The talk with the council went on for much longer than Luna had anticipated. Without a single leader to decide on a course of action the group of five was split on every decision. There were too many interests at work at the same time and Luna was starting to doubt that they would get the village set up quickly. If that did not change in the near future they could just do their own thing. Luna was not going to stick around, if they did not get their shit together.

William had requested a favor from Luna. He had asked her to find the easiest way to access a hill near the village and check if she could find any anomalous colored rocks or rock formations. He explained that these changes on the surface could indicate that metals might be found underground or in the hillside. Luna had agreed to look for it, as she wanted to return to the location where she had first sighted the Jaguar and the deer-like Guemal.

Luna did another cursory inspection of the forest where the teams were working and after making sure that they all had someone on watch she went back to her tent. She opened the chest and retrieved the Class Tablet and a smaller backpack from it. After wrapping it up in clothes she stuffed in the small backpack with some other supplies and went to find out where the Monsters lived.

Just like last time Luna decided to follow along the cliff for a while. The lack of the annoyingly thick forest was enough to improve Luna’s mood considerably. Once the first signs of hills were visible she turned to the north east and soon reached the rising hillside. While that meant that she had to walk through a bit of forest again, it was much lighter towards the sea and it soon petered out when the ground started to get more rocky.

Luna had soon found a problem with the task William had given her. She had no idea how to identify rock that was not the normal color. She had no idea what was normal for rock, especially in an area she was not familiar with. The cliffs towards the sea were a deep grey, but the rocks on the hills were a much lighter color, in sections even turning more towards a beige. To her every single rock looked suspicious.

Inside the forest Luna had been walking with the machete drawn, but once she left the tree line she had her bow in hand and an arrow already knocked, ready to draw. She soon spotted some of the deers near the tree line, where they were feeding on grass and leaves of young trees. This time the group was much bigger, Luna counted eleven and there were three of them classified as monsters.

[Guemal]

Level 27, Monster

[Guemal]

Level 25, Monster

[Guemal Alpha]

Level 36, Monster

The one with the highest level was considerably larger than the other around it, with pointy looking antlers easily 30cm long. Luna decided to retreat to the tree line for better cover and observe them for a bit. She made her way back to the treeline carefully while steadily looking around herself. Where there were prey animals, there were predators and she had no doubt that the Jaguar would consider her prey as well.

Once she had gotten closer in the tree line Luna activated Conceal Presence and peeked around a tree. She had underestimated the size of the monsters. The normal Guemal were looking like normal deers, differently colored, shorter legs and maybe a little different shape of the ears, but normal sized when compared to what she was used to.

The monster Guemal on the other hand, especially the Alpha, towered over the rest. From the ground Luna estimated its shoulderheight to already be taller than herself, but she had no wish to get close enough to verify that. Now she had a decision to make, was she going to do something or just stay around and watch?

First, she would need highground. After finding a suitable tree she activated double jump and grabbed a low hanging branch. Once she had made it into the upper branches she let Conceal Presence slip to conserve Mana. There was no way she was going to make a shot with her bow from up here, she was too close to the group and the canopy was hindering her sight on the Guemal group.

What she did have however was a great look over the meadow the Guemal group was feeding in and from the higher vantage point Luna could see even more Guemal on the other side. They were too far away for Luna to identify any of them, but going by their size there had to be more monsters with that group as well. That meant it was no fluke that she had found monsters, it was normal around here. Luna was about to climb down the tree when she spotted something below her and she froze.

[Jaguar]

Level 32, Monster

The monstrous cat was directly below her. Had it been following Luna or was it just coincidence? That question was answered when the big cat sniffed the ground and looked around curiously. Luna thought the big cat was beautiful. The golden yellow color with black marks, she imagined the fur to be super fluffy and soft. The perfect properties for a bedside rug.

But this cat was out of her league right now. She had no illusions that mortally wounding it with an arrow would be pure luck and monsters could be much more resilient than a normal animal. The leading theory was that once they turned into monsters, they started gaining something like Classes, but that was based on the observation of intelligent monsters such as Goblins or Orcs and could not be confirmed in any way for the animal type monsters.

Luna did not dare breath or move, Conceal Presence had snapped in place the second she had spotted the cat and she was hoping for it to keep moving. The Jaguar moved on into the grass and Luna realized that the cat could keep low enough for it to barely be visible, she lost track of it for a bit when the canopy blocked the vision, but it was visible again when it kept walking up the hilly grassland.

Luna expected the Jaguar to hunt, but after sneaking through the grassland it simply walked out into the open and laid down to sunbathe on a rock further up the hill. The Guemal were not happy about the predator suddenly appearing and the whole group ran away while loudly lowing.

Luna was not happy. The big Jaguar was a problem. It had its lair somewhere around this hill and was hunting along the forest line, maybe even across multiple hillsides. If it covered that much ground it was to be expected that it ranged far enough to find their village. With the predator stalking the area no settler would be safe to go outside to set up fields or prospect the hill for ores or usable stone.

Conceal Presence deactivated, with only half her Mana supply left, Luna climbed down the tree again. She would have to find another area to hunt, maybe find out where she could find boars. If all failed she could still hunt rabbits on the grassland near the coast This area was off limits for now, at least until she could take down the Jaguar.

The way back was quick, Luna decided to use Windwalk to cover ground quickly. If the solitary cat was hunting here, it was very unlikely that any major predator was intruding into its territory. Despite traveling quickly Luna arrived in the evening. She was astonished to see how much progress had been made on the stockade, as she walked along the full quarter circle of the already prepared ditch.

They had not yet started to put in the tree trunks and Luna went to find out what the hold-up was all about. No teams were working in the treeline, but they were still busy debranching the already cut down trees and cutting the trunks to the proper length.

Near the perimeter fire around the tent camp she found William and many other people busily working on large mountains of vines. He told Luna that the vines would be excellent for the purpose, but that they had started too late on braiding them into ropes and could not yet set up the wall.

Luna was still astonished by the process they made in just a day, but after being reminded that she had a large number of people from a mining village under the settlers, that mystery was easily solved. They made short work of a small ditch and just 4 people had dug the whole thing in half a day.

Luna told him about what she had observed and stressed the fact that the settlers should not leave the area, unless they were prepared to face a level 32 monster cat. William was a little disappointed with the lack of information about possible ore deposits, but conceded that without ever seeing what the surface formations might look like it could be hard to understand what to look for.

As her next stop Luna decided to visit the beach and find out if the other ships were going to leave. When she reached the beach she was astonished to find neat stacks of wood and two nearly fully dismantled ships. A group of 20 people were still busily working and Luna decided to not interrupt them.

She found a few sailors still on the beach next to some rowboats spending their time playing dice. She asked them about the schedule and they told her the ships would be gone at first light. They were still refilling their freshwater supplies from the river spilling into the sea. They were only waiting to row back to their ship when the sun set, they had been waiting around all day in case something came up on land. Luna wished them a good journey and returned to the camp.

Luna was greeted by William and the full council, who were standing around next to a fire. They had apparently been waiting for her, as William waved her over. He had informed them of her warning about the animals, but they still would not believe her story.

“You are just making that up to keep us away. I bet you have been scouting the best locations and already found good ore deposits or rare trees and keep them to yourself.” Christoph accused her, with Alfred nodding along with his rant.

Luna just about had it with these people. She had been running around trying to do the job Parrot had told her she would be doing and these people were a major pain in her backside. “You can believe what you want. I do not work for you.” She told him. “You can go out and see for yourself, I am not keeping you. Just head north along the cliff and turn east up the hill when you see the land rise. Just be prepared to die if you provoke any of the monsters.”

With that she turned around and just left the sputtering idiot standing there. She had better things to do. Like find warm food and maybe help with the braiding. She spotted Evelyn near one of the fires and asked her to explain the braiding to her, which she gladly did. Luna spent the rest of the evening braiding vines with the other settlers and had some more boar stew. Evelyn explained that the women were going to start tilling the ground where their camp was right now, once they had relocated a bit up the land closer to where the stockade would be standing. One of the farmers had declared the whole area to be prone to flooding and they weren’t going to build any buildings on it.

Luna was delighted to find out that the women were just doing things without consulting with their ‘council’, at which Evelyn had just laughed. They were happy to let the men feel important, that way they could just do their thing while they were busy elsewhere without a big fuss and discussion.

After another bowl of hearty boar stew Luna decided to call it a day and went to her tent. But she had promised Evelyn to look for something to hunt the next day, even if it was only a rabbit or two. Luna had seen quite a number of them on the grassland north of the camp, between the hills and the cliffs and would have to find out if they had any Hunters she could show the spot to.

When Luna arrived at her tent she found her expectations confirmed. Someone had been in there, scattered her backpack contents all over the ground and tried to open her travel trunk, but failed to get it open. Not for a lack of trying, it had huge gouges cut into the wooden surface, but the chest’s metal bands had held it together and the sturdy lock had not snapped. She had her suspicions about who had tried to get in there and was very happy the Class Tablet had been with her all day.

Sleeping alone in the tent was out of the question now. She gathered all the items from the ground and packed them back into the big backpack. She carried both backpacks to the fire and dropped them next to Evelyn. “Someone went through my tent, scattered all my stuff on the ground and tried breaking my travel trunk.” She told her. “Can you help me get my tent back over here?”

Evelyn was visibly shocked that it had only taken two days for people to get up to no good. “You can stay with me, I used to own an alchemy shop in a town and had a little money to plan this trip. I splurged a bit on my tent.” She pointed towards an easily 4m times 4m tent close by, which was high enough to stand upright inside. “One of my grandchildren, Fiona, is staying with me, but there is enough room for one more.”

Evelyn waved Fiona over and explained to her that Luna needed a place with women around to sleep. Apparently that explained everything to Fiona, who nodded knowingly.

[Fiona]

Level 33, Human

They walked to Luna’s tent and carried the travel trunk over to her new accomodations. In the middle of the tent a post was holding up the roof and all the luggage was arranged around it. They simply cleared some room and set up the trunk there, putting the bags back on top of it.

Luna retrieved her backpacks and set up her bedroll in an empty corner, then went back outside to help with the braiding. It felt somehow impolite to just go to sleep now. It was not much later when Evelyn declared it time for bed and the three women retreated into the tent. It did take quite some time for Luna to fall asleep.