VS Early Game Enemy

It took two hours to find a low-level Gloomspawn.

Meredi... You looked so sad during all those dinners... Heh, I feel stupid remembering it now.

The creature loomed ahead, knocking over stones as it lurked about the muck. 

I've got to get my head in the game... I'm about to learn what combat is like in this world.

The battlefield for this first lesson would be a muddy arena fenced in by gnarled trees and vine-covered boulders.

I'll put you to the back of my mind. But your smile... I'll return it to you.

The enemy was a Gloomspawn with long limbs, too thin at the joints, that dragged low like an ape’s. Its spine was hunched and crooked, vertebrae glowing faintly beneath its oily black hide like a line of distant stars. Loops of spectral light pulsed along its arms and chest—like luminous rings stitched into flesh. Its head jerked slightly, sniffing at the air with a snoutless, tooth-lined face, and then slowly turned toward me.

I recognized it as one of the early game enemies—the Gloomspawned Thrasher.

I gripped the side of my head. “Looks like your detection range is as limited as the game suggested.”

The combat in the game played like an action rpg. You go out into the wilds, and swing your weapon. Monsters could be snuck up on for extra damage. In the early game, you would need to be within five paces of an enemy before they would notice you. Really lenient gameplay, but I was thankful for it now.

What I didn’t expect was the strange reaction in my head.

I could feel something tugging at the edges of my vision, like my brain couldn’t make sense of the spawn’s figure.

“The good thing is…”

I shifted my grip on the weapon strapped to my back and slid it free.

“I think I’ve forgotten how to perceive fear in any normal way.”

Meredi hadn’t named this weapon, but I was tempted to name it something that would fit on a legendary weapon.

It was a stylized greatsword, long and with curving—almost haphazard, wavy edges. A testament to how difficult the metal was to work with. The spine of the blade had faint grooves running down its length, like old circuitry. The blade was wide enough to double as a shield in a pinch too. It looked heavy—and in another world, maybe it would’ve been—but the material it was made of was some ancient miracle metal. Salvaged from the depths. Reforged by Meredi’s glorious hands. It felt thematically appropriate.

This weapon was more vulnerable to a specific element rather than vanilla physical damage. Thankfully, low-level Gloomspawn wouldn’t be problematic.

"I remember your crash course, Meredi."

The idea behind such an exaggerated weapon was simple. Reach over risk. Swing wide, keep your distance, and let the weight and width carry you. If you were lame enough to let a spawn slip in, raise the flat of the blade, stand your ground and block the attack.

I had been laughing every time she corrected me. I just loved spending time with her. She’d hit me with a broom handle when my grip slipped. I loved it too. I never thought being corrected could be such a wonderful feeling.

Something she said came back to me. “I can see the traces of what your dad taught you when you were younger. Let’s reinforce that. Just enough to keep you standing.”

“Alright… Enough reminiscing.” I chuckled as I held the sword out, gauging the distance between it and me. "Meredi… The Merry Edge and I are going to do more than keep standing.”

The Gloomspawn lurched forward, its arms swinging like pendulums, each step accompanied by that awful squelch of wet flesh on marshy ground. The rings of light pulsing along its limbs sped up in rhythm, like a heartbeat hastening.

“We’re running right into the fray!” I told myself before launching forward.

It slid to a stop and then lunged.

I took in a big breath of stimulant from my mask.

Its knuckles slammed into the wet earth as it sprang forward, and I moved—sidestepped, then swung wide. The blade cut through the air like the armored wing of a righteous valkyrie, but the spawn was faster than it looked. It twisted just out of range and came in low.

Claws scraped against my greave as I kicked back and swung again, this time dragging the Edge low in a rising arc. The tip of the blade caught the beast’s shoulder and slashed through, sending a burst of black ichor into the air.

It shrieked and staggered, the rings of light along its body flickering erratically.

I pressed the advantage, pivoting into an overhead swing, aiming to bring the edge down just as Meredi had drilled into me.

The spawn roughly raised its arm, but the metal carved down through the creature’s arm, snapping a loop of strobing light and cleaving halfway into its chest.

The Gloomspawn screeched. A noise so high, so alien, my teeth rattled. The blow had nearly split its chest in two.

With a violent twist, it yanked itself back off the blade, stumbling along the muck and stones with a shriek still gurgling in its throat. It crouched low, twitching, spasming like a puppet fighting its strings.

I didn’t chase. I settled my heart and had a deep inhale, letting the stimulant fill my lungs.

“This isn’t so hard,” I muttered.

Suddenly, it arched. Spine backward, chest flaring open—not splitting with gore, but peeling like a blooming flower. Beneath the putrid ribs was a fleshy silver cavity lined with bioluminescent fangs and spiny glands twitching in anticipation.

“What the hell?”

It fired.

A storm of shimmering needles launched from its body, each one like a glimmering bone dart. My instincts screamed, and I threw the blade up in front of my chest. The wide metal rang like a bell as the first few needles slammed into it.

I crouched low behind the blade—tight, coiled, trying to minimize my profile. The needles kept coming. I could feel them rattling off the steel. They bit into my shoulders, my thighs, my sides. One caught the edge of my mask, skidding with a sharp ting that made my ears ring. Another grazed my upper arm, tearing cloth and skin alike. Shit, a few just pierced through my glove and got my fingers.

I gritted my teeth, and felt warm blood trickling out of me. My awareness of my body intensified. I felt it—the fire burning through my veins. It had to be a toxin—holy shit, it was a toxin.

The final barrage ended in a faint clicking sound as squelches echoed. The Gloomspawn slumped forward, panting in that wet, mewling way a creature does when its still alive, but barely hanging on.

I shifted the sword and focused on the creature. I couldn’t help but smirk.

“I’m getting real lucky today, aren’t I?”

I turned one of the canisters attached to the filter mask and took a nice, long breath of this special batch as it filled the mask’s cavity.

The marshlands were a place of noxious, dangerous fumes. Miasma, natural chemicals, Gloomspawn breath—it was all stuff that could kill a person. Everyone who went into it had to wear these special respirator-type masks. Their filter capabilities weren’t super high, so instead, people breathed in stimulants, powering up their body’s natural capabilities in order to overpower the effects of the antagonistic air.

But see, me? The alchemist? I didn’t settle on the standard issue stimulant. I needed an advantage, and thankfully, Timaeus had notes on his special, aggressive blends. I’d have to take a potion for my kidneys later, but this special stimulant, “SPS-07” would give this body a performance boost equivalent to an adrenaline rush four times more potent than the standard.

Not done with using tools, I pulled out a vibrant red prism from a pouch and slotted it into the Merry Edge’s handguard. The circuits in the blade lit up immediately and the edge glowed red.

“Got to make sure not to ruin the heart.”

I ran toward the creature and before it could react, I plunged the sword into its abdomen and pushed it toward a boulder. We hit the boulder within moments. The blade melted through the stone and pinning the creature.

It suddenly flailed, but I pulled the sword out and, with a flourish, cut through its arms. Then, with one more stroke, I relieved it of its head.

The body slumped over with a wet, defeated sigh. The rings of light lining its body flickered one last time… then faded, like cooling embers in a doused campfire.

I stood there, panting, sword lowered but still alert.

Then I pulled the prism out from the Merry Edge’s guard. The red circuits dimmed instantly, retreating into the weapon like veins going cold. The faint hum that had accompanied the charged blade vanished, leaving behind only the whisper of wind and the distant cries of unseen birds.

“Huh…” I let out a breath. “That was actually way more fun than I thought it could be… and kind of therapeutic.”

I knew what I was getting into with the weapon, thanks to the game. The majority of people didn’t have magic aptitude, but they could make use of weapons that had their own source of mana, or make use of mana crystals and the mana-conductive miracle metal to make magic-powered weapons. The Merry Edge was one of those weapons, where its guard was more like a piece of repurposed machinery and the circuitry created conduits to control the flow of mana spilled by the mana crystal.

Meredi had made this sound like it was just a scrap project but in actuality, this was an amazing weapon… And even if it wasn’t, I would make it amazing because it was the weapon that she gave me.

I looked down at my shoulder and poked at one of the spine-like needles still lodged in the fabric. It squelched slightly. Another one stuck out of my thigh at a bad angle, and a third had broken off entirely in my glove, the tip biting into the web between my fingers.

“Must’ve been a desperation move,” I muttered. “Maybe against a normal person, you would have gotten the opening you sought but… I once kept fighting even after a rust-covered spike had been driven through my right eye and into my brain. You weren’t going to take me down… I’d keep swinging even if you killed me.”

I winced as I pulled the broken spine free and pricked my finger with it. A sharp, chemical sting danced across my nerves—enough to make me twitch. The stimulant was definitely helping my body stay as calm as my mind, however.

“Can’t wait to crack this open. Study what kind of compound you used. Toxin? Paralytic? Maybe something more exotic? I wonder what its nature is,”

I dropped it into one of my specimen vials and sealed it tight. Then I turned my attention to the corpse and got to work. I took the heart, and some of the weird glowing cables that ran along the spawn’s body. Then I collected the head, and one of the arms.

“Well,” I said, stretching as I stood up. “That’s all I wanted. No need to push my luck.”

From there, I backtracked through the marsh path I’d taken, collecting even more strange fungi, half a dozen iridescent bugs, and three kinds of moss that refused to stop glowing even after being sealed in a dark pouch. I even found a bulbous vine that retracted from touch—who would miss out on something like that?

I gave thanks to the patrolling guards every time I picked up a new specimen. It was only because of them that I could have such a leisurely time in these parts. Without Gloomspawn coming down on you, your most likely enemy would just be yourself and the nervous mistakes you could make.

“It does make one wonder though,” I mused. “If the patrols are this effective… What happened to make it so that the city would be overrun by Gloomspawn?”

I adjusted the straps on my gear, felt the weight of my samples, and walked through the miasma-infused fog with my fair share of questions.

"Oh! But what if I find a legendary weapon!? I wouldn't be able to part from the Merry Edge... Welp, guess I can learn how to dual wield."