Chapter 9 Mantle of the King

I followed them at a safe pace. I didn’t know enough about these vandals. How were their tracking and survival skills? Was it just sabretooth tigers under their thrall, or did they have, I don’t know, eagles soaring above, or snakes slithering in the underbrush? I’d underestimated them once before and paid the price. I wasn’t about to do it again.

I let my hunter skills guide me, leading me out of the jungle into a grassy savannah. It was beautiful here, and seemed to lose that ever-present humidity I’d come to associate with these savage lands. Instead, the air felt crisp, the skies a deep blue. Low wind rustled the savannah, a crystal clear stream flowing. And across that stream was the vandal’s encampment.

It wasn’t huge, but it also wasn’t the dotted tents of the avatar’s encampments. There were wooden palisades for defence and a single entry point. I guessed there were perhaps a hundred inside. A hundred warriors, or perhaps there were women and children as well.

Hardly mattered. After all, a single vandal had outmatched me.

I needed to regroup. Rushing in now, wounded and without a plan, that was death.

I gathered the herbs and plant fibre I needed to craft bandages and poultices, applying them immediately to get myself back up to strength. I could now craft a campfire, having unlocked it in the tech tree.

It took me the better part of an hour to start the fire, trying to get the flints to spark. By the time I was done, my fingers were numb and the sky had darkened.

I had taken refuge in a nearby cave. The system told me it was a safe zone. I didn’t actually know what a safe zone was, but hopefully it meant mobs wouldn’t attack me. Other avatars were likely a different story.

As I ate the food that Raymond’s camp had given me, I opened up the proficiency menu. I hadn’t actually given it a proper look before, but now that I had, I saw just how dense it was.

Similar to the character classes, almost all of it was locked. I clicked on spear. Rank two. Five percent increase to damage. Bow proficiency four. Fifteen percent increase to damage, chance to maim when firing within ten feet of target.

I thought of how the vandal had fought. I didn’t know the rules of this place. Did mobs have proficiencies too?

I sighed deeply and lay on my back, watching the stars above. A camp full of those things. They clearly hated humans. They’d attacked us on sight. It made no logical sense to go there. The item that had been taken, I didn’t even know what it was or what it did. All I knew was that it was powerful, important. Fuck, it was loot.

I checked the combat log again and re-read the character description for the vandal, when something caused me to sit up. Tribes of Yukon…

And suddenly, I knew how I was getting in.

I walked right up to the gate. There was no point trying to sneak in anyway, may as well go in, head held high.

Whilst I still had a head.

Predictably the two vandals guarding the gate regarded me aggressively, as behind them a third larger one appeared. This one I knew if it so much as crossed his mind, would snap me like uncooked spaghetti.

‘Human,’ said the vandal guard, ‘this is not a place for you. Go now, before you die.’

‘No,’ said the other guard, ‘do not let him go. We need meat.’ He sniffed at me. Well, that went some way to explaining why they captured humans.

I raised the pelt of the sabretooth king. Despite the fact I had neither cut it off the sabretooth, nor treated it in any way, it looked pristine. Its fur was glossy and regal in death, and I could tell by their reaction that they recognised it immediately.

One of the guards began braying with laughter. The bigger vandal stared at me impassively.

‘This human, killed the king?’ said the laughing vandal. ‘I do not believe it.’

‘No,’ said the other vandal guard quietly, ‘only the one who defeats the king may hold its pelt.’ He looked to me, not with deference or respect, but cold uncertainty. ‘He is the one.’

‘Then,’ said the larger vandal, in a deep booming voice and much to my sheer surprise, ‘the chief will wish to see him.’

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was the larger vandal rather than the vandal guards that let me inside. I saw that it wasn’t a war camp, it was a settlement. There were no tents, instead there were simple structures built from stone and dried mud. We passed a row of wooden cages where several humans, including Miggy were being held. He looked like shit.

The other humans looked different from the avatars I knew. These ones were dirtier, their hair longer and wilder. Something told me these were natives of the savage lands.

The chief vandal was with another vandal inside his mud hut, and bared his teeth aggressively when he saw me. I thought he was going to club me to death there and then when my escort spoke,

‘He has killed the sabretooth king.’ The large vandal motioned to me, and I held up the pelt.

The chief slowly closed his mouth, pursing his lips. ‘Leave us,’ he said, his voice guttural. The two vandals slowly filed out, the chief never once taking his eyes off of me.

‘You are from the sky,’ he said. It wasn’t a question. ‘In times past your people were strong. We would hide from your kind, but now your people are weak. Nothing.’

From the sky. So the mobs knew the difference between the native humans and us. Interesting. ‘I have slain the sabretooth king,’ I said, stiffly, ‘I have err come to turn it in.’ I fell just short of saying quest. That seemed off, even to me.

‘Show me.’

I edged forwards, slapping down the pelt of the sabretooth king on the wooden table. The vandal chief examined it, running his hairy hand across its surface. ‘The king was a powerful beast, and my great enemy. He killed scores of my warriors. How did you manage to defeat him?’

‘I am more of a warrior than I look.’ That sounded better than pushed him off a cliff. The vandal seemed hardly to react to my response, and instead took the pelt in his hands. His eyes closed, and he began to mutter something. It sounded like an incantation. The pelt began to shift, and transform, hardening somewhat. I heard a roar, as though the sabretooth king had come back to life and was with us now in this tiny mud hut.