Chapter Seventeen: The High Ground

Seventeen

“Hold it down!” Dane struggled to line up his sacrificial dagger with the squealing monster. It thrashed back and forth in Tolic’s arms, pointed, ragged, teeth gnashing Tolic’s borrowed arm into a bloody mess. He stabbed down and the creature went still and another core was added to his growing pile of sacrifices.

Razor-Tooth Jackalope lvl. 6

Without an identification skill set he couldn’t figure out exactly what the creature was besides its level and its name. It was only a few feet long and composed mostly of coarse fur with twisted spike horns that emerged from its small skull. Glassy red eyes glared outward with spite as Tolic dropped the beast and flipped it over with his toe to the pile of the corpses there.

The little monsters were constantly bursting out of the brush in continuous waves of rage and fur. They had piled them up as they killed them to make a small hill, but Dane hadn’t earned a level yet. Sounds of fighting came all around them as the forest was filled with fighting and killing. They had only encountered monsters so far, with none of the natives or Aji-Abami having stumbled upon them.

“I’m not complaining, but this sucks,” Tolic complained. Dane glared at the spirit and his torn apart flesh suit. The native was little more than ragged strips of flesh now, having sacrificed his body to hold down the small beasts.

“I’m sorry the dagger is a dagger and not a spear. They're hard to kill like this,” Dane shot back at him as they kept moving further forward, following the compass of the leaderboard. The top one hundred list was populated and he was on it, but near the bottom.

“We’re earning points by the aggregate level, not by the number of beasts killed. It’ll be more efficient to go and kill higher ranked beasts than these things.” Tolic punctuated his point by kicking over a dead corpse. Dane had to agree with him but didn’t want to say it outloud. The spirit was annoying enough without knowing he was right.

Another of the beasts came flying out of the brush and Dane reacted on instinct, the dagger flashed end over end and sank into the charging chest of another of the jackalope. Its body slid to a halt at his feet and he pulled the blade free and looked on toward where they had to go.

The forest was tilting upward and toward a hill as the trees thinned and the slope became rocky. Corpses lay in still heaps, mostly monsters but with a few native and Aji-Abami warriors in the mix. This side of the hill was quiet and without life. Dane picked his way carefully over the dead bodies, eyes alert for anything that wasn’t quite dead.

Tolic was also picking through the corpses, but looking for a new suit rather than checking to make sure they were all dead. Most of the bodies were a mess, victims of claws or blades till the point that even Tolic’s mangled body was better than what was available.

Toward the top of the hill the sounds of fighting grew louder and a golden circle of light illuminated the entirety of the top of the hill. Obscured figures were fighting in the center of the tight confines of the golden circle and Dane got low to the ground and moved silently up to the top to look it over.

His compass started to spin wildly as he reached the top of the circle and Dane figured this was where the monsters would be drawn toward. It was a defensible position at the top of the hill with clear line of sight in a full three-sixty and would give him plenty of room to work with. A full team camped up here could hold out as long as their mana did if they did it right.

Dane didn’t have mana. Or a team.

“I do have one very powerful ability though.” A dozen figures were clustered on the rim of the hill looking away from him. They were fighting each other, their forms obscured by the golden light but Dane could tell what they were. It was a trio of natives fighting against six of the smaller Aji-Abami scouts. The bulkier natives were holding their own, but struggling to finish any of the scouts.

Staying low to the ground he worked his way around the edge until he had them all roughly in a line. At this angle he could see more of the jackalopes coming out of the forest and heading toward the slopes of the hill. They leapt with agile grace up and over the dead corpses as they had their eyes locked to the glowing circle. Dane ignored them for now and looked at the nine figures, eight now. One of the smaller scouts had failed, falling to the ground and rolling down the slope.

“Tolic, new body,” Dane said, pointing at the scout. The dogman was still alive, but bleeding heavily from a wound down his thigh.

“Finally,” Tolic said with a smile and his falling apart corpse fell limp to the ground as the spirit raced toward the scout. The four arm spirit cut across the distance, making sure not to be seen from the fighters on the top of the hill.

Dane lined them up and summoned [Hellfire]. The bolt of flame crossed the distance in a flash of light and bodies exploded in a wave as Dane’s arm warmed uncomfortably. Three had died and he double cast it just a second later as the other survivors looked around in shock at the sudden violence.

Only a single survivor remained after that second bolt but Dane was busy staring at his arm in horror. Blisters had risen up, painful, ugly, white, pustules decorated his casting arm. Pain hadn’t hit yet but a burning was rising up in a way that stole his breath. Tolic saved him, rushing up the hill and braining the sole survivor while Dane stood there stupefied.

“Two in a row? That seems dumb. Come on, it’ll start wearing off in a second,” Tolic said as he grabbed Dane around the shoulder and lead him to the center of the hilltop. The leaderboard flashed and nine names had disappeared off the leaderboard. All of them had been ahead of him.

“Got fifth,” Dane said between clenched teeth. The alert had popped up after the second blast had killed the survivors. The boost to his vitality was apparent as the blisters started to heal, slowly, and the pulsing redness eased slightly. With enough time his new and improved vitality would have him at full strength soon enough.

He just didn’t have time.

“I can hold them for a little bit, but you need your head in the game,” Tolic said as he heft a short sword and began to kill the jackalopes as they bounded over the top of the crest. Each one could leap several feet into the air and they attacked head first with their spiky antlers leading the way.

Dane gritted his teeth and tried to control the pain that threatened to consume him. He panted and worked on trying to blank his mind out and breath in the way that he knew the Meditation skill would activate. It took a moment before it dinged as he went up a level and the crushing depths of the pain lessened its hold enough for Dane to breathe and steady himself.

The dagger in his good hand felt useless as the hordes of monsters came scaling up the side. It was a sidearm at best in a brawl like this. Sheathing it made him wince as he thought about the loss of cores he’d be able to sacrifice, but he had to live to do it.

“One step at a time.” A short sword was picked up from the dead and he swung it around a few times to get a feel for the balance. It felt alright in his hands and he wasn’t going to complain about free weapons. Tolic yelled in anger and he looked over in time to see a pair of jackalopes had stabbed the spirit through the chest with their spikes. The new flesh suit was nearly already in as bad as shape as the last one and Dane didn’t think Tolic would have much longer.

Two swipes of the sword and the jackalopes hit the ground, minus their heads, and Tolic was free to continue rampaging around killing the small beasts. Every death added a few points to his score and Tolic was racking up the kills now that he didn’t need to hold them down for Dane to kill them. They were climbing up the leaderboard, but rather slowly.

“Dane, there’s some bigger monsters starting to head this way. And more of the dogs.” Tolic pointed with his bloody sword into the trees. Dane peered where he was pointing and felt a bit of a cold sweat break out as he saw a mass of monsters start running toward them. Not just the little jackalopes either but six foot tall, long limbed, grassy creatures with six golden eyes scattered across their face.

A squad of Aji-Abami warriors raced out of the forest to the side of them, dueling a pair of the grassy creatures while trying to protect the person in the middle of their formation. It was a slight Aji-Abami, no taller than five and half feet, covered only in robes as it held a quarterstaff in one hand and lifted its other to point at the grassy creatures.

Red flame leapt from its hand and the creature went up in a burst of flame before folding in on itself to collapse. Dane looked at the leaderboard and saw one of the names jump up and into the top ten.

“Looks like we have a mage to kill,” Dane told Tolic. The spirit cackled and the duo backed away from the lip of the hill and retreated, allowing the squad to fight their way to the top.

“I can’t fight them toe to toe, not yet anyways. But a warrior isn’t just his brain.”