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"Ah. It\'s over."

Lvl 9?

Krow didn\'t even draw his gun, knowing it was useless.

He\'d just gained Lvl 3, and won\'t get a battleclass skill for another seven levels. He had four bullets and two crude knives.

He couldn\'t even taunt the monster with the Tattered Golden Silky Fur of its dead pack members because he wouldn\'t be able to survive the charge.

Krow paused at that thought.

Too cruel, he admonished himself. The armored beast and its pack hadn\'t done anything to him after all.

It was Krow who had trespassed, in that regard.

So he turned from the approaching beast and its much diminished entourage, jogged away.

Kchreee! Chk-keee!

Krow paused, as if to listen to the chittering. He brought up his profile. Twelve points of dexterity?

And then he flung himself off the walkway.

The land silenced.

It was only now, when Krow could only hear wind in his ears, that he realized the Gardens were full of sound – insects uncountable, birds that chirped and fluttered their wings, the flowers themselves hummed with life.

What part did the mothmarmots play in the Gardens, that the sounds of everything else didn\'t stop when they appeared?

Almost instinctive, a hand reached out to catch a trailing vine, and Krow\'s body slammed into the wind as he swung.

"Gyaaaaaahaah!"

The landscape rushed past dizzily.

Something clicked in his brain, and Krow released the vine at a particular point in the arc. He flailed his arms to keep upright, feet coming up in front. He skidded onto the pathway, legs bending to take on most of the impact.

Even then, his feet slipped against dust and gravel, knees slammed into the ground, palms almost bruised from road rash.

There was a short stillness, as dust settled.

Then Krow popped up with an exhilarated laugh.

His status told him he had Negligible Wound(s). A small debuff, considering he\'d never done that move before.

But this was a game, and his body was data. He just needed to let the \'instincts\' take over.

"Twelve points of Dexterity!" He gleefully cheered. Then he grinned widely at the Armored Mothmarmot on the walkway above, ignoring the angry eyes and confused chitter-roaring. "Twelve points of Dexterity, that\'s what just happened!"

Twelve points of Dexterity.

Enough to activate the first skill of the Acrobat subclass, Rope Trickster.

Eli had watched tightrope stunts and rope-dancing on vid before. Even at Krow\'s third apprentice level, swinging from a vine without slipping was simple, though it was about the most he could do.

He brushed himself off and rapidly walked away. It would take at least three minutes for the remaining members of the monster pack to reach where he was.

He had to get away from the armored mothmarmot\'s aggro zone, and stay away for one hundred seconds before the pack could lose his \'scent\' and start calming down from the battle. To lose a monster concentrating aggro on a player, that meant: run away very far very quickly.

Skreeeaaaaooar! Ch-kreeaAAOR!

Krow glanced back.

Wasn\'t he out of the aggro zone already? In most monsters smaller than an eighteen-wheeler, it was a twelve-meter radius.

The armored beast jumped.

What.

Krow could only stare, dumbfounded.

Large butterfly wings unfurled from the back of the armored mothmarmot. Gouts of gold dust rained thickly from the spreading wings. A full seven to ten meters in span.

Krow choked on nothing in shock, coughed, leaned against the rocky crag to thump his lungs into working again.

Flying creatures had a larger aggro zone, nearly five times that of ground-based monsters of similar size.

"Norge!" Krow yelled the name as a curse, peeved to the extreme. "Did you program your monsters with twelve points of Impossible?!"

Krow could run, but the path led straight for Gremut.

Even thirty meters along the route he was on, the monster would scent the village.

The full sixty meters and the flutterpoison dust would affect the villagers whether they wanted to or not.

He opened his Profile, distributed four points to VIT and one to DEX. With 12 points to VIT, he\'d reached a threshold and his body became slightly tougher. Unfortunately, he didn\'t gain any class skills with it.

Each point to MND made his bullets stronger by a percentage, but the increase was insignificant at his level.

The he turned away from the village path and started clambering up the steep slope.

Above him were sheer cliffs, but climbing got him away from the veritable waterfall of poison dust from the impossibly gliding giant ratbug. There was more than one pathway on the slope, due to the layers of vine walkways.

Most of them led to Gremut.

Skreeeeaaaor!

He glanced behind him, drew his revolver. He shouldn\'t have left the Gardens – there, those wings wouldn\'t have had room to spread. But here, in the space between the Gardens and the wall of the gorge, there was enough room to glide.

The massive bugrat even had the nerve to look graceful while doing it.

Krow cycled the cylinder to a stun-round, snapped two shots at the eye of the beast. Even if the stun wouldn\'t work, the projectiles only dispersed upon touching the enemy and it would at least sting.

Sure enough, the monster roared in pain, the fluttering wings jerked in their flowing dance. The monster drew its wings in, and its whole bulk swerved unsteadily from the expected trajectory.

Weeping graves.

Krow holstered the gun and pulled himself up the gorge wall faster.

He\'d barely flung himself behind a jutting crag when the armored mothmarmot crashed, the impact site exploding into a cloud of poison dust, rocks and actual dust.

He huddled into the hooded cape as the poison dust spread, as the impact triggered a dozen small rockfalls

"Buy a mask, too," he noted to himself, as the hood kept the pebbles off him, but not the tiny choking particles of soil.

StrawmanScare had worn a mask for the majority of his life.

It came in handy many times against airborne dangers, like paralyzing plant spores, the emanations from leatherworker solutions, steaming acid pools, or the various strong unpleasant smells he had to deal with over the years.

That was a thought for another time though, as the monster below was already picking itself up.

Chk-skreeeaar!

There was a kink in one of its wings, but its reddening eyes were set mercilessly on Krow.

Dread curdled in his gut.

"You want it to follow you." He swallowed reflexively, as the plan firmed in his mind. "Don\'t mind the absolute murder-death-kill eyes it\'s giving you. Those totally don\'t matter at all."

He waved, as if greeting a friend.

The other chk-roared its protest at the notion and started digging claws into the side of the gorge, slowly climbing with vengeance dripping out of every crack its claws dug into stone.

Krow started to move, not up, but sideways. He boosted himself onto an upper pathway and jogged along it, eyes sharp and roving, keeping track of the landscape.

He glanced back and grimaced. The armored monster was still emitting puffs of poison dust, clawing up the slope toward him.

It wasn\'t raging yet, but from how those wings looked slightly less vivid and more milk-colored, it was getting there.

He moved faster.

He couldn\'t use the flameburst-rock-crystal explosion strategy here.

For one, this side of the gorge seemed to have a dearth of rock crystals. Second, he didn\'t know if the rock shards could penetrate the armor. He only had one flameburst left, and he wasn\'t about to leave his life to chance like that.

Krow huffed ruefully to himself.

He\'d really been out of his mind, to take on a hidden quest without proper preparation.

He\'d failed it before. He should know how difficult it was.

Too eager and too overconfident.

He should have waited to do the hidden quest. He should have known he hadn\'t had enough bullets. He should have at least stocked up on food.

Should have, he snorted.

\'Don\'t think in should haves\', said Craftmaster Ortholian, \'think, what should be done better next time?\'

Krow had never been sure if the craftmaster had been a native or a former player. He didn\'t wear the globe icon that most of the transmigrators had adopted as their symbol. But he didn\'t act as most of the Zushkenari natives did either.

What should be done better next time?

Many things, Krow admitted with much irritation at himself.

He hadn\'t even changed his starting gear slippers for boots!

The durability was already fading on the slippers because he could feel the stones under his feet now. Not helped by how he\'d landed feet-first on that vine swing.

"Just get to Lvl 5," he told himself. "Lvl 5 and then immediately leave Gremut to somewhere with better gear."

Starting villages didn\'t sell good armor or weapons. They didn\'t even have an auction house. Only large towns and cities had those.

Of course, he needed to get away from the Lvl 9 monster intent on ripping him to shreds first.

He stopped as he saw a rock pillar formation as he rounded a corner – thrice taller than him, suitably heavy, and more importantly it tapered a bit toward the ground and looked very crumbly and unstable.

It wasn\'t precisely the plan, but plans change….

"Perfect."

At least, it had a decent chance of working.

He ran to the pillar, started climbing up the stone formation gingerly.

The fact that it was crumbling gave a lot of handholds, which aided his ascent. The fact that it was unstable made it shudder with every move he exerted on it, which did not aid his nerves.

The armored monster rounded the corner, bounding energetically even with a wing uselessly trailing the ground. Its gaze caught him.

Chkreeeeeaaar!

"Shkav," he cursed, and carefully moved faster. The rock formation trembled and swayed. He paused, eyes wide.

Chkskreeeeeaoor!

Krow set his teeth and ignored the swaying. Don\'t look down, don\'t look down, don\'t look down!

He gained the semi-flat top of the pillar with a sigh of relief, then grabbed a trailing vine hanging from a walkway above. He glanced down, stepped to the side opposite the armored mothmarmot, inclined himself nearly horizontal, soles of his feet against the edge of the pillar, with the vine supporting his weight.

He bent his knees. Then with all the force he could, pushed off.

The pillar swayed in the opposite direction as he swung away. He reached the top of the swing arc, and bore down with all his weight as gravity pulled him back down.

Using the momentum of the return swing, he slammed into the pillar.

He bounced off deliberately to save himself the pain, but the shock of the collision still resonated in his bones.

The pillar leaned over. But it wasn\'t enough to fall.

The armored monster scrabbled at the slope, intent on getting to Krow and ignoring everything else.

He adjusted and pushed off again, with greater force, cursing. Even if his debuff said Negligible Wound(s), the scratches on his knees and palms still stung. Even now, he felt his grip on the vine slipping.

Chkreeeeaaaor!

He slammed into the pillar again. It tipped over. He huffed in relief. The pillar bumped one edge against the slope as it wavered in its descent; he nearly slipped off. Tightening his grip on his makeshift rope, he braced.

Chkreeeeaaaor! Chk-kreeeeeooor!

The armored mothmarmot, just a single leap from where Krow was hanging, could not avoid the pillar\'s falling weight.

Chkeeee! Chk-kr—

Krow braced his feet on the stone, letting the length of the vine run out between his loose grip as he descended with the pillar.

Pillar, mothmarmot, and Krow crashed onto the path. His feet slid from under him. He turned it into a roll, dropped onto a path on the mountainside below.

This time, Krow couldn\'t avoid the flutterpoison dust mixed with stone shards and soil debris. He ducked beneath a ledge and covered his mouth and nose as best he could.

Definitely need a mask.

He could see the vine web of the Gardens tremble as large rocks fell onto the vine walkways below them.

\'That would surely endear you to Gremut,\' a part of him snarked critically, \'destroying a beloved site that had obviously been the work of generations.\'

Say goodbye to those Reputation Points, Krow.

The rockslide tapered off, and he cautiously peered out of his hood.

A series of cracking sounds, breaking stone, shot through the quiet, and more rocks tumbled down.

Krow eeled further under the ledge. Some of the rocks fell against the ledge, protecting Krow from the rest of the landslide.

Chk-kreeeaAAAOOOR!

He stilled.

It was still alive.

And in a Rage.

"Weeping graves," he breathed feelingly into the dust under him. He pushed against the rocks that half-trapped him under the ledge.

Skreeeeaoor!

Something large thumped near where he was near-punching rocks out of his way. Shkav!

He wriggled out frantically and sat up, revolver already in hand, already aiming.

They looked at each other, so close that Krow could almost feel the monster\'s breath.

He cycled the revolver cylinder to the last flameburst bullet, one of the two bullets he had left in the gun.

The monster was bleeding badly, only a sliver remaining in its HP. But its wings were fully crystal, in a familiar Rage, and its HP was slowly replenishing.

Krow himself had not wanted to think about the 43% he had left, indelible at the corner of his eye.

A screeching roar and the monster was on him. Krow\'s hand didn\'t waver as he waited until he couldn\'t miss. He triggered the flameburst; the bullet flew true into a blood-red eye.

The vulnerable area exploded.

Krow ignored the roaring, forced himself up and equipped a stone knife, used all the force of a lunge to slide the blade into the monster\'s eye-socket and deep into its brain.

There was a long, helpless moment where he thought he hadn\'t succeeded.

Then the large mothmarmot sagged.

The stone knife snapped, leaving him only holding the tang.

[You\'ve gained two (2) pouches of Flutterpoison Dust from a monster!]

[You\'ve gained one (1) set of Crystalwing Bones from a monster!]

[You\'ve butchered a monster to acquire its Golden Silky Fur!]

[You\'ve gained ten (10) serpens from a monster!]

[You have finished a Hidden bonus objective: Vanquish an Armored Mothmarmot!]

Krow stumbled back, breathing hard.

The monster carcass dispersed into a mass of glowing sparks, lifting up to the skies.

He watched until the last glowing mote was gone.

Godforsaken hidden objectives. "It wasn\'t hidden at all!"

And bonus? Bonus meant \'optional\', right?!

The monster confronted him, then pursued him when he walked away! It had basically forced them into confrontation! How was that \'hidden\' or \'bonus\'?

"Take your not-really-optional objectives and shove them, Norge!" he muttered.

Sometimes, Krow felt that if any gods existed, they were laughing at him.

He stretched slowly. His body felt heavy, indicating debuffs.

The intricate web of the Gardens, at least, remained mostly untouched.

Poisoned, Exhausted, and Wounded, he started walking to where he could get food and treatment.

Chk-kreeee!

"Are you joking, world?" Krow aimed the revolver, glaring at the single monster blocking his way.

[Mothmarmot Lvl 3]

"I only have one bullet left in this gun. Do you want to try your luck?"

Unsurprisingly at this point, it did.

Less than ten minutes later, he was ignoring the looks sent at his dusty and torn attire as he all but limped through the town.

He squinted at an Apothecary sign on the shop.

"Boy, did you tangle with a herd of wild stone-swine?" chuckled the proprietor as he entered and slumped against the counter.

Krow grunted. There were stone-swine this high up? Tenacious little things. "Ten vials each of General Antidote, Low Revitalit, and Low Heal."

"Look like you need it." The man started packing the vials into a chest. "General Antidote at ten serpens each, Low Revitalit at twenty, Low Heal at twenty-five. Five drax, fifty serpens total."

Whoa. Cheap.

Oh right, this was a starting village. Prices were at least 30% cheaper when under Lvl 5.

"Twenty-five hundred-item crates of each, in addition." He\'d have liked to buy more, but Inventory slots were finite.

The man\'s brow lifted, but he only said, "You\'ll have to return tomorrow for the crates. Five thousand and five hundred drax. Half the price now, half tomorrow."

He closed the chest and thoughtfully left out one vial of each potion for Krow, who guzzled them all down without hesitation.

"You don\'t have Fool\'s Antidote, High Revival or High Heal, do you?" Krow asked, placing pouches of coin on the counter.

"I look like I could sell that amount here?" The man laughed, incredulous. "You could order a similar amount from the city if you want to pay the delivery prices. It would take three days."

"No thanks." Krow figured it was something like that. All the top-quality items were designed to be player-crafted, so the system couldn\'t just make them appear like it did the general NPC-shop items. And it couldn\'t discount the prices, either. Noted.

He should shop around to see what NPC shop items he could stock up on.

Krow left the shop, paid for a week in a draculkar visiting-house, engaged the security locks, and went to sleep.

*

Eli took off the neuro-virtual headgear, but didn\'t move for several minutes. Finally, he sat up on his bed, running a hand through his hair.

"That was slightly more intense than expected," he breathed.

A glance at the clock said it wasn\'t even nine in the morning.