The walk to where the four star monsters resided was completely uneventful. There were a couple of three star mobs, but they were mobbed down in a matter of seconds, enough magic flying out to put a massive number of holes in them. I was soon thinking that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to hunt four star monsters. Yes, my magic had barely harmed the one I’d fought, and yes, I probably had a higher wisdom stat than anyone here, but the sheer amount of spells we could output would likely cripple even a four star monster.

We eventually got to the territory of the four star mobs, and then we started walking much more cautiously. It wasn’t long until we spotted our first prey, a Glaneous, and with its four eyes looking different directions, it seemed to spot us as soon as we spotted it. It instantly started charging at us, only to be met with a hail of magic, from fireballs to those globs of acid I wasn’t sure what type of magic they were.

The monster barely slowed down though, and soon impacted the first tank, one of Lily’s groupies, who slid back a good six feet before stabilizing as he got backed up by another member. As they stopped its forwards momentum, our damage dealers started to slice at its sides, Liz with her trademark monster hunting grin, but most of the others wearing more steady expressions.

It didn’t take long for the beast to collapse from the blood loss of so many people chopping at it, though the mages weren’t able to cast spells for fear of hitting one of the melee fighters. We all let out grins at how easy it seemed to be when it fell.

The next few monsters went the same way, they would be first hit by a barrage of magic, and then we would clean them up. Lars and one of the two tankers from Lily’s group would be in front of it, stopping the forward momentum while the damage dealers would get to the sides and back of the monster before attacking it. I was playing the role of a mage for the moment, glad I wasn’t stuck fighting on the front lines for once.

While walking between fighting some of the monsters, I decided to ask Sydney and Jake why they had decided to fight the monsters even though they were sitting it out before.

“So what made you decide to come hunt monsters? I know that the world got a bit scarier with the monster waves, but you could still have stayed hidden and let the military protect you.”

“Well, I just wanted to be able to do something if monsters managed to get through the military. I didn’t want a craw or something to get past the military and not be strong enough to fight it off. My family may not be here, but I have plenty of friends I may have to protect,” Sydney explained

I nodded, and then turned to Jake.

“Honestly, I just got too worried about my sister. I wasn’t going to leave her alone now that monster waves are happening. I may have let her hunt a bit on her own, but letting her face a monster wave on her own is just not something I’m willing to do.”

I nodded again, I guess they were a bit more reasonable than what my desire had slowly morphed into, now practically addicted to gaining strength and watching my stats creep up. We all had our reasons, even if Liz’s reason was probably just because she was a battle junkie.

The rest of the day passed in relative peace, hunting the monsters down, but I was the only one to take any loot, the sacs that excrete the paralytic mucous from the glaneous, figuring I could dip my spearhead in it to add a paralyzing effect to my weapon. After a bit, I started to wonder how that would work with the sharpness rune cutting a distance away from the spear blade, but after testing it seems I needn’t have worried. The paralytic mucous ended up condensing into the edges of the part that would actually be doing the cutting. I wasn’t sure why it worked like that, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Once the sun started to get pretty low in the sky, we all started to head back, and we soon were back at the militia barracks, and Lily and I got some odd looks as we left together to head back to where we were staying, with Elizabeth giving me a knowing look, making me sigh. I shook my head, she was seemingly obsessed with her idea about Lily and me.

We soon arrived at the building we were staying at, and I collapsed onto the bed, tired even though it had been an easy day of hunting. The only ones who had gotten a good workout were the tanks. The melee fighters had also done some work I suppose, but this time I hadn’t joined them, so I wasn’t physically tired, simply mentally. I kept myself awake only long enough to focus on my meditation, and slowly fell into my meditative sleep for the night.

I woke up in the morning, and went to meet with my group again while Lily went off to collect her groupies. Meeting up with them, Liz was instantly asking about why I had left with Lily.

“I’m staying with her and her father,” I eventually admitted.

Liz’s grin grew even wider as I admitted that, obviously feeling extremely smug.

“Seriously, nothing happened, I just appreciate having a real bed to stay in. Her father is really nice,” I tried to explain

Liz simply kept her smug grin on, obviously feeling like she had won. I just sighed and decided the best thing to do would be ignoring it.

“You know, it’s sort of hard to believe that nothing happened when you’re literally staying with her,” Lars said.

I winced, I knew it would be bad, but I hadn’t thought that even Lars would turn against me. Looking around, Jake simply had his eyebrows raised in an I know what’s going on expression, Sydney seemed to not care, and Rachel just seemed annoyed for some reason.

Shaking my head, we eventually went to go meet up with Lily’s group, who seemed to be quite annoyed for some reason, and we were soon heading off to hunt some more four star mobs.

The walk there was unsurprisingly uneventful, and we were soon overkilling the four star mobs again. Things were going very easily, until we attacked a borow, only to be spotted by a glaneous right as we aggroed it. We instantly split into our two groups, Lily’s group working to fight the borow, while our group peeled off to fight the glaneous.

Lars was barely able to stop the charge of the glaneous, but stop it he did, and Liz and Jake were instantly beside it chopping and stabbing as hard as they could to get through the thick skin. I’d enchanted their weapons, and I’m sure they were also imbuing their weapons with sharpness, but I knew from experience that is was still a pain to get through the hide.

Meanwhile, Sydney and I moved to the back of the glaneous so we could have a clean shot without much risk of hitting one of our friends. Deciding that it would be better to be safe than sorry, I began to repeatedly cast frostbite, as if I hit one of my friends, I would only stop them for a second or two rather than seriously injure them. Sydney meanwhile, was simply casting fireballs at the feet of the glaneous, angling them so there was no way that they would hit one of our group.

It took a decent bit longer, but it was definitely dying. It was a bit of time before we had worn down the monster to collapsing, Lars carefully controlling it, keeping its attention on him while the rest of us finished it off. We finished, and turned to see Lily’s group finishing off their own monster, and the two groups shared grins. We may not be the biggest fans of each other personally, but when you fight with someone, you at least share in the revelry of victory.

Things went ok for a while, until we got spotted by another two monsters again, and we split off into our groups to do battle, still feeling relatively relaxed with our experience from before.

It seemed there wouldn’t be an issue, until yet another reik came out of nowhere, charging in and flattening one of the mages in Lily’s group. I instantly yelled at Lily, and we split off from our groups, looking to handle this third monster. Noticing Rachel running over to the downed mage, I didn’t bother bringing him a potion, and flung an ice spear at the reik, trying to distract it from the downed mage it was looking to take a bite out of. My ice spear landed on its eyeless face, and I was soon following it up with my actual spear, stabbing in as hard as I could, hoping to hit something important like an artery.

Unfortunately, I only left a shallow cut on it, with Lily having more luck, her lightning spells seeming to conduct straight through the shell of it, cooking its insides. It turned to me, and I winced as I saw it step on the leg of the downed mage, and I backed up, luring it away so that rachel could get in and work on healing him. The monster seemed to wait a moment for me to back up a distance, its eyestalks following me, and once I had gotten a decent bit away from it it charged. I released the ice spear I had prepared, and imbued my spear with a toughness rune, intent on taking it from the front, giving Lily some time to hack away at its back legs and tail.

I got a lucky break, as one of Lily’s cuts on its legs caused it to stumble in its charge, slowing down its forward momentum enough that I was only pushed a bit over a foot backwards as I took my spear in both my hands, blocking its attempted bite with the toughened haft of it. Shoving my spear to the side, I got its eyeless face out of mine, and started to stab it with my spear, leaving shallow cuts and holes in it.

I started to dance around its head on a very flexible neck, constantly retreating to dodge its bites, but staying close enough that it couldn’t charge me again, occasionally having the leeway to give it an ice spear, this time aimed at its eyestalks sticking out of its shell. They seemed to duck down with the same speed I could blink though, so with my following spears I targeted its front legs, trying to slow it down to give me a bit more breathing room.

After what felt like a few hours, but probably wasn’t more than fifteen minutes, it started to slow down, one of the rear legs Lily had been cutting at collapsing under the monster’s weight. We both let out grins, but stayed focused on the monster until it eventually stopped moving, the eyestalks collapsing down in death.

Standing up from my fighting stance, I felt quite sore, handling a four star monster was pretty hard with just the two of us. Looking around, I notice That everyone else has finished with their monsters, and everyone is standing around in a circle where the mage had been trampled.

I started to get a sinking feeling in my gut, and ran rather than walked over to the group, pushing through the people, hoping that my prediction wasn’t accurate. When I got through, I saw Rachel, with a shell shocked look on her face, standing over the mage, who had their entire ribcage crushed in.

I could almost feel my face turning pale as I looked down upon the mage who had been fighting with us just a few moments ago. I took a deep breath, then another, but the sickening feeling in my stomach wasn’t going away. I looked to Rachel, and she seemed to be doing even worse than I was, practically in shock. We hadn’t known the guy, but we’d been fighting with him, and Rachel was the type to care immensely about life, probably why she focused on being a healer.

We all stood around for a bit in silence, Lily soon joining us in our vigil, until the other mage started to cry, which seemed to start a chain reaction. I wasn’t sure how long Lily’s group had been together, but they were probably close. I hadn’t known the guy, and I was actually close to crying myself. I took a few steps out of the circle to clear my head. Sitting down, I began to reflect on how dangerous hunting really was.

Somewhere along the line, I’d gotten used to hunting, and I didn’t really see it as dangerous so much as just a way for me to get stronger. Now though, the fear that I used to have when monsters first came to earth was starting to come back to me. I looked down, noticing that my hands were shaking, my own mortality being something I was all too aware of at the moment.

I sniffed a bit, for some reason my eyes watering. I hadn’t known the guy. I actually thought he was a bit of a prick from the interactions I’d had with him, but he didn’t deserve to die for that. Just one moment of inattentiveness and death came for him.

We all silently agreed to go back, two of the people in Lily’s group, with tears still leaking from their eyes, being the ones to carry his body as we headed back. We walked in silence, killing the monsters that got in our way without speaking a word to each other.

When we arrived back in the area patrolled by the military, we ran into a few patrols, each of them getting a serious, somewhat sad look on their face as they saw what had happened. Once we got closer to the town, I wasn’t sure where we were going, but Lily’s group seemed to know, and so I simply followed them until we arrived at a building I hadn’t been to before.

We went in and were greeted by a scene reminiscent of a funeral home, and I realized that’s exactly what this was. It wasn’t attached to a graveyard, so I wasn’t sure if body would be buried, or it it would be incinerated, something which had become much more common in modern times.

We waited as Lily knocked on a door, and soon a couple of people exited. The two people carrying the dead mage, whose name I didn’t even know, handed the body over. The two people who had come out from the door Lily knocked on seemed to handle the body almost reverently, with eyes that seemed to have been locked into sadness from how much death they’ve seen.

We slowly went our separate ways after having scheduled an appointment for the funeral. I assume at least one of Lily’s group went off to inform his family, if they were living nearby, but I simply went back to the building I was staying at, ignored John as he greeted me, and laid down in the room I had been sleeping in.

Nothing happened for the rest of the day, I just laid there in confusion, trying to accept the fact that someone right next to me had died. It wasn’t until long after the sun had gone down that I managed to get some not very restful sleep.