First Expedition (02)

A Hell Hound.

Its unnerving appearance said it all: this was, at its core, a creature I couldn't take down with the equipment I had now. It was the kind of thing that only entered the picture once your village had developed a fair way — facilities built up, mages recruited in numbers.

The mission briefing had warned me to 'loot what you can and get out,' and that alone told me the beast wasn't placed there to be caught. It existed so you could farm a little and run.

'So there's something here so good they don't want to hand it over this early, huh?'

Without magic, the Hell Hound wouldn't have been much of a threat to me at all. It was the sort of beast that gnawed on mage corpses like the one it was eating now — not the sort that chased ordinary people down.

But the moment I had magical ability and actually used it, slipping the Hell Hound's pursuit was out of the question. It had been built into the game as a difficulty regulator in the first place — a safeguard against magic becoming too omnipotent, too universally useful.

'Deliberately placed with me in mind, it seems.'

As long as this was the game world of End of World, events like this — sudden encounters, as they're commonly called — would be deployed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠target me or my villagers with pinpoint precision. If I'd sent Elena instead, they probably would have fielded a monster that physical attacks couldn't touch, or one that shrugged off slashing damage outright. And if I'd brought every villager along to cover every contingency, the game would have summoned some major faction we couldn't handle — or whose retaliation we couldn't afford — to drive us off, or else swapped this ruin for a smaller village with nothing worth looting at all.

'Put another way: this place holds supplies the game hates to give me this early.'

If only I hadn't cast magic, I could have farmed while the Hell Hound was busy with the mage's corpse — but it had already noticed me, so that door was closed.

'Maybe I should have hunted with the bow instead of magic, even if it took longer.'

Regretting it now changed nothing. No — thinking it through, I was never going to abandon a farming spot this rich. The only difference would have been time; one way or another, I'd have had to kill the Hell Hound in the end.

"Grrrrrr..."

Every drop of drool that fell from its jaws carried a swirl of green and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠black mana down to the floor, letting me guess at the attributes of the mage it had just devoured.

'And more to the point, I'm the one who needs to survive this.'

I had already mapped the ruin's layout back when I was hunting the first wolves. Slowly, I formed an ice spike in my hand — very thin, very small, but unmistakably made of mana. Conserving every scrap of it, I hurled the needle-thin spike into the empty air.

"Grrarf!"

There it was. Couldn't resist, could it.

Any other creature would have ignored an ice spike too small to see, but a Hell Hound could never, ever ignore one. If it were content to lap up the leftover mana in a dead mage's body, it wouldn't be hunting a living one the way it was now. What it craved was fresh mana — better yet, magic cast right in front of it and crammed straight into its maw.

The mana in its mouth right now told the same story: the black was probably what had gone into making undead, the green what the mage had carried inside him. So long as something held mana, this beast would chew undead to the bone and gnaw enchanted artifacts to scrap — so if I sprinkled mana out in little doses like this, there was no way it wouldn't bite.

Pop!

I didn't even need to run. Every time the beast closed in, I formed another ice spike and led it along. I'd throw a spike to buy some distance, it would swing its head around to swallow the thing, and then come padding after me, drooling the whole way.

Most mages, the instant they laid eyes on a Hell Hound, felt instinctive terror and threw every trick they had at it to survive — or got eaten. I was different. The fear trying to freeze my body solid? Manual Combat Mode took care of that. With my sharpened senses dialed up as far as they'd go, I fed out magic in the smallest possible doses and kept the beast on my hook.

The moment I felt the slimy ground underfoot and a foul stench rose to sting my nose, I glanced back over my shoulder to check my position.

'Just as I thought.'

A viscous liquid had seeped out between cracked oak barrels, with clumps of dust caked over it. The most basic setup imaginable: an oil leak. A town this size was bound to keep a shop selling oil for lamps, or for treating armor and other goods, and I'd already marked out the building among the ones I'd passed that looked like a general store.

'Going up against a fire-breathing Hell Hound with oil at my back is madness, granted.'

I made the ice spike I'd been tormenting it with one size bigger. If everything so far had been ice needles, this one had grown to about the size of a knitting needle — and the instant it did, the Hell Hound's greed gave it away, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠its pupils glued to my hand.

Flick!

Without so much as a backward glance, I hurled the ice spike at the oil barrel, and the Hell Hound lunged, its drool-soaked maw closing around the cask instead.

CRUNCH!

Its head smashed the oak barrel in one bite and got a face full of the contents. Low-grade stuff, cut with rainwater and every kind of filth — but the Hell Hound stood there doused head to tail, its oil-slicked hide gleaming as it turned back toward me.

Watching the oil evaporate fast, heat haze rising off the beast's body, I let loose my cold blast on the spot.

Sssssaaaah......

Spraying raw cold cost far less mana than conjuring actual ice. On a living creature, a cold blast did little more than chill the skin; you'd have to hold it there for ages to cause frostbite. But with the evaporating oil already leaching heat from its body, the moment I began ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bathing that chilled hide in cold air, the Hell Hound's skin began to split.

"Kyiieen!"

And yet I deliberately eased off, breathing the cold out gently as I brought my hand right up to the Hell Hound's face. However dim-witted a creature might be, once its body was hurt and hurting like this, it would either maul me to save its own skin or, failing that, try breathing fire.

"Grruk... Grrrrruk..."

The Hell Hound did neither. At its core, the Hell Hound was built to snipe mages; its artificial intelligence had 'consume currently-cast magic' set as its highest priority. Early on, plenty of players could be seen wailing as Hell Hounds devoured their mages — but in time they learned the answer: bait the hound with magic, then take it down with traps or other means.

Even as its own body froze and cracked apart, the Hell Hound held its maw wide open to swallow the cold I was sending at it, and the mana lacing that cold slid into its mouth to be neutralized and absorbed. But—

Craaack.

One thing it hadn't neutralized: the cold air itself. Granted, the air snapped back toward its original temperature almost as fast as the mana drained away — but the oil-drenched Hell Hound kept gulping down my cold even as its skull iced over in that freezing air.

The Hell Hound's hide resisted magic, and its maw could absorb and consume spells — but it could still burn to death on a patch of grass ignited by magic, or crack its jaw biting into a boulder hurled by telekinesis. It was a boss whose counters had long since all been catalogued, so I vented cold until my brain felt ready to overload, shoveling it straight into the beast's mouth — and before long, there stood a Hell Hound with its head frozen solid.

From the throat down its body was still fine; past the gullet, the cold warmed back to normal. But with its head soaked through in oil, once the head froze over, every action stopped. Brain-dead, you might call it.

Swish. CLANG!

I brought my hammer down, and the barely-frozen head shattered into shards; the headless body slumped to the ground.

"Tsk. If I'd taken it down clean without damaging the head, I could've pulled a Greater Magic Vessel from its skull..."

That would have let me grant Elena magic protection, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

I carried the Hell Hound's remains to the slaughterhouse I'd scouted earlier, laid them out on the butchering table, and started hollowing the carcass out. Butchering was supposed to be a job for a villager with a high Cooking skill, but I'd already shredded the hide beyond repair — all I needed was what was inside.

'Faster. Every second...!'

I nicked my hand on bone shards and blade edges along the way, but I kept pushing the pace, because the moment freshness slipped, the prize I wanted would spoil with it. Slicing into the growth clinging like a tumor right beside where the heart should have been, I bared a small lump of flesh glowing blue.

The moment I read it, I popped the thing into my mouth.

"Blegh!"

My body heaved, desperate to spit it right back out, but I clamped a hand still bloody from carving up the Hell Hound over my mouth and forced the retch down. It wasn't just raw meat sitting on my tongue — the mana inside my own body went wild, raging against the mana organ itself, and only by pinning my own head down, jaw pressed to the floor, could I hold it in until I could bear it.

"Ueeeughhk!"

The moment it was over, I spat the Mana Condensate out and doubled over retching right there. I dry-heaved several more times and rinsed my mouth out with the water I'd brought, and the reek of blood still clung to my tongue — but in exchange, my Mana Affinity had climbed a full stage.

If the Magic stat measured how complex a spell you could weave, Mana Affinity measured how much of it you could pour out, and how much harder it would hit. Call Magic the leading figure and Mana Affinity the multiplier tacked on behind it. It was an extremely rare item that no ordinary reward would ever produce — but from a Hell Hound that had devoured a powerful mage, it was a guaranteed drop.

"Hrk!"

Body still pitching with dry retches, I made my way back to the mage the Hell Hound had killed earlier. The man was already half-eaten — head and upper torso gone — and the robe he'd worn had been mangled past any use. Under End of World's rules you could wield a dead opponent's weapons, but a dead man's armor or clothing counted as a memento; wear it without being a necromancer, and all you'd collect was a stack of penalties.

"So what's... left...?"

Bones and bodies that looked like zombies lay scattered all around.

This mage had been a necromancer.

'That explains it. No way a village like this got wiped out by a Hell Hound and a pack of wolves.'

To be precise, beasts like those almost never overran a village with this many people in it. This mage had tried to raise undead here and forge the villagers into his own army — but with the villagers' corpses lying in a circle where they'd fallen, and a sizable number of wolf bodies strewn about, it looked like he'd turned his own undead to defense when the Hell Hound and its pack attacked.

Then the Hell Hound arrived and drained the mana animating his zombies and skeletons; he'd tried to run, been caught, and been eaten. That was the shape of it.

"Nothing worth taking."

Strictly speaking there were a few items, but thanks to the Hell Hound's sloppy gluttony their enchantments had been destroyed, leaving them useless. As for the mage's corpse itself — with necromancy, I could have put it to good use as a Skeleton Mage or a Lich. But I wasn't a necromancer. Keeping one as a villager wrecked internal relations to begin with: the moment people saw the corpses it dragged around, everyone's sanity collapsed, and the necromancer itself, professing its love for the dead, would go dig up the villagers' graves and melt down completely... It was a class almost nobody used.

I was already lightheaded from forcing that vile thing down, and merely looking at corpses to salvage loot made my head throb. If there was truly nothing left worth taking—

"......"

And yet...

Among the sprawled dead, I spotted a Hell Hound that had been hacked to pieces by the zombified villagers. Its skull was caved in, its body carved up and ruined, and it was nowhere near fresh — no parts left worth harvesting. But a few items still hung from its jaws, most of them broken and drained of power — except for one dagger that gleamed with unusual brilliance.

Which meant one thing: an enchanted artifact.

"No way......"

I reached out and closed my hand around the dagger.