The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Rats?

Krow glared at the locked door for a long moment, before he looked around.

There was indeed a scale built into the stone wall beside the door.

He had to collect rat tails?

There was a squeak further down the dim corridor. He twirled the rifle into place on his shoulder and shot. The retort of the weapon was even quieter than his revolvers.

A tail dropped onto the scale, smelly and damp.

[You've gained two (2) Silver Serpens from a monster!]

He stepped back from the mechanism.

Marvelous.

At least he didn't have to cut them off himself.

Two serpens meant that the monsters were above Lvl 10.

Krow studied the rifle he'd been given.

[Mothberg Rathunting Levergun Rifle]

[Quality: B+][Uncommon]

['You are sneaky, I'm sneakier. You are squeaky, I'm squeakier. You are betailed, I detail.']

[Boosts Stealth and Damage by 100% against all Rodents.]

[Defense Multiplier: .1]

[Damage Reduction: .02%]

[Weight: 3.5kg]

[Durability (1/1): 129]

It held six shots, with one in the chamber, for a total of seven.

Krow sighed and walked down the corridor. He passed the rat carcass. It was massive, its paws tipped with claws as long as his own fingers.

He touched it, grimacing.

[You've gained one (1) Murklith Tooth from a monster!]

He checked the tooth.

[Murklith Tooth]

[Quality: C-][Common]

He dropped the tooth from his Inventory. Not worth it.

A scurrying above alerted him to the possibility that the rats could climb. That was when he saw the platforms. The light was scant, but enough for his draculkar eyes to see that the narrow corridor had a ceiling that was at least a tower high, with wooden platforms along various levels.

He jumped to the lowest one above.

A rat scurried away from the sound of his boots landing on wood. He shot, and it slid off the platform, dead.

He returned to the ground, grabbed the pullcart of ammunition, and started walking.

A service corridor, he determined. The vertical platforms above him were to maintain that colossal mechanism on the walls of the hall outside.

A mining platform this massive? What were they mining?

He turned a few more corners, getting used to the rifle as he shot rat after rat, only to back up against the wall at a sudden roar of sound echoing through the narrow corridor.

He covered his ears, grimacing at the onslaught of noise.

A small rain of stones fell from above.

His tenseness bled away as he realized. Someone had just gotten through the temple's weird obstacle course again. An initiation ritual of some kind?

Then through the gaps in the wall, he heard:

"What do you call that, you mangy donkey? Couldn't you have done it faster?!"

"You lost me three silver!!"

"Remarje! Remarje! Remarje!"

"What do you mean six and ten?! We agreed on five!"

"Give me back my money!"

"I'm paying for drinks tonight, haha!"

"Fadal, you're up next!"

"Who??"

"Oh, that guy. I'm betting two silver on under ten seconds!"

"Are you mad? Look at him!"

"Don't waste your money, you still have to feed your wife!"

Krow's lips twitched.

What was he thinking? What initiation ritual. Clearly, they were all just gambling.

Bothadin, deity of sacrifice and death, dreaded from sea to sea, are you sure you don't want to just smite all your followers right now and be done with them?

Krow straightened as the deluge of stones, and the sound of rock rattling through vents and into wooden containers, tapered off.

He must be right at the wall where the stones poured out.

This obstacle course of the temple workers must be digging the mining gear deeper and deeper into the mountain. For what purpose?

A larger Temple? Judging from the amount of people in the temple hall, and the several levels Vathan led him through, the inner temple was more than large enough for them already.

Who needed that much space?

A rat ran out of a corner, scrabbled at the fallen rocks, then scurried away. Krow lifted a brow, aimed.

It took just one round to kill two-serpens monsters, so easy.

But the rifle was too unwieldy to load. The rounds had to be fed into the affixed magazine tube one by one.

These Murklith Rats were fine, but with more aggressive monsters, it was an enormous downside.

Krow bent over the rat, wondering what was so important that it left safety.

Fallen out of the monster's mouth was a stone.

He picked it up, quizzical.

Did the rats eat rock?

[Ordinary Pebble][Epic]

[A very ordinary pebble.]

…Epic?

Krow rubbed the dust off the rock. There was nothing distinguishing about it. The size of a grape, the color of ordinary granite, nothing notable.

Nothing but the designation that said its rarity was Epic.

An Epic pebble.

An Epic pebble?!

And here he'd been stunned just yesterday by a Legendary butcher knife.

His levels of disbelief had just been upgraded. Truly, they said travel stretched your horizons.

Krow thought for a moment, rolling the pebble around in his hand. 

Then he dismissed his spirit sparrowhawk and brought out the spirit worm.

"Appear." A five meter translucent form materialized before him, with a head full of nothing but sharp teeth. It didn't even have eyes.

He lifted the pebble. "Mark this on the map."

The spirit worm touched the pebble, chilling Krow's hand, and disappeared into the stone wall.

He flicked the pebble into his inventory, then brought the hand up to touch the ghost-stones on his necklace.

Was this the answer?

The catalyst needed?

If it was, he needed to know. The difference between Uncommon and Rare on the Bourse was vast. To be able to churn out Rare items from Uncommon material…wasn't that just like minting gold from thin air?

Something like that, anyway.

Krow frowned at the pebble in his hand.

But it didn't have a quality grade?

Even if his suspicions were mistaken, investigating was prudent. He stepped to the handful of similar fallen stones, picked them up one by one.

Of the dozens, only one turned up.

[Ordinary Pebble][Rare]

[A very ordinary pebble.]

He straightened, then placed the pebble in the Inventory. Another look around, then he continued with the rat extermination quest.

Three hours later, a series of notifications caught his attention.

[You've killed 1000 monsters!]

[You've gained 25 Reputation Points in Marfall Continent for killing 1000 monsters!]

[You've gained the Monster Slayer Badge from killing 1000 monsters!]

Oh?

His mood improved.

Nice!

Now if only he could get out of this smelly place.

Basically, the only reason he still hunted rats after the initial hundred was because the spirit worm had discovered and was mapping a rather extensive cavern system under the town.

Also, he'd picked up more epic and rare pebbles.

He needed a reason to stay in the corridor.

The gambling sounded like it was winding down though, which meant he had to leave soon.

It took thirty minutes, and ten more rains of pebbles he had to winnow through, for Vathan to come looking for him.

The ghostcaller looked up at Krow, who was perched on one of the upper platforms, tracking a rat ten levels up with the rifle. "Have you decided to forswear a material life and remain at the temple of Bothadin to become an ordained rathunter?"

The rat darted off, frightened by the amused voice of the ghostcaller.

Krow lowered the rifle, sighed. "If ever I do, you have my permission to check me for possession and other external mental influences, toxic drugs, hallucinatory venom, or such."

Vathan chuckled. "I assure you, being a temple devotee is not so bad as you think. But continuing, were you lost in a frenzy of bloodlust, found salvation in the inestimable Bothadin, and were sending sacrifices to the great deity?"

Krow landed lightly on the ground. "If ever I do, same procedure."

"Hah. No care for the deity of sacrifice, have you?" Vathan shook his head. "Come on then, I have the skill shard waiting."

Krow lifted a brow. "Just one skill?"

Weeping skies, how many rats had he killed for that?

"A skill you've well earned," acknowledged Vathan.

Finally, one master let him have a skill for half the going price. As a Rare skill though, half price for the skill shard of Occultist was still six drax.

Walking out the temple, a glance at the Map confirmed that the maps drawn by Rare ghost-stone spirits were more detailed than those drawn by brute-forcing Uncommon monster Bones.

He thought a burrowing spirit would only mark locations where ores and ethermica could be extracted. He wasn't expecting that it could actually differentiate environment enough to map a cavern.

His Map now had an underground level.

He didn't even know the Map could do that.

Did that mean it could conceivably become a 3D map?

He made a note to find out.

He waved at Dayirras as he left.

Recognizing the pillar with the Shrine of Knowledge some distance away, his eyes lit up. Krow clambered onto the vine balustrade and stepped off, then double-jumped toward a bridge in that direction.

He snapped off a grapple-hook and used it to swing upward, gaining air and distance, with a whoop.

He landed on a bridge with only a slight stumble, startling several people.

A passel of children, accompanied by several who looked like teachers, laughed at his landing and surrounded him. "Do it again!"

"That was great, can we do that too?"

"Sorry," he laughed with them. "It only works because I'm this tall."

"No way!"

"You can ask your teachers, they know a lot, right? They'll say the same." He walked along the bridge for a while, until the kids had left, shooting questions at the teachers who were glaring at Krow.

Then he flung himself off the bridge again.

"You're still young! What worries do you have, eh?!" complained an aged voice from behind him.

He laughed and triggered double-jump. This time, he landed on the bridge leading directly to the shrine.

Shrines of Knowledge were small, and didn't need the prestige of a temple. This one was half-carved into the peak of a pillar. In style, it was only a colonnade holding up a stepped pyramidal roof.

There was a single blue flame burning within, on a pedestalled brazier basin.

Krow stepped up to the brazier. Absorbing a skill was one drax per shard. He dropped a shard and a golden drax into the brazier.

[The skill Haggle has been added, at Third Apprentice rank, to your Accountant subclass!]

It was the first of his fourteen skill shards.