I do miss what we built despite what you may think. I hate that we needed conflict to create but I understand that it is necessary in this Universe. You may believe me naïve but I still believe that the need for conflict is temporary, even under control of this abomination that we call Genesis.

Following the curve of the mountain path, I pass through a small patch of overgrowth and come upon a heavy flowing river. The path slopes downwards towards the water, but twists near the edge, running parallel with the body of water. Continuing along the path, I jog while listening to the sound of the water rushing by. The noise is relaxing and deeply familiar, bringing up memories of childhood summers spent on other riverbanks and wasting away the days with imaginary adventures and skipping rocks.

Letting instinct and necessity take over, I stop jogging and glance around before leaning down towards the flowing water. Reaching into the river with a cupped hand, I pull out a small amount and bring it to my mouth, letting the icy cool liquid run down my throat. My father had always said it was a tradition my grandfather had started whenever they had gone camping. Unfortunately he passed away before I was born so I was never able to discover the reason for the drink of cold river water, or why that single action was considered a tradition. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep it going.

Feeling refreshed and more relaxed by the brief respite, I get back to jogging down the bank, ever mindful to keep the path within my sight. Straying off the path laid out for me by Craig might be dangerous, but in my mind the risk is minimal and worth the added benefit of the beautiful view.

As soon as I start to get into a steady rhythm I’m immediately forced to stop again, all forward motion completely halted as my Passive Search briefly catches the thoughts of some wild beast. Since gaining the skill, my successful experiences have only been with Helldarvin creatures, Albasalas, and the few humans in Peter’s camp. Each possess their own unique thought processes, some more convoluted than others. I’d tried testing it with insects and small creatures like squirrels and rodents since coming back to Earth to improve my understanding of the skill’s limitations, but their minds didn’t seem to register at all. My hypothesis is that I can only search semi-intelligent creatures and above, a theory that seems to be further supported by the thoughts that slowly make their way into my mind.

A deep and evolving hunger that is never satiated. The familiar need to build interspersed with a newly developed thirst for conflict. The nervousness of waiting for prey. The desire to leap out and ignore patience.

Loyalty to the Mother.

These concepts and thoughts make me pause, my eyes darting around to spot the creature that got caught in my web of awareness. The thoughts take a moment to fully process, and during this time I’m still unable to find their origin. My range isn’t that large, by my estimates only about 100 feet around me. While this limitation is frustrating, it does offer me two clues to my current situation. The first, whatever this creature is, it’s close. And the second, since I don’t see any other travelers in the area, suggests I am the prey, most likely caught in some type of ambush.

Excited by the sudden opportunity to gain more combat experience on my home turf, but not knowing exactly where the threat lies, I fall into Effortless Presence and immediately conjure four Fireballs around me. With practiced movements, I push them outwards and send them whistling out into the forest around me, careful to make sure they land in sparsely forested areas to try to avoid fire spreading indiscriminately. The resulting explosions cascade throughout the area surrounding me, shaking the trees and causing several heavy thuds as three large furred creatures fall out of their arboreal hiding places.

Slowly extracting themselves from the ground, each of the large beasts get off the ground and use surprisingly versatile hands to brush themselves off. With pronounced noses that jut forward and familiar enlarged buck teeth, the creatures are obviously some form of evolved beaver, a theory confirmed as they look at me and the title, Blood-Crazed Mammoth Beaver [Lvl 18], appears above each of them. They stand at about six feet tall, with a wide frame and the signature giant tail underneath them. That is where the similarity to their previous version ends however. Two gigantic tusks, ending in sharp points coated in red blood, grow out of the sides of their heads, their tails are covered in inch long ivory spikes, and a hint of almost insane intelligence hides behind their eyes.

After regaining their composure, they each look at one another. With no verbal warning I can detect, they suddenly rush towards me as a team, the only noise the sound of their heavy paws hitting the ground as they move to quickly overtake me. With Fleet Feet of Air still activated from my jog, I decide to take a defensive approach and see what these beasts are capable of. These are my first real contact with new creatures of Earth and I want to see how they compare to their Helldarvin counterparts.

The first Mammoth Beaver reaches me and takes large swing with its front paw. With the time dilation effects of Effortless Presence and the speed given to me by Fleet Feet, the swipe is easy to avoid. Slipping underneath it to come up behind the creature, I quickly conjure a Mana Blade into my hand and let loose a couple quick thrusts into the beasts legs before throwing myself forward to avoid the other two. The first Beaver lets loose a pained roar of anger as it turns around to bite at its assailant only to find it gone.

Finishing my roll, I turn around to find the two uninjured beasts attempting to flank me. It seems that these creatures have a decent level of strategy and communication in their hunting pattern. The third Beaver, still nursing it’s wounded legs, hangs back. The attack I gave it was weak, relatively speaking, but it’s still more wary than it’s pack mates. Quickly losing interest in defense, I decide to see how resilient they are to damage.

In a triangle above me, three Mana Bullets are conjured into existence, streams of Mana leaving my body and forming into the long and spiraled grooves of the now familiar Bullets in less than a second. Just as the flanking Beavers reach their positions, I turn to the one at my five o’clock position and fire all three bullets. The first two bullets strike it in the torso in unison, the third directly into its head a moment later.

What they have in strategy is obviously not on par with their resiliency; the bullets rip through the Beaver and it instantly falls to the ground, no longer a risk.

Seeing its pack mate die, the other uninjured beast lets out a massive roar and rushes toward me, all semblance of intelligence and strategy gone and replaced with it’s base animal instincts. Already disappointed with the predictable outcome I push off the ground into the air and ready my next attack. While I had hoped for a challenge, I hadn’t really been expecting much from the creatures, but even this sad level of strength was lower than I predicted. Obviously I have no desire to face an impossible obstacle at this point and risk dying, but I know I need more challenging encounters if I’m going to achieve my goals. Level 18 Beavers do not appear to be the opportunity I’m looking for.

Raising both hands and pointing each towards one of the two Beavers, I pull deeply from my Mana Well and simultaneously cast two Freezing Beams. The white and blue streams of concentrated Ice and Mana hit my opponents almost instantly, and the explosion of ice that follows locks them in place.

I land softly on the ground as Fleet Feet of Air ends, letting me know that the battle lasted just a little over a minute. It is hard to gauge the length of any battle while behind the time dilative effects. I make a mental note to find some sort of watch or time keeping device when I reach Everwall, ignoring the pained cries and roars of anger that the Beavers let loose.

Walking up towards the previously uninjured one, I make my peace with having to kill this vicious creature. I’m not some bloodthirsty animal, seeking wanton destruction and death, but my time on Helldarvin taught me more than how to fight. I learned the laws of nature. Kill or be killed. Brutal and simplistic, I don’t like it but I understand its importance and will never let it fade from my mind. Each monster I slay may give me the step up I need to protect what’s important to me someday.

A Mana Blade forms in my hand and I drive it into the eye of the frozen Beaver, hitting its brain and killing the creature instantly. Letting it go, I cut the tie of Mana flowing from me towards the blade and watch it dissipate, the now empty socket free to release whatever was damaged out onto the cold dirt. I could easily take out the trapped creatures with one of my other Skills but Mana Blade is only Lvl 19 and could use the extra levels. It is a versatile Skill and I have a feeling that getting it to higher levels might open up some interesting options.

I repeat the process with the second trapped creature and then immediately open up the notifications page, interested to see the results of the battle.

Results that immediately cause a frown, as the sneaking suspicion I’ve had since I met Faul comes to realization. I’d always wondered why Faul had been so bored while he’d been on Helldarvin. Even if the creatures were at a much lower level than he was, they were plentiful enough that I had assumed he would still have gotten some experience from them, even if only a little. A suspicion had formed in my mind but, without any way to verify it before this I’d let it fall to the side as other things came up.

Reading the notification, I see that I didn’t get any experience from the fight.I don’t know the exact details on the level difference that results in this happening but I now understand that Genesis only gives experience to those who fight things closer to their level. I’ll have to do some testing later on to figure out what the exact cutoff level difference is, knowledge that is especially important given my goal of reaching level 50 as quickly as possible.

With the Beavers dead, I start to make my way back down the trail while casually reviewing my Skill notifications. While I may not have gained any overall level experience from the short, one sided battle, I did gain a few levels in my Skills; namely 3 in Fleet Feet of Air, 2 in Mana Blade, and 1 in both Effortless Presence and Freezing Beam. My previous light mood and leisurely nature walk soured by annoyance, I close the notification windows and resign myself to continuing on my journey.

After another ten minutes of jogging down the river path, I once again catch the thoughts of a creature. While familiar to the ones before, these thoughts are slightly more complex and a little more intelligent. This time, the origin of the thoughts is exposed quickly as I jog past another bend in the river and come face to face with a structure that takes my breath away.

Rising nearly thirty feet into the air, a large wooden structure lies in the middle of the river, stretching from bank to bank. It is comprised entirely of logs and branches, with dirt and leaves somehow serving as an adhesive to keep it all held together. If I hadn’t run into the creatures before, I would have been immensely confused as to the origin of the building but now I can see it for what it truly is.

I’m staring at an incredibly large Beaver Dam. One that would have been impossible for regular Earth Beavers to build but still a dam regardless of size.Looking it over for a few seconds, carefully alert to the potential of another ambush or a creature emerging from within it, something immediately draws my attention. On the bank closest to me, only twenty or thirty feet away, lie two human corpses.

Despite all of the fights and all of the creatures I’ve killed up to this point, these are the first human bodies I’ve ever seen, and I just stare at them while trying to process the sight. Dead humans, laying by a river. Before the changes my world has gone through, this would have been a big deal. News crews would have set up around the site, angling for the best view of the scene and the clean up efforts. Maybe even trying to get a few words with the young man who discovered the bodies to make the evening edition. But now, these bodies just lay here forgotten.

Another whisper of thought passes over me as something wanders through my Passive Search range, snapping me back to the present. Moving closer to the bodies, I can see they are not whole. Each is missing several key components and the blood on the ground seems to indicate they’re being disassembled where they lay. The most important thing about them, however, is that they both wear ruined versions of the gear that every member of the Hunters I saw carried. The camo backpack, the brown hiking boots, the poorly stitched H on their thick hunting jackets.

These two bodies were clearly members of the Hunters.

The sight of these two corpses makes me realize something that I had obviously been trying to keep out of my mind since my first encounter. With Craig’s supposed mapping skills and the Hunters knowledge of the mountain area, there would be no reason that they would send me past a den of ‘dangerous’ beasts. According to the information Peter had provided me, the Hunters had supposedly mapped this entire region, even if certain parts were still giving them a little difficulty with the finer details. Why would Peter direct me to follow a path that skirts almost into the home of a creature capable of killing two of his men?

He’s fucking testing me!

Anger and hurt rise within me as I accept the realization. Despite our years of friendship and all the things we’ve gone through together, he obviously still has issues with my being a randomly selected. Either that or he’s become so dulled to the loss of human life that he is willing to risk mine in a stupid ploy to test me and potentially remove an obstacle in his way.

Suddenly the entire reunion is soured and my mood takes a turn for the worse. I’d assumed my luck had changed when the first person I found was one of my best friends. Obviously that isn’t true as now I know that he’s changed just as much as I have, albeit in a much more mercenary way.

The next time I see him …

The thoughts whirl in my mind as I consider all the things I’m going to do. He’s still my best friend and I don’t intend to hurt or kill him but this needs to be resolved. I’m not willing to lose my friends but I’m going to do what it takes to make sure he realizes testing me will have consequences. If anything, this can serve as practice for the moves I will have to eventually take as Primus.

All the thoughts I have whirling around are interrupted by a large roar from the dam, a giant beaver emerging from the top and rage filled eyes staring down upon me. The words, Blood-Crazed Mammoth Beaver Mother [Lvl 26], rest above it.

Before finding the dead Hunters, before realizing Peter was playing a very dangerous game with my life, I would have been overjoyed to have a new higher level creature to interact with. But now I’m no longer in the mood for testing out the capabilities of these creatures, so I slip into Effortless Presence and decide to end this battle quickly. My realization has worn me out and it will take me a while still to get over the implications of Peter’s decision.

Conjuring three Fireballs, I fire two at the banks of the dam and one at the center, the shrieking noise of the projectiles drowning out the sound of the Beaver’s roars. I could have attacked the creature directly but I don’t know her capabilities, especially for any sort of ranged attack. Better to destroy her home and fill her with enough rage to counteract her newly evolved intelligent instincts.

The Fireballs explode upon contact with the wood, the concussive force blowing large chunks out of the dam and the fire quickly spreading among all parts of the structure untouched by the surrounding water. My Passive Search picks up the Mother’s feelings of rage and sorrow upon seeing her home burning down but I force myself to ignore it.

Bringing my hands together, I start building up the attack that will end this battle quickly. Just as I had hoped, the Beaver Mother is too enraged to do anything but jump down from her burning home, landing into the river and swimming to the bank. She quickly jumps out of the water and begins lumbering towards me, her steps causing the ground to shake slightly and her large teeth exposed as she roars her challenge. Too bad I have no intention of meeting her in direct combat.

My hands raise above me and her roars are drowned out as a flash of light and resulting boom as the Flawed Lightning Bolt makes contact. The concussive blast sends her flying backwards and the electricity creates immeasurable sparks as it discharges into the water coating her skin. A heavy thump is the last noise she makes as her body makes contact with a few trees and stops, falling down to the ground.

Staggering under the pressure of the attack, I remain still for a few seconds, staring at her in anticipation of a possible attack. After a few moments it is clear that she is dead, the attack having killed her almost instantly.

I exit out of Effortless Presence and let myself become fully confronted by the implications of my realization. Still in a terrible mood, I rejoin the path and quickly cast Fleet Feet of Air, focusing on the act of running in the hopes that it distracts my mind. No more light jogging, and no more sightseeing, just focused drive and a desire to get further away from Peter and his Hunters. For their sake, and for mine.

Kat watches as he runs away, her eyes glued to the binoculars in utter shock. She had initially balked when Peter had given her the task of following Cael from far behind, assuming he had wanted her to keep an eye on him and intervene if he ever became too overwhelmed, but her true task of observation had become clear to her the minute he had entered into combat.

“Holy fucking shit”, she whispers to herself as she focuses in on the corpse of the Beaver Mother. In less than thirty seconds, Cael had completely wiped out the dam that was blocking a key source of freshwater. In that same thirty seconds he also killed a creature that had taken out two of their more powerful members.

And he had looked pissed off the entire time, almost as if it wasn’t worth his time.

She had no idea what was going through his mind right now but she knew that she had to report back to Peter. He was going to want to know about this. And she wanted to get the hell away from Cael and wherever he was headed.