Bacon Macleod
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B2 Chapter 240: Beast Lore
🕑 Added 2025-03-25 20:29:37 +0000 UTCAfter waking with the rising dawn, Kaius pushed his way out of the tent they had pitched right by the site of their battle and set about making breakfast. His companions were still dozing, sleep claiming them deeply after the rigours of their midnight soiree with the drake.
Fetching another cut of meat from the body of the drake, he decided to pair it with some bread and scrambled eggs. A simple meal, but one that would be relatively easy to make.
He prepared an extra serving—it was likely that Ro would arrive within an hour at most.
Kaius shook his head wrily at the thought of the woman crossing that much ground in only eight hours. The trip had taken them the better part of two weeks—that sort of speed, sustained over that long, was ridiculous.
Not for the first time, he wondered what level she was—and Rieker too, for that matter. The second tier was the bare minimum, he suspected that Silver was a requirement to hold the sort of rank that they had within the guild.
It felt too low for the kind of feats he had seen from them. Gold rank—level three-hundred—perhaps?
Regardless of their exact level, he was almost certain that they had good classes too. People who put in the sort of consistent effort required to reach that level in the low mana zone that was Central Plains almost invariably grew strong as they passed through the tiers. Before beasts had swamped the land, reaching that high in any sort of reasonable time frame required nigh constant delving, or trips far afield to where powerful monsters were able to be found.
It was still hard to believe; people in the second tier were rare. Almost unheard of, from what he’d heard from Father and the discussion he’d had with Ianmus after they had first witnessed Ro’s blinding speed. Sure, it was obvious that he’d run into far more of them in the Guild, and that his own strength meant he was all but certain to brush shoulders with people of nominally similar pedigree.
But Deadacre? It was a backwater—and not a particularly pleasant one at that, from what Ianmus had said.
Meeting not one, but two delvers of their capability was mind boggling. It was somewhat explainable in that they clearly knew each other well—too well for the mere handful of years that Rieker had been stationed in the city.
He still questioned why they were there though. There had to be a reason.
It wasn’t so much a burning need to know, but there was a curiosity there.
Maybe he was wrong, and the second tier was more common than he was led to believe—certainly, both Rieker and Ekum had implied that the third tier was not the legendary achievement he had believed it was. For all he knew, bigger cities could have second tiers by the dozen, and guildmasters solidly into the third.
On the other hand, maybe there was something about Deadacre that held the guild’s interest enough that they’d station two elites just to safeguard it.
It was by no means impossible. The city had its mysteries. The circle of blighted land that grew around it, and the rumours of its origin, for one. Even if that wasn’t the case, it could be something as mundane as politics.
The frontier was large. A poor and underpopulated region, it nonetheless was the nexus between the Hiwiann steppe, Mystral, the Dukedoms, and the elvish Domains. With only two major cities in such a region, maybe the guild simply needed some display of strength to project their will through the region.
Honestly, the more he thought about it, the more likely that was the case—though he hoped it was not so. The other two options were far more exciting secrets.
Lost in thought as he dreamed of hidden lairs in the Deadacre sewers, and secret societies of high level delvers, Kaius smiled as he continued his preparation for breakfast, cutting the drake meat into long strips.
….
“Fucking hells, you guys really did a number on this thing.”
Surprise physically jolted him at the sudden noise that came from behind him, a desperate blurt escaping from his lips as Kaius jumped upwards. His team mirrored his responses—Porkchop bolted upright, hackles raised, and Ianmus snapped his head upwards from where he’d been staring mindlessly at the ground in front of him.
Kaius’s hand lurched to the hilt of his sword instinctively, before he realised he recognised who the voice belonged to.
Ro.
Whipping around, Kaius found the guild manager grinning at them with a knowing smile—clearly finding amusement at the fright she had given them.
“Gods’ bollocks, woman!” Ianmus replied with a glare, clutching his chest.
Ro only cackled madly, the mage’s protests inspiring more delight.
“Never gets old,” she finally said, wiping her eyes as her laughter petered out.
Walking over to their group, she waved at Kaius to shuffle to the side—staring at the nearly finished breakfast cooking away in his pan.
“Shuffle over,” Ro said. “Do you have enough for me? Some asshole activated a communication token at midnight, so I've been running for hours on last night's dinner.”
Kaius winced—suddenly realising the imposition they had placed upon her.
“Sorry about that—its nightly patrol was the only time that it came through this valley, and it was the best shot we had.” he explained, moving to his right to create some space for Ro.
“Bah,” Ro said as she waved him off, and took her seat on the stone ground. “Think nothing of it—this sort of shit is just part of the job.”
Craning her neck back, she took in the still body of the drake. Nearly fifty strides from snout to tail, Kaius would have needed to stand on his own shoulders with his arms outstretched to just barely reach its back.
“Even seeing it for myself a few weeks ago, it still amazes me just how damn big these things get. It’s only the second I've ever seen, you know? And the other was in the depths, so I couldn’t be sure if they got to that size naturally.” Ro said, turning back to them.
Kaius nodded. Things like drakes were unheard of in the central lands—seeing one at all was seen as something of a sign of a successful career. Hells, anything of that size was seen as a serious threat—the irontusks around Deadacre were something of an outlier, and probably would have been culled if they didn’t tend to stay low level and keep clear of major settlements.
“Guess it goes to show just how much is changing, huh?” Kaius replied.
He only got a slow nod in response—they were all well too aware of the effects the phase change had had on the settlements in the region.
Finally, Ro looked up and gave them a smile. “Still, I wasn’t joking about you tearing that thing to shreds. It looks like a pack of flaming dogs got at it.”
Porkchop snorted in amusement. “It might as well have been—that thing just wouldn’t bloody die no matter what we did. I’d bet the fight would have gone far differently if we hadn’t had the sense to drop half a forest of logs on its back.”
Ro cocked her brow at the mention of their ambush. “Oh? Is my little team of greenhorns starting to use their brains? I saw the embers, but I didn’t dare hope.”
Kaius rolled his eyes at her jab, but smiled all the same.
“We aren’t that bad.”
“You can tell me that once a few years have passed since I saved your asses from suicide by boggling plague.” she scoffed.
Kaius had the sense to look embarrassed, but he held to his belief that they could be far worse than they were. Sure, they’d had to learn a few lessons, but he doubted that was unique to them. The fact that the dangers they faced were greater than most didn’t change that.
With her impeccable sense of timing, Ro had arrived right as their meal had finished cooking.
Shuffling forwards, Kaius served out heaping portions onto the plates that they brought with them in their spatial storage. He passed the dishes out, receiving thankful nods in return.
With the smell of food in the air, the conversation died out for a short time—everyone too focused on shoving as much meat and eggs into their mouth as they could without choking. Simply put, the meat was delicious. Richer and more flavoursome than any cut he’d had before, it all but dissolved in his mouth.
“Regardless of our prior follies, I would love to know why it was so hard to kill—if you know, that is.” Ianmus asked once he was half way through his plate.
Ro chewed through her mouthful, holding her hand up to ask for time.
“It’s something you’ll notice more and more—a factor of Endurance that becomes apparent as you grow closer to the second tier. Once you cross that threshold, it’s something of a universal challenge you will have to deal with.”
Kaius raised an eyebrow at that. While Endurance made things tougher, it was hard to imagine that everything would be able to survive the level of devastation that the drake had persisted through.
When he asked, Ro shook her head.
“There are degrees to everything—of course some things will be much more fragile than others. Even so, you’ll start to see more and more creatures persisting through wounds that should have killed them. You can still kill things without fully draining their health, but it will get harder to do so with every level. Thankfully, I have yet to see something that a good old fashioned decapitation can’t take down.” Ro explained.
She continued on—talking about how the drake was a special case. While eventually everything would grow that tough, it would take far longer—at which point their own growing abilities should be able to keep pace. Apparently, all inherently magical creatures had some decreased reliance on the mortal concerns of the body.
It varied, and draconic creatures were some of the worst of the lot—at least as far as beasts went, things like spirits and elementals were far stranger.
Their blood would keep beating even through a burst heart, their legs would hold their weight through shattered bones and torn muscle, and other such impossibilities he would struggle to believe if he hadn’t seen the evidence with his own eyes.
Sure, it would hamper them greatly, and they couldn’t persist like that indefinitely—but that simple power of persistence made them a dangerous threat.
One that he was proud to have slain at such a low level—even if it was only a lesser drake.
“Why didn’t we find references to that in the archive?” Ianmus asked, clearly a little affronted that his research skills had been stymied.
Ro gave them an awkward smile. “A failing of Rieker and myself. It is…easy to forget that you are only bronze, when we so handedly send you on threats that most Steel teams closing in on the second tier would balk at. More detailed information on threats of this caliber are usually held in the rooms which you would not have been able to access.”
Ianmus frowned at her response, his unhappiness at not having full access to the information they had sought evident.
“Why would that information be locked up? I can’t exactly see the harm in people being more wary of taking on a draconic creature.” Kaius asked.
“In this case, it wouldn’t be an issue—but those shelves hold far more than just bestiaries, and even those have more than just the strengths and weaknesses of strong monsters. More than one cocky idiot would try their hand at something they shouldn’t, if they knew that a creature's corpse could bring them more than a single mission of their tier.” Ro replied.
Kaius struggled to believe that—people with their specific brand of reckless abandon were supposed to be as rare as hen’s teeth.
It turned out that Ro had an easy explanation. While yes, it was unlikely that anyone would seek out something clearly higher leveled, there had been many, many cases of someone learning of a creature's value, and foolishly attempting to track down a juvenile.
Almost invariably it ended up with the team in question getting eaten by angry parents, or simply overwhelmed by the natural strengths of more powerful varieties of beasts.
At the very least, Ro would apply for special dispensation for their access. She couldn’t just jump them up through the ranks, but having individually vetted teams access information they otherwise couldn’t was not unheard of.
It was likely to take some time, but in the interim she offered to fetch any relevant bestiaries herself.
As their conversation wound down, Ro finished her meal. When she had, she slapped her knees and leapt to her feet.
“Well! As nice as this has been—and as good as the meal was—duty calls. I can’t be away from Deadacre for too long; last time the build up of work was unbearable.” she said, before walking to the drake’s corpse.
Kaius was about to ask her how she planned on segmenting it for her storage artefacts—he’d spotted the new collection of rings she sported on her fingers earlier—when Ro drew her sword.
Eyes sharpening, Kaius stilled as Ro casually pirouted her blade through the air. It was similar to his own, though a hand shorter to make it equally comfortable using either single handed, or with both.
Then Ro seemed to…flicker, the only evidence she had moved being seen in the blood dripping from her sword.
The drake’s stomach opened, offal falling free as she flickered again.
Another blur of motion, and Ro stood with her chest notably heaving as the drake slid into four distinct pieces. Each cut was flawlessly straight and smooth—and Kaius saw no evidence Ro had truly struggled, other than a little exertion.
Approaching the segments, Ro tapped each one in turn. They vanished with a pop of displaced air—disappearing into her spatial artefacts.
Ro gave them a final wave—grinning at their slack jawed expressions.
“See ya!” she replied, before vanishing in a blur—though one that was notably visible compared to her earlier attacks.
“By the Matriarchs! How the hells does she do that?” Porkchop asked, still staring at where Ro had been standing.
“I have no idea.” Kaius replied.
Comments
Kendelle Trotter
Rieker has already said his level is around 260 or so and his badge was already confirmed gold.
Aureus
The mention that ianmus's staff was 5 strides long and one guy mentioned you had strides and long strides when I thought about 1 meter for a stride and the drake was mentioned as being the size of a house
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Bacon Macleod
did I contradict an earlier chapter? I roughly based the size and shape of a drake off of a spineosaurus, so 50ish feet/15m is about the right length
Dax
No, no, "strides" just simultaneously means feet *and* yards lol
Brandon Wilburn
Handedly > Handily
Aureus
I'm assuming fifty strides from snout to tail now means long strides
BelligerentGnu
It's going to be amusing when their sensory capabilities rank up enough to spoil Ro's fun.
Jon Simpson
women > woman
