9 Dark Souls: Bone Spikes

Inspecting his newly acquired crossbow, Drake sat down at the cliff's edge the crossbow Hollow had just taken a dive off. His new toy was plain, unadorned, and came with seven steel bolts. Mostly wood, the crossbow had a metal bow, pulled back by a single action lever.

A few minutes passed as Drake sorted out his equipment. He pulled the bolts, the Hollow had shot, out of his shield, soon after a glowing blue light bloomed from the cracks, formed on the exterior of the shield, that it had accrued in battle. It was repairing itself. The wood grew and sealing up the cracks, it mended at a mild rate.

He placed his shield on his back, lassoed on by his previous belt, the young white branch. He kept the dagger tucked into a sort of sheath, made with holes in his rag and kept the crossbow, and his seven acquired bolts in his hands.

While waiting at the cliffside, from the grey, murky underbelly of the world, flew up a soul.

Drake smiled as he grasped at the soul, pulling it in.

"So, the souls can be pulled from afar, interesting."

With all the Hollows in the cemetery of ash cleared, Drake had a few options to choose from.

One, he could continue on out, try to fight the hollows ahead, which assuredly all had weapons of some kind, that in itself would be trouble, but after passing through all that, he would have to battle lIudex Gundyr, the first boss. He felt stronger sure, but Gundyr was a hulking mass of stone might, even before he transformed into an abomination, his crossbow bolts would probably just bounce off him.

Two, he could double back, find the crystal monster and somehow kill it, this also seemed next to impossible, it would be like trying to fight a small armored land-bound dragon, a bit of a step up from fighting some individual zombie creatures.

Thirdly, he could feel it, with but a thought, that he could leave this reality and move on to another, trying his luck elsewhere first and come back when he was stronger and trounce these enemies with ease, under his boot.

Drake pondered for a while over his choices.

"The first is out of the question," he declared. He would be able to take the hollows without too many difficulties now he had the crossbow, but Gundyr would quickly smash him into a paste, should he try to fight him, all that would be left of him would be a smear on the ground.

"The third.... hmm I don't really feel like running away this early in the game, I've only got the energy to jump to another world and back once, whos to say the next won't be even harder than this one."

Drake ruminated, before sighing.

"That leaves the third option..... well, I don't stand a chance if I just go in crossbows blazing hmmm..."

Trying to think of a method to take out the lizard, he sat cross-legged his chin propped up by a hand, and his brow furrowed in thought.

"A trap could work, don't know how to make anything fancy, but with some effort, I should be able to dig out a pit," he spoke to himself.

Drake pulled out his knife and looked at it.

"This just ain't gonna cut it, literally. What's one lousy knife gonna do against it, even if I trap it, and that's a big, if. I'm going to need some way to keep it there and kill it."

He needed something that could wound it when it fell and hopefully hold it in place.

"I've searched the whole cemetery though, all that's there is dead hollows and a set of rusty armor."

More time passed in thought, and Drake remembered something he saw once, idling watching tv, a documentary on prehistoric man. They would use sharpened tools made from bone, the tv show went mostly over early man's use of it in leatherworking tools and such, but Drake bet he could use the Hollows bones to form spikes for his pit with a little grinding against a rough stone.

"Oh god, this is gonna be gruesome."