Matthew woke up to the rest of the group gathering their things and preparing for the hunt. He had expected he'd oversleep after the wishing.
Grumbling, he began to gather his things, taking stock of his water and raw materials he used to create paralytics and poison. He met Gareth last night, and asked him to help him gather the ingredients.
In exchange he made some of the useful purple dust for him.
He also asked for the usual.
The usual of course was that Gareth and Mable attack him. One of their new members had an armament that could create a freezing bolt of blue light, so Matthew had the boy shoot it at him.
Everyone looked at them a bit weird, but brushed it off as some weird training Matthew had been doing.
Because he did such things a lot, meeting people to discuss their hunts and armaments and asking them to attack him. It was his way, weird? Yes, but everyone had their thing.
Matthew's was being attacked.
Matthew was of course using this as a chance to record a variety of interesting damage types. Most of his strategy was built around exploiting weak points with different attacks.
There was also Wandering spirit. Not the dol and his personal skill, but rather the trait.
Wandering spirit: [You can now divide your spirit to perform different tasks.]
The difference between spirits and souls still eluded him, but he knew he could use the spirit to his advantage.
His latest tests were having two distinct pieces of his spirit separated—one for the Lovely doll and the other staying in his body.
Doing this allowed him to set an automatic action, this was a bad idea, however. Controlling a body with two different spirits was like trying to walk forward and backward at the same time.
It caused a lot of pain and it wasn't the physical kind, but a bending pain that racked his entire being.
So creating an automatic dodge was destined to fail, he would have to create a pyramid of at least ten thousand protocols to just automatically dodge one monster type.
He almost gave up, until he split his soul one day to talk with it. He had been alone in the Dark forest and profoundly bored.
He created a split version of himself to play I spot, and immediately hated it.
It was much better than him, winning before he could even have a chance. This intrigued him so he tried it with many other games.
Chess, mental arithmetic, rock-paper-scissors and even jeopardy.
It was a strange day to say the least, but he figured out that he could create a split whose main purpose of existence was to quickly calculate something.
This worked well for dodging, although his body couldn't keep up sometimes and the drain on his mind wasn't ignorable.
Matthew could quickly process using the split and then dodge attacks manually.
So he got a lot of attacks to replicate and practice using his trait.
This was his final day working with Parker's group, he had to move on to see the other parts of the dungeon.
They had helped him a lot, he was level 4 and decided he'd wanted to see what other creatures were out there before he took the leap to level 5.
Kinslayer wasn't a bad sword by any means, but he didn't want to rely on it as his main offence. That night he lied about the description of the sword, making it seem like a perfect weapon since he didn't mention its drawbacks.
They began to head out and Matthew was close behind. Stella was saying goodbye to the girl so she caught up beside him.
"How are you feeling now? It's a good day for a hunt."
"Right as rain," he mumbled. "You're a fisher, not a hunter."
"Oh, be for real, we all started as fishers. You guys just go into the cavern now."
"You started as a fisher," Matthew corrected, his eyes swept over the central cavern. "I wasn't even here. How are you?"
Stella flinched, thoroughly shocked at his sudden one-eighty. Her jumpy, green eyes suddenly found the central cavern's desolate expanse interesting. As she climbed down a steep hill, she answered.
"Um, pretty good, I guess. Colin's White lantern means I have an easier time performing surgeries. The boys are a bit more bearable these days too, everyone's focused and we just talk about the dungeon or tv shows. What type of shows do you like? Action? Or the best genre, dramas. What about music? You don't seem like a drill person, but you are British, right? I'm not just being an uncultured sloth and—"
"I can only answer one question at a time," Matthew interrupted, while standing at the secret tunnel's entrance. "Also they've left us behind."
Matthew began to wonder if initiating a conversation had been a bad idea. He had just wanted a simple talk, now he had to engage in a talk of their top ten worst injuries and his favourite animal.
It had been the longest he had spoken since coming here, making him feel weird and inhuman as he found his own voice strange and creepy.
"Nah, it's deep and even. Not too deep, but just right. A little more and you'll sound like all those men who have exhaust pipes instead of windpipes."
She began an impression of someone with a deep voice that actually made him laugh. Stepping into the dim, humming world of the dunes was calming and yet he noticed something strange.
The rest of the group had their eyes on him, some seemed angry, others curious and most just plain interested. He realised that they must have heard their entire chat through the dark tunnel.
Stella was the only girl here other than Asha, she was also maybe the prettiest he had seen other than maybe Jane. She was also always around them, fishing and talking.
They must have sensed a difference in how she spoke to him. Matthew sighed and wished he could just explain that this was her way of cheering him up.
The corny jokes and the forced conversation told him a lot about Stella. She was of course a good person, but she was also very worried about how her behaviour affected others.
If he said he didn't like something she'd never speak of it again and even make fun of what she had just said she loved.
It was a maddening way to live, and frankly made him glad to be a solo hunter. He waved goodbye as he caught up with Jamie, and the others who had already gone ahead.
——
Splitting into three groups they began to enter the designated areas. Parker didn't want them fighting anything too tough yet, so even though this area had been mostly cleared they used it to lure and practice fighting against different types of monsters.
Matthew lured different types like Sword demons, Salamander, Stone heads and Ash scorpions. He left out more deceptive and indirect attackers as he didn't think they would learn much.
A blonde boy fought a Sword demon with a buckler and a one handed sword. His blue eyes danced about frantically as the two red blades sought his neck, dismissing his shield, and jumping back as the demon grabbed it to pull him off balance.
The red armoured demon let out an eerie laugh, and it's green eyes shone with sadistic glee.
The other four boys watched Brian fight while surrounding the demon.
Brian swept back his golden hair, glaring at the demon and sweating terribly. He resummoned his buckler and raised his sword.
"Lower your stance and swing for its normal arms," Matthew advised, holding Kinslayer in a relaxed position. "Also don't close your eyes when you block or you'll die, i guess."
After a couple more clumsy attempts, Matthew dove in to stop the boy from getting killed. After three counters and the near loss of its head, the demon fought only him.
He blocked a slash, escaping away from its reaching hands, and raised his arms for a horizontal slash and changed his stance as soon as it bit the feint.
He switched to a vertical slash at the demon's elbow. Guided by his true strike and strength stat cards the sword tore through the monster's elbow. Not even a second later he struck again, sword biting into its chest shattering the red armour.
The demon in a panic attempted to behead him, he let go of the sword that was stuck in the demon's tough skin to duck under the slash, and batted away the demon's two reaching arms.
Missing one arm and very angry the demon chased after him as he was retreating. It felt more confident now that he was unarmed.
That wasn't his only sword unfortunately.
The wandering spirit swam through the air behind the enraged demon and cut its neck a little. The demon whipped around furiously to try and swat it out of the air.
Matthew replicated one of the demon's vertical slashes.
Black and cold blood poured over the walls, ground and people as the demon was decapitated. Its body swayed for a moment then fell to the ground with a loud splat.
Joey scratched his head. "We were supposed to kill it together."
Matthew was about to apologise, when he heard a loud bell echoing through the caves. He was kneeling to pick up the three spirit coins.
They all looked at each other for a moment, then bolted back to the muster point at full speed.