Chapter 17: Bait

Chapter 17: Chapter 17: Bait

Eric quickly carved open the chests of the two fallen Riftspawns, prying loose the pair of cloudy F-rank mana stones before slipping the warm, bloody crystals into his coat pocket.

He extended a hand over the dead creatures, preparing to store the carcasses straight into his system inventory.

Then, his hand froze mid-air.

*Wait a second... Why am I packing these away?* Eric thought, looking down at the dark, foul-smelling ichor pooling across the soil. *Predators in the wild track scents. Why waste hours blindly scouring the tall grass when I can just turn these corpses into bait?*

A sharp, practical grin spread across his face.

Instead of storing them, Eric dragged the two mangled carcasses into the center of a shallow dirt depression, slashing their bellies wide open to let the pungent, metallic scent of monster blood carry on the prevailing wind.

*Now we wait,* Eric murmured across the mental link. *If anything catches the scent and comes sniffing, we drop on it from its blind spot.*

*Caw!*

Coal understood the directive instantly. The crow took flight with a silent beat of his obsidian wings, perching high up on the thick bough of an ironwood tree overlooking the bait, blending seamlessly into the canopy shadows.

The ambush strategy paid off faster than expected.

Barely twenty minutes later, the tall grass thirty meters out began to sway with a rapid, rhythmic rustle.

A hideous, multi-legged silhouette emerged into the open, a Fleshcrawler.

The grotesque beast scuttled forward on its scythe-like legs, its rubbery muscle tissue glistening in the amber sunlight as its compound eyes locked greedily onto the dead Riftspawns.

Eric crouched dead-silent behind a thick limestone slab, his muscles coiled like a loaded spring.

*Coal, initiate.*

From his vantage point high in the tree, Coal folded his wings and plummeted like a black streak.

*WHOOSH.*

Before the Fleshcrawler could take a single bite of the bait, Coal swept past from behind, channeling his shadow mana into razor-sharp talons.

*SHRED.*

The enhanced Level 4 claws gouged deeply across the monster’s central eye cluster, blinding it in an instant. The Fleshcrawler shrieked, flailing its front scythes into empty air in wild agony.

Eric burst from behind the boulder like an arrow loose from a bow.

His agility carried him across the short distance in the blink of an eye. Stepping smoothly under the blind monster’s wild swing, he drove his reinforced round buckler into the beast’s side, throwing it completely off balance.

Without breaking stride, Eric pivoted his weight and thrust his shortsword straight up into the soft joint beneath its jaw.

*CRUNCH.*

Steel pierced through the meat and nerve center with surgical precision. The Fleshcrawler convulsed once, its dozens of chitin legs folding inward as the life drained from its twitching frame.

A perfectly clean kill. Zero wasted motion, zero counter-damage.

*DING.*

│ [QUEST PROGRESS: 3/5 Monsters Slain]

│ Current Status: Active

"That makes three," Eric grinned, flicking the dark fluid from his blade. "Two more and we cash out the quest."

*ROOOOOOOAAAR!*

A deafening, primal roar detonated through the air, vibrating the very ground beneath his boots. The concussive acoustic shockwave tore across the plains, flattening the tall grass like an invisible gale.

Eric instinctively clamped both hands over his ears, his teeth rattling from the raw sound pressure.

"What in the hell was that?!"

He looked up at the sky. *Coal, scout it out!*

Coal took to the air, flying high above the tree line to pinpoint the disturbance. The moment his vision locked onto the source, a pulse of pure alarm flashed across the soul bond, nearly knocking Eric off balance with its intensity.

Five hundred meters to the south, the earth was literally being torn to shreds.

Two colossal monstrosities were locked in a savage duel to the death.

*Let’s see what we’re dealing with,* Eric thought, his curiosity warring with caution. *If they tear each other apart, there might be a massive profit waiting for a third party.*

Staying low to the ground, Eric used the undulating terrain and thick brush to crawl closer, stopping behind a high earthen ridge overlooking a wide, cratered clearing.

Peering over the edge, Eric’s breath caught in his throat.

The two combatants were grotesque avalanches of pure muscle and chitin. Each stood over four meters tall, shaped like hideous, bipedal toad-abominations covered in calcified bone plates. Their entire torsos were dominated by gaping, cavernous maws lined with concentric rings of jagged, razor-sharp fangs that snapped together with the sound of cracking boulders.

Eric narrowed his eyes and triggered his vision.

*Appraisal.*

│ Race: Gorgefiend

│ Rank: E

│ Stage: Mortal

Eric stared at the azure prompt in disbelief.

*Those things are Rank E?! Seriously?*

He watched as one Gorgefiend slammed its massive, boulder-like arm into the other’s chest, shattering reinforced bone plating and sending shockwaves rippling through the dirt.

*They might be Rank E by species, but with that terrifying muscle mass and mana density, these two are definitely at the peak of Mortal Stage, Level 8 or 9 at least!*

Eric crouched lower behind the ridge, his heart pounding in his throat as the earth trembled beneath him.

If he played his cards right, this brutal clash wouldn’t just fulfill his quest quota, it could hand him the biggest harvest of his life.