Elise eyed her enemy. It was another disgusting ball that walked on eight legs. It was a little bigger, but that was it. It didn't look that dangerous. The spider still looked as squishy as its earlier companions. The young girl grinned. Anything that crossed her path so far had turned into a rotting corpse or would become food for the goblins or whatever else roamed this forest.

She knew that there were rather large wolves and giant bears in this forest. Both were types of demonic beasts that she would rather not fight because they might be able to harness a demon's power. Besides, the old woman of the Association had told her that drakes sometimes came to the forest. The forest with its dense magical and also demonic energy in combination with the nest was something no monster or beast could resist.

She had to stay alert. Demonic bears and wolves were enemies she absolutely did not want to fight. Besides, the old woman, apparently a friend of Heinz's, had told her that drakes were strong enough to fight a small army. The old woman had looked quite important, so Elise believed her words for the moment, even though she hadn't seen a drake yet.

Elise sighed loudly. Fighting the spiders was boring. Actually, she had wanted to accompany Alexandra, the old woman's niece, to see how she fought the drake. But Alex had told Elise that she was too weak and that the young mercenary would not be able protect Elise. Sadly, that was true. She had defeated Alex, but Alex had fought her with the same strength Elise had used. Elise had only won because of Heinz's teachings. She really had to thank him when they met again.

The big spider screeched, perhaps out of fear, perhaps it knew about its dead brethren. It attacked her with its two front legs, lifting them into the air and then knocking them down. She quickly dodged the attack by taking a few steps backwards. Why were all mercenaries so afraid of these little beasts? They looked disgusting and were ugly and quite smelly, but that was about it.

They weren't fast, which was quite surprising since they had eight legs and not two. Besides, no attack from them had hit her yet. Their attack pattern was just too obvious. First they struck with their front legs to knock down anything that dared to attack them. Then the spider spat venom or used its sharp teeth to end the life of its poor victim.

But even a small child could see through its attacks ... perhaps. She assumed that Augustus, the blacksmith's son, probably could. He had managed to fight her and most of their battles had ended in a draw.

"Foolish girl. Humans don't like fighting them because spiders are disgusting," the angry voice said to her. "Humans don't like spiders ... Especially not when they're bigger than a dog or a horse."

That could be true, but Elise ignored the voice, she had to concentrate on the fight. The spider's eight eyes eyed her, and it moved slowly to the left, then to the right, almost as if it was dancing. Yet it probably was not really dancing. Apparently it was trying to find a weak spot. Then she would give it one.

Elise grinned and clutched her sword tightly. The cold black steel begged her to end the spider's life. But killing it probably wouldn't count as a sacrifice. It was indeed bigger and somewhat stronger than the others. Yet it was still... weak, at least the angry voice claimed so.

She really needed to find something stronger. Elise supposed a lone demonic wolf would be easy to defeat. But they could use a demon's power. Besides, she had read that these wolves often roamed the lands in packs. Elise was well aware of the fact that fighting many opponents at once would not result in a victory.

Her limits were clear. She knew a few sword techniques, had a decent amount of strength, speed and endurance. However, she lacked the most important qualities of a mercenary, she could not use magic and had close to no real experience. So fighting a single demonic wolf would be suicidal. She loved to live. Besides, a good hero was someone who lived, not someone who died. She aspired to be one, the living one, not the dead one.

She walked quickly towards the spider and then raised her sword high in the air, neglecting her defence. The spider had fallen for it. It raised one of it's front legs to block the sword and tried to attack her with one of it's left legs.

This was a new attack, but the spider was still too slow to achieve anything. Elise had expected it to do something different from the others, apparently this was the only new thing the larger spider could do. That was ... disappointing. The angry voice agreed with her.

Elise ran towards one of the big trees and walked around the tree. The spider was just like her siblings, though much bigger. She had made some noises, but the spider had taken no notice. The young Monia successfully managed to sneak behind the spider and raised her red glowing sword.

"Stupid animals," she thought.

Alex had told her that demonic spiders could see well but could not hear. Their animal counterparts had hairy legs that they used to hear. Elise didn't understand how, something ... something about vibration was the only thing she remembered.

Anyway, the hair of the demonic spiders served as camouflage and as a kind of defence against the poisonous attacks of their fellow spiders. They often hid in bushes or on the barren ground and fought whatever entered their little territory, it didn't matter what it was. They were just too stupid.

Whatever had made them give up their hearing in exchange for poor camouflage earned Elise's praise. It made killing these spiders extremely easy.

Her black sword glowed. She really began to appreciate Heinz's gift before she cut through the spider. Its flesh began to sizzle, as if something hot was tearing it apart, while her sword and the angry voice in her head rejoiced.

The spider collapsed and landed on the ground, throwing a small cloud of dust into the air. Some kind of almost transparent liquid oozed out and drenched the ground, probably blood or poison. Elise had no intention of finding out. She quickly cut the dimly glowing core out of the spider's forehead. It was a disgusting thing to do. The young girl put the still slightly damp core into her deep pocket.

Elise eyed her surroundings warily. Apart from an owl sleeping in a tree and a few insects, there was nothing to be seen. So she closed her eyes and found herself in the dark realm.

The two nodes were there in the distance. But this time something had changed. The red mist that surrounded her nodes had decreased in intensity and a path was forming. Unfortunately it did not reach the bright stars that hovered there.

It seemed that she still could not go to her nodes to see what they were. It appeared as if she had to kill at least five more larger spiders to form a proper path. That was surprisning. She had assumed the spiders to be too weak to count as a sacrifice.

But ... she sighed. She had to stop here. Her legs felt a little sore. Besides, it was possible that the drake would start to rampage during the fight with Alexandra. Elise really didn't want to feel what a drake's foot felt like.

The young girl opened her eyes again. Voices could be heard nearby, piercing through the ususal sounds of the forest. One belonged to a man, probably old, the other to a girl. She could have sworn that the old man's voice sounded familiar. But she had no idea where she had heard it from. It was not Heinz's voice, that much was clear.

The girl's voice, however, was unknown to Elise. She had never heard her voice before, so it was probably not a schoolmate of hers. She doubted that any of these cowards would even dare to go into the forest. School was awful, boring and she knew most of the things the teachers tried to teach. The only reason she had to go to school was to find friends. Yet she had not found a single one.

Elise looked up and thought of a plan. She slipped the sword into the worn deep pocket she had been given by the kindly old woman of the Association, Gertrud or something like that had been her name.

After a few tries she managed to climb to the top of the tree and waited. The voices got closer and closer, and then she saw a familiar face. The old man was Gustav. He was, as far as she knew, one of her mother's co-workers. He didn't work for the Margrave, but the Margrave's guest. Yet Elise had never seen the guest before. It was strange, but she had better things to do than wonder why the guest was always in his room.

They spotted the spider's corpse and the older girl, an archer, she had a small, simple short bow on her back, was sniffing the air, her wolf-like nose pointed in Elise's direction.

They examined the spider's corpse. Unfortunately, she didn't have enhanced hearing and so could only hear a few words they said. The archer seemed rather agitated from what she had heard, while the old man seemed rather.... unimpressed.

Elise was well aware of the fact that the value of a sacrifice was equal to the challenge the fighter faced. Unfortunately, killing the spider had been fairly easy. Sadly not as easy as before. It didn't feel like she had cut through butter with a hot knife, but through flesh. Fortunately, the killed spider had counted as a sacrifice. Not necessarily a good one, but it had been enough to at least form the beginning of a path to her nodes.

The Lycan sniffed again and then looked towards the tree before looking up and staring into her eyes.