Duskbound-Chapter 131 - Book 2, 52

It was a good thing Velik was already in the water, because he was covered in a film of scalewark ichor with chunks of meat stuck to it. He'd been bitten probably a thousand times, especially after the water had been chummed so thoroughly that he couldn't see anything at all, but the end result was never in question.

The scalewarks were dead, or at least eighty-three of them were, and Velik was unharmed. He swam away from the battle, hoping to find some relatively clear water to scrub himself clean in. If he couldn't, he supposed that wasn't the worst thing in the world. He'd been filthy with monster viscera plenty of times in his life. Once more wouldn't hurt.

The ledge he'd stood on earlier was five feet under the water line now, which was about perfect for his needs. He stood there for probably twenty minutes, scratching at the gunk stuck onto his clothes with his bare hands until he'd peeled off everything he could find. It was no substitute for actual laundering, but everything he was wearing had [Mending] on it, so it'd be fine.

Good thing I stuck the cloak in my pack. Hopefully the water sealing on it doesn't fail.

Considering the annoying buoyancy it gave him while strapped to his back, he figured it was probably still safe.

He'd harvested the scalp fins off the scalewarks when they weren't damaged, just as proof that he'd cleared out the majority of the infestation, and stuffed them into a sack he'd bought off the fisherman for exactly that purpose. Milly would have to take his word that he'd gotten more of them than he'd brought back proof for. Regardless of how she felt about it, he needed her to go back to Cravel so that her father would give Velik the location he wanted.

He was about to leave when he heard the splash of something slipping into the water from a tunnel he hadn't bothered to explore once all the scalewarks had decided to come to him in a suicidal wave of bloodlust. Curious now, he pulled his spear back down into his hands and stared out across the water.

A soft yelp reached his ears, one that was definitely human. Frowning, Velik debated whether to go investigate or to hold his ground and wait for whatever it was to come to him. [Apex Hunter] cautioned him to wait, but logic overruled that. If there was another person here, the rising tide could have trapped them. Besides, there was still every possibility a few scalewarks who were out hunting for fish had escaped their pod's massacre. The monsters were weak, but with the advantage of attacking in the water, they could easily kill a human twice their level.

He launched himself off the ledge and swam toward the noise. Thankfully, it didn't take him through the swirling chum cloud of butchered scalewarks, and a few minutes later, he was pulling himself up onto a crumbling ledge that he suspected would just barely be submerged at high tide. The pallid face of a man stared back at him in shock.

He looks familiar. A hunter from the iron trial, maybe?

"Velik?" the stranger asked, obviously flabbergasted.

"What are you doing here?" Velik asked. The man was camped on a small spur of dry land with a stone ceiling no higher than three feet off the ground. He was laying on his side, a long bandage partially wrapped around his leg, covering most of what looked suspiciously like a scalewark bite. A fresh cut on his lip was slowly dripping blood onto his chin.

"Hiding from the monsters, obviously. What are you doing here?"

"Killing the monsters. Obviously."

The hunter stared at him blankly for a second, then asked, "How's that going for you?"

"Eighty-three dead. I don't know how many there were to start with."

"And why did you feel the need to take our job? Didn't you jump rank to gold somehow after failing the iron trial?"

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"Milly is wanted back in Cravel," Velik said. "I thought I should make sure the monsters you were here to hunt actually got taken care of for the sake of the people who submitted the request. Don't worry. I don't want the credit or the money."

"Oh. That's…" the man trailed off for a moment, then cocked his head and said, "Good, I guess?"

A few months of etiquette classes had at least drilled it into Velik's head not to roll his eyes in front of the other hunter, but it was a struggle. He decided to just ignore that and instead asked, "Where's the rest of your team?"

"Beats me," the hunter said bitterly. "Probably took the boat back to town after they left me to die."

It didn't take long to get the whole story out of the hunter, and by the time it was done, Velik was tempted to ask if the man had some sort of extreme luck skill. They'd decided, for some reason, to fight the scalewarks on the water, a decision Velik doubted he himself would have made if he'd barely been level 20. To that end, they'd engaged the services of a six-man crew and a fishing boat, then gone cruising the open sea near where the most recent attacks had been reported.

They'd found the scalewarks, or rather had been found by the monsters, and furious battle had ensued. In the chaos, the hunter—whose name Velik still couldn't remember—had been thrown overboard when he got caught on the edge of one of his own team member's skills. The attack had thrown him several hundred feet to land in the water near the tidal cave, and the boat had quickly left him behind. Hoping to find solid ground to stand on, he'd swum into the cave and managed to lose the monsters when he crawled up out of the water onto the narrow ledge.

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Velik wasn't sure he believed some or even most of that story. He suspected it was embellished to make the hunter seem more the victim of misfortune than of his own poor decisions, and to shift the blame onto the rest of his team in the process. Since that didn't really change much as far as Velik was concerned, he let the possible lies slide.

"You're lucky you knocked that rock into the water when you slipped," Velik said. "I wouldn't have known anyone was here otherwise."

For some reason, the hunter had been trying to clean his bandage in sea water when a rock beneath him had shifted, dropping his face onto the ground and punting the rock into the water. Velik might have found him anyway, but he'd been on the fence about exploring any further and it was just as likely he would have left without looking.

Fortunately, a cheap healing potion was enough to get the man back in good shape. Why he didn't have his own stock of potions was a question Velik pointedly didn't ask. Truthfully, all he wanted at this point was to get back to dry land, find the rest of the man's team, and deliver Pevril's letter to his daughter. With their job taken care of, they'd have no reason to stay, and he could get on with his life.

"Ready?" he asked once the healing potion had done its work.

"You're sure you got them all?" the hunter asked nervously.

"No, but what are you going to do, lay here until you die?"

And this guy passed the trial while I failed? What a joke.

After coaxing the hunter into the water, Velik led him back out of the cave. That required them to swim fifty feet of submerged tunnel before they resurfaced next to the seaside cliff, but that wasn't an issue for them. Velik's original plan had been to climb straight up the cliff, which was daunting but not outside his capabilities. His new tag-along, however, was nowhere near strong enough to do it unaided.

"Look," Velik told him while treading water, "it's either a hundred feet straight up or a mile of swimming through monster-infested waters. Your leg is healed. I'm sure you can manage this."

What followed was a lot of complaining and whining for over an hour while Velik scouted out the easiest paths and, in some cases, carved handholds for the man. Eventually, he physically dragged the other hunter up the last ten feet with the man clinging to his back while Velik climbed.

"Gods, that was one of the most punishing things I've ever done in my life," the man said once he was safely at the top of the cliff. He lay on the ground, gasping for breath and staring up at the sky.

"I take it your class doesn't put a lot of points into physical."

"It actually does, but it skews a lot more heavily toward coordination and agility than it does to raw strength," the hunter said. "Stamina is also a bit of a weak point."

"Take a few minutes to catch your breath," Velik advised. "I'm going to look around and make sure there are no monsters nearby. What town are we heading to?"

"Town? Uh, probably Dansworth. That's where we were staying before I got separated three days ago."

Meaning maybe they're still there. Maybe not. Well, it's a place to start looking. If they're not there, someone should know where they went. With any luck, I'll be back in Cravel by tomorrow morning.

"Then that's our first stop. Which direction is it in?"

The hunter hesitated. "You're… you know… not going to leave me out here alone, are you?"

Velik couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes this time, but at least his back was turned to the man when he did it. "Would have been a lot of effort to get you this far just to abandon you now, don't you think?"

"Oh, yeah, that's true."

"So, which way?" Velik asked again.

Might take longer than expected at this rate.