Biter

Adam peered out from the dungeon’s brush, “Are you certain you can take out a straw or clayman golem?”

“No, but you both can right?” Sebas asked him, tugging him back down so the wicker humanoid wouldn’t look in the group’s direction.

“Well,” Adam began matter-of-factly: “I’m kind of a big deal, I did get promoted to copper yesterday.”

Sebas looked down at Adam who was flashing his copper adventurer ID, it didn’t appear like he was trying to boast, so Sebas let the matter go with a roll of his eyes.

“What Adam is trying to say in his special self-humbling way, is that a copper rank would be or at least should be able to deal with a monster at or near their level,” Karri added to the conversation, “ Adam what level did it appear to be?”

“It's a feisty one, for some reason it's mad, and it's level nine.”

“Wait,” Sebas told him, shaking his head before asking. “What do you mean it feels mad?”

“The magic eyes work in mysterious ways, I’m telling you what the magic eyes say because you asked and I love you enough to tell you.”

Sebas groaned, “These things are just… theorized to be, clones of things the dungeon makes.”

Karri held a hand on her adventurer partner, “Everything has feelings. The monsters we kill will resent us even in death, along with the red players we put down as adventurers.”

“Is Elimir spouting nonsense throughout the guild?”

“Sebas there is a record of people who kill other members in the guild, it is common knowledge. It can even impact the chances you get to rank up your membership.”

“I have no clue what the benefits, nor the purposes of the rankings in the guild, besides the arbitrary set of loose rules that determine who is what rank that I read about a while back.”

Adam crouched down from where he was staring at the monster, a pale look painted his face like a rabbit at the end of a gun’s barrel, “Tell him about the nitty gritty later?” Adam asked Karri.

“You’re up. We’ll back you up if you need it… and you might with how twiggy and ragged you look.

Sebas scorned the hunter and pulled his dagger out of his belt sheath, “Hopefully I can still things without the noisy god window.”

“Strictly speaking,” Karri began before Adam placed a hand over her mouth, pointing out towards the Strawman Golem.

Sebas nodded and gave Adam a tired “I’m on it” expression. His lack of proper access to the worldwide system made it inconvenient for daily activities, at least when it came to skills and items in the world, but it was entirely unnecessary. One could still access their skills, shown by the purple hue shining off of Sebas’ dagger’s skill; . He focused his senses, which were dull unless he was in the middle of battle, on the incoming humanoid.

A flash of three consecutive strikes launched out from the wheat field, ruining the crop making grain dust launched into the air around the battlefield. The first two flashy strikes were doing its job while the third was a strike from his explosive and slinging him forward. A resonating aura settled into his blade as Sebas began using his a faux blade of light that gave a false length to his knife.

He struck the straw golem, and several thousand splinters of hay bits fled the golem’s body as his blade, leading Sebas to go for the golem's head, a loud yell was cut short as some sort of Miasma radiated from the monster, which suddenly took the form of a muscular blonde woman with a kind face in a white dress that gradient into pink where her sudden wounds bled out onto her beautiful dress, making her face turn into a fearful scowl.

The woman began to scream and yelled at the now hesitating adventurer loosened his grip on his weapons, “YOU’RE A MONSTER, A MONSTER, THE BEGINNING OF THE END, THE OMEN THAT SPELLS DOWNFALL FOR OUR HOUSEHOLD!” The woman, Sebas’ mother, looked beautiful, despite her false mirages caused by her son’s blade, a shoulder wound, and a ripped stomach. Sebas stared down at the bloodied dagger and his wet hands. He began to feel the heart rate audibly increase behind his ears, and a strange tightness in his chest radiated a burn that locked up his breathing, he began to shake his head back and forth in a panic.

“YOU ARE NOT MY SON,” the woman said, the words drew his attention towards a giant and imposing fist that rapidly began to take up his vision. He was launched backward from the Strawman Golem, the sudden reeling punch sent him into the dirt in the distance, Adam appeared next to him, helping him upright from his confusion.

“You good?”

“No… what was that.”

“It has a fear skill, you hallucinate whatever is wrong with you, and it takes the opportunity to beat you nasty; Need a potion?” Adam asked while holding a vial of liquid.

“No, I’ll be fine… It isn’t real?”

“Not unless you make it real I guess,” Adam stated.

Sebas stood up and opened up his clenched jaw before answering, “Thanks, that helps.”

Sebas began to run back toward the lanky Strawman golem. As soon as it saw him it turned back into his mother, but Sebas shook his head as she screamed expletives in his direction, the only thing that let him stare the false mirage down was the fact that the body of the beast was facing Karri, who was pre-occupying the monster, while the head appeared to be screwed on the wrong direction.

Sebas ran directly into the monster dirt tufts launching from underfoot until his dagger landed in where the spine would have been inside of the doll. An unrestrained fury overtook him as memories he had since repressed were brought to light, he began ripping straws out by the handfuls, causing bleeding underneath his nails from the sharp straws which felt like needles. The adventurer began to snarl as the strawman began to turn fully onto him, its illusion of fear and antagonism screaming at him, he took his right arm and began to pull onto its wrist, and while using his foot for leverage against the giant false woman, he placed his stag boots onto its face and began to pull.

An animalistic squeal came from the strawman, the illusion died down as the arm of the monster separated at the bicep, Sebas arms red and vein-covered from the excessive pulling suddenly relaxed. The monster’s arm was flung backward, and it tried to stand upright, only that Sebas kicked the golem over, and sat on its torso. He simply clenched his fists, and began to rotate his shoulders at the head of the monster was rapidly slung to the left and the right.

His hands began to flash a violet color, similar to the first level of his dagger’s , a dozen and a half fists launched the monster’s head back and forth, side to side, Sebas got grabbed by the golem’s arm, and normally he would have reacted in a sensible and normal way, but he felt that he needed to rip the monster’s arm off with his now red flashing teeth. His knuckles hurt too much to continue punching, bloodied and ruined, he slammed his untrimmed fingernails into the Strawman’s chest until a small ball of brown twigs was found, and ripped out from his teeth.

A roar sounded from Sebas after he pulled the Strawman Core and crushed it between his teeth. The ground beneath him, the monster, which was stray straw and wheat grains; wailed on until his unleashed fury was pittered out, leaving him sitting on the ground, elbows on his knees, huffing in a rage he couldn't release anymore.

A silence that lasted much longer than needed was broken by Karri, who set a hand on Sebas’ shoulder: “We’ll talk about it later, let's go find something to eat somewhere.”

Sebas nodded and shrugged her comforting gesture off, he began to walk off until he remembered his dagger, and returned for it, a small tuft of straw was removed from his mouth, and he made a small joke about the situation: “Crazy how they just leave these things out for free, if I had one of those guys to wail on every time I got angry, I would probably be a very calm individual.”

Adam’s fearful visage changed to one of sad comfort and slung an arm around Sebas, who returned the gesture and pointed off. “COME, Adam, we have fish sandwiches to requisition from TOM!”

“Beware all fish who enter, we are hungry!” Adam said, picking up on the mood.

“Yeah! Sure! That works!” Sebas said while walking back towards the guild.

Karri remained for a single moment, viewing the small divot that was removed from Sebas’ wrathful explosion. She took a last look at the ruined golem that slowly began to burn a blueish-white color as she left.

“Why are you some sort of chosen prophet hero… person?”

Adam looked at Sebas in a confused manner, half of a fish sandwich in his mouth, an unintelligible grunt that may have been an answer, or a questioning “Huh?”

“Item Space, some swordsmanship that seems to be from my family, along with these magical traits I've never heard of, and your class is something “Sealed.”

Adam shrugged and continued to partake in lunch.

“You know,” Karri said, “The appearance of the hero, at least in the past, signifies the birth of the demon king.”

Both Adam and Sebas looked over at her, waiting for more tidbits of juicy conversation, however the hunter only took a bite of her lunch in response.

Adam looked smug, with a stomach full of fish, and the strangest canvas attire Sebas had ever seen, causing him to shake his head, indulging in his own respective crisp lunch half sandwich.

Adam pointed at the green light above the entrance: “Alpha tri-horned rabbit.”

Sebas looked up and grinned, “You guys ready to get some monster hunting done?”

“Frankly, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to control yourself. I put it off to prevent upsetting Adam, but if you go berserk as you did before, I can't say that I will plan to continue this team.” Karri said.

Instead of getting irrationally upset, Sebas thought for a moment instead of responding at the first chance, “I had a bad encounter with whatever mirage that strawman created, the form it took brought back some… unpleasant memories.”

Adam patted Sebas on the back in a consoling effort while Karri continued, “Emotional outbursts aren’t a part of being an adventurer, but controlling those outbursts are, all I ask is you control your mentality, because with how weak it was earlier, if your state of frenzy latched onto us, we would’ve either had to kill you or flee.”

Sebas thought hard about the words he just heard, and nodded solemnly, “I apologize, I'll work on my mental resistance and control.”

“You’re also paying for the raid charge, Since I covered lunch” Karri added with an impish grin.

Sebas latched onto Adam and stared into his eyes, “Adam, you need to give up, that woman is a devil, there are so many fish in the sea, please find someone else to obsess over.”

“But she's so pretty…” Adam trailed off, while Sebas squished his face.

A sigh came from Sebas, as Karri told him that his Coinpurse went from 53 Silver and 43 Copper down to 43 Silver, he grumbled and dropped it back into his magic pouch. The main problem that he encountered was that he had to count like some sort of scholar, and for the change he had in his bag.

The guild attendant was suddenly stopped by a large man, probably twice Sebas’ size and completely overrun with tattoos on his burly upper body. A massive pouch of money followed the words, “We were here first.”

The guild attendant attempted to console the man’s plight, but Sebas ignored the attempt to outbid the fight. A large hand sat on his shoulder, some sort of skill was activated by the man’s touch, but for some reason, Sebas didn’t feel anything wrong.

“What say you let my crew get this one big fella?” The man asked Sebas, he seemed like a gentleman, if it weren’t for the massive scar that took over his left eye, along with the evil smile that was poorly disguised as one of friendship.

“What’s in it for me?” Sebas asked the man while forcibly removing the man’s hand from his shoulder, it took far more effort than he was willing to expend but managed to twist it off of his shoulder.

“Well, just imagine my friend,” Fake Smile began, “Imagine if your group encountered a Boss that you aren’t equipped for. You don’t strike me as someone who can afford a low-rank antivenom.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Sebas smiled at the man, returning his fake kindness, and kicked the iron doors open with his boot.

Adam apologized to the big man while he and Karri went in, and Sebas stood behind the iron doors, holding them while staring the man down, “I appreciate your kindness sir, But you should probably just wait your turn. After all, we were here first.” His smile was removed, and he slowly closed the door, “But you knew that, didn’t you.”

12 sconces surrounded the interior of a fully stone dodecagonal prism where the trio stood across from a blue flame that surrounded a circle of stone carvings made in the floor tile, and from within a three-horned rabbit two meters long arose.

“Sebas you take the aggression, me and Adam will support from the flank.”

“Anything to note? Tips or advice?”

“If you see any of it glow, get away from the head, it will run through you.”

“Scary,” Adam muttered.

“I thought you already fought one of these Adam???”

“It wasn’t that big!”

Sebas ran forward to meet the monstrous rodent, shaking his head and signaling the start of the fight, the rabbit screamed at the top of its lungs, vibrating the very chamber with its deep bellow. Red flashing lights lit up the three horns atop its head, and Sebas charged up his dagger with charges of his own .

“Don’t die!” Karri yelled.