This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

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As I was about to pack up and leave for the night, I noticed two people going out of the village. I leaned my rifle against a branch and observed the scene. The two people were the chief and a woman who seemed visibly distraught. She had a seriously angered expression on her face and was apparently yelling at the chief.

Only one woman could possibly have enough power to yell at the chief himself, his wife? The woman had badly drawn black and yellow lines on her face, going vertically from under her eyes. My identification ability seemed unable to identify what it meant so I assumed that she had probably hastily drawn them, preventing the nanites from recognizing what it meant.

After a while, the shaman also came walking out and went to speak with the both of them. After listening to him for a moment, the woman then stormed back inside with tears in her eyes, leaving the chief and the shaman behind. Seemed like there was nothing else for me to see, but as I was about to leave, the shaman's red glowing eyes then abruptly turned in my direction.

Yikes, had he managed to detect me from this far away? This old man was undoubtedly no pushover. Quickly gathering my stuff, I then swiftly ran back to my cave for the night. Now that all these powerful warriors were back home, making contact with them seemed less and less like a good idea.

Now that I had learned a bit about the locals, it seemed obvious they couldn't help me in any way. They seemed to be living in the stone age, and weren't using boats or anything noteworthy. With that in mind, I decided to try building a boat myself tomorrow.

It would probably take me a few weeks, but if I used enough wood and structural beams, maybe I could build a boat strong enough to travel over sea. In the end, all I needed to do was go north to get closer to home. From there I would have to wing it though... Right now, I had food, shelter, and enough trees around to be able to make it on my own.

On the fifth day, I began to chop down trees and shaped them like the spine of a boat. I had nothing to make sails out of, and honestly had no idea how sailing boats worked, so I decided to make a paddle-boat instead. I was going to use leather straps as belts and make a pedalling system out of coconut tree wood, which seemed to be the hardest wood around here. Without nails or screws, the most difficult part was to keep everything held together by using dowels and joinery.

Wooden cogwheels were nothing new and were pretty easy to make. The boat was going to have two pedal wheels, one on each side like the steam-boats that used to go down the Mississippi river back in the days. That way, I wouldn't be dependent on wind and could use my dokari doped body-strength to make the boat move faster.

Even if the wood was very tender and easy to carve, it immediately became obvious that it would take me a very long time to complete its construction. I had to juggle between foraging, wood collecting, water boiling, cooking, sleeping and boat building. Doing a few weeks of that was certainly going to be a pain in the ass, but it had to be done.

Three days later, I already had completed what looked like a boat skeleton. At 8 meters long, it was definitely not a small boat but I wasn't feeling comfortable with the idea of travelling at sea with a smaller one. Getting bored with this daily routine already, I decided to go have a look at the village out of curiosity.

After living alone in the woods like that for 11 days, stalking the village had become my new television. When I arrived at my usual observation tree that day, something felt off. Nobody was out working, but were all inside the village instead. I wanted to get closer to get a better idea on what was going on but didn't want to risk being discovered.

An hour of nothing later, a horn made itself heard. Everybody then exited the village with gloomy expressions on their faces, as if something bad had or was about to happen. A small group of people eventually appeared in the distance, coming from the same road that the group of warriors had come from a few days back.

A look through my rifle scope confirmed 10 people in total, 6 women and 4 men. The group was made out of 9 superior nolvak warriors plus one unidentified man. I had never seen this man's face-paint design before so I focused on him and used my identify ability.

[Rank: Imperial Panhak]

Well now I knew what to call it, but I still had no idea of what he was. He had the same triangle design on his cheeks like the chief, but his were blood red instead of white. He also had the usual black raccoon eyes and a black line dividing his face in half, going over his forehead, nose and chin.

I didn't know if it was because he was the first alien humanoid without long hair I had seen, but the look of his weird face-paint and his bald head was giving me the creeps for some reason. The scary group consisting of highly powerful warriors seemed to keep their distances from the rest of the people and appeared to be waiting for something.

After what seemed like chaos and confusion, a small woman emerged out of the crown, escorted by the village's chief and the woman from yesterday. The young woman seemed distraught by the situation but wasn't struggling. If looked almost as if the villagers were giving her away to the newly arrived group of warriors as hostage or something.

Some of the villagers were weeping and tearing up as they gave the young woman away for whatever reasons. Identifying the young girl's red and white face-paint ended up confirming my suspicions. This young woman was the chief's daughter, and by the look of it, she was being given to a neighbouring tribe for marriage or something like that.

Even if I had been unable to identify her face-paint, the sophisticated leather skirt she wore would have been enough in itself for me to identify her as such. The skirt she wore was ornate with wooden beads strings and even had what looked like metallic eyelets and studs where the laces were used to tie it up.

Since I had begun to observe these people, it was my first time seeing anything made out of metal. I had first thought of them as being stone age people, but maybe I was wrong after all. The small group of warriors then took the chief's daughter with them and left back to where they had came from.

Seemed like they were the escort responsible of bringing her safely to whoever she was destined to get married to. I felt a bit bad as I watched the situation. The woman I had assumed to be her mother seemed on the verge of collapsing, while the rest of the village simply looked as if they were holding funerals.

I could understand her mother's sadness to see her daughter leaving the family nest, after all I had felt the same way when Rambo had left me, but why were all the other villagers looking so grim as well? Curious, but also worried, I decided to follow the group of warriors from a distance.

My instincts were telling me that this panhak bald dude was not a good person, so I wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to the girl. Leaving the village behind, I began to stalk the small group from a long distance away, since all of them were superior nolvak warriors except the chief's daughter and this panhak dude.

I now knew that I needed to be very careful when it came to nolvak warriors. I followed the group for around 2 hours, while being careful to remain undetected. The young woman was walking in the middle, surrounded by the warriors, which made it look like she was more of a prisoner than a future bride.

While they were walking on a road, I was following them by using a paralleled route through the forest. I made sure to never lose sight of them while keeping my distance, but as they arrived to a lake, my senses picked up a bunch of entities heading their way.

Unsure on whether it was an ambush or welcoming party, I remained cautious and laid on the floor with my sniper rifle ready for action. As the entities closed in on the group, the bald panhak dude suddenly made a hand gesture to which the other warriors reacted by adopting fighting stances.

It is then that the mysterious entities finally showed themselves. I was far away but through my rifle scope, I could clearly 8 dog/hyena looking creatures surrounding the group. The eyes of the ten warriors suddenly began to glow red, their body slowly being enveloped in a calm looking layer of dokari.

The way they used dokari seemed different than me, which was quite interesting. The panhak dude remained next to the scared woman while the other superior nolvak warriors charged at the creatures. It was very chaotic, but these warriors moved with a lot of speed and fluidity in their movements.

Seeing them fight was impressive but they seemed to slowly get pushed back by the evil looking dog creatures. The warriors were jumping in all directions, launching arrows at the creatures as they did so but the creatures seemed mostly unaffected by the attacks and simply kept charging.

After two minutes of fighting, the group had managed to kill two of the dogs but were visibly at a disadvantage, since one of the warriors appeared to be dead and two more were injured. How could they struggle against such weak creatures? Weren't they supposed to be among the strongest warriors out there?

It seemed as if the group was going to be exterminated, but that all changed when the panhak dude decided to get into the action. The bald man suddenly began to leak what seemed like red tentacles of dokari out of his body, and rushed toward the beasts.

In a few seconds, the panhak dude had managed to cut two of the beasts to pieces with his dokari tentacles which he used like deadly whips. For the first time since the start of the altercation, the monstrous dogs finally seemed to be pushed back. Seemed like I wouldn't need to intervene after all.

Seizing the opportunity, the chief's daughter took advantage of the panhak warrior being distracted to run away into the forest. For the first time, I could confirm that the woman was being held prisoner. If she wasn't a prisoner, why would she even try to run away from them?

This didn't look like the reaction of a willing bride. The woman was running as fast as she could, and seemed to be heading toward me. I remained immobile, cloaked by my ghillie suit, trying not to be seen as the woman ran past me and continued deeper into the forest. Turning my attention back to the road, I saw that all the monster dogs were already dead, apparently all killed by the panhak warrior.

This weird bald man was clearly not on the same level as the other warriors. The nolvak warriors were all sitting on the road and taking care of their injuries, while the panhak warrior launched himself from three to three, in pursuit of the fleeing woman.

Worried, I decided to follow them and see what was going to happen, but after only a few hundred meters, found the panhak dude immobile, staring at a hole in the ground. My sensing ability was telling me that the woman was either hiding in the hole, or had fallen into it.

As I stealthily approached, the panhak man then suddenly turned around and stared in my direction. I was immobile, hidden behind a tree over 200 meters away but the man had instantly noticed my presence. The man firmly help his spear and seemed nervous. He kept looking around in my general direction and seemed to be panicking for some reason.

“YHAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAKU ARU NILA, TI DIARRR! NIART!” The man suddenly began to shout his lungs out. My first reaction was to wonder what the hell he was saying, and once again was surprised by what happened.

Duliptani to English:

“YHAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN SENSE YOU, SHOW YOURSELF! MONSTER!”

A google translate function? Now this was going to be very useful. This man could clearly sense my presence, but I didn't know what to do. Should I show myself? If I fought against him, it would reveal my presence here and they could potentially send an army to subjugate me later on.

Wanting to avoid trouble, I decided to try to scare him away without fighting him directly. I began to gather some dokari inside my chest, gathering and compressing it as much as I could. Then as I felt as if I was about to explode, I released all of it outward and sent a massive shockwave of pure dokari all around.

The power behind this outburst made the giant trees surrounding us sway and crack under the pressure. Birds and various creatures took off and ran away from our location, as if death itself had appeared. The shockwave even sent the panhak dude flying a few feet back, and made him fall on his ass with a bewildered look on his face.

I had remained laid on the forest floor, invisible to his eyes but had allowed him to sense my power, which had seemed to be very effective. The warrior then rapidly stood up, and screamed his lungs out while running away as fast as his legs could carry him. “GUHAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa DEMON!”

I waited for a few seconds, and when I finally sensed that no one was around, stood up and walked up to the crevasse where the woman was. When I looked down, I saw the small woman laid in a puddle of blue blood at the bottom. Seemed like she had fallen to her death. For a moment, I felt like puking. I couldn't help but feel responsible for it.

If only I had intervened before it happened. Seemed like she had been too busy running away to take the time to see where she stepped, and accidentally fell down the crevasse. Deciding to at least offer her a proper burial, I jumped down the crevasse and landed next to her small inanimate body.

The crevasse was around 12 meters deep, which was not that deep for me. I believed to be able to survive a free-fall from a plane if I used dokari body strengthening. I turned the small woman on her back and placed my hand on her neck, trying to feel her pulse.

Unexpectedly, the young woman seemed to still be alive. Maybe I was not too late, maybe I still could save her. Excited, I took her in a princess carry, doped my body with dokari and superman-jumped out of the crevasse. I then ran back toward my cave at a speed that couldn't even be considered human anymore.

Having her in my arms wasn't slowing me down at all. I could barely feel her weight, and it was almost as if she was weightless, or made out of sponges. Among all the aliens I had seen so far, she was by far the most beautiful one. So beautiful that even her belonging to a different species wasn't putting me off.

She had a small mole over her lips like Marilyn Monroe and supple lips similar to Angelina Jolie. Truly a beautiful young purple alien woman. Also, not that it was usually the first thing I looked at, but her breasts were equally beautiful. Healthy, perky, well shaped, simply perfect in every way.

At this point, my only hope was to make it back to my cave in time to save her. Maybe I wouldn't be able to deal with such bad injuries on my own. 'If only Camille was here with me' I thought to myself.