Rexus: Side Quest (The Completionist Chronicles Book 3) Read online

Chapter Twenty-four

  Jaxon and Jess stumbled into the Wolfman outpost a little over a day later, getting under a lean-to that was used to dry wood and falling into a deep sleep. They woke up to the sound of chuffing laughter, Wolfmen Warriors surrounding them and laughing at their sorry state.

  Jaxon popped up and got close to one of them, his mud-and-dirt coated face being split by dazzlingly white teeth. He slipped into speaking their language, poorly, “Rawrdrick! You’ve been working on your straight-stand! I am is pleased!”

  “My name is pronounced Rod-rick, feisty man flesh.” Rodrick chuffed as Jaxon visibly tried to translate what was being said.

  “Is there way we track down who took her metal sharp-stick?” Jaxon pointed at Jess who was watching the conversation with a wary expression.

  “No chance. I know who has it. He left for the war-front two days ago.”

  The human shrugged and moved on. “You is doing move positions I told you? Bad standing come back if not worked at!”

  “Yes, I am doing the exercises you prescribed.” Rodrick sighed as the others in his group chuffed at his discomfort. “What are you doing here? Are you going to be setting up your shop again?”

  “Oh!” Jaxon thought for a moment. “Am doing, yes. Stay in camp short while, train hands by trial. Then is going leave, fight hairless annoyances!”

  “Training your hands? I have no idea what you are saying.” Rodrick turned to the others and spoke fast enough that Jaxon didn’t have a chance to follow along, “Heh. I convinced him that ‘hairless annoyance’ is our word for Humans.”

  The Wolfmen dispersed, laughing at that, but Jaxon stopped Rodrick from leaving and looked at him with a serious face. He switched to English and asked a question, “Rawrdrick, we need to improve quickly, and the Trial Primates are good experience for us right now. Is there any way I can get quests for them and do something for you at the same time?”

  Rodrick tilted his head to the side and flicked his ears before responding in broken English, “I… hmmm. You bring meat, bring fur, I convince for rewards.”

  “You’re a good boy.” Jaxon punched Rodrick gently, then adjusted that spot with a thought. A minor posture issue was fixed, and the Wolfman decided not to take offense at the familiarity.

  “What’s happening, Jaxon?” Jess stood up and scratched at the dried blood on her neck. “How did you learn their language, by the way?”

  “It was a quest reward,” Jaxon responded faintly, trying to plan their next move. “We need weapons and armor. I think I can trade a few adjustments for some basic weapons, but metal is a really big deal to these guys. They won’t give that kind of thing up cheaply if at all. Then I want to go back into the trial area and work on training Lefty and Terror to an acceptable level. We can gather pelts and meat, trading them for quest rewards, experience, and reputation. Sound like a plan?”

  “Works for me, Jaxon. Shall we get to it then?” Jess had planned to go bathe or find some way to get clean, but she knew wandering too far from Jaxon’s side would inevitably result in her getting eaten.

  They went into the same location Jaxon had previously offered buffs, and he was soon gaining small amounts of trade goods. It seemed that a large amount of the Warriors in the area had left and gone to join in the common defense of their shattered and leaderless race. For some reason, there didn’t seem to be much concern from the Wolfmen in this area. Any time the topic was brought up, they gave their version of a shrug and moved on.

  Jaxon took the pile of smoked meats and various baubles over to a weapons merchant and traded every single bit of it for a matching pair of stone-reinforced bone daggers. He handed them over to Jess with a smile and then got back to work, this time saving up for a meal and a bath. This was easier, especially since most of the goods given to them were food based, but after eventually conveying their desire to the Wolfmen, they found that baths were not a thing in this culture.

  “Sorry, Jess, looks like we’re gonna have to go without being clean for a while. I hope you don’t mind. I know I don’t.” Jaxon shrugged at her horrified expression and decided to move on. “I did get an interesting offer from a tanner and a leatherworker, though. I’ll get one cured hide per five raw pelts that I bring in, and the leatherworker will make me boots and a pair of studded gloves if I give him five cured hides. He said something about learning a new design or something.”

  “They are robbing you blind, Jaxon.” Jess shook her head at his cheerful acceptance of the trade values.

  “Good thing I won’t be able to see it then, huh?” He waggled his bushy eyebrows at her, and she shuddered as her only reply. “It’s fine; we need to go out there and fight the Primates for experience anyway. I got another thousand on the way out yesterday, but my T-Rex Head Hands only got six hundred the whole day.”

  “Do you think we should go out and hunt at night? That way we can maximize the number of creatures that we fight, and you’ll be able to keep your hands out longer. That is, keep them transformed. What the heck, that’s so weird to say out loud.” Jess grimaced and looked away in disgust, making Jaxon laugh.

  “How about later in the day and into the night? I’m not a huge fan of messing up my sleep schedule just to do a little hunting.” Jaxon made a good point, and they decided to go back to sleep, filth and all. The little lean-to didn’t offer much in the way of protection from the elements, mainly being a way to stay out of sight and mind. Luckily, they were tired enough that they slept the majority of the day, only waking up after most of the Wolfmen were finishing their dinner. Jess and Jaxon sat wearily in their little shelter and ate some pungent, smoked jerky, comparing their debuffs.

  “I have stinky level three and poorly rested,” Jess complained bitterly, really feeling the hit to her charisma.

  “When I walk around my neighborhood, I feed dogs meat with broken glass in it to stop their incessant barking.” Jaxon’s words made Jess recoil as if she had been slapped, but she paused before snapping at him and cocked her head to the side.

  “Jaxon, what did you just say?”

  “I said: stinky level four, mental fatigue two, and seepage three.” Jaxon shook his head sadly. “There are many ways to skin a cat, but I think I found the best way.”

  “Right, okay, Jaxon, don’t answer out loud, but do your debuffs to charisma put you at negative charisma right now?” Jess’s words seemed to reach him, and Jaxon looked off into space for a moment before nodding. “Alright. Do me a favor? Do your best not to talk until after we find a way to clear up the debuffs to your charisma? You are slightly more evil and terrifying than usual right now.”

  Jaxon cackled wickedly, agreeing by smiling and nodding at her while leering. Jess felt the bile rise in her throat as he squirmed to his feet and started stalking toward the trial area. “Hurry up, Jess. There are creatures to murder for fresh meat!”

  “What did I just tell you?” Jess muttered as she hurried to keep up with him. He was skipping away, but instead of the normal strange look he had while doing this, Jaxon was posed like a velociraptor. He completed this look by screeching intermittently, and Jess would have found it funny if she at all believed that he was doing it intentionally.

  Jaxon’s only reply to her question was a screech like someone sucking in air to sound like a dinosaur. He got to the rear wall of the outpost and jumped, somehow clearing the eight-foot wall with ease. Unfortunately, this left Jess in a Wolfman outpost without a neutral party to vouch for her. She scrambled to get over the wall, managing to escape just as the first spear stuck into it where her lower back had been a moment prior. She was shaken and sprinted after the skipping Monk with a dark look on her face.

  Jaxon’s high-pitched sounds were already drawing Primates to him, which was an unexpected benefit to his currently debuffed state. He took two hits before he was able to see the monkeys, since Jess had been too far away to call out a warning in time. She caught up to him just as he grabbed the creature by the neck and chucked it at a nearby tree. W
ith a crack and a *splat*, the beast was crushed by a wooden force of nature. Jaxon howled in triumph even as the creatures surrounding him became enraged.

  Jess shouted a few detailed instructions and joined the fight, driving her new daggers into the kidney area of a monkey that was looking toward Jaxon. The pain made the beast go rigid, and she kicked it in the back of the knees to force it to the ground. She reached around the creature as if she were giving it a hug, then tore open its neck with both daggers. She started to get swept up in the battle and shouted into the air with her blood-soaked daggers held to either side, “I’m back, baby!”

  Shouting was a bad decision, as Jess had caught the attention of the monkeys. Seeing their comrade brought down made them hop up and down, howling for reinforcements. The crashing in the undergrowth around the humans let them know that the battle was about to heat up… but this was exactly what Jaxon wanted. He pulled back his fist to throw a punch, activating Living Weapons as his hand started to move forward. His simple punch turned into a serrated grip, and by twisting his hand as he moved backward and triggering Adjust, his target’s shoulder was dislocated as well as shredded.

  The Primate turned and ran, but by the amount of blood pouring out of its wound, escaping for now wouldn’t matter. Jaxon turned his weapons on the other creatures coming, and—thanks to Jess finally being useful in combat—soon the remainder of foes had either been defeated or had fled. Out of enemies, Jaxon turned toward Jess to ask a question. He forgot that his hands were wild, and Terror got close enough to latch onto the bicep of his left arm. Jaxon shouted in pain but was somehow able to manage not to instinctively yank his arm away, as that would have only created more damage.

  He glared down at Terror, who was starting to chew. Jaxon shouted again, this time in rage. He leaned down and chomped onto the back of Terror, dumping the entirety of his stamina into his intimidation skill as he did so. “Ragh!”

  Terror instinctively released Jaxon’s bicep and seemed to recoil in shock. Jaxon’s health began depleting rapidly, not only from blood loss and the damage to his arm but he was biting and chewing on his own hand as hard as he could. He managed to break through the leathery skin and draw blood, then pulled back with his arm and let go. Glowering at the T-Rex head, he shouted, “No! Bad Terror!”

  His hands stared at him for an additional two seconds, and neither of the parties involved moved until his hands reverted into just hands.

  Your Living Weapons’ disposition has shifted from ‘Wild’ to ‘Confused’. They are now 20% less likely to attack you if they come in range!

  Jaxon quickly pulled up his skill and looked at it before reading any of the other notifications. Just as he suspected, the mana cost to maintain his Living Weapons had decreased again and was now sitting at forty mana per second. “Excellent. When they are fully tamed, they should cost… only ten mana per second? Wonderful!”

  Experience gained: 25 (25 * Trial Primate x1)

  Experience gained (Living Weapon): 225 (25 * Trial Primate x9)

  Your Living Weapons have reached level 2!

  Skill increased: Living Weapons (Novice V).

  “Did you bite yourself?” Jess asked Jaxon as she moved forward and wrapped a cloth tightly around his bicep. “I don’t know if I can handle being around you, man.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it.” Jaxon sighed as he sat down. In fact, he very nearly passed out since his Mana and stamina were both almost at zero. “It’s an old dog training trick. If a dog bites you, you either have to pry open its mouth by pressing on the hinges of its jaw or you need to bite it on the ear. Terror didn’t have an ear, so I just bit down.”

  Jess didn’t respond, so Jaxon tried to think of what he could do now that combat had ended. His eyes lit up as he remembered that he had a slew of skill points to assign, and he pulled open his skill sheet to do just that. Ten skill points… what to do with them…

  Chapter Twenty-five

  As the sun rose over the Wolfman outpost, Jess and Jaxon stumbled back into town with a heavy load of bloody pelts and raw meat being dragged behind them. Jaxon smiled up at the Wolfmen on the wall who were looking down with amusement, letting go of his burden to wave. “Give you both meat, five chunk, you help lift?”

  His terrible accent and word pronunciation made the Wolfmen wince, but they agreed and helped bring in the sticky mass of loot. Jaxon was pleased with the choices he had made over the course of the night. Firstly, he had only assigned five of his available points. This had brought his Acupressure skill back up to the Master Rank and had given him a secondary benefit in the form of a notification.

  Title upgraded: Power’s Cost II. You have given up skill levels, not to combine them but to gain something greater. Now, through dedicated effort, you have regained the lost Master ranking! +2 to each stat except Karmic Luck! (Does not stack with Power’s Cost rank I).

  This had caused his constitution stat to hit the benchmark of fifty points, and he had fallen to the ground writhing in pain until his body had become denser and far heartier. Luckily for him, this transition had mostly closed the open wounds on his arm formed by his T-Rex hand, but since he hadn’t given Jess any warning, she thought that he was poisoned or some other effect. She had a minor panic attack before realizing what was going on.

  Over the course of the night, they had continuously hunted the Primates. Their plans to come back to town halfway through the night had been thwarted by the sheer number of opponents, but they had become somewhat accustomed to the sleep deprivation and had powered through… to great effect. Jaxon looked at the accumulated notifications as they walked toward the tanner in the town.

  Skill increased: Aerial acrobatics (Beginner VII).

  Skill increased: Battle Meditation (Novice IX).

  Skill increased: Body Compression (Novice V).

  Skill increased: Cloth Armor Mastery (Beginner IX).

  Skill increased: Contortionist’s Dodge (Apprentice III).

  Skill increased: Intimidation (Journeyman VII).

  Skill increased: Jump (Apprentice V).

  Skill increased: Living Weapons (Novice IX).

  Experience gained: 400 (25 * Trial Primate x16)

  Experience gained (Living Weapon): 2,000 (25 * Trial Primate x80)

  Your Living Weapons have reached level 3!

  It had been a great night in terms of increasing skills, and he had found that Battle Meditation had been used near constantly. Also, once he had regained his Master rank in Acupressure, he was nearly salivating over the information he once again had access to. He had a nearly overwhelming desire to bring Adjust back into the Master ranks, but something kept holding him back from making the commitment.

  Thanks to generous usage over the night, he had also come to understand his living weapons to a higher degree. Jaxon hadn’t been certain what it would mean for them to have their own stat sheet, but it seemed that it created an additive effect with his own abilities. So, if his T-Rex heads were at thirty points of strength and Jaxon was at fifty, he could let them attack on their own, or he could put his own strength behind blows. This would turn that ‘thirty’ and ‘fifty’ into eighty points of strength being behind an attack.

  Of course, it wasn’t a perfect conversion, but the damage he saw was about what he would expect to see at that level. In terms of growth, the passive skill had easily increased the most over the night, which was nice, but Jaxon was most excited over his T-Rex Head Hands almost getting to the next tier. Something fun would happen; he was sure of it. Jaxon wanted to just make it happen but once more decided against spending the points.

  “These… useless,” the Tanner was complaining about some of the pelts they had turned in, specifically the ones that had been savaged by the Living Weapons. “I won’t take them.”

  “I’m certain that you didn’t mention that a pelt had to be at a specific quality.” Jaxon’s eyes glittered savagely, though he held his smile in place. “I’m sure you wouldn’t go back on a quest reward now,
right?”

  Contrary to expectations, the Wolfman only chuffed in reply. “Who offered a quest? I told you what my rates were for work. You have enough here of a good enough quality… I’ll give you six cured pelts for all of this or four for only the non-trash quality ones.”

  “Done!” Jaxon cheerfully replied. The Tanner nodded and retrieved six pelts, handing them over with his ears forward and twitching, both of which were obvious signs of excitement and happiness.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jess hissed at him. “We made three trips to get all these hides into the outpost! There are almost ninety of them, and you are trading them for six?”

  “What?” Jaxon glanced at her with a confused expression. “I only needed five!”

  She scoffed as they walked to the Leatherworker, who took Jaxon’s measurements and told him to come back in a few hours. Jaxon gifted him the additional hide as a tip to get the best quality work. Then they went over to the communal dining area of the Wolfmen and made sure that all of the meat had made its way into the building.

  Reputation increase: You have given the Wolfmen enough food to last their entire outpost a week if properly rationed. In this time of war, where their fighters are away, this will help the outpost thrive! +1200 reputation. Current reputation with Wolfmen: 0 (forced neutral). Actual reputation: -1000 (Cautious).

  “Pain-power man!” a pup called over to Jaxon in its high-pitched voice. “You smell like poop-pit! Go to river, rising sun side of town!”

  “Thank you, puppy!” Jaxon called back in English, getting only a cocked head in response. The pup didn’t know any words except its own people’s. “Look at that, Jess! I got enough reputation that people will tell me that I stink and where to find a river!”

  “If I knew where it was, I would have taken you there myself a long time ago,” Jess muttered. “Whatever, at least we have something to do except sleep while we wait for your boots and gloves that couldn’t possibly take more than two hides to make.

  They left the outpost and went to the river, disrobing and getting into the water when they found a spot that allowed for a bit of privacy for both of them. After they were clean, they started doing their best to wash their clothes; then they waited in the water for the clothes to dry.