Duskbound

The first thing Velik did upon waking was check his compass. It had been pointing northwest of his camp, but now it pointed straight north. Torwin must have killed that one already.

It was good to see the plan was working, but a new problem immediately presented itself. For all he knew, Torwin could be engaged with the next champion at this very moment, but until the compass signaled a direction change, Velik wouldn't know it. That wouldn't be so bad if that were the case; he'd lose a few minutes of travel time, but it was far more likely that Torwin was traveling to the exact same location and would probably get there first.

Until the champion was dead, though, there wasn't anything Velik could do to find the next one. The compass could exclude a lot, but it didn't have a minimum range to start looking from. That coupled with the fact that he still had at least six hours to dusk meant Velik didn't have much better to do than find more monsters to kill. Maybe [Spear Warden] would go up a rank, or [Phalanx] would merge into it. He doubted he'd get that lucky so soon after picking up the skill, but it theoretically could happen.

[Kinetic Charge] is probably going to be the next thing to jump a rank, anyway. I'm using it every fight.

He was hoping that one would merge soon, too. It had ranked up quickly in the beginning, but now he didn't feel like the skill had much left to offer beyond the streamlined efficiency of being a higher rank. At this point, he wanted it to fold into [Spear Warden] and free up the skill slot.

Velik traveled through the afternoon and killed hundreds of monsters. Most of them were no more than a few hundred feet out of his way, but hunting them down turned a straight line into a long, wavering pattern that more than doubled his total travel distance. Since he didn't want to fight a champion before the sun went down anyway, that served his purposes just fine.

The monster level seemed to have averaged out over the last hundred miles, which did alleviate one of Velik's fears. He was already punching up three to six levels as it was, which was fine for a normal monster or even an elite, but he'd been worried that the champions would start climbing into the forties and that he'd have to flee from a fight that was designed to keep him there. Any monster that couldn't leave a specific area had to have a way to keep its prey from running off.

That was less of a psychological hurdle than Velik had expected it to be. Knowing he couldn't easily escape if he needed to was balanced out by the fact that he knew that, should he manage to run away, the champion was bound to its seed and couldn't chase after him. Normal monsters didn't give up unless they lost the trail, and even then, most of them would roam the area, trying to pick it back up again.

Not that he'd had to flee from regular monsters in years. The last time it had happened, he'd been twelve and the only reason he'd run was because the tip of his spear had broken off when it had gotten caught between two armored plates of a stone-back monitor lizard. He probably still could have killed it if he'd been determined enough, but not without getting hurt. He'd been in no position to waste a thousand decarmas on an overpriced system store healing potion.

He was about three hours into his journey when the compass abruptly swung around to point east. Damn. I knew this was going to happen. Well, it's not a total waste at least. I'm up eight hundred decarma already and I've made progress toward another skill advancement. With a sigh, Velik backtracked a quarter mile to a game trail he'd passed going the right way and started following the compass again. He wished it would tell him how far he had to go to find the next one, if for no other reason to make sure he was closer to it than Torwin was.

* * *

He was getting close; he was sure of it. The sun had just started to sink behind the trees, casting everything in an orange light bisected by long, dark shadows – twilight, his time. Already, he could feel strength flooding his limbs as [Duskbound] activated. Any minute now, he'd come across the edge of the champion's territory, and it looked like this time, he'd beat Torwin there.

Then something strange happened, something he'd never seen before. The needle on the mana compass shifted. It was a slight adjustment, only a few degrees, but it definitely changed. At first, he cursed his luck. Torwin must have killed it and the next one is almost directly behind it.

Then the needle moved again. Velik slowed to a halt and stared at it. Over the next minute, it shifted a few more degrees toward the north, only to turn and start going the other direction. What is this? Did I pick up some sort of massively charged elite that's not bound to a specific location?

He was by no means an expert in all things mana compass, so it was entirely possible. It hadn't happened since he started refining his search criteria, but that didn't mean it couldn't. If that was the case, he just needed to hunt down the elite and kill it, the same as any other monster. Hopefully, the needle wouldn't swing around and take him back in the direction he'd just come from.

Angry now that his first kill of the evening was going to be just another elite, Velik tracked it down with the compass. He heard nothing at first, and after a few minutes, he started to wonder if the monster was farther away than expected. Soon enough, he realized the truth. It was a stealthy predator, a hunter just like him.

About the only way this could get more aggravating is if right as I find the thing, Torwin puts an arrow in it and kills it.

The trees were starting to thin the farther east he went, to the point where a small cart could have navigated through them. For Velik, it was a leisurely stroll down an open road. He jogged forward, splitting his concentration between [Apex Hunter] to find his prey and the compass to keep him on the right track.

Where is this thing? I should be able to sense it by now, no matter how well hidden it might be.

Part of him worried that he was biting off more than he could chew, that he'd stumbled across something as high-leveled as Torwin. There'd been no indication of anything that strong in the local monsters he'd already killed, and he couldn't see some random elite jumping up ten or more levels, but he supposed it was possible. As far as he knew, there were no system rules prohibiting it. It just didn't happen naturally.

Maybe it wasn't natural, though. He was out here looking for an intelligent entity, possibly Chalin, possibly something else. The champions had been placed more or less randomly, as far as Velik could tell, but that didn't mean the same was true for an elite. Perhaps the source of monsters had sent one to this area to guard something, a powerful elite that had the advantage of being mobile.

That would mean there was something worth protecting here, which might just be a clue towards unraveling the whole mystery. With any luck, the elite would stick close to it and Velik wouldn't be stuck spending the whole night scouring the woods for whatever it was. Maybe he'd get lucky and Torwin would catch up to him soon to help him look.

Velik immediately started planning out a way to capture the elite while it was still alive so that Torwin's compass would continue to point to it. That would probably be the easiest way to arrange a meeting, but if it wasn't possible, there were other ways to find him. He'd crossed the old hunter's trail once already today; he could find it again if he had to.

Come on. Where is it? It couldn't be that far away if the needle is shifting to follow it as it moves.

The compass was holding steady now, which either meant the monster had stopped moving, or that it was moving directly away from him. It would have had to have exceptional senses to notice him before he spotted it, and also be incredibly fast to keep ahead of him, so he doubted that was the case. More likely, it was just holding its position, maybe eating another monster for a snack.

[You have entered the domain of a champion elite: Velik the Black Fang.]

Wait, what?