Free Web NovelChapter 14: Lands of Horror [3]
"Story system." I called upon the system and a black screen appeared in my mind.
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✧ Name: Yves Noctis Laurent
✧ Age: 15
✧ Titles: [Unwanted Child]
✧ Rank: Awakened
✧ Soul Fragments: 30/100
✧ Story Fragments: 0/150, 0/1000
✧ Main Story: [He Who Yearned for Death], [■■■]
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I had earned 30 soul fragments for slaying about 40 Lesser monsters, which was a solid start.
Soul fragments were fragments that an Awakened being gained from slaying other awakened beings. Absorbing them strengthened the body and soul, increasing physical growth and overall rank.
Once you absorbed a certain number of soul fragments required for ascension, your soul ranked up, increasing your overall rank, breaking through the limits of your body and soul and achieving new strength. That was why adventurers and mercenaries entered this forest — not only to earn money but to grow stronger by hunting monsters.
But you might be wondering why I only got 30 soul fragments when I killed 40 monsters.
It was simple.
My strength at the start was on par with the rabbits, but as I kept killing them and absorbing their soul fragments, my soul strength surpassed theirs. The amount I gained from each kill decreased because my soul no longer considered them useful enough to absorb, since they couldn’t increase my strength any further.
That was a problem that could only be solved by hunting stronger monsters, preferably ones at the same rank as me or higher. Slaying them would yield far more soul fragments than picking off weaker ones.
Stronger monsters meant more dangerous foes with stronger souls and richer soul fragments. That was what I was after. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
✧Story Fragments: 0/150, 0/1000
Now, story fragments were a different matter entirely from soul fragments.
Story fragments are pieces of narrative essence obtained by killing compatible beings, absorbing aligned energy, completing story-related actions, and fulfilling narrative conditions.
I know that might be confusing, so let me elaborate. Call it an info dump if you want.
So sue me!
In my case, my first Main Story [He Who Yearned For Death] is a story tied to death, and in death there is shadow and darkness. That meant that in order to obtain story fragments — or in this case, Abyssal fragments — I had to kill creatures with some form of darkness or shadow attribute.
Creatures such as Abyss monsters, shadow creatures, death creatures like liches, or even humans who wielded darkness or shadow abilities. That included Ezio, but I wasn’t going to kill him, and even if I tried, it was impossible at my current level.
This meant I gained no story fragments from beings without such attributes. The rabbits I had just killed, for example, only gave me soul fragments.
So if I wanted to win the Rite of Passage, I needed to rank up my story. Doing so would unlock new abilities, which could make a significant difference. In this world I had created, stories carried more weight than soul rank.
That meant I had to hunt the right creatures, which were not easy to find in the area of the forest I was currently in, especially during the day. For that I would have to go deeper, where I would find the creature that could boost my strength enormously.
But there was no rush. That creature would not appear for another three weeks. In the meantime, I would raise my soul rank and hunt as many monsters as possible.
I closed the system, spared no glance at the rabbit corpses behind me, and ran south through the forest to continue the hunt.
...
I ran and ran, cutting down every creature I crossed. They were all straightforward to deal with since they were weaker than me, and during that stretch I earned only 8 soul fragments. A poor harvest, I would say.
But that was fine, because I had finally reached the area where the monsters would actually give me meaningful fragments and perhaps, if I was lucky, enough to break through to the next rank.
The section of pine trees had ended. Crossing into the next stretch, I found darker, shorter trees continuing as far as I could see.
Their branches were thick and long, reaching horizontally toward one another rather than upward like the pines. Those branches formed a kind of aerial pathway that someone could walk along.
I hid behind a boulder twice my height and crouched.
Something was wrong with the ground. It was black, hard, brittle and crispy underfoot, as if something had burnt it in a wildfire. Yet somehow the trees had survived.
I pressed my hand to the ground where footprints from something that walked on four limbs had been pressed into it. Not just one set but dozens of them. The ground was still warm. I estimated the creatures had passed through roughly 8 minutes ago.
The footprints led toward the trees.
At that moment I heard a branch snap and my head shot up. Something roughly circular, wrapped in flames, was hurtling toward me at frightening speed. I instinctively threw myself to the side and rolled, narrowly avoiding the flaming projectile.
It hit the boulder and detonated, sending stone fragments and dust in every direction.
I brought my arm up to shield my eyes.
When the dust settled, the spot where I had been crouching was scorched black and the boulder was reduced to rubble.
"That was close."
If that had landed on me I would have been done for. I enhanced my eyes with mana and looked up, peering through the branches until I found the ones responsible.
They had brownish fur, long arms and legs, muscular builds, and long tails wrapped around heavy stone-like objects as if they weighed nothing. Their faces were monkey-like but looked more demonic up close — red eyes with slit irises full of nothing but malice, and large sharp teeth with two long upper fangs jutting out of drooling mouths.
Fire monkeys. The monsters I would be hunting continuously until I could ascend to the next rank.
They were extremely well hidden. If my senses were not as sharp as they were, I would never have spotted them. Their fur matched the bark of the trees almost perfectly, making their camouflage highly effective. And to make it worse, these bastards made absolutely no noise.
The moment I had entered their territory I had already sensed their presence and feigned ignorance to their stalking.
"Ooh-ohh ahh-ahh!" They started screaming as they leapt from branch to branch.
Flames wrapped around their tails and engulfed the stones they carried, and then without hesitation they hurled them at me. The crackling of burning projectiles filled the air as they tore through it toward me. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
I had no idea how they hauled those stones up into the trees, nor did I care to find out.
Mana flooded through my veins and I started running in a zigzag, dodging the fire-stones as they hit the ground behind me and threw up clouds of black dust.
The fire monkeys jumped from branch to branch, following me. They were agile enough to keep pace with ease. When some projectiles got close enough, I wrapped my blade with mana to keep it from melting and sliced them apart, though I met some resistance doing it.
I was careful not to let the cut pieces touch me. I didn’t want my clothes on fire.
Then a large fire-stone hit close, sending a shockwave of dust in every direction and shaking leaves from the trees.
The monkeys stopped throwing, their vision cut off by the cloud. When it finally cleared, there was nothing left in the blast zone but scorched black earth.
They thought I was dead. But I had dodged and used the dust as cover to slip away, hiding a few meters back behind a large tree. Then I willed the darkness to form a cocoon around me, masking my presence and protecting me.
I knew the monkeys would find me eventually since it was daytime, but it would buy me enough time.
I was at a disadvantage and couldn’t reach them from here, so I needed something to close the distance.
Focusing, I manipulated the darkness and formed a large spear in my hand, with a sharp blade at the head.
If they wanted to play at range, so could I.
I let the cocoon dissolve, which would give away my position within seconds, looked out from behind the tree, and picked a target that was slightly distracted.
Pulling from memory of the javelin throws I used to do when I was younger, I took my stance and drew my arm back. Then I pushed mana into the spear and threw it as hard as I could toward the distracted monkey.
It left my hand at such speed that it kicked up the black dust off the ground.
Whoosh!
The spear tore through the air like a bullet. The fire monkeys finally noticed my position, but the spear was already halfway there and the one I had aimed at had no time to dodge.
It snapped through the branches they stood on without slowing, drove through the monkey’s chest and out the other side, then kept going, punching through the ones behind it and leaving large gaping holes in each body.
"Bullseye."
