Common Clay

The next day, they set out on yet another group patrol into the valley. Once again, they fought their way past the flame wretches that had edged their way closer to the town. With their new abilities and increased [Stats], the team seemed to have an easier time cutting down the trios of wretches that obstructed their way. Even when they made it to the valley, it seemed like they had a much easier time hunting down and eradicating groups of small ironslimes, too. Only one of them even came close to being wounded, and the others spent a decent amount of time hassling Jack for letting the monster get close enough to drench him with its death spray.

None of them were using [Chants] yet, though he saw Natalie struggling to remember the spells. Perhaps it would take them a bit longer than he’d expected to master the magic than he’d feared.

Once they had each slain at least two of the ironslimes, Clay called a halt to their progress and led them back out of the valley. He paused at the top of the ridge that separated the valley from the forest just outside of Rodcliff. “All right, you can all head back on your own. Make sure to do a sweep near the town, and then see if you can spend more time training and memorizing those [Chants].”

Xavien raised an eyebrow at him. “You aren’t coming with us?”

He shook his head. “It will do you some good to hunt a bit without the bonuses I’m giving you. That way, if something ambushes you when I’m not around, you won’t get thrown off balance.”

Jack snorted. “Besides, Clay wants to go hunting without having to worry about protecting us.”

Clay winced, but even while he was searching for something to say, Anne started laughing. “Well, that’s fine by me! From the sounds of it, those flame devils are not exactly a whole lot of fun to play around with. Feel free to figure out the best way to wipe them out before you get home, Clay.”

Still unhappy with the way the [Knave] had phrased things, Clay still tried to come up with a different reason. “It’s not that you would be in the way, it’s just…”

“We still have things to learn, and you knowing what’s ahead of us will help keep everyone alive.” Natalie waved his excuses aside. “We’ll try to get some of those [Chants] down. Go take care of what you need to do. We’ll be fine on our own.”

He still hesitated, but Lawrence gave him a nudge back towards the valley. Then they all set off through the forest together, their eyes watchful and their weapons at hand. Clay watched them for a while, hoping that they didn’t stumble into a patch of wretches right when he had sent them off, but they vanished from sight without incident.

Then he turned back towards the valley and picked out one of the scorched areas. With any luck, a flame devil would be hidden somewhere inside of it. He glanced back at the town one last time and then set out to see what he could find.

The journey through the valley was far less rough than he’d been expecting.

True, there were the occasional fields of ironslimes, but the monsters didn’t appear to have nearly as much awareness as the wretches. Half the time, he’d already killed most of them with arrows or ice spears, and the few that were left died a long way short of where he stood. The bonuses he got from [Slimebane] and his various [Experiences] were simply too overwhelming when they didn’t have the advantage of surprise.

He didn’t know if the same would be said of the flame devils. The manual had mentioned tougher hides, worse fire, and more dangerous claws and bites. It sounded like they would be almost as dangerous as an elder mantrap in their own way. Better to be careful than to be dead.

So he crept through the half-burnt forest, keeping his eyes moving as he went. He was still looking for those odd shadows that always revealed the positions of the flame wretches; if they were anything like the spiders, their habits stayed with them even as they increased in rank and power. Then again, if the things had gotten better at hiding, the others would need to know before they walked into another trap.

Clay felt his heartbeat rise slightly as he neared the spot he had chosen. The burnt trees showed signs of old fire; trees already bare of leaves had been scorched and scarred by whatever blaze had burnt among them. Some of them appeared to have been knocked down and nearly consumed by the flames, too, leaving only ashes mixed with snow behind. Black and grey dominated the small grove, and Clay paused as he realized what that would mean.

It was ideal for the type of camouflage that the wretches used. The dark colors would muddle things when it came to shadows. Trying to see if there was a wretch in that place would be much, much harder, especially if those weird swiveling eyes stayed still for long enough.

Of course, Clay didn’t have to ask if there was a monster in that burnt glade. His ethereal sense was already screaming at him that there was.

Carefully, alert for any twitch or shift, Clay crept forward. He had his spear in his hand; if the devils were tougher and bigger than the wretches, he didn’t think that a shot from the shortbow would be enough to kill them. Besides, if the thing did manage to take him by surprise, he didn’t want to waste time dropping the shortbow and trying to grab the spear.

A gust of freezing wind blew through the glade, and Clay paused. He watched as the breeze stirred the ashes and snowflakes, trying to see if the patterns of shadow from the half-crumbling branches revealed anything. There was nothing, and he stepped forward again.

Slowly, carefully, Clay entered the glade. The dead, burnt bones of a half dozen trees rose around him, a dead place in the middle of the rest of the thriving forest. He wondered if the devils knew how obvious they had made their homes. In the Tanglewood, the mantraps had marked their dens with webs, but it had been for the sake of communication. None of the trolls had made their homes obvious, aside from their desire for perches where they could glide around. Burning an entire section of forest just seemed so obvious.

He froze, not even daring to breathe. It was obvious, the kind of thing that he would have expected from a dumb animal trying to hide from a hunter. The devils weren’t animals, though; they were predators, and a fellow hunter would only use something like this burnt grove for a single purpose.

For bait.

Under his breath, Clay began to recite the reversed form of the [Chant] for Heart’s Light. He called it the Soul’s Shadow, and he’d used it often enough in the Tanglewood to hide. There hadn’t been nearly as much reason to use it here, with the understandable clumsiness of the others making stealth a bit harder to come by. Now, however, he was alone, and surrounded by ashes. What the devil could use, Clay could use too.

The hairs rose on the back of Clay’s neck, as if he could feel the devil’s breath just behind him. He shifted his grip on the spear, preparing for a desperate lunge as soon as he heard a sign of the monster that he was now sure was behind him. Giving the game away too early was a good way to get bathed in fire or bitten somewhere important. If he wanted to survive, he needed to make the thing think its trap was still working.

He delayed and paused, knowing the thing was drawing closer. It was an active fight not to turn and face it. Instead, he continued the [Chant], knowing that it would be complete soon. Clay crouched down, making himself a little smaller as he pretended to study the burnt remnants of a log.

Then the [Chant] abruptly cloaked him in shadows, and Clay dove to the side. He spun as he moved, bringing his spear back around.

The flame devil was indeed there, hard to see with its mottled skin and low profile. He still managed to catch its form as it reared up, its grey eyes locked on him despite the shadows. Its mouth snapped open, and a jet black tongue darted out to slam into Clay’s left shoulder.

He had just enough time to register the impact before the tongue retracted with all the force of an elder troll spider’s web, yanking him towards the devil’s maw. The monster’s camouflage didn’t shift at all; only the mouth changed, as its near-toothless rim abruptly began to glow with heat. Clay pictured the jaw closing on his arm, the heat melting through his armor, flesh, and then bone in a single brutal bite.

Then his reflexes snapped into action. Clay had held onto his spear, and he snapped it into position with blurring speed. He grabbed the tongue with his right, and then pivoted to put his left side ahead of the right, with the spear extended out in his left hand at nearly its full length.

In one motion, he went from a helpless meal to an approaching threat, and the devil simply didn’t react quickly enough. The spear struck the roof of its mouth, and it didn’t even have the chance to close it before the blade was in up to the crossguards. He caught sight of a glimmer of metal poking up through its skull, and then he planted his foot on its shoulder and shoved himself back. There was a sickening rip as a piece of the tongue came with him, but he shoved that thought aside.

He skidded backwards a bit further into the burnt patch, his eyes already searching for other threats. In the Tanglewood, the mature spiders had nested together. If there were other devils here…

Yet no other tongues struck, and he saw no glowing lights heralding their pitch-filled breath. The devil he’d struck struggled, twitched, and then abruptly went slack. He saw the glow go out of its mouth, and a heartbeat later, the notification arrived.

{Flame Devil slain! Soul increases by 30.}

Clay ignored it for a moment, still focused on his surroundings. Yet as he waited, there were no other ambushes. He looked around, almost disappointed at the lack of initiative. Another two or three monsters would have made it nearly impossible to escape without some kind of plan. The spiders might have taken these things apart without a problem.

He rolled his shoulder a little, feeling the joint click a little, and winced. Maybe not, after all. Besides, how mad could he be that they weren’t coming at him in groups of four?

Shaking his head, Clay looked around the grove, and then picked a direction. When he’d looked over the valley, it had seemed like there was another burnt patch in that area. Perhaps he’d find another devil to kill.

By the time he came back to the house where the others were staying, the light was already beginning to fade from the sky. Anne was standing outside, her eyes worried. He finally dropped Soul’s Shadow, and she broke into a grin. He waved back as she danced around and watched as she ducked into the front door to yell something at the ones still inside.

She didn’t wait for them to come out. Instead, she hopped the fence on the ramshackle building’s front porch and strode across the snow towards him. “So, did you find any of the big ones?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I did. Got three of them, in fact.” Once he’d caught on to their trick, Clay had simply found the next burnt patch and scouted around the edges. Both of the other devils had been hiding well outside the burnt section, clinging to the side of a tree trunk or sprawled in a snowdrift where an unaware adventurer would pass them by on the way to the bait. Neither one had lasted very long when he’d turned their ambush back on them. “How are you doing with the [Chants]?”

Anne paused for a moment and then recited a very familiar set of words. Shadows crowded in around her, and in moments she was like a shifting piece of the gathering twilight. She released it a moment later and grinned. “That one should come in handy, right? I’m sure plenty of [Burglars] would have loved to have it.”

“Strictly for heroic purposes, right?” Clay gave her a half serious look, and she laughed.

“Oh sure. Well, that and the occasional prank—but only when it would be really funny.”

Clay sighed. Better than nothing, he supposed. It wasn’t like George and Ned had been any better once they’d had the [Chants]. “All right, let’s get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.” Anne nodded, and she headed back inside. He followed her and paused, looking back towards the north.

One way or the other, the monsters were going to be driven back. He just hoped that whoever had unleashed them here wasn’t already somewhere else, making the world just that much worse.

The next few days followed a fairly predictable pattern.

Each morning, Clay led the group out and into the valley. They killed the wretches along the way, and every day it seemed like they were driven just a little further back. Once they reached the valley, they tried to sweep it for slimes, wiping them out in whatever holes and hollows they were hiding in. They all quickly got used to clearing the things out; it took only two days for the team to finish reaching their second [Achievement], though it still left them well short of their next level.

Clay insisted on keeping them on task, however, helping them clear out more and more of the smaller monsters. He wanted to make sure that the wretches and small slimes were kept under control as they pushed further in, and the more they could kill, the better. It also gave the team the chance to practice their new [Chants]. They could all use the lower [Chants] with regular success by the end of that week, though the only one who was able to use a more advanced [Chant] was Natalie. The [Alchemist] was beyond enthusiastic when she convinced the Flame-tongued Song to work for her, though her companions quietly asked her to practice it outside after the first time she used it. Luckily, Lawrence had already mastered the Vanishing Ember [Chant] and managed to rescue most of the table.

By the end of that week, Clay had already grown comfortable hunting the flame devils as well. He knew which trees were likely hiding spots near their burnt patches, he knew what kind of noises and tracks would lead them away into ambushes, and he knew what attacks they employed when they were faced with a direct fight. The handbook had not been wrong about their fire; rather than a simple blob of flaming pitch, they sent entire gouts of it streaming towards their target. Fortunately, their hide was still well short of impenetrable, and by the time the others persuaded him to let them start going after the larger lizards, he knew exactly how to prepare them.

Surprisingly, it was Lawrence that killed the first one, using his original [Charm] to blind and distract it until he could smash it to pieces. Xavien took the next with repeated lightning bolts, while Anne snuck up on and executed the third. Jack took another by stealth, while Natalie killed another with a pre-positioned javelin that she called to her using the Cycle of Return. In a single day, they cleared a significant chunk of the forest of the things. It was amazing. Clay had not been able to stop grinning as they went back home.

Then the next day they did it again. The next, they did it again, and each of them celebrated their ascent to the third level. They returned that day full of new abilities and powers, ready to push even further into the valley on the following morning.

Which was when the snowstorm blew into Rodcliff and darkened the sky for nearly two days. For two days they were trapped in their house in town, peering out into the snow as the monsters grew and recovered. Several times Clay was tempted to head out into the cold anyway, trusting in his [Fortitude] to shield him from the cold. Yet if the snow and cold didn’t get him, the hidden lizards and slimes probably would; seeing through their ambushes in the blizzard would be the next best thing to impossible.

During their downtime, the adventurers trained, going back over the exercises that Orn and Taylor had drilled into them. Their [Stats] began to improve, and their skill with the [Chants] grew as well. Clay felt a flicker of pride when he considered how far they had already come in just a few days.

He tried to ignore the fact that they’d all gotten [Exterminator] as their [Experience], the same one that he’d gotten at fourth level. It was probably just a strange kind of coincidence.

Once the snow finally relented, they forged their way out into the forest again—and almost immediately were swamped by flame wretches and small ironslimes. They ran into more of the monsters during the next four hours than they had in the two days before the storm—and even more disturbingly, there were slimes on the town’s side of the ridge. They’d never shown up before the valley before.

Clay grimaced as they finished clearing out their third batch of small ironslimes. “I was afraid of this.”

“Of what, ironslimes?” Xavien shrugged as he zapped the last of the things with his lightning [Charm]. It exploded beautifully, and the [Oracle] grinned. “I don’t think we need to worry that much about them.”

Natalie frowned. “Why are there so many more of them, though? And how did they get so close to the town?”

He paused. “Back in the Tanglewood, we figured out that the spiders were reproducing in waves. Every five weeks, we were hit by a horde of spiderlings. I’d have to spend almost an entire week clearing them out before I could get any further in towards the Lair.”

“So they might have just created a bunch more. We can still handle them easily enough, right?” Anne grimaced as she accidentally stepped in a pile of slime leavings. She paused to start the [Chant] of Pure Touch, while Lawrence answered.

“If we miss some, though, they’ll get much closer to the town. It would be easy to miss one or two. Imagine how much damage a group of these would do inside of Rodcliff.” He frowned and leaned on his staff. “It still doesn’t explain why there are so many more slimes on this side of the ridge, though. Are they trying to come after us?”

Clay shook his head. “No.” He looked around. “The slimes and the lizards fight, right? They’ve been feeding on each other, at least a little bit.”

Natalie smacked her forehead. “And we’ve been focused on killing the flame devils, which means there are fewer lizards to eat slimes.”

Xavien grunted. “So if we kill the lizards, the slimes escape. If we focus on the slimes, the lizards will break free. It seems we can’t win.”

“Not unless we focus on both at once.” Clay looked around at them. “We’ll try to get the forest cleared again, and once we get back to the valley, you’ll all start going after the flame devils again. This time, on your own.” He glanced north, feeling the itch to go after the larger creatures already. “I’ll try and find some of the bigger slimes and take them out. Try to balance things a little, so we don’t start seeing large groups of either here.”

Jack nodded, having finished his own [Chant] to clean himself and his knives. “That makes sense. We’ll need to know a lot more about them anyway, and you’ve already got the [Achievement] reinforced for [Lizardsbane], right?” Clay nodded, and the [Knave] continued. “We can take care of the small fry, at least once we do our sweeps. You go after the new creatures, and then come back and tell us how to do it too. Tomorrow, maybe things will be back to normal, and we can join you.”

Clay hesitated. “You’re sure?”

The others all nodded, and Jack made a shooing motion with one knife. “Get going. We’ll meet you back at the house tonight.”

He hesitated another moment longer and then turned north. Behind him, he heard them set off again after yet another cluster of ironslimes. Explosions echoed through the woods a few minutes later, and he shook his head. Maybe he was worried over nothing.

It still took him another hour to reach the valley. Between the new swarms of wretches and slimes and the thick cover of fallen snow, the journey had not been the most fun. If he hadn’t had so many bonuses to his endurance, he might have been unable to reach it before midday. As it was, the sun was already close to the top of its arc when he looked down into the valley.

He found himself looking at a very different place. Several of the burnt patches where his friends had killed flame devils seemed softer now, as if the snow had buried the remnants of those scars. In their place, however, there seemed to be a lot of ice. It hung from the branches on the trees, spread in glimmering waves across clearings.

Clay thought back to what the handbook had said. It had called the next level of ironslime a large ironslime, and warned that the ground around them was wet. Had the water just frozen? If that was the case, he might be able to see where they had been, then. All he needed to do was go and see what the handbook had managed to leave out.

Mindful of how badly his first encounter with the flame devils had gone, Clay took a moment to wrap himself in the Soul’s Shadow. Then he went down into the valley to hunt the enemy once more.

It did not take long to reach the first area where he suspected the ironslime was hiding.

Unfortunately, it also didn’t take long to realize that something else was very wrong.

The slime wasn’t hiding, as he’d expected. It was simply sitting in a slightly deflated lump in the middle of a small clearing, as if it were sleeping. All around it, it looked as if the top snow had been scraped together and refrozen, leaving it covered in a thin layer of ice that glittered with a filmy substance. In warmer weather, Clay could imagine that it would have been a coating of some oily liquid. Frozen or not, he didn’t have any particular interest in touching it.

Clay studied the thing, watching for any sign that it had seen him. It had no eyes; how did the slimes even sense other beings, anyway? If he just walked past it, would it even know he had been there?

Whether or not it was aware of him, though, Clay had no intention of leaving it be. He set aside his spear for the moment and drew out his shortbow.

He’d gone through about a quarter of the arrows at this point, but he still had plenty left. The Cycle of Return was remarkably good about helping him recover them, though it didn’t always bring them back intact. The Captain of the [Guards] back in Rodcliff had already been scrounging around for more; apparently the threat of joining the adventurers in the valley had been more than enough to motivate his cooperation.

Clay drew one of the arrows and sighted in on the ironslime. It still hadn’t moved, not even when the wind blew across the clearing. He studied it for a moment longer, and then loosed.

The arrow sped true. He watched it for a heartbeat, satisfied with the shot. He reached for his quiver and was already drawing out another arrow when the first hit.

Then he stopped, blinking in surprise.

He saw the arrow sink deep into the slime’s flesh. There was a small spurt of steam as the tip pierced its hide. Then the slime shifted slightly, and the arrow was suddenly pulled into it. Clay’s jaw dropped as the shaft suddenly grew indistinct and faded. Within moments the slime had eaten his arrow and then settled back into place as if nothing had happened. It didn’t even have a mark where he’d shot it.

Clay looked down at his quiver and sighed. He released the Soul’s Shadow and started the Canticle of Ice instead. The slime might be able to absorb a simple bowshot, but the Canticle had been able to kill elder troll spiders even before he’d reached his current level. He was sure it would do plenty of damage to the thing; if he was honest, he wanted it to die outright. It ate his arrow. How else was he supposed to react?

The slime seemed to shift as he began the Canticle, and it settled a bit lower into the earth. It almost seemed to be ducking or crouching, but it wouldn’t do it any good. He pictured the ice spears tearing through the thing and smiled.

His smile vanished when something punched out of the ground and wrapped around both of his legs.

Clay looked down in horror at what had to be two sections of the ironslime. They weren’t large, just the width of a snake, if a little thicker. The pressure of its grasp wasn’t going to break any bones, but it had a very strong hold on him. His fingers went straight to the hilt of his Pell knife, immediately knowing he needed to hack the things off.

Then the slime flexed, and he was suddenly pulled into the ground. He caught a flash of the slime’s chemical scent and realized that the thing had softened the frozen ground somehow. It pulled him down until he was buried in the snow and dirt up to his waist, and Clay felt a brief moment of panic as he abandoned the Canticle. There was a crackle of shifting ice and rocks, and he looked up just in time to see the slime vanishing into a hole in the ground.

He knew it was pulling the bulk of itself through the softened soil after him. The grip on his legs was already strengthening slightly, and when he tried to push against it, he couldn’t get a good enough purchase on the ground to pull free. If it reached him, he’d be crushed or swallowed, and neither sounded like a good way to die.

Clay switched [Chants]. He began Pursuing Leap and grabbed his spear. With a half-frantic twist, he hurled it across the clearing, where the spearpoint was buried in the bark of a nearby tree. Another twist freed his knife enough to draw it. From that point, it was a race; would he finish the [Chant] first, or would the slime bring its bulk to bear on him first?

In the end, he won. The grip was still tightening on his calves when the [Chant] took effect. He gritted his teeth as it yanked him out of the ground, dragging him back out of the hole as if someone had hitched an oxcart to him.

Then, just as he was beginning to grin, the slime redoubled its efforts, and he was suddenly dangling in midair between the spear and the tendrils of the monster pulling at him.

Clay grimaced as pain lanced through him. He kept ahold of the [Chant], and then bent to swipe at the tendrils with his knife. The heavy blade bit and cut straight through the thickening tendrils, and just as the bulk of the slime came lurching out of the uneven hole he’d left in the ground, Clay went shooting free across the clearing.

He twisted as he reached the spear, grabbing it with one hand and swinging around it for a moment. Behind him, the slime was already retracting into the hole. To his surprise, the bits of tendril that he’d hacked free were also writhing around, as if they were struggling to rejoin the whole. One of them reached the main body and was reabsorbed as if nothing had happened.

Clay’s eyes narrowed, and he started a new [Chant]. This time it was the Drums of the Earth, and he focused on it as the slime continued its retreat back into the hole.

He sheathed his knife and pulled himself up past the spear, just in case the slime was burrowing out towards him. In the end, he managed to get his aching body into one of the lower bows of the leafless branches, just in time to see a handful of tendrils poking from the ground around the base of the tree.

Clearly, the thing hadn’t given up, but where was the main body? It obviously had the ability to reach a long distance, but it probably wasn’t all in the ground beneath the tree; he’d have heard the ground being plowed up, the way he had with elder mantraps. Clay looked around, searching for movement.

He spotted it a moment later, as the Drums of the Earth was drawing to a close. It was a barely perceptible bulge beneath some of the soil, just large enough to crack that odd crust of oily ice a little to the left of where he had been pulled under. Clay felt a sudden vicious satisfaction as he brought the [Chant] to a finish, letting the power of it fill him.

Most of the time when he’d used the [Chant], it was a diversion or a distraction. False footsteps, or a brief shake of the earth to disorient someone on the surface. This time, Clay focused all of the power of the spell into a single, brutal blow, focused directly around where the slime was hiding.

The [Chant] struck with all the force of a giant’s warhammer; the bulge abruptly flattened and then collapsed inwards. He felt something pushing back against the power of the [Chant] and he bore down on it with all of his strength. There was another bit of resistance, and then he heard a violent squishing noise that twisted in his guts. Fluid fountained up through the cracks in the ground, and the tendrils below him abruptly spasmed and deflated.

As the resistance faded away, Clay saw the expected notification a moment later.

{Large Ironslime slain! Soul increases by 40!}

He relaxed and released the [Chant]. It had been effective, but the others probably couldn’t match the same tactic. If he wanted them to be able to fight back against the things, he’d need to find another way to kill them, something that they could all use.

Fortunately, he had plenty of chances to practice.

The sky was once again nearly dark when he made it back out of the valley.

He was limping slightly; at least one of the slimes had gotten in a decent shot at his leg, but it was just a bad bruise, not a broken bone. At least, he was fairly confident that was the case.

It had been worth it, anyway. After the second big slime, he’d managed to figure out a better way to handle the creatures. Using Ballad of Air, he’d yanked most of it off of the ground, which had revealed a central mass of something that had been vulnerable to his attacks. A well-placed arrow or ice spear had killed it easily at that point. The only problem would be reaching the core consistently, but he trusted the others would find their own ways of doing it.

To his surprise, he ran into the others before he reached Rodcliff. They looked almost as battered, though the lot of them were still laughing and joking amongst themselves. “Hey! How did it go on this side of the ridge?”

Lawrence was the one who answered, looking jubilant. “We got a lot of them! I think the town should be fairly safe again.”

Xavien nodded, the [Oracle] looking fatigued. “We had to have killed a few dozen of both wretches and slimes. A few more days and the forest should be mostly clear again. How did you fare in your hunt?”

“Got four large ironslimes. A couple more days and I’ll have enough to lead you back there.”

Jack grinned, looking around at the others. “By that point, the forest should be almost clear here. You think we’d be ready to handle them?”

“Yeah, though you have to be careful.” His leg twinged painfully as he stepped on something slippery beneath the snow. “They have these arms that extend beneath the ground. If you aren’t careful…”

He continued to describe what he’d found, even as they returned to Rodcliff, ready to rest before the hunt started again the next day.