Trial Of Monsters And Summons

I set out early in the morning to give myself plenty of time to hunt while in the forest with Jareth, it still took nearly an hour to get to the center of the city. Before I enter the gate, I go to a quick breakfast stand and purchase a 1 credit meal of sausage and eggs on a biscuit.

Before chowing down, I decide to bring Jareth out to give him a goblin core for his morning meal before we start hunting. It's not easy to do any exercise on an empty stomach, so why would summons be any different.

Jareth will be doing most of the work, so it's only fair that I treat him as well. After quickly finishing our respective meals, we set out through the gate and towards the forest to begin looking for monsters to fight.

....

It's funny how monsters that used to haunt my nightmares are beginning to look more and more like moving bags of money that have yet to be cashed in. Doing my best to reel in any impulses making me want to start running around picking up monsters to sell.

I remind myself that any little mistake could be the end of me, so caution is the most important while I'm still so weak. Maybe later on with stronger and more summons or even a partner, I could wander through areas like this without a worry, but for now, I would remain cautious.

The first thing we come across is a horned rabbit that Jareth quickly disposed of when it jumped to impale him on its horn. Jareth managed to avoid it by simply moving to the side a bit and then proceeded to bash in its head with 2 hits of his solid wooden club.

He really seems to have a thing about crushing monsters' heads, it must be his version popping bubble wrap, albeit much gorier than popping some bubbles. I guess it's better than having him wound up and getting violent at some inopportune time, plus it's way cheaper than therapy for the violent little guy.

Not that therapy is even a thing anymore, and even if there were, I don't think that monsters would receive any therapy. Just the thought of an ogre sitting on a couch telling a person about his feelings is enough to make me chuckle and get Jareth looking at me funny.

We continue to wander around, and after 2 hours and having slain 8 more monsters, we finally decide to come to a rest. I bring out another meal I had previously purchased, this time it was a roasted meat sandwich with lettuce and tomato. Before I dig in, I make sure to give Jareth his own meal after working so hard.

I saw him smiling gleefully at the sight of the goblin core I hand him. He seemed determined to mimic me, and he ended up sitting next to me with his back to the tree I decided to rest against. his attempt at mimicking my eating by nibbling at the core with his sharp teeth was one of the funniest things I had seen.

I couldn't help but laugh at the similarities between Jareth eating and a squirrel nibbling at some acorns, and when Jareth looks questioningly at me I just wave him off figuring it's better he doesn't know I was comparing him to a rodent.

After the break, we continue moving and head a bit deeper into the forest where tier 2 monsters will begin to appear. Not long after entering the noticeably denser forest we come across a tier 2 iron-hide boar, it had bristly gray fur covering its entire body and its' tusks were jutting out sharply as if they were miniature scythes sprouting from its mouth. It didn't seem the slightest bit afraid and even charged as soon as it saw us.

Jareth launched himself into battle without me even needing to prompt him, but due to their similar strengths, it became a battle of attrition with each monster continued circling each other looking for any opening to exploit. The boar seemed to fight by relying on its sharp tusks to eviscerate anything that it charges towards. It seems to lack intelligence as this was pretty much all it did, dodging wasn't difficult for Jareth and he acted sort of like a matador, only with a club instead of a cape to distract the dense monster.

After countless charges that were avoided or redirected by trees and one close call that left a deep gash on Jareth's left side, the boar made a mistake that left an opening for Jareth to exploit who had been waiting patiently at my behest.

With impressive reflexes Jareth brought his club down from overhead in a side sweeping motion and bashed the boars' left hind leg, breaking it. Jareth then quickly moved away from the boar's sharp tusks which swept towards him in an attempt to gouge him while he is still within range of it in retaliation for injuring the boar quite badly.

The boar is left exposed and immobile, and Jareth approaches the boar from the side with determined movements and fakes it out at the last second by pretending to swing towards its' head which resulted in the boar committing to try and fend Jareth off from its front, this quickly results in the other hind leg being taken out leaving the boar effectively immobile.

With half of its' limbs not working the boar can no longer move to defend itself and Jareth quickly ends its life with a few quick bashes to the back of the boars' neck which eventually breaks its' spine killing it soon after.

Seeing Jareth with a few deep scratches from his battle of attrition with the boar, I dress him in some bandages I had tucked away in my storage space to keep his wounds from getting any worse and feed him the core from the boar as a reward for his hard-fought battle.

He seemed to not care about his wound which continued to drip blood and was instead engrossed in eating the core which he seemed to especially savor as if his personal conquest of the boar made it taste all the sweeter.

I decided to end our hunt here rather than risk additional injuries to Jareth because if he goes down then I have nothing left to protect me from any monsters I might run into, not even a knife and I'm beginning to understand just how much of a mistake that is.

With the corpse packed away along with the other 9 bodies after retrieving the rest of their cores, I begin to head back towards the gate to get back to civilization. I still find it strange how one step takes me into a completely different realm, going from a grassy meadow to the cobblestone streets of the North American Continental City that I now call home.

Each of the tier 1 monsters we killed today sold for 3 credits per, and the boar corpse sold for 25 credits due to the value of its' hide and the tusks that can be made into daggers. It would have been 28 credits but I took one of the larger tusks to bring to a weapon-smith to be made into a dagger.

My total amount of money comes to 51 credits, and once again I upgrade my storage space to a total of 7 cubed meters and leaving me with 27 credits which quickly becomes 26 after purchasing myself dinner on the way back home.

I walk home with a tired gait despite having cut my hunting trip short, as the constant movement in the forest and the long trek to and back from the gate have worn me down. I decided that I should bring up moving closer within the city when I make more money so that I don't have to waste so much time walking to the center of the city, not to mention that Mira would be closer to work as well.

I get to the apartment and walk up to our floor where I immediately take a shower to wash all the dirt, blood, and grime off of my body and change into a clean pair of clothes I retrieve from my storage. With the remaining time I have left today, I summon Jareth to once again take a look at his injury and see that it has healed already with barely a scar to prove that there was even damage to that area before.

With Jareth healthy I plop down on the couch and have him sit beside me while we watch television in the living room, television is one of the few things still existing from the previous age as even God recognized not much good would come from humans being bored. Jareth seems to really enjoy the television, especially anything with fighting or action, it seems like he's quite the war-monger.

We spend the rest of the day just relaxing until it gets to around dinner and I hand Jareth a core while I take out the dinner that I had bought from storage and we begin to dig in. It becomes late and I resign myself to go to bed knowing that Mira has once again become engrossed in her work and will probably end up sleeping there. So with a sigh I return Jareth to his crystal and fall into bed, preparing to rest for the incoming day, knowing I'm going to be quite busy.