Fight. Level. Survive.

Chapter 69 - Happy Little Hunter

“Okay, one down and one to go,” Mayry said, taking out the last contract they had taken out. This one has even fewer details than the last; I chose it because it sounded interesting and mysterious. Three other Hunters have already been out here, but two returned and rejected the job, the other never returned.”

“Oo yeah, that is mysterious. Does it say why they rejected it?”

“No…” she replied, looking closer. “All it says is there have been sightings of monsters coming in and out of a cave. It’s not that far. Depending on what the monsters are, we can probably get it done by the end of the day! Then we can relax for a while.”

“Relax? Now you’re speaking my language!” Mason moved behind her, put his hands on her shoulders and started massaging. He put his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “How should we relax?”

A shiver ran through Mayry before she shrugged him off, “You’ll just have to wait and see. C’mon, let’s get this done…” winking, she added, “as fast as possible.”

*****

With Mason able to teleport them around, it only took a few minutes for them to find the specific cave in question. He was starting to run low on Mana when they were a five-minute walk away, so they walked as he recharged. They could see the cave just up ahead; it looked disappointingly normal.

He didn’t know what he had been expecting… maybe ominous lights, strange runes or even a ton of booby traps that might have put off the other Hunters, but looking at it, it just looked like any other normal cave.

No matter! As his mother always said, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and as long as there was something he could fight on the inside of the cave, he would be a happy little hunter.

They made it to the mouth of the cave and still saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you sure this is the right cave?” Mason asked.

Mayry took a moment to answer. Mason looked over at her and saw her staring at the contract again. “I think so? All these caves look the same! And you were no help navigating!”

“Oh, I’m sorry; maybe next time we use your teleportation power.” He shot back. “Anyway, I’m not so great with maps. We’d probably end up somewhere in southern France if I were in charge of the map.”

“Where’s—never mind. Let’s check it out, and if anything in there has mouths bigger than their heads, we can probably assume it’s the right cave. Fair?”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n Sparks! Lead on?”

“Oh, so you’re a pirate now?” She smacked herself in the face, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “I can’t believe I have sex with you.”

The moment they entered the cave, the most horrendous stench they had ever experienced hit them so hard that it felt almost like a physical force.

They scrambled back out of the cave as quickly as they could, each of them emptying the contents of their stomachs on the ground.

“That was-” Pausing to puke again, he finished “-horrible.” For once, Mason cursed his high Perceptions Stat. He reckoned the only reason the smell hadn’t knocked him out was his Resilience Stat working overtime to counteract his enhanced sense of smell.”

“No wonder none of the other Hunters who took this contract completed it; I don’t know if I want to find out what kind of creature makes that kind of disgusting stench.”

Quest Received! The smell of the Dungeon

Quest Objective - Kill all monsters in the dungeon and rescue the test subject before it is too late.

Reward - Loot the dungeon for a unique potion.

Accept? Y/N

He mentally accepted the quest and relayed it to Mayry.

“There is a person trapped in there with that smell?!” Mayry exclaimed.

“There is. We need to figure out what to do next. I could send in a clone, but I doubt he’ll enjoy the smell any more than we do…”

"I could start a fire and put it out from here before it starts to spread. See if anything or anyone comes to investigate."

"That could work. Just make sure to put it out, or you could hurt whoever is trapped in there."

Mayry summoned a small fireball to her hand and shot it into the cave. Mason wasn't sure if the fire would spread at all, as the cave was made of stone, but as the fireball landed, Mason could see that there was moss covering the cave floor.

The fire started to grow slowly. Mason and Mayry waited, hoping that either the fire would be able to burn away some of the smell or that one of the creatures would come and investigate. The former worked to an extent. Mason experimentally stuck his head into the cave and took a very cautious sniff that made him cough and choke. The smell was marginally better, but now it was mixed with the smell of smoke.

The latter part of the plan worked, and a few minutes after the fire had started, they saw what they could only call a blob monster emerge from deeper in the cave. It looked like something from a truly terrifying nightmare: mostly a mass of flesh with limbs poking out at random—some human, some not—stretched and twisted into jagged angles. The sight was almost as bad as the smell it brought with it.

Up until now, Mason hadn’t thought it was actually possible to see stink lines, but this creature proved him wrong. Wavy green lines leaked out from all over the creature. It had multiple sets of eyes scattered all over its body as if it were an amalgamation of several people and creatures squashed into one entity.

The creature undulated forwards toward the fire like a snail, leaving behind it a wet, shimmering trail of slime.

It was almost painful to look at, but Mason did so for long enough to use his Identify ability.

Monster - Level 28 Cronenburgian Monstrosity - Once human, these horrifying freaks of nature have been changed by Magic, Science or simple Dumb luck into Monsters, with only the barest hint of their human form remaining. I would really recommend against letting one touch you.

It was some sort of experiment, meaning that the Test Subject the quest referred to was in danger of being turned into one of those things. This one was only level 28, but fighting them would be difficult if they couldn’t do something about the smell.

At least they could lure this one outside and kill it to see what it was like in a fight. It looked slow, and he couldn’t imagine it being very smart.

Picking up a stone, he used his Ballistic Touch on it and shot it towards the Monster as fast as a bullet. With the ability’s latest upgrade, he found he had a sense of where the stone was going to hit; it was currently telling him that the stone was going to miss. He tweaked its trajectory slightly while it was still in the air and ensured it hit the creature in the dead centre of its mass.

It reeled at the hit and, faster than he imagined possible, crawled towards them.

Before he could do anything, Mayry stepped in front of him, turned and, with determination in her eyes, asked, “Let me have this one?”

He smirked and teleported himself off to the side to keep from getting in the way.

Mayry moved out of the way as the monster reached her and, already partly transformed, raked her claws against its flesh.

It was durable, but its huge mass of flesh was thick and difficult to penetrate. However, her razor-sharp claws managed to get through, opening a long wound that intensified the smell in the air. She scrambled away, trying to escape the horrific smell and shot an Ice spike at it. The smell that permeated the air managed to melt her attack before it close close, leaving only a puddle of water on the ground.

It turned and, again moving faster than either of then expected it to be capable of lunged at her. Mason took an involuntary step forward wanting to intervene back managed to hold hmself back, hoping that she would be able to recover. He to her, “Don’t let it touch you!”

At that exact moment, one of the creature’s limbs wrapped around her arm, but his shout caused her to turn and look at him, making her unable to see it coming.

To his horror, the creature pulled her off her feet towards it. The moment her body made contact with the creature flesh it ripppled and sucked her in.

Caught off guard, he froze for an instant, not knowing how to react. What was it doing to her? Was she being digested in the thing’s stomach, or was it something more nefarious?

Snapping out of his stupor, Mason concentrated on using his Mana Control to make ropes of Mana and wrap them around the creature. Where the mana touched the creature’s flesh, it started smoking and bubbling. He wrapped it up as tightly as he could and then mentally pulled on the rope being cautious at first, not wanting to accidentally hurt his girlfriend, but soon enough he was pulling on the ropes as hard as he could only barley managing to get through its tough hide.

In his panicked state the concentration it took to maintain the ropes was immense, but he endured. The creature thrashed around violently, but he was able to keep it contained. Mason just hoped all the movements weren’t hurting Mayry.

His heart raced with panic as the Monster’s struggles grew more and more aggressive, and it took more concentration to keep it contained. Mayry's life was at stake; he couldn’t let this freak experiment overwhelm him.

With every fibre of his being focused on the task, he kept tightening the Mana ropes, feeling a surge of relief as they sliced through the creature's flesh.

But as the ropes cut deeper, the creature's thrashing intensified. Mason could hear Mayry's muffled cries from within its grotesque form. Gritting his teeth, he pushed harder and harder, noticing his mana draining fast. He knew he needed to act fast before it was too late.

Summoning all his strength, he grabbed the end of the Mana rope, feeling pure energy burning his hand; he pulled on it now mentally and physically hell-bent on increasing the pressure of the ropes, willing them to slice through the creature's body just a little bit more. The monster let out an unearthly howl, and finally, with one last powerful tug, the disgusting creature exploded in a torrent of flesh, blood, guts and slime. The smell seeped into everything and almost made him throw up again, but seeing Mayry on the floor allowed him to push the feeling away.

He ran over to her and checked her pulse. Mayry was almost dying, and it was becoming more and more frequent. He needed to get stronger, not only so he could protect her but also so she would get stronger and be able to protect herself. Her pulse was strong, and she seemed fine, but she wasn’t moving. He lifted an eyelid and saw it move around erratically. He thought that might mean she was conscious, but being inside the creature had some sort of paralytic effect.

He wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but he reached out and laid his hands on her, activating his Healing Ability. With his high Vitality and Resistance stats, the paralysing effect he absorbed from Mayry only made him feel a bit sluggish, and the few cuts and bruises disappeared as fast as they appeared.

As soon as he was done healing her, she sat up and immediately puked. The next thing she did was pull him into a hug, covering him with even more of the creature’s slime and guts.

“Thanks for the hug and all… but you reek.”

She pulled back and swatted him, “So do you! I am never going to get this stink out of my hair.” She pointed a hand to the sky and shot a powerful jet of water upwards, causing gravity to bring it back down as if it were heavily raining. It only took a minute or two to clear most of the creature’s putrid remains from the surroundings, but clumps of it still clung to their bodies.

“What the heck do we do now?” Mayry asked. “I think I could fight a few of those things if my Demon side got the chance to kick in. The moment it touched me, though, I couldn’t move an inch.”

“I’m going to summon something and get it to go in and draw them out one at a time.” He looked over at her with a grin. “If you could try not to get eaten this time, that would be great.”

The glare Mayry gave him made him chuckle. The fireball she threw at him did not.