“If only we had a torch or someth-”
A light lit up the cave as Anya pulled out a luminous orb with a smug smile. It’s white-blue light lit up the area around them, reaching about twenty metres away.
That was when they saw it, one of the monsters they were here to slay.
It had black, slimy, reptilian frog-like skin.
Basically, it was like a large, human-sized leech yet with some startling differences: It’s mouth was a gaping hole filled with spiny teeth, surrounding its mouth were ten white eyes, most of which were locked onto Jay, though at first glance they simply looked like white spots.
It didn’t have any arms, though it’s legs consisted of multiple tentacles, all of them wriggling around which gave it silent movement, while much faster than the normal way a leech moves. It was perfectly suited to hunting in a dark cave system.
Already speeding towards Jay, it was drawn to him like a magnet. Strangely, it didn’t even care about the skeletons in front of it as it charged straight into their blades.
Now that it was stopped by the skeletons, Jay took a moment to analyse it.
<[Leech Imp Level 1]>
[HP 5/5]
<[Skills]>
[Glade Vision]
- Sees temperatures rauther than colours. Thermal vision.
[Annelid Body] (Passive)
- It’s segmented, boneless, muscular, jelly-like body can bend, squeeze, flatten, stretch and twist to extreme proportions, making it hard to wound.
- Requires a moist environment.
- Immune to crushing damage.
- 90% reduced slashing and stabbing damage. Pierce damage counts as stabbing damage.
- 90% increased damage from fire-based attacks.
[Devour]
- The leech imp begins to swallow its victim whole (Takes 15 seconds). Once swallowed, the victim begins to be digested by stomach acids. After the meal, anything non-organic is regurgitated along with excess mucus.
- 1 damage/minute.
- Once swallowed, the victim can only escape if the leech imp dies. Can attack from inside with 90% damage reduction penalty.
[Anaesthetic Bite]
- The creature bites into you, syphoning blood as it heals itself.
- 1 damage/second.
- 0.1 Hp heal/second.
- Enough bites paralyse the target for (1) seconds. Scales with victims vitality.
- Local anaesthetic. Victim feels no pain. Most creatures will not realise they’re being attacked.
[Mucus Movement] (Passive)
- +25% speed in mucus.
[Create Kin]
- After consuming enough blood, can create another leech imp, grown from one of it’s tentacles.
- Asexual organism
“Really low health but also high damage reduction.” Jay said to Anya while still staring at the leech imp.
“Also we can talk normally now since it relies on its heat-sense vision. Looks like it can’t even see the skeletons, that’s probably why it charged into them.”
Blue slashed at it twice, only doing 0.8 damage each time.
Jay was glad he crafted the stronger 8 damage ossein swords.
It was a level one monster, but it would’ve been hard to kill if Jay was still using his cooking knife; it would’ve done 0.1 damage. This would be like fighting a monster with 50 health - he definitely wouldn’t be able to kill it within the 15 seconds it took to channel it’s devour skill. From inside the belly, it would be like fighting a monster with 500 health due to the extra 90% damage reduction from inside.
“These things would be hard for any level one to deal with… it’s pretty unfair to even call them level one… I guess my skeletons are pretty unfair too though” Jay mischievously smiled.
The majority of other adventurers would only be level three at this point, with 3-5 damage swords; Jay was level eight. Monster classes are truly overpowered.
Thankfully he had his skeletons with him, they made short work of the slimy monster, only taking 7 hits to kill it. With the combined attacks of the minions, it was dead within a few seconds.
Since both Red and Blue dual wielded the swords, each of them only had to attack twice to end it.
[15 Exp]
When it died, it turned into a mass of wriggling moving parts for a moment - then slowly stopped as its individual body parts ran out of energy, swimming around aimlessly in a growing puddle of its own mucus.
“Gross.. I guess that explains all the mucus in the hamlet… Do you want to loot it?”
“...No” Anya’s face scrunched up at the sight of it. She had already left one bolt behind searching through a corpse, and wasn’t going to waste another.
Whatever this level one monster would drop wouldn’t be worth digging around it’s slimy corpse for. Jay had his level one minion search the corpse, but it turned up nothing.
He tried waving his hand over the corpse and picking up any items from it using his inventory but to no result.
“Perhaps it drops nothing?” Jay thought to himself “I guess it’s a non-dungeon monster anyway.” he pursed his lips “Let’s keep going.”
“I’ll contact Mark, they should know what we’re up against.”
Jay nodded as she pulled out the crystal.
She channelled some mana into it, but after a few moments she had a frown on her face.
“Hnn… it usually lights up a little when it works… damn. We must be too far. It doesn’t feel like we walked that far though.”
“Oh well. We can’t do anything about it. I’m sure they’re safer than us anyway, so let’s move on.”
“Mm, sure.” She put the crystal away.
Journeying through the darkness, walking along the light path, Jay’s shield soon squeezed his arms - multiple times.
Leech Imps started appearing while his shield kept squeezing. The first three were dispatched easily by Red and Blue, but afterwards there were five at once, all much faster as they travelled over their kin’s mucus-covered dead bodies.
Jay was forced to join the fight with Anya backing him up, while each skeleton was fighting its own leech imp.
Slashing at the slimy creature's long neck, Jay’s sword seemed to have little effect as the leech imp’s body almost seemed to slide around the blade; It’s skin was tough, stretchy and slimy; similar to an octopus.
[0.8 damage]
The creature lunged back, snapping onto Jay’s arm. Jay expected to feel pain but it only felt like a cold slime was touching his arm. The lack of sensation made him surprised and disgusted as he tried to control his panic - It was as if his own body wasn’t warning him that it was being consumed; like it was complying with being eaten.
“Argh!” He tried to pull it off his arm but it seemed like his skin was more likely to rip off with it, while the creature's body merely stretched.
Anya wouldn’t fire at the leech imp, as Jay was moving a lot and she didn’t want to risk hitting Jay.
Getting slightly more panicked, Jay began to endlessly and ferociously slash at its black body.
Meanwhile the Molodus coat was doing it’s part at protecting Jay, the poison damage coming off the coat wasn’t reduced by the leech’s natural defences at all as it slowly killed the leech.
The coat did 1 damage over three seconds, this made it as if someone was attacking the imp with a three damage sword.
Damage numbers quickly popped up until it eventually fell off, dead.
“The worst part of these is that you don’t even feel them.”
He had this thought as he looked back at Anya - she shot a bolt at the leech that the level one skeleton was fighting, though since her concentration was somewhere else, one of the fat black slugs had crept up behind her and was now latched onto her lower calf muscle, getting a free meal.
“Sneaky bastard.” Thought Jay as he sprung over to help Anya.
Not wanting to alert her, Jay jumped at it, stomping on its body as he slashed it with his sword.
Anya’s eyes bulged, trying not to scream as she realised what Jay was doing. She was the most vigilant person in the whole party, and yet she was now being eaten alive without even being aware of it. Thankfully Jay had noticed.
“This could be dangerous if enough bite us without us realising” Jay panted “We definitely don’t want to get stunned here.”
The sneaky leech died in a few moments, Jay and Anya both stabbing it to pieces as it squirmed from the pain, though still not letting go of Anya’s leg until it was dead.
Blue, Red and Lamp had all killed their leeches by now, but like clockwork, six more leeches appeared from the darkness - their sucker-shaped mouths lined with teeth, drooling slime as they silently approached.
“How many more…” Jay quietly said as he sprung into action, slicing at another leech.
The six new leeches died quickly, though Jay was bitten again.
After the leech imp’s all died, the smaller leeches on the floor all scurried off, seemingly disappearing into the darkness. It was as if Jay and Anya had reclaimed territory from them and now they were fleeing.
“Cool..” Jay thought, watching the tiny swarm of blood suckers wriggle off into the darkness.
The party continued onwards into the dark, deep ravine. The sun wasn’t directly above the ravine anymore so it was like night-time at the bottom of the ravine.
As they walked, they began to find some unusual items lying on the cold cave floor.
The first item was a wooden axe with a stone head, the next were shoes and socks, then some time later they found some pants too.
Jay held up the pants, raising a brow to Anya.
She didn’t say anything but only gave a curious gaze at them, shrugged, then looked back into the darkness.
“It’s weird. It doesn’t seem like these would come off in a struggle… why would someone drop their weapon, take their shoes and socks off, then their pants too?”
“We didn’t find any clothes in the village either. Maybe the villagers were taken here and someone left a trail?”
“But… the leech imp’s don’t seem smart enough to take prisoners.” Jay scratched his chin in thought as he walked, voicing his thoughts to Anya periodically.
The leeches started appearing on the ground again, a signal that they were entering more leech territory, so Jay got ready to fight - yet without his shield.
Instead, his shield hand nursed a few teeth, slightly vibrating as he channelled some mana into them..
This time, he would test his spell against their natural defences…
