaped my mind in search for the skill that would help me change the whole game around.

Of course, such a broken skill was nowhere in my skill list.

Yet.

Peeking at the unspent Derivation point, I decided that if I did not have a broken skill I could use right now, might as well as make it myself.

Deciding that it was about damned time to do it, I quickly opened up the derivation menu and started exploring the possibilities that I could spend it on. I felt that maybe picking something specifically for my long sword wasn’t a bad idea, so my first thought was to go directly to the two handed sword skills, or more specifically, the Hunter’s style table.

Sadly, it seems that to derive the Hunter style itself I would need to be of a higher mastery to do that. Sighing, I quickly changed to take a look at the individual skills. While they were pretty strong and broken as the others derivate skills, they weren’t quite what I was looking for to be of use against the spider. They were powerful, but they were mostly a really: Deal ridiculous damage, kind of skill. Very straight forward.

The one that did get my attention, however, was from a skill I sincerely didn’t expect much.

Slash, for two handed sword skill.

Sub-skill: Focus Slash [lvl9] (Modify slash (two handed sword))

(requires Snipe, Requires a Style)

(levels increase with two handed sword mastery)Your focused mind earned from long time drawing your bowstring helps you empower your attack into a single and powerful slash to sever your foe in pieces, dealing 140% of weapon damage. This skill can be charged for up to two seconds, doubling damage dealt and removing energy cost proportionally to the time spent charging.

If immediately after releasing a full charge you receive an attack, your focused mind will automatically deal a counter, reducing the damage of the attack taken by 50% and dealing a second Focused Slash that counts as fully charged. The second Focused Slash can’t trigger Counters.

Using this skill resets the time allowed to combo your style skills.Cost: 25(20) energy

This one is interesting. Not only do I get a fairly powerful skill that can hit hard as a truck, I also get some kind of defensive attack too. Though the whole charging part leaves me a bit confused. Do I need to stand still while using it or can I move around as I wish? If it’s the case of the first one, then this is a bit harder to use than I would have guessed, although still being an extremely good skill.

Contemplating the skill, I decided to check the others skills just to be safe, but since nothing really caught my attention as much as this new slash skill, I decided to simply stick to it. Well, not that I had any doubt after seeing the skill the first time, to be honest. As always, I just knew that I would pick it after looking at it the first time.

“YOOOSH! Time to go for revenge!” I shouted while jumping up, making my two partners jump back in surprise.

“Do you have a plan, teacher?” Lily asked me surprised, and I shook my head.

“Not really much of a plan, more like a list of counter-measures.” I said while taking off the knifes of my bandolier and getting a more appropriate set.

“Counter measures?” Ozzur asked me curious, preparing to jot down any of my following words. I shrugged as if saying that it wasn’t much before nodding and saying.

“You see, usually I have a problem with one or more attacks that a certain monster can use. In a handheld console game, there’s only so much I can do against it, but in here things are different.” I told him while pulling out two stun knifes and preparing to put it on my bandolier, only to stop as an idea popped up in my head. “While I can somehow deal with a few of the spider’s attacks here and there, it’s usually only a couple that actually give me trouble. All I need to do is to come up with a way to counter those.” I explained while summoning some pieces of leather and using my skinning knife to cut it down in stripes.

“Isn’t that a bit obvious?” Ozzur asked a bit confused, but I shook my head.

“Not exactly. Thinking up countermeasures isn’t the same as becoming immune to it.” I explained with a smirk. “The biggest problem is making it work in actual combat situations. Which is what I just thought up just now. For example, what’s the best way to deal with the explosive web problem?”

“Hmm… Avoiding them?” Ozzur asked.

“Nope. That would only delay the problem altogether.” I said while remembering the web hell the spider created. “In the end it would get to a point where I wouldn’t have any place to hide or run to.”

“Then, stopping the spider from using the attack altogether?” Lily asked, but once again I shook my head.

“That’s exactly the case of an easy on paper problem.” I said while pointing the knife to her before taking the leather stripes and tying them around one flame knife. “How would you go around stopping it?”

The undine opened her eyes wide for a moment before stopping to think. She tilted her head while trying to find a method, but from the looks of it she wasn’t getting anywhere. I smiled satisfied before turning towards the tunnel entrance, where some of the explosive web was still sticking around. I peeked at the cave and saw as the spider left through the other end.

Looks like she was still searching for something or someone, seeing how she wouldn’t stop at her nest for more than one minute at a time. I took the chance to scrape off some of the web from the walls and ground around.

“Stone mister. Why is it bad that the string go boom-boom?” Rio asked when I came back.

“Well, that’s because when the string explodes master takes damage, Rio.” Crys explained to the small Wyvern, who tilted her head cutely. “And if he takes too much damage, it ends up badly.”

“Humm…” The small wyvern nodded understanding, receiving awkward nods due to her innocent question.

“But she’s on the right track, you know?” I said while dropping all the string I gathered on the ground. The others jumped back in surprise, but I wasn’t very bothered. Via testing I found out that they only combust when in contact with open flame or magma. Otherwise it’s perfectly safe to handle it like this. “Why is it bad that the string explode?”

“That’s…” Crys said while frowning, before widening her eyes as my idea seemingly entered her mind. She soon started chuckling. “That’s so like you, master.” She said.

“Huh?” Ozzur asked confused. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it, mummy.” I started cutting long strings and tying them on the handle of the fire knifes. “The string explodes. The explosion deals damage.” I looked up to him and smiled gently. “I mean, not only do they have a large range, comes from every side possible and deal unreasonably high damage. If they are so powerful, why am I the only one who have to deal with them?” I mean, not only in Monster Hunter, I also have to deal with this in here?

I mean, why is it always explosions? Do you have any idea how damn annoying it is to deal with those things? Not only you have to watch the monster and the terrain around you, but there’s also effing instantaneous explosive barrels that they spread around! How many times have I lost a hunt just because one damn slime puddle or string of web appeared on the way I was dodging?

I just hate explosions so much. I hate them so much…

“Monstersthatuseexplosionsshouldalljustdie,gotohellandneveragainappearinfrontofme.Orelseimighttake allthatexplosionandshoverightbackatthemuntiltheydie,thentaketheirskinmakeaneffingpikeanduseittokilleverysingleone ofitsbrethenoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandover…”

“IIIIIH!” Lily whimpered while taking a step back.

Looking around I also noticed how everyone had opened some distance from me, with Rio hiding herself on Lily’s arm and Lieutenant using Aura as a barricade against me.

Hmm. Seems like I’m getting angry. I slapped my cheeks to help me snap out of my explosion-induced anger and went back to my work.

“ANYWAY, as I was saying before my dark memories came back...” I said while trying to put on a more friendly look and not go back to how I was. “As long as avoid the explosions myself, it shouldn’t be a problem for me to explode them myself.” The moment I said that, the duo following me widened their eyes as understanding dawned on them. “Also, I noticed something very interesting, but the spider itself avoid the explosions like the plague.” I added with a smirk while storing the knife with the thread tied around it and going to do the same to the next one.

“Wait, you mean that it’s actually affected by its own attack?” Lily asked confused. “Isn’t that weird?”

“Not exactly.” Ozzur said with a nod. “Although rare, it’s not strange for an animal to die because of its own poison should it bite itself. Or even fall for the trap they made themselves.” He said with a nod before pointing towards the spider. “In fact, if disturbed while walking, it wouldn’t be strange for a spider to get stuck on its own web.”

“I seriously doubt this would happen to this one.” I said while looking back at the cave before shaking my head. “But this doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “The point is, from the looks of it, even if it have some resistance to explosions, they still should pack quite a punch.” I said with a nod.

“AH! Is that why you are tying these strings on the knifes then?” Ozzur asked me and I nodded. “I see. Usually fire would be useless against a fire monster, but if you use it as a means to ignite the explosions…”

“AH!” Lily said with a surprised look. “Then you are going to use these to attack it?”

“Yup. That’s the plan.” I said with a nod. “But I’ll also set the bow as my secondary weapon just in case. My guess is that I should be able to ignite the treads from afar with it, and if my guess is correct, this should make it so that when it sets up the explosive web I would bring it down before it’s even done.” I stopped for a moment and peeked at the knifes I had set up previously. “And that’s if my plan A fails.” I nodded amusedly.

After preparing two knifes with treads and setting them on my bandolier, as well as two simpler fire and one stun knife. By logic, using the ice knives would have the most effect on the boss, but the sheer heat that emanated from all the magma pools around this area made it so that even if the effect were amplified, it would melt far too quickly, so I abandoned the idea.

Quickly exchanging the mana crystals I put together with the sonic bombs, I went ahead and tied them to my waist. After a quick test, they proved to be just as effective as I wanted, so at least this I had going for me.

Giving one last look to the others and making a motion telling them that I would be going for now, they sighed before nodding. From the looks of it they are starting to get bored in here. Not only that, but a few hours already went by, so the time I had to finish this spider, despite still being more than enough, was ending, so I decided that I would only give a couple more tries before calling it a day.

Walking away from the cave, I soon found myself in the middle of the now destroyed nest. Inhaling deeply, I soon let out a loud wordless shout. For some reason the spider would always come up here whenever I started making any kind of loud noises. Probably thinking that it might be whoever it was that had destroyed the eggs.

However, even as I awaited, it never appeared in a hurry like before. Usually it would take less than five minutes before it would pop near here, but after getting bored of waiting, I tried shouting once again.

Just when I started to get annoyed of waiting, I heard a few low footsteps approaching from behind. Turning back I saw as Aura and Crys approached me. Raising an eyebrow confused at the duo, Crys quickly said.

“Master, Aura heard the spider roaming through the tunnels on the other side.” She told me, making me frown confused.

“On the other side?” I asked confused.

Aura nodded before frowning slightly and barking something. Turning towards Crys, I awaited for her to translate.

“She said that it sounded like it was running around.” I frowned confused.

“And it wasn’t coming to this place?” I asked confused, but she shook her head.

While both me and Crys looked confused, Aura quickly turned back and started walking ahead. I took it as her offering to guide me to the spider so I quickly followed her suit. Receiving confused looks from both Ozzur and Lily. A quick explanation later the duo nodded and decided to follow me.

I had to make sure to make them stay quietly in the smallest tunnels just in case. They accepted readily, much to my surprise. Though I’m pretty sure that boredom was the reason why they accepted, as they were doing nothing for pretty much a good time.

I might need to rethink of how these hunts of mine will go if I start dragging people around all the time. While thinking about this, we followed the blue fox as she sniffed the ground and started to guide us through the slightly messy cave system. While Crys made sure that we wouldn’t get lost by reading the map, it didn’t take us much longer until the other of us heard the sound.

Different from the silent stalker, this time I could clearly hear the skittering sound of the legs as the spider ran madly around. The only time it would do that during our fights was when it started getting angry, so this meant a lot for me.

“You guys, hide there!” I said while pointing to a nearby tunnel entrance and unsheathing my swords. They hesitated for a moment before running away while I darted towards the crossing ahead where the sound came from. Jumping while readying my sword for my first attack, I shouted loudly “Round seven, FIGH… Bwaagh!”

-23 (977/1000)

For a moment I laid there flatly on the ground, trying to understand what had just happened, feeling the stone behind my back as I stared at the ceiling. Did I just get flattened by the spider? It kind of felt like it didn’t even see me back there.

…I don’t mind if we fight and I get beaten down fairly, but…

“HOW DARE YOU IGNORE THE HUNT-MASTER GONDORRER SPIDERBANE-SAMA?” I shouted angrily while turning around and darting forward.

I ran after the spider, seeing the large molten-rock like back of it as it stormed through the ground, the sharp feet poking holes on the ground. Just as I reached to the stun knife I had in my bandolier, the spider made a sharp turn down the tunnel, it’s body slamming heavily on the wall, making a large dent into it.

This also meant that I had to skid a little to try and keep up with the sharp turn. However, not even a moment later the spider made another slam-turn down the tunnel, only to skid to a halt and start to claw at what looked like a small indentation on the wall.

Stopped my run a few meters away from it, watching as it clawed angrily at the wall for seemingly no reason at all. I’m pretty sure that it didn’t even notice me as I ran after it. Point proven by the fact that the game didn’t even consider me to be in combat. While I felt mighty annoyed that he was ignoring HUNT MASTER GONDORRER SPIDERBANE-SAMA, I was also curious for its reason to try and attack the wall.

Seeing that it wasn’t going anywhere, I finally sighed and decided that intervening would probably give me answer sooner. So as a good boy, I took out the remaining strings that had remained after my little botching and dropped besides the spider who was still lost in a fit of rage.

Heck, might as well as take the chance to try and test my idea, right?

Dropping the mess of strings right on the back of the spider, I took some space before retrieving a small fire knife from my inventory just so I would not spend the ones from my bandolier.

“Go to hell, you bastard.” I said happily, finally noticing my presence, the spider turned to me, but it was far too late, as the knife was already embed on the net.

A massive explosion echoed on the room. Since the string was all gathered on one spot, it was much bigger than what I expected, so even I was taken in by the impact, being blown back a good few meters before falling on my back.

-79 (921/1000) (Leg injury)

While I raised myself painfully from the ground, heavily regretting my decision, I looked over at the spider who was at the ground zero of the explosion. What I saw made me laugh madly.

-438 (4862/5300) (Stunned) (Deaf) (Claw Injury)

TAKE THAT YOU ANNOYING OVERSIZED CRAWLER! HOW DOES IT FEELS TO TAKE YOUR OWN EXPLOSION TO THE FACE, HUH? HUH? HUH? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! IT FEELS SOOOO GOOD! REVENGE FEELS SO GOOD!

IT REALLY IS BEST SERVED COLD!

Wait, don’t they say that revenge is sweet? Since it’s both best served cold, and sweet… Is revenge ice cream?

Okay, someone really should make an ice cream brand called Revenge.

Quickly standing up, I winced in pain as my leg hurt a little, but quickly ignored it and approached the downed spider while withdrawing my sword. No chance I would miss this opening! Raising my sword, I prepared to go and slice the crawly bastard into half.

But before I had the chance, something hit my leg, surprising me. When I looked down, I only managed to see the shadow of something climbing up my leg from behind.

Feeling an unpleasant sensation on my back where it stood, I quickly tried to grab and yank out whatever it was that had stuck to my back, but it kept dodging my hand nimbly while jumping from side to side. The fact that I had a cape between me and whatever it was that was dodging around didn’t exactly help me. Deciding that simply using my one free hand was leading nowhere, I quickly took the long sword, put the back of the blade on my back and scraped it up until it popped up around my neck, where the cape left.

I quickly grabbed the thing, feeling a hard surface before bring it up.

“tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek…”

I stared at the small creature with sincere surprise.

It was a small sprite, like the ones I saw earlier when I first came into the dungeon. Except that it was completely black with some scale-looking lines on its surface, exactly like the scale iron ore found in this mine, and instead of only four small leg like appendages, it had a total of seven, two of which had a strangely claw-like appearance to itself.

“Wait, is this the spider’s string tied around you?” I asked surprised before quickly removing the red tread that was tangled around the two claws. “There you go.” I said before eyeing the creature a bit curious. Now that I took a better look at it, it was also a bit more elongated than the others. Kinda like…

“HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

I jumped in surprise when I heard the loud furious hiss coming from the spider. Turning back to it, I noticed that it managed to stand up once again, with some difficulty, and looked towards us. Except that it looked a bit angrier than usual. Like, REALLY angry. Heck, I didn’t even know spiders could hiss like that!

After a moment of surprise, the little pebble in my hands started to get nervous and move to one side to the other, finally grasping at my hand and climbing on my arm and once again hiding on my back.

…Ah… I see…

While seeing the spider start to stand up, looking at me furiously, I finally understood what was happening here.

Rolling to the side at the moment I saw it bringing down the massive claw over me, I quickly took hold of my sword and aimed for the nearest leg, but the spider stabbed one of its legs on the ground and used it as a pivot to spin around. Not only it managed to dodge my attack but also slammed me on the chest with its abdomen, one spike managing to find its way to my gut.

-102 -32 (787/1000)

Being sent flying backwards, I somehow managed to recover on the air and land on my knees, my hand grasping my sword to the side while the other one lifting me from the ground.

“Looks like I’ll have to deal with your full anger now, huh?” I said annoyed.

“TEK-TEK-TEK!” The small sprite said over my shoulders while trembling slightly. However, this only served to make the spider hiss once more, so the sprite quickly hid itself behind me once again.

“YOU AREN’T HELPING!” I complained to the sprite before preparing to deal with the next attack.