I ducked as the whirling branch sliced overhead, then rolled as another one slammed down where I had just been standing. I don’t know how this thing could even track my movements, but its reflexes were as sharp as the thorns on its woodland tentacles.

It doesn’t even have eyes! So how is it-

*WHAM*

I did my best crab impression and scuttled sideways to avoid the path of a third branch, knuckles white against my spear.

The cactopus wasn’t fighting with any kind of skill - it just started kind of flailing around when I got close - but when you have eight heavily-barbed maces as appendages, flailing is a pretty viable survival strategy.

Eventually, after a bit more maneuvering, I got a clear line of sight to the creature’s core: a pulsating mound of wrinkly flesh in the middle of the eight branches that spread out from the center like a great flower of death. I desperately wanted to charge in and finish the monster off immediately… but I couldn’t risk it. If that shot missed, I’d be well within constricting distance. And when a cactopus constricts you, you don’t die of suffocation. You bleed out.

So instead, I took the safe route. With a great deal of patience, I continued dancing around the perimeter until I had a decent shot at one of the branches. I stabbed it right in the base, with enough force to make the branch go limp.

One down, seven to go.

As I disabled the branches, one after another, the cactopus seemed to get weaker and weaker, making my job progressively easier. Finally, with the branches all down, I stepped up to the creature’s core and buried my spear downwards straight through the middle - though it only got a bit of the way through, as if I was stabbing a rotten tree stump.

Fortunately, the spear I was using was a special cactopus-slayer, with a couple of horizontal bars sticking out from just below the blade. I put my foot on one of the bars and stomped hard, pressing the blade straight through the core. It let out a loud whistling sound and deflated - like the air being let out of a balloon.

And just like that… one successful hunt in the books!

In order to graduate from the adventuring class, each student was required to participate in at least one “successful” hunt in the killing field. Meaning - the monster(s) in question was eliminated, and nobody got seriously hurt in the process. And try as I might, I was unable to convince Ms. Brooks that the fishlights my group had bravely faced down qualified as “monsters”. Furthermore, the duodon didn’t count either, because I wasn’t using “typical hunting tactics” to bring it down. Sounded like a goddamn technicality to me, but I kinda understood where she was coming from.

Besides, it wasn’t a huge deal. These prickly virgin land-anenomes weren’t fucking with my newfound mojo - they had no concept of how much my lifts had been improving.

I’d hit ten reps of lifting one end of the ceremonial weight on the main altar of Dunkan’s church. With a bit more dedicated practice and buildup, I might even be able to lift the entire thing. I was doing more pull-ups, more push-ups, more Turkish fucking get-ups - and this was on top of my daily combat training. I don’t think I’d ever had this much endurance back on earth. Oh, to be young and indefatigable.

I wiped my brow and looked around for my team. Sylvana was doing her usual support thing - sitting around waiting for one of us to get hurt. Beck was about halfway through another cactopus. And Spud was…

“Hey, Beck!” I called out.

“Yeah?!” Beck answered, temporarily backing away from his target.

“Where’s your better half?”

“Oh, that dumbass? He went over there.” Beck said, pointing at a cave entrance jutting out from a nearby hilltop.

“What?! Why?” I demanded. “He should be out here helping us!”

“He said he saw something shiny. Said he’d be right back.”

“And how long ago was that?”

Beck shrugged.

I’d been concentrating entirely on not being torn to pieces by lovecraftian ficuses, so I truly had no idea when Mr. Potatohead had decided to wander off. Come to think of it, I’d never tried this hard to not get shredded in my entire life. I couldn’t tell you how long we’d been at it, but the sun had definitely moved, and the fact that Spud hadn’t returned yet was…

“Sylvana! Come on!” I beckoned, and our squad hiked our way towards the cave entrance.

Looking in from the front, I could see what Beck had been talking about: there was definitely something shiny in there, twinkling away in the back of the cavern.

No… make that two shinies

My curiosity was piqued… but my sense of danger was peaked.

I didn’t want to go inside, but as the group’s vanguard, I felt obliged to take point and make my way carefully into the den. Something had prevented Spud from obtaining the shinies, and by golly gee I was going to find out what.

I handed my spear to Beck and crept forward through the tunnel, drawing my sword. Several paces behind me, he followed. Sylvana went last, staying far behind us, but never letting me out of her sight, her face tight with anticipation.

Before long, the tunnel widened into a mid-sized chamber. Not huge, but big enough that you could move your family in if the bank ever came knocking. It was too dark to really make out what it looked like, but the shinies were there, glittering temptingly.

I advanced into the middle of the room, glancing feverishly around in all directions, checking my corners.

It was all clear on my right, but on my left there was a pair of glowing red-

*WHAM*

A heavy dark mass bowled me over before I could even react and pinned me down to the ground. Powerful metallic jaws gnashed at my mythril collar, instinctively going for my throat. If I’d been anyone else, that would have been all she wrote… but in the fraction of a second that I gained to retaliate, I managed to ram my arm down the beast’s throat, crying out in pain as its jaws clamped down hard.

I grabbed it in a headlock ragdolled around as the creature thrashed, desperately trying to break free.

“BECK!” I screamed.

“AAAAHHGH!” Beck answered as he charged in, stabbing wildly with his spear.

The spear sparked uselessly against the monster’s metallic bristles, and it began to slice at me with razor sharp talons. I still hadn’t even gotten a good look at the damn thing and it was about to dice me to pieces.

In desperation, I pushed my useless fist even further into its mouth, all the way up to the elbow. The monster was sporting a wickedly serrated beak, but the inside of its mouth was smooth. I blocked its throat and continued to hold on for dear life.

Kill me now, and you’ll only choke to death!!

“The stomach, Beck!” I shouted out.

A moment later, Beck was back on the offensive, plowing and twisting his spear into the monster’s soft, unprotected belly. Blood and guts spewed out, and after a few more moments, the creature’s evil red eyes dimmed and went black.

Sylvana rushed forward, ready to work on my mangled arm, but I waved her off.

“Save it all!” I ordered her.

“SPUD!” Beck called out… but there was no answer.

With my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, I could barely make out the dark outline of a heap in the back corner of the chamber. A lump formed in my throat.

No…

I hurried across the chamber, and my worst fears came true: It was Spud. 

And his neck was a gaping red mass of viscera.

“Sylvana!” 

Time to find out how far these elven healing powers can go! If his brain is still active, there’s a chance we can…

Sylvana put her hands on his neck and gave it her best shot, but to no avail. She shook her head at the floor, staring stupidly at the cold, unmoving body of her teammate.

“Beck… I’m so sorry.” she said, her voice a shaky whisper.

As I looked back towards Beck, my gaze caught on the shiny objects.

They were arranged in the center of a pile of twigs and leaves, and while a bit of sunlight from the entrance did faintly glint off of their surfaces, there were also spots of bioluminescence flashing around.

They were really quite pretty.

Normally, animals go to great lengths to hide their eggs. But for some reason, this monster had placed these glamorous, glowing eggs so that they would be easily visible from outside the cave.

We’d been… catfished? No, that’s not it.

We’d been anglerfished.

And we only had ourselves to blame, playing around in the killing field like it wouldn’t eat us alive at the first chance.

I remembered how Spud and Beck had wandered around in front of me that morning, spinning our squad’s spears around like cheerleader’s batons while we hopped around over the root-webbed ground like it was some game of hopscotch.

“Stupid… STUPID!” I cursed.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in my arm, I staggered over and finally got a good look at the beast that used its own children as bait.

It was… just another confusing abomination. It had the body of a direwolf, the beak and claws of an eagle, and the razor-sharp, metallic thorn-feathers of a… I don’t fucking know.

Why can’t anything in this world make any damn sense?!

I really wanted to blame Spud for this whole thing. But deep down, if I’d seen those eggs glittering away, I knew deep down that I would have checked them out as well.

Sylvana came over to heal me, giving Beck a moment to himself. The usual soothing rush ran through me, and I had to stop myself from gasping aloud in relief.

How can I possibly feel this good right now?!

It’s not right!

Beck spent a long time crouching in silence over the body of his brother. Finally, when he was good and ready, he stood and went over to the eggs.

“We’ll take the shinies,” he said, handing them off to Sylvana. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

As she took the eggs from him, it struck me as bizarre that, unlike any kind of egg that I was used to from earth, these eggs were lumpy and misshapen. They barely looked like eggs at all.

In fact, they looked more like…

Don’t say it…

An ugly pair of potatoes.

I hefted the body of the beast over my shoulders - proof that our efforts had at least achieved something. As we’d been taught, a true adventurer never leaves the kill behind. Sylvana carried the eggs and the rest of our equipment. And Beck bore the body of his brother.

As we left the cave, we walked past the unmoving limbs of the cactupi that should have been our only prize that day.

It was going to be a long walk back to the forward base.