I Built This City Chapter 61: Chapter 61

Read chapter 61 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Hunter Ellen The precision with which the Adventuring Party went through the first floor was a little unsettling to Ellen. She’d come along reluctantly, but really needed to see how the quartet functioned… and they’d allowed it, so long as she stayed out of their way. She’d offered to keep them covered with her bow, even knowing it was of more limited use in the tight confines of the dungeon, and they’d agreed in unison. Yet she hadn’t needed to draw her bow back since they had started. Ellen shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew they’d run the first floor six times already, so it wasn’t hard for them. The first floor of a dungeon rarely changed, with the only unpredictability being monster behavior. Since all of the monsters had the Bloodline Rival trait targeting the nearest Ellen, their behavior was easily guessed as well. The coordinated group rapidly cut through every chamber. “Is this how you handle it every time?” Ellen asked, foot nudging the corpse of the arachnohopper. A stab to the base of the neck had cleanly silenced it, and she got the feeling that nobody in the group had been in any real danger at any point. Fighter shrugged. “Sometimes we miss the first kill strike and have to improvise, but we’ve gotten pretty good at it now.” Ellen knelt down while the others were preparing, setting her knife against the arachnohopper’s throat. “Clean kill, though.” She’d never tried taking a pelt from a dungeon monster, but since she had the time… she slid the knife down and started skinning it. “I wonder if we’d have time to butcher it, or if the dungeon would reabsorb it first?” All four stared at her as she began to cut. Acolyte tilted her head. “You’re skinning it right now?” Scout knelt beside Ellen. “We have never seen you do this to anything this large during our hunting trips. Do you need help?” Ellen didn’t bother to try to address the quartet separately, just continuing to cut. “It’s messy, but why don’t we try it? With you four to help, I can probably get this done pretty quickly. Eight limbs will be a little tricky, but we don’t have to preserve the meat beneath, so it should be fine. Fighter, can you crack the skull and scoop the brain into my bag? I’m going to need that. Acolyte, if you want to study the venom you should probably extract the sacs.” She drew out and handed over her small knife… but Acolyte stared at her, baffled. Scout had to step in and take the knife, moving to do the cuts herself. Ellen felt a small surge of surprise when she saw that… she’d never seen the Party confused about who would do what before, and that small break in their normally coordinated movement gave her some relief that they weren’t truly inseparable. Monster parts were worth money and often valuable to enchanters… but actually harvesting them required timing and the ability to skillfully extract anything interesting before the dungeon reabsorbed the body. That sometimes took as little as half an hour, and Ellen was hoping this one wasn’t quite so fast about it. She wasn’t sure what the usual range was, since dungeons were so rare these days. It was fortunate that she worked quickly, because with the help of the other four Ellen was able to get the pelt off and the brain and venom sacs stored. It was quick work, though it burned through some of the wicks on the three lanterns they carried. A quick trim was all they needed to fix that, but it was unfortunate that the Darkvision circlets were not all complete yet. Smith had prioritized construction with their limited iron supplies. With the materials salvaged, Ellen stowed them—messily—in her sack and followed the quartet down. Now that they weren’t split up by task, they all four moved with that same unnatural coordination. She found it interesting that two of them were mildly squeamish about the work done to get the parts. They shouldn’t have many divergent experiences, only Class differences. “I presume you’re all ready for this?” Ellen asked the others. A chorus of affirm