Free Web NovelChapter 8: Moon Bear
"That’s good enough."
Ethan said it quietly, more to himself than to Vlad.
He stood back and looked the figure over. Seven feet and change, armor fitted across his frame like a glove. The set caught the low light in dull flashes, the ice coat ability already shone every few seconds, a thin layer cycling quietly around the exterior. It was Just there, drawing mana in steady amounts and holding it as defense.
Level 9 armor.
Ethan had turned it over in his hands when he first took it out of the ring. The enchantment work alone was worth more than anything he had held before. The High Regent had handed it over like it was a minor inconvenience settled. Like the ring was the simplest way to close a conversation she didn’t want to be having.
She was powerful, Experienced, and rich, But she didn’t like him. That much had been clear from the moment he walked into the room. And honestly, that was fair. He had taken her daughter’s virginity, even if that hadn’t been the arrangement going in.
’Maybe one day I’ll be able to repay her.’
The thought surfaced and he let it sit for a second before pushing it back.
He wasn’t even sure he would survive the night.
"Let’s go."
He nodded toward the cave entrance ahead and started walking.
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He had noticed this place the first time he went into the forest.
A tier 9 beast in a cave system, back when he was still just starting out, still getting his footing as a summoner. At that point the bear had been injured. Moving slowly, breath labored, its belly heavy with young. Killing it would have filled several of his requirements in one move.
But easier said than done didn’t begin to cover it.
He had filed it away and moved on.
Now he was back.
As they entered the cave Ethan raised his crossbow and activated the sight spell, feeling his vision sharpen and extend through the dark. The details of the tunnel walls came into clarity, the texture of the stone, the uneven floor, the way the passage narrowed ahead.
A summoner wasn’t only what the name implied. They were magic users also, working with an array of auxiliary spells to fight and stay alive where other classes would fall short. Previously his spell list had been thin. What he could afford, what he could find. But the windfall from clearing ordinary beasts had given him room to expand.
He had picked up a number of ordinary spells since then, stacking his options.
Naturally, Against a tier 9 beast, he would need more than ordinary.
He knew that.
The tunnels grew tighter as they moved deeper.
Ethan’s breath steadied. He moved slowly, shifting through corners with his back angled, crossbow up, eyes tracking everything the spell brought into focus. Vlad moved ahead of him, taking point without needing to be told.
The cave was quiet.
Too quiet.
Ethan frowned.
No trace of the bear. No sound of something that large living in an enclosed space. It was unsettling.
Two scenarios came to him immediately.
The first Was Without a mate to bring food, the bear had dragged itself out of the cave at some point during its recovery. Wounded, pregnant, alone. It had gone out to scavenge and hadn’t made it back. Somewhere out in the forest it had simply stopped.
The second. The bear had healed. Fully. And it was somewhere in these tunnels right now, watching them move through a space it had lived in its entire life while they navigated it blind for the first time.
Lambs walking into a den.
’Calm down. Steady hands, steady mind.’ ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Ethan took a slow breath. His grip on the crossbow adjusted without him thinking about it. His focus pulled back to what was in front of him and he pushed forward.
They cleared the tunnels section by section.
Twenty minutes later they came out the other side without finding a single trace.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"That’s unfortunate."
Ethan exhaled as he stepped out behind Vlad, who had moved to take point at the cave entrance. The open air hit them, cool and wide after the enclosed dark of the tunnels. Above them the stars were out, scattered across a clear sky.
Ethan stopped just inside the boundary of the cave mouth, looking out across the treeline without stepping through.
And then,
Something shifted in the air.
He felt it before he saw it. A change in pressure around him.
A white bear came over the top of the cave entrance and dropped its full weight onto Vlad, driving him into the ground with a force that shook the earth beneath them.
Shock hit Ethan’s mind in a wave.
His grip on the crossbow locked.
He was outside in the next second, moving with deadly precision, taking aim and releasing in rapid succession. Arrow after arrow drove into the thick fur across the bear’s back, each one punching through an inch of hide before stopping. Not deep enough. But enough to register.
On the ground beneath the beast, Vlad was struggling.
The spear in his hand trembled, his arms shaking under the full pressed weight of several hundred pounds bearing down on him. His armor held. The ice coat flickered as it absorbed and redistributed, cycling hard. Through gritted teeth his eyes lit up, that faint inner light that signaled the link between summoner and summon pulling taut.
He pushed.
With everything his body had, Vlad drove upward, and the bear came off him, hitting the ground sideways with a heaviness that cracked something in the soil beneath it.
Ethan didn’t give it a breath to recover.
He laid down suppressive fire immediately, arrow after arrow tracking the beast as it tried to rise, forcing it back a step, then another, the impacts accumulating at the same spots until it couldn’t ignore them.
"Hmm!!"
Vlad was back on his feet.
He pulled a long spear from thin air, the weapon manifesting in his left hand with a clarity that marked it as something more than standard. A treasured echo, earned from kills. Ordinary class. But it had an attribute.
[Description: just like the mole rat, the spear has a drilling edge, capable of tearing through the toughest parts as long as enough pressure is applied]
He moved past Ethan without slowing, spear leveled outward, and drove the point into the bear’s chest.
"Roar!!!"
The drilling edge engaged the moment it hit resistance, spinning through flesh and leaving a ruined cavity behind it. The bear’s roar came from somewhere deep in its body, a sound of pure agony that rolled through the trees and scattered whatever had been nearby.
Its arm came up and swept downward in a slash aimed at Vlad’s head.
Vlad was already moving. Several fast steps back, the spear still in hand, the attack missing him by inches.
Ethan watched from behind and said nothing.
No one had promised this would be clean. He had known that when he chose this path. A tier 9 beast with its life on the line, in the dark, on its own ground.
They were still in this.
