The Climb & Grind

"Joe, get back!" Clyde shouts. A blood curdling screech rips through the air, accompanied by the heavy beating of wings.

Another Evil Eye.

They've become something like recurring guests on our little mountaintop murder tour. Big yellow-and-green bastards, like someone skinned a diseased toad and wrapped it around a beach ball. Their one, massive red eye gleams with a bloodthirsty intensity. Razor teeth line a too-wide mouth, and two clawed feet dangle underneath it. Large, bat-like wings stretch from the back of its round body.

Monster: Evil Eye, Level 10

Classification: Flying Demon

This one's maybe fifteen feet away, hovering over me like a murderous buzzsaw.

Behind it, I see another one rising from the rocky cleft and descending through the tree branches—drawn to the chaos like a moth to a flamethrower.

"And it's got a friend," I shout back. "Three o' clock!"

I scramble back, glancing over my shoulder. Veronica's holding position, Clyde has his pistol trained on the first Evil Eye, and Jelly Boy is doing that low-simmering, gelatinous wiggle that means he's ready to party.

"Plan Two!" Veronica calls. In the past several days, we've developed four plans in total when dealing with mobs. Plan Two was also referred to as 'Black Hawk Down,' and was specifically for dealing with multiple flying enemies.

"You got it, boss," I mutter, snapping into a half-hearted crucifix pose—just enough to trigger my Force Blast Spell. I aim right past Jelly Boy, careful to not bullseye him directly. An invisible pulse of raw kinetic force slams into the slime's side like a magical hook shot. Jelly shudders, emits a happy burble like a sentient bubble bath, and triggers his Catch Skill.

He immediately triggered his Juggle Skill. His body ripples, twists, and then pops out five glowing spheres like a Pez dispenser of mass destruction. Fwip, fwip, fwip! The spheres hover around his body like moons orbiting a gelatinous sun.

[Item: Minor Explosive (Force)]

[Description: A magically-infused grenade that will detonate upon impact if thrown with sufficient strength. Explodes in a small radius of pure, non-elemental force.]

[Note: This item was created using the Catch & Juggle Skills. This Item is temporary. This Item will degrade in 12 hours.]

"This is my favorite party trick," I say, grinning as I snatch two of the force grenades and toss them to Clyde. He catches two mid-air with a practiced ease. He launches his towards the second Evil Eye, the concussive blasts keeping it at bay. As soon as he hurls the second grenade, he summons his pistol and begins to unleash an unending wave of suppressing fire.

I snatch one of the remaining three, spinning and hurling one at the incoming bastard. The grenade pops—a pulse of force ripping out from it in a violent shockwave. The flying eyeball screeches and spins like it just got hit by a truck made of gravity.

Then, it fires back.

A concentrated missile of red light fire from the Evil Eye's pupil. They're aimed straight for me.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

Three gleaming silver disks—Veronica's summoned shields—slam into place mid-air, forming a semi-dome over my head. The beams scorch across them but don't breach. One ricochets off of a shield, slamming into a nearby tree and leaving a nasty scorch mark across the bark. Veronica runs to my side, eyes narrow, hammer in hand, shield strapped to her left forearm. She doesn't say a word.

I snag and hurl another grenade. It misses by a mile but still detonates close enough to toss the monster into a spin. I grab the last one and launch it. This one slams right into the Evil Eye's wing and when it detonates, the demonic eye ball crashes towards the earth.

I flex my muscles and cast Wizard's Fist twice. Lefty and Righty appear over my shoulders and immediately know what to do. They zoom towards the descending Evil Eye, wrapping around its wings like two drunk bouncers grabbing an unruly patron, and yank it down harder.

It screeches again—a pained yelp, like a dog whose paw was accidentally stepped on.

Veronica's already closing the distance, hammer raised high, eyes locked in. I stay back, beginning to make my way towards Clyde to help with the second Evil Eye. I'm careful to not lose my footing in the uneven terrain of the mountainside forest.

The first Evil Eye hits the ground, hard. Its wings flap in panic, a futile effort against the iron grips of Lefty and Righty.

Then Veronica swings. The hammer comes down with a sound like a church bell being beaten with a brick. Bone shatters. She hits it again, roaring.

I have a clear shot at the creature's red, cat-like eye. I cast Mana (Force) Blast. The blast of energy rips through the air, hitting the monster point blank and tearing a hole into the creature's slimy meatball body, right above its eye.

Then Veronica swings again.

Then again.

Then again.

By the time she's done, it's not even a monster anymore. It's a smear. A chunky, vaguely circular smear. Like someone ran over a rotting squash with a lawnmower.

"Clear," I say, panting, as I reach Clyde. My hands are trembling slightly—something I only recently realized happens in combat, no matter how much I try and keep them under control. Jelly Boy bounces up beside me, Veronica's three shields left behind where she had initially summoned them.

The second Evil Eye's pupil flashes crimson as it fires three energy blasts in our direction. I'm too slow and one of the lasers slam into my shoulder.

"Argh!"

Pain explodes through my arm, raw and immediate. My shoulder cracks backward, like someone tried to remove it with a crowbar. I hit the ground on one knee, breath catching in my throat, fingers of my right hand twitching uselessly.

That's… not great. A chunk of my Health bar was instantly eviscerated. Not life-threatening by any means, but definitely less than ideal. I hiss through clenched teeth as my body begins stitching itself back together. Bone re-knits. Muscle regrows. The torn shirt fabric—sadly—does not repair. I glare down at the smear of smoking flesh and blood that used to be my shoulder. In a few moments, it looks better though not perfect. I'll need to top off my Health to complete the regeneration.

"Fucking ow," I mutter.

"Plan One," Clyde shouts.

Plan One is our go-to.

I flex, squeezing my pectoral muscles as tightly as I can as I cast Slimy Shield. A circular disk of shimmering blue ooze materializes in a brief flash of light.

Clyde doesn't hesitate. He slaps a hand onto Jelly Boy's head, muttering an incantation. He casts one of the few Spells offered by his Big Game Hunter Class—Soften. Normally, this Spell would be a hex, slowly eroding a target creature's Armor Rating with 0.5 debuff points per second. But with Jelly Boy, we can compound the effect even further using our slimy friend's Residual Casting Skill.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The Spell hits Jelly Boy and I swear he giggles. Then, he absorbs the components of Clyde's Spell, storing it in his body. Which I learned is like a suspicious lunchbox packed with a bunch of magical secrets. Just a little terrifying. Anyways, Jelly Boy takes Clyde's debuff Spell to the face. Then, I just let him cook.

[Ally Jelly Boy has activated Residual Casting.]

[Residual Spell: Soften]

The surface of my Slimy Shield bubbles. Then—

Thwap-thwap-thwap!

Bullets of blue slime fire from the shield, slamming into the face of the unexpecting Evil Eye as it closes in on our position, readying another volley of eye-beams.

"All three hit!" I exclaim. We hadn't landed all three of Jelly Boy's Soften Bullets onto a target until now.

Within ten seconds, that thing'll have the defensive capability of wet toilet paper. And Lefty and Righty are already there, flanking the beast.

The Evil Eye screams as it fires the magical laser missiles from its eyeball.

The metal shields spin through the air like chakram, moving with the grace of hummingbirds. They block the lasers, which thud against their metal surfaces harmlessly. The thing screeches again. Definitely pissed off that we're not dead yet.

Veronica steps forward, face still, shield at her back, hammer held low. Her three floating disks hover in formation.

Clyde fires his gun.

The crack of the shot is like a firework exploding next to my ear. The bullets punch through the monster's hide like it's tissue paper. No resistance. Jelly Boy's residual casting of Clyde's debuff spell had done its work. The Evil Eye is nothing more than raw meat waiting for the butcher.

And I am the butcher.

I grin, raising both arms, fingers curling into fists of spectral blue energy. "Lefty, Righty, do your thing!"

The spectral fists are happy to oblige. They hammer into the beast, beating the ever living shit out of it.

Once. Twice. Three times.

And that's all it takes.

The Evil Eye spasms once, its red laser flickering out like a lightbulb on its last breath. Then it bursts like a dropped melon—slime, bone, eyeball pulp and all—painting the rocks below in a new shade of crimson.

Jelly Boy slurps a few globs of the monster's gore as it pitter-patters down on us, blinking his puppydog eyes at me.

"Good boy," I say, patting the slime. My shoulder is still sore as hell, but I hold off on withdrawing a health potion right away.

I can't help but smile when the System notifications start rolling in, signaling the end of this battle.

You have defeated Evil Eye, Level 10!

You have defeated Evil Eye, Level 12!

Partial credit awarded to… Clyde Richmond, Big Game Hunter.

Partial credit awarded to… Veronica Sampietro, Iron Maiden.

Partial credit awarded to… Jelly Boy, Arcane Juggler.

Level 14 increased to Level 15!

Nice! Another level! My third since we started our trek to the dragon's nest.

An additional pulsing sensation quakes through my very core, and a soft ping heralds another System notification.

Your Flexible Casting Trait has been triggered by this Level Up!

FLEXIBLE CASTING: You have 1 Modified Spellcasting available. Please select one Spell to see available options.

I am going to need to take a closer look at that after we make camp for the night.

I check the status of my Health and Stamina, floating in the bottom corner of my HUD.

Current Health: 82/120.

Current Stamina: 200/235.

Not bad. As we grinded on mountainside mobs, I learned that using my Stamina as a spellcasting source was a double-edge blade that required a balance. Currently, none of my Spells in their base form threatened my massive Stamina pool on their own. But my Stamina was also depleted through the natural exertion of battle. I have to be careful not to exert myself too much, and mistakenly leave myself without fuel for my Spells. Or overstretch myself on casting and be left in a position where I'm a sitting duck.

Clyde lowers his pistol and exhales like he just finished an exam and didn't totally bomb it. "We should make camp soon," he says. His pistol dissolves into a mote of light before evaporating into pixels that disappear on an invisible wind. "Looks like we're past the halfway point. Maybe a few miles from the Nest. We should be able to reach it tomorrow."

A few miles? Not bad, if it wasn't a few miles of mountain trails crawling with laser-eyed float-beasts and god-knows-what else. And my shoulder feels like someone tried to yank it off, dipped it in acid, then stapled it back on with paper clips. The System-empowered healing is a lot slower than I'd like. I pull a lower quality health potion from my inventory and down the bitter liquid in a single gulp. The potion is enough to nearly top off my Health bar, and in a couple of moments my shoulder is good as new.

I nod, rotating my shoulder and making sure everything ended up back in the right place. "Yeah. Camp sounds great." I take in the scorched hole in my shirt. "Damn, this was one of my favorite shirts too," I grumble.

Veronica is looting the corpse of the first Evil Eye. I make my way over to the pulverized body of the second, which slid down hill after it hit the ground. I'm careful not to lose my footing and take a tumble. During our first monster encounter on the climb up, I was less careful and ending up falling head over foot, losing about half my Health along the way. I was happy to get out of that one without a broken neck and only a slightly bruised ego.

When I'm close enough to the destroyed remains, the System prompts me.

[Loot Evil Eye corpse?]

I mentally confirm and am greeted with the now-familiar 'Evil Eye Corpse' Inventory menu.

Demonic Leather x1

Eye Drops x1

I suck my teeth in disappointment. "Just the common drop," I say. I take both items before I begin making my way back up to the others.

A tree to my right is streaked with neon blue ooze. A long splash of it, like someone slung a can of paint across the bark. It pulses faintly, soft and goopy. Definitely slime.

I point at the tree. "Yo, Jelly. Looks like one of your slime bullets missed after all!"

The slime rolls forward on a pseudopod, leans in like a scientist inspecting a new specimen, then emits a sound that I can only describe as indignant sputtering. Not a fan of the critique, apparently.

"Hey," I shrug, "still nailed the kill. But you might wanna—I don't know—recalibrate the splash radius or whatever."

He buzzes again—dismissive this time. Diva.

We find a flat ridge about twenty minutes later. It's high enough to keep away most of the ground crawlers, with a sheer drop on one side and a ring of thick trees to block visibility from the air. Clyde calls it "defensible." I call it "cozy with only slight murder potential."

We don't hunt or forage, or build shelter. No, that would require significant survival skills that this Realm thankfully doesn't require. After all, we have Adventurer's Cookies. Hard little oat-brown bricks of convenience. They taste like cinnamon-flavored drywall. But I can't complain with the results. The description notes that they can sustain you for two days. I suspected this meant no need to eat, and that was true. I didn't quite expect the lack of need for water, and I definitely didn't expect the fact that it eliminated one's need to relieve themselves.

I chew mine slowly, staring into the woods. I swallow the last bite and feel my stomach do a grateful little burp. I do my best to pretend I'm eating a Biscoff-inspired protein bar instead. It doesn't really help.

I pull out the heat stone. It's a sleek black obelisk, no bigger than my palm, etched with two runes near the base—one like a little sun, the other like a ripple in water. I press the sun. The stone glows white and heat radiates out instantly, warm and dry like campfire air without the smoke or the fire hazard. It's magic IKEA camping.

As the sun dips below the ridge, the second rune flares on its own. A soft white light spills over the camp like moonlight that got tired of subtly hanging out in the firmament of the sky and decided to join our little camping party. At first, the stone's light made it impossible for me to sleep. Now, after a few days, I've grown used to it. Even finding it a bit comforting.

"I'm sorry about your shirt," says Veronica, breaking the silence that settled over our small camp.

I sigh. "I am bummed about the shirt, but I'm even more bummed about needing to take that laser beam in the first place. Mages not being able to equip heavier armor is completely bogus!" I throw my hands up in exaggerated fashion to emphasize my point.

Clyde snorts. "Who said anything about mages not being able to equip armor?"

"It's true. I received a message saying I couldn't receive the Armor Rating benefits of that chain mail back in the city." I plop down onto my back, staring up at the silhouette of branches above us. "I'm cursed to have an Armor Rating of zero."

Clyde chuckle. "You must not spend enough time on the right Discussion Channels. This was a hot topic a while ago. There are no Class or Discipline restriction on armor, at least not one you can't work around. Most people think there's a hidden system of proficiencies and skills that the System tracks. No one has really nailed down how to train proficiencies, but if you just wore heavy armor, it would still be armor, just not enhanced with an Armor Rating."

"Huh," is all I have to say in response. I sit up. "So you're telling me—"

"You probably should have picked up that chain mail after all," says Veronica, finishing my thought.

"I could have become proficient in heavier armor by now and maybe—"

"Spared Fleetwood Mac," Veronica interjects.

I throw my head back and groan. Clyde and Veronica laugh. Even Jelly Boy joins in, making a wet, squishing noise that sounds eerily similar to chuckling.

After their laughter dies down, and a bit more chit-chat, we decide it's time for some rest. I take first watch, as usual. During the second day of our journey up the mountain, I had gained a System notification alerting me of a new passive skill.

[NEW SKILL: Perception (Passive)]

[Description: Perception provides the user with a naturally heightened ability to perceive their environment, pick up on subtle details and minutiae, and other subtle details.]

My current level in the Skill is only 'Beginner' but I hope it improves with use. And since it's a passive Skill, it means I'm using it all the time.

The thought reminds me of the perk my Flexible Spellcasting Trait offers, and the notification I received upon leveling up to Level 15. Excitement bubbles up in my stomach as I access the System and navigate to my Spells interface. I wonder what customization options I had waiting for me.

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