NOVEL NEXT Chapter 149: Back in the Saddle Again
In the frigid northern summer, the sun never set. Come winter they'd have the opposite problem.
We have to be out here while the sun's still ever-present, Jelena thought.
Anthropological books claimed that the arctic winter was dark and cold. Local nomads still roamed the land, though per their name, they'd move to more effective winter hunting grounds as the days grew short.
There was supposed to be an aurora in the sky during the dark months. Jelena had read about the phenomenon in great detail at the Japella mission. She'd always wanted to see it. Alas, they were out of season. If Zilara were here, she'd be able to tell them more about this corner of the world.
Memories of the holy brat with the custom class flooded Jelena Turandot's mind. She exhaled, and a stream of warm breath appeared visibly before the relic thief. Back in the desert she'd never seen this before. It happened a bit up in the highlands, so she wasn't entirely freaked out about it. Still, it was a reminder of just how alien this place was to her sensibilities.
In every way other than the environmental specifics, Jelena's desert nomad ancestors and these ice nomads were surprisingly similar. Both were perfectly adapted for the scorching high desert and frigid oceans of the north, respectively. How you skinned and preserved a fish out of a desert oasis and a dire-sturgeon from beneath the ice were not so different. The northern nomads were somewhat more dependent on smoke-drying fish, whereas Japella had developed a salting and ceramic storage technique.
Both bands of nomads operated, until recently, largely without the menu.
The northern tradition of keeping a single family line of Branded around in the position of elder was… a curious one. Jelena didn't want to think about what they did with the elder heir's younger siblings.
Another week of perpetual midday passed by. Calaf's arm wound healed as much as it was going to. The couple continued their daily fishing chores and largely 'paid their own way' in terms of food supply.
"Ready to go?" Jelena asked, sticking her head into their tent.
Most of the nomads lived communally in a particularly large central tent. Calaf and Jelena stayed in a tent at the periphery of the summer settlement. The tent was littered with bandages. Calaf sat on a raised bedroll, wrapping fresh bandages around the stump of his arm.
"Going to be difficult without my spear hand," he said.
"Don't worry," Jelena said. "It's much the same principle. I'll walk you through it."
Calaf walked out of the tent with a whalebone spear in his right hand. Jelena carried most of their supplies. The former Paladin wore a thick dire-seal coat with dire-reindeer fur accents. It was a common garb amongst the nomads, particularly for travel and fishing duty. Jelena, in contrast, was covered in several layers of thick furs.
Give me the dry desert any day, Jelena thought. She truly was not built for this place.
The nomad's giant sled ran out into the ice for hours. What their target was, the nomads did not share. But they were scanning for tracks.
The pair cuddled for warmth, as the winds howled even on this cloudless day. Gazing out over the ice proved blinding, a problem the locals solved with some strange blinder devices over the eyes.
It had been a while since Jelena had access to the Menu. She no longer considered what the descriptions of items and the like ought to say. No longer did she estimate what stat bonuses these shade-blinders would provide. Still, estimating these elements in the mind's eye could help Calaf. He'd only lost access to the Menu mere weeks ago.
The sled stopped well short of their destination. Nomads kennelled the sled dogs up, not wanting to put them at risk of whatever quarry they were tracking.
"Dire-goddogs gain an appetite for human flesh," said a nomad. "Eat our dire-reindeer herds too. Maybe once every five skyloops."
"They mean years," Jelena said with a shrug.
Calaf nodded his agreement. The group marched over a short, uplifted ledge of ice. Beyond this, a massacre awaited. Dozens of dire-elk bones, nearly an entire horde, had been picked clean. Blood stained the ice, leaving a steady track of crimson footprints heading due south.
An order went out. "Follow the goddog."
What was a dire-goddog? Jelena and Calaf didn't think to ask, as the definition proved self-evident for this band of nomads. But it appeared this damage was done by a single specimen.
Interesting, Jelena noticed. Every third nomad is a porter.
Roughly as many members of this group carried strictly backpacks full of supplies as came wielding spears. What would these packs be used for? They got antsy if Jelena tried peeking in there, so she decided to let the answer become apparent.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Onward the band ran at a modest pace. Jelena and Calaf remained at the back of the pack; Calaf wasn't going to be taking a frontline approach in his condition.
Bloody tracks tapered out, ending abruptly at a crevasse poking out vertically through sheer ice.
"It's a den," Calaf guessed.
Jelena looked over to him. "Don't overexert yourself. And stick near me."
Combat off the Menu would require some adjustment.
"I'll be fine." Calaf shot her a warm, quick grin.
Rather than lure this 'doggod' dire-beast out right away, the nomads stopped to prepare. The porters dumped their packs on the ice, and their purpose was revealed:
Great bits of tree bark were shaped and bent into a type of shell that wrapped around the human body. Armor, as all-encompassing as any chainmail. They were snapped into place like a puzzle piece. The shell was so thick it would surely block an arrow. Hell, it would probably block a claymore.
"Another band down south uses bark armor consistently," explained their nomadic handler. "Dire-caribou don't winter in their valley, so we trade them fish over the winter months in exchange for armor."
"That requires a great deal of trust from both sides," Jelena said.
As she spoke, Jelena continued to look at the porters as they assembled the armor around their 'knights'. There was no telling when or if Jelena would have to assemble similar armor.
"They're too far away to warrant challenging with a war party," said the nomad.
And vice versa, Jelena assumed. She wondered if they'd have to visit these more southerly nomads on their trip back down to the church lands.
Four figures were now wearing thick bark armor. They even had all-encompassing helmets with carved slits for eyelids.
Calaf remained broody and quiet. He'd always been broody and quiet, but had gone days without speaking unprompted since the Demon Lord's Fall job.
A more nimble scout performed the dangerous task of venturing up to the fissure and peering in.
"Not a den. Single male, resting after his meal," said the scout.
The ice rumbled as a low roar sounded from the crevasse. Something was angry. The scout took off running, pursued by a snow-white furred 'goddog'.
"That's a…" Jelena began.
There was a pause as her partner waited instinctively for a Menu designation that would not appear. He exhaled sharply.
"A dire-polar bear?!" asked the knight.
Another dire-beast that they'd heard of only in church records. Only rumored, none had ever been Branded. Neither did these beasts ever venture south of the great ice floes. Dire-bears existed in the church lands, particularly the woods. But this was twice the size of even those mighty beasts.
Four bark-armored knights lumbered forward, wielding extra-long spears. With their mobility limited, they weren't exactly going to be able to retreat if this monster proved too difficult to best.
The lead warriors must be incredibly brave or indisputably suicidal, Jelena thought.
"Keep thinking of what this thing's stats should be," Calaf said. "Title, Menu designation, and all that…"
"That… helps quite a bit, early on." Jelena held a hand up to her eyepatch.
Calaf nodded understandingly.
While Jelena had not been born with a Brand and only took it through an early-adulthood conversion, she'd still gotten acclimated to a great many tasks via the Menu. Combat was the most helpful, as the stat breakdown and special abilities made combat almost too easy.
The dire-polar bear swatted at one of the armored bark-knights.
"Okay, what do you think this 'goddog' would have for an Interface designation?"
Jelena used her mind's eye as well.
Name: Dire-Polar Bear (Goddog)
Rank: Dire-beast
Level: (Likely 70+)
Status: (Likely around 1,000)
Much was lost in translation from the rigid uniformity of the Menu to this rough mind's eye estimation, of course.
"Stronger than we are," Calaf said with a frown.
"But there is strength in numbers." Jelena nodded.
The bear's claws swiped a triple-gouging scar out of the nearest nomadic knight. The swipe failed to pierce the bark, however. The bear could only focus on a single attacker at a time, while there were always attackers on either flank or just behind the beast. Filed-sharp dire-walrus spears left red-coated wounds through the monster's thick hide.
"It must have thousands of hit points," Calaf said.
"That doesn't matter as much as you'd think," Jelena said. "Dead is dead. Hit points just estimate the level of energy or health left. It's… approximate. Nobody's ever survived decapitation just because the Menu's hit points haven't caught up and zero'd out, yeah?"
Calaf shrugged, conceding the point.
Shouts came from the crowd. The goddog had broken out from its boxed-in position. A bloody, limping dire-bear charged at Calaf and Jelena!
"Get out of the way!" Calaf said.
His shield hadn't made it through the portal. He held a spear in his offhand—now his only hand.
"Let me deal with it," Jelena said.
The dire-bear was upon them!
"No time. Dodge!"
Jelena wasn't expecting Calaf to brush her out of the monster's path with his lelft shoulder. She flew aside, and the bear kept going at Calaf.
With a mighty cry, Calaf rammed his spear down the dire-bear's open jaw. The monster let out an enraged growl of pain. Still, it continued to move, rearing up over the shieldless knight. Calaf's fur moccasins dug into the ice. Still, he was overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the beast.
"Under the Menu this would've… done a number to him!" Calaf yelled through gritted teeth.
"Hold on!"
Jelena leaped atop the dire-polar bear's back and thrust her own spear into its skull. The bear dropped like a stone into a placid lake, cracking the ice as it landed.
"Well," she managed, breathing heavily.
Calaf was on his knees in front of the fallen bear. Both caught their breath.
No sooner did the couple drop their guard than did the bear rear up again. Jelena held on to its red-coated fur for dear life.
The creature lashed out at Calaf. The first swipe missed and gouged a great trench out of the ice. The bear's second paw reared up, ready to strike.
Unlike those nomads in bark-armor, still trudging slowly with their inflexible wooden knee joints to rejoin the battle, Calaf was unarmored. The beast would tear through his relatively light coat and the vulnerable flesh beneath like it was nothing.
Jelena reached into her own coat and pulled out a metal-and-wood tube. A lone bullet was pre-primed for just such a situation.
"Only have three more of these!" Jelena placed the barrel of the firearm up to the bear's skull and fired. A deafening blast caused dogs to bark back at the sled, and the creature dropped after a short, delayed response. The bear landed at Calaf's feet.
"Ah." Calaf rolled his head back onto the ice. "No experience points."
"The experience is the point," Jelena said, voice hoarse from exertion.
The one-eyed relic thief pocketed her firearm next to her two remaining leaded bullets and powder charges. She climbed off the dire-bear and collapsed beside Calaf.