Kazuki charged forward, waving his stick like it was Excalibur and not just a glorified branch with commitment issues.
"HEY!" he yelled. "OVER HERE, SPIDER-DOG THING!"
The creature—a Cave Leaper, apparently—turned its hideous, many-eyed head toward him with the speed of something that did not fear sticks. Its eight legs twitched. It hissed.
Kazuki immediately regretted every decision he'd made since birth.
"Wow," the girl said flatly from behind him. "Brilliant plan."
"I panicked, okay?!"
The Cave Leaper lunged.
Kazuki dove to the side, narrowly avoiding becoming an organic smoothie. The beast skidded past, crashing into a tree with a wet THWUMP. The girl didn't waste the opening—she fired a bolt into its exposed flank.
The creature shrieked and reared back.
[Cave Leaper: -18 HP]
[Bleeding Effect Applied]
Kazuki scrambled upright. "Okay, so maybe we do this together. You shoot things, I... yell encouragement and occasionally hit it with a stick."
"That's the dumbest tactic I've ever—"
"Great, we're on the same page!"
What followed could only be described as a mess, but somehow a functional one.
Kazuki learned two things during the fight:
Screaming while charging at something does, weirdly, make you run faster.
Crossbow bolts are more effective than wooden sticks. Who knew.
The creature thrashed and leapt, claws tearing through trees like tissue paper. Kazuki dodged, rolled, got slapped into a bush, and still managed to land a lucky hit to its side.
[Rusty Ladle of Sadness used. 3 DMG.]
The girl stared. "Did you just hit it... with a ladle?"
"I panicked again."
Eventually, with enough dodging, blood, and one very lucky bolt to the eye, the Cave Leaper collapsed with a dramatic death screech that probably registered on seismographs.
[Cave Leaper defeated.]
[EXP Gained: 85]
[Level Up: 3 → 4]
[New Skill Unlocked: Battle Instinct Lv. 1]
Kazuki flopped onto his back, wheezing like someone who just finished running a marathon inside a meat grinder.
The girl approached, reloading her crossbow with casual efficiency. "You're insane."
He blinked up at her. "Thanks. I try."
She offered a hand. "Kaelith."
"Kazuki."
"You're lucky that thing was injured already. Otherwise we'd both be fertilizer right now."
He took her hand and stood—wobbly, but upright.
"Yeah," he said. "Lucky's... one word for it."