The Hunter’s Guide To Monsters

Nighteye Caterpillar.

Of the monsters he'd encountered since he joined the game this time around, it was the first one he recognized from another life.

Of all the monsters he knew, why did this one have to be the first.

Krow reached cautiously for some of the arrowhead-shaped leaves, poking gingerly with a butcher's knife to see if anything jumped out before plucking the large green leafblades.

[The challenge has ended! Both parties forfeit without penalty.]

Oh who cared!

He was in a tree with a colony of caterpillars that ate meat, alright?!

His only saving grace was that they ate leaves too, and most of the leaves of the tree he was in were away from the trunk!

Krow breathed, calming himself.

There was one loophole to ending a battle challenge without winning that didn't bring penalties. It was if it was the opponent's fault that you went out of bounds and then they didn't or couldn't pursue.

Like keeping out of monster aggro zones, he had to stay away for 100 seconds.

He smirked briefly, imagining that Arvidane player's rage at seeing the notification.

The fury if he knew what Krow was doing now.

Nighteye Caterpillars gave good materials.

Krow wasn't about to squander this chance.

He gathered enough leaves to make a large mound, then climbed to one of the wide lower branches. He piled the leaves in a mound nearly as tall as he was, chopped off some dry bark from the trunk and branches, then lit that tinder under the green leaves with a torch from his Inventory.

Soon, sweet-smelling smoke wafted through the branches of the massive tree.

Krow settled on a branch under the smoke-pile, tipping his head back to watching the smoke curl and dance around the arrowhead-shaped leaves.

They were called dandelion trees, for the large balls of white fluff that dotted the leafy canopies, when seen from afar were so reminiscent of the dandelion pappus. But these white fluffy things on the trees weren't flowers, but clusters of cocoons.

When he deemed the smoke had made the caterpillars sleepy enough that they wouldn't tackle him en masse, he tossed back an Antidote vial and started gathering more leaves.

He exchanged the pauldrons he was wearing for his hooded cloak, pulling the hood up.

When he filled half his Inventory with leaves, he started jumping from dandelion tree to dandelion tree, lighting smoke-piles on the lower branches of as many as he could.

Nighteye caterpillars were poisonous and aggressive. They hatched from the eggs of the Nighteye Butterfly. Krow was grateful it was summer season in Redlands, when the butterflies migrated east to the Dawn Sea.

He really didn't want to fight a horde of meat-eating butterflies.

When he finished lighting the smoke-piles, he settled on lower branches to avoid most of the smoke.

[You have participated in :100 Bandits Encounter!: and eliminated 13/100 bandits!]

[You've gained 1 RP with Marfall Continent!]

Woo, yes!

Continental RP, and he hadn't reached Lvl 10 yet.

The caravan must be on its way again.

The others would've seen him fall off a high cliff after all. No one would look for him. If the robber-challenger had a movement spell, he'd have found Krow by now.

So it was goodbye to the caravan.

He coughed, glanced at his status.

Minor Poison.

He flipped the caps of two vials of Low Revitalit and drank them one after the other.

This was Redlands, and that meant he could abuse Low Revitalit to keep the effects of the smoke at bay.

He'd have keeled over already, if he did this in Zushkenar.

He plopped himself down on the branch, eyeing the forest floor warily.

Then he broke open his belt-cylinders to start reloading, the steady click-click-click sound of bullets fitting into place calming him.

Nighteye Butterflies were the source of Nighteye Powder, which was used to make Darksight Potion. It allowed people to see in the deep dark, like Dryads. Useful for underground and undersea exploration, as well as moonset expeditions.

The powder was also used as a catalyst in several sight-related enchants.

Nighteye Caterpillars though….

The immature ones with black antennae are used for poison cures and the Revitalit potion.

The mature ones are hunted for their golden antennae, sold as a material called 'auric feathers' in the markets, and its venom which is sold as 'blackvenin'.

A mature caterpillar is as rabid as a wolverine when provoked, and its bite has paralyzing properties. The poisonous parts were the soft spiny cilia running down its sides.

Mature caterpillars survived on dandelion tree leaves and fresh meat. Due to the paralyzing bite, often it was fresh, still alive, meat.

When a nighteye caterpillar fully matured, it went into a feeding frenzy and spun a cocoon.

Nighteye silk was rated E+ Uncommon.

Every material with a quality grade was enchantable, of course, but under D-, they couldn't be used as armor or weapons. E+ Rare was luxury goods for the wealthiest – for royalty, rich nobles and richer merchants.

E+ Uncommon wasn't that level of notoriety, but silk was always a sought-after material. Enchantable silks more so. He'd come across at least eight types of silk in Zushkenar, and they were all expensive.

The dandelion tree grove had maybe sixty or seventy trees.

Krow could almost count the drax.

It normally took a party to harvest, but that was mostly because of the amount of work involved. The dangers were ameliorated when the leaf-smoke method was discovered and publicized.

That was maybe four years after the Quake? Perhaps five.

Conservation efforts had been going strong then, and the complete decimation of monster nests was banned. The leaf-smoke method was welcomed and widely recommended because it allowed the hunters to easily harvest while leaving 'seeds' behind to replenish the nest.

A nest this size…he'd only be allowed to take half at most.

But here in Redlands, even if he killed every caterpillar and unraveled every cocoon, the nest would respawn after a few weeks.

Even if he returned here to harvest the next respawning, there would still be cocoons to hatch in the middle of winter to terrorize nearby villages. The strongest butterflies would survive to spring, when the rest of the horde would migrate back to mate and lay eggs in the dandelion groves all over the south of the continent. Then all the butterflies would leave again in the summer and the cycle would start over.

He heard a thump. Another. And another.

Caterpillars fell from their leafy perches, one by one.

Krow armed himself.

Another thing about dandelion tree groves.

They were not simply places for Nighteye Butterflies to lay eyes. If the cycle happened long enough, the groves became an ecosystem of monsters and harvestable plants.

The fertile, poisonous soil made from caterpillar and butterfly waste attracted the massive whitecloud earthworm. A whitecloud earthworm nest would attract various predators but none so often near as the thunder badgermole.

The falling caterpillars would attract the tunneling moles – their methods of prey detection similar to stonesharks in that they used vibrations to 'see' and hunt.

He squawked as a caterpillar, curled into a ball twice larger than his fist, thumped onto his head before falling to the ground below.

"Should've bought a helmet," he grumbled, like he hadn't tossed all his money at the Bourse.

He rubbed his hooded head. "Ow."

A low rumbling from below silenced the rest of his griping.

The soil, already loosened by the travails of earthworms and thunder-badgermoles, lifted up in a wave.

Krow's stomach clenched.

The last time he saw something like that…

Faint screams, only memories, resounded in his ears. He gripped the revolver tighter and aimed.

One darkspear. Two. Three.

The thunder quieted, the monster stilled, yet half buried in the soil.

[You've gained one (1) silver serpens from a monster!]

Krow crouched on the tree branch, gun still aimed.

Thunder sounded again, further away, urgent. Two monsters in a territory, a mated pair. The approaching monster was the larger, the low rumble that allowed its 'seeing' louder and more resounding.

The tree Krow was in heaved.

Shkav!

How stupid could he be?! He'd fought similar monsters before.

Initiative was important, and speed and agility.

But he was fighting alone, and had no other to distract it.

Brute force it was.

Krow swapped to his shieldburst cylinder. Pointed at the ground. The loose soil exploded at the sides of the shield, compressed under.

The rumbling grew louder, more deliberate.

Krow shot again and again.

There!

For a moment, dark fur exposed.

He swapped to darkspears and emptied half the cylinder into the earth.

[You've gained two (2) silver serpens from a monster!]

He heaved a breath in relief.

Why could this nest not be simple, like the windrats on the higher peaks. Those only had windrats in them.

Godforsaken monster factories.

Nests like these were old, used by generations. A dandelion tree grove would always attract Nighteye Butterflies. And soon, the whitecloud earthworms would appear, which would attract thunder-badgermoles. The earthworms and moles would become prey for the caterpillars and butterflies, then the corpses and waste would enrich the soil for a number of useful flora and of course to grow more dandelion trees.

He quaffed a Low Revitalit, eyeing the Minor Poison debuff.

It wouldn't remove the effect, but it kept it from growing to Major status.

He stood, stretched.

He should start working.

This was a middling large grove.

It wouldn't be long before he needed to replenish the smoke-piles, or the caterpillars would pile on him en masse.

Krow shuddered at the thought.

First he jumped down to the forest floor, tapping the ground warily, and tossed the two thunder-badgermoles into his inventory before quickly returning to the trees. The moles' approach would have scared away the whitecloud earthworms briefly.

Then he begun harvesting the cocoons, pitching them into his Inventory along with the immature caterpillars. The mature caterpillars, he left for the moment.

Those needed to be butchered on site.

He had to stop twice to keep the smoke-piles going, as the day turned into noon, then afternoon.

The shadows were starting to lengthen, approaching mid-afternoon, when he started the butchering.