Duskbound

A few dozen more arrows rained down through the darkness, but before they could strike the half of the team that were just now groggily waking up, Gilder reached up a hand overhead. A surge of… something… pulsed out, detectable in every piece of metal Velik was wearing jumping in place, and suddenly the entire volley was veering off to the side to pincushion the ground around their camp.

"Go," Torwin ordered. "Leave them alive if you can."
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Velik didn't need to be told twice. He shot off into the night, [Apex Hunter] guiding him to the biggest threat. A cluster of humans were crouched behind a small hill on one knee, bows already drawn back and more arrows coming his way. This round was focused on him specifically, but it was trivially easy to sidestep them at this range. But with five hundred feet between him and his targets, they had plenty of time to keep shooting if he let them.

No point in letting them keep trying.

His cloak flared out around him, the raven's feather pattern glinting silver against black in the darkness. He pulled on its magic and activated the second of its two abilities: [Shadow Step]. It was a hungry ability, not something he could use more than once, but in this case, it was the perfect response to having fourteen men armed with bows trying to murder him on an open field.

Velik vanished into a shadowy version of the world, somehow distinctly different from the normal night he'd been in. To the eyes of those men, he'd simply disappeared. To him, though, he'd slipped into a mirror of reality. For the next few seconds, he was a ghost among them. By the time the cloak's enchantment expired, he'd already circled past them.

If he'd been striking to kill, the archers' contributions to their ambush would have ended right there. None of them were past level 35—it was surprising that some of them were even close, considering how peaceful the area was—and he had a legendary spear more than capable of ripping the life out of them. Instead, he drew his dagger and stowed his spear in its normal spot, its form shifted to loop around his arm.

Enchanted with [Bleeding], [Weakness], [Blinding], and [Sharp], it was trivial to stab each target a few times and leave them crippled. [Savage Rhythm] sang through his limbs, enhancing his speed with each strike until he'd put down the entire squadron in a few seconds. None of them were dead, but they were all struggling frantically against the magic that had left their vision dark, their limbs heavy, and their blood flowing both freely and quickly from their wounds.

He took a second to make sure no one was getting back up, claimed their bows as an additional precaution, and scanned the battlefield for his next target. Giller was defending the camp despite the fact that she was completely unarmored and had nothing in her hands but a sword with a six-foot-long blade that she definitely hadn't shown off during the previous week. Presumably, it was enchanted in some way to make it more portable outside of combat.

Seven bandits had descended on the camp, but between her and Torwin, they'd completely locked that group down. A second archer group, perhaps half the size of the one Velik had just disabled, was positioned on the opposite side of the camp, but that didn't make them safe. It was dark and the moon was up.

Bursts of silvery light accompanied panicked and agonized screaming as the bandit archers spontaneously combusted. So much for non-lethal, Velik thought. The whole scuffle had barely lasted twenty seconds, and the attempted ambush had failed miserably. At least, it certainly seemed that way from where he was standing.

He had a frozen instant's warning before the monster ambushed him. It was a great cat, its coat the exact same color as the night it slunk through. Even with [Duskbound] tearing away the concealing shadows and the [Night Vision] enchantment further enhancing his eyes, he only saw the monster by its purple, slitted irises, and only when it pounced out of concealment onto his back.

Velik spun in place and stabbed up with the dagger in his hand, but it skipped off the cat's flank without doing more than ruffling its fur. [Apex Hunter] filtered that information along with its remarkably stealthy approach and came to the inescapable conclusion that the monster was a high level, probably high thirties or low forties. It was going to have a few other tricks to show off before the fight was over.

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One of those, apparently, was how sharp its claws were. The cat was several hundred pounds and probably eight feet long without including the tail, but it easily got its back legs up between them and raked his stomach. Hot lines of fire scored his skin as it easily shredded the chimeric leather making up his vest, the armor's [Resilient] enchantment no match for whatever skill had honed the cat's claws to razor edges.

Velik hit the ground on his back, his spear still wrapped around his arm and the dagger released so that he could use both hands to hold back the cat's jaws from clamping around his face. With one hand pushed against its neck and his other forearm braced against the monster's chest, he took a few more slashes from its claws, but then he got his feet up and shoved.

The cat flipped end over end, thrown into the air and already twisting to come back down on its paws. It was only off Velik for a minute, but that was all the time he needed to reform his spear as he rolled to his feet. He expected the cat to charge right back in and press the advantage now that it had wounded him, but to his great surprise, it raced off into the darkness. He quickly lost track of it as its body blurred and then vanished.

Okay, that's annoying. Come back out here so I can gut you.

Only a few seconds had passed since the cat had ambushed him, and the fight was still going on back in the camp. He could be there almost instantly, probably too fast for the cat to attack again, and he'd be in a much better position to handle it among his allies, but he didn't move. He was a hunter. He was [The Black Fang]. Monsters fled from him in the night, not the other way around.

Blood dribbled from the cuts on his stomach, chest, and thighs, but they were shallow wounds, easily ignorable. Drinking a healing potion would be overkill when they'd scab up on their own before morning. His range of motion was slightly restricted through his torso unless he wanted to tear them open and make them worse, but he'd fought with much more severe injuries.

Whatever the cat's stealth ability was, it was at a very high rank. He had [Apex Hunter] up to rank 6, and that was on top of the rank 9 [Predator's Visage] it had been built off of. It was unusual for anything to sneak up on him, let alone something that wasn't even a higher level. There was no way that cat being here was a coincidence. It had to be connected to the bandits somehow, but nothing he'd seen indicated any sort of class that could produce and control monsters.

Which means there's someone else here who hasn't joined in the main fighting. They must be a ways out if I can't find them, though, or else have their own specialized hiding skill.

The cat appeared out of the darkness behind him again, but it had already done that once and he was prepared for it to try the same tactic. Spinning in place, he lashed out with his spear. The monster was already in the air, claws extended, and couldn't alter its course. Unlike the dagger Velik had used the first time, the spear was a much stronger weapon, better able to take advantage of his prodigious physical stat. Between that and the fact that he was prepared for the ambush, the metal tip dug deep into the cat's chest.

Yowling in pain, the cat aborted its leap and dragged the spear down with it. Velik flexed his arms and kept control of the weapon, turning the cat's jump into a downward slam that shook the ground where it hit. Torwin had said not to kill the bandits if possible, though Velik wasn't sure if that was an act of mercy or just to question them about their intentions. Either way, he hadn't mentioned leaving any monsters alive.

Before the cat could scramble away, light arced down the length of the spear. The night blossomed with brilliant light as [Dread Lance] detonated, blowing the cat apart into chunks of bloody meat, bones, and fur. Even the disabled archers thirty feet away were splattered with gore.

[You have slain a bonded ghostwalker cat (level 39).]

[You have been awarded 2 decarmas.]

What does 'bonded' mean?

Before Velik had a chance to consider it, Torwin came sprinting across the field. "Are you alright?" he demanded.

"Fine," Velik said. "Why?"

"I thought you weren't going to kill anybody," the old [Ranger] said. "That seemed like a fatal blow."

"It was, but not to the bandits," Velik explained. "Some sort of monster. A bonded monster, according to the kill notification."

Unexpectedly, Torwin started swearing loudly. The line of expletives went on for several seconds, shifting languages at least once, until the old man stomped over to the still living archers. "On your feet," he barked out. "I've got some questions, and if you want to see the sun again before you die, you're going to answer them."

With confused moans of pain, the bandits allowed themselves to be dragged upright and prodded in the direction of the camp, where they joined the rest of the attackers who'd survived their ill-fated ambush. A quick glance around showed that none of Velik's team had been injured besides himself, though his own wounds were well-hidden under a layer of gore.

"Alright," Giller snapped out once all the bandits were gathered together. "Which one of you idiots is in charge?"