The group of four, or better to say five with Pravin included, walked back to the place where they entered the forest proper the day before. They retraced their steps for five hours before meeting something interesting. When they heard some noises in the distance they expected to have finally found an hunting party of Srenc. They followed the noises keeping silent and hiding their movements in the underbrush, however when they got in sight they saw that it was a fight between different beasts. One looked like a gorilla with an eagle’s head, and the other was simply a big snake. When in sight the team could read the levels: the gorilla was a level 9 beast and the snake level was hidden by two question marks ‘??’.

“They are already fighting each other, they are distracted so we could surprise them and attack. We would get some nice experience if we kill them both” Jake voiced.

“I don’t know. Look at them. The gorilla is half dead, but the snake HP bar is almost full. We cannot read the level of the snake, so it must be quite higher than our own. I’m afraid that we cannot kill it even with the help of the gorilla. Most probably if we meddle now, the gorilla would just escape and we would have to deal with the snake by ourselves. I suggest to just move on. Srenc are enemies that we can take, but that snake could be level 90 for all we know.” Gera replied.

Gera is the word of wisdom, but I really want to throw a big spell at those two. I could charge up an Acidic Shot at full power and hit them without any effort. I am fine in both scenarios.

“What do you think Rizza?” Jake asked.

“We should go. This is not our mission. We are eager to find enemies, but that doesn’t mean that we should overreach. Your bloodlust will be sated as soon as we find Srenc. You just need a bit more of patience.” She answered.

“Ok, the women have spoken. Running it is! Let’s circle around so that we will not be discovered.” Jake had the last word.

A pity. I was warming up to the idea of attacking that snake. But maybe snakes are resistant to acid, so my idea would have been really counterproductive.

The noises of battle were still going on when they left that part of the forest. After three more hours the next event happened. Rizza and Jake were happily chatting, to Gera and Zortex irritation, when a slight movement on a tree to their left alerted their senses. A centipede-like monster was scuttling up the tree trunk, probably scared by their presence. It was almost two meters long and as thick as a fully grown python. On his head there were two pincer as long as his beginner knife and it was black from top to bottom. The moment they noticed the monster its level appeared: It was a level 5 enemy. The teammates looked at each other and without a second thought they went to attack. Jake was the closest so he made a dash and tried to impale it with his spear, however to his dismay the centipede moved too fast for him to follow, bending its body and increasing its climbing speed until it was out of reach. Of course Gera is also useless now, being a melee fighter, so the responsibility for the kill now falls on the shoulder of me and Rizza. Which spell should I use? Zortex contemplated.

“I could use my Throwing Spear skill, but if I miss I will have to go and recover my weapon. I have bonded it, but I would prefer to not get separated. Can you two do something?” Jake said.

“I am going to use my Electric B…” Rizza was saying, when she stopped because Gera, without anyone realizing, had taken out four knives and she threw them at the escaping centipede. The weapons had an unnatural speed and they made a whistling noise traveling. She must have used a skill there. Zortex thought. Three of them were aimed true hitting the body and the monster lost its grip on the tree trunk and fell down to the ground close to Zortex. Its HP were not completely depleted yet, but a good ¾ had disappeared and it was now struggling to move. Zortex could have easily shot it in an instant, but he let Gera have the satisfaction to give the killing blow. She had done all the work after all, so it wouldn’t have been fair to steal the pleasure of her kill.

“Good job Gera!! You are also quite resourceful. We must reevaluate our tactics if we take into account your long range attacks.” Jake hugged Gera, under the jealous watch of Rizza who said nothing. I can imagine her thoughts. She is the long range attacker, but Gera stole her job, killed the enemy and now her boyfriend was hugging the other girl Zortex mused. Gera wasn’t looking that happy to be hugged, thus she pushed away Jake and went to look to the corpse of the centipede. When a monster died an empty crystal could just appear close to its head, just like in RPG games where items came out of nowhere, but for such low level beasts the possibility was so low that it was almost not worthy to look for it.

“This is the first kill for our team. I think this call for a celebration” Jake declared. “We haven’t eaten in a while, so we can settle down and prepare lunch…or dinner. Which is it? I have bought some real food before starting the mission, so we don’t have to eat that crappy stuff we were given. And look at the experience. Killing higher level enemies sure helps to level up faster.”

“You can prepare the food, I have to retrieve my knife embedded in the tree trunk. Damn it if it is high over there” Gera said.

Zortex looked at Pravin and made a gesture with his hand. His pet squished out a long tentacle and wrapped it on the handle of the knife. After a bit of struggle he was able to detach it and he delivered it to Gera.

Hopefully this will give them a better opinion of Pravin. He is such a good boy and I don’t like people to shun him. Zortex thought.

“Hmm….Thank you?” Gera picked up the knife by the blade with thumb and middle finger, looking at the handle a bit disgusted.

Come on! Pravin is pretty clean for a Slime. He doesn’t even smell bad now that he is out of the sewers. Slimes blend with the environment, so now he smells like forest. Zortex felt a bit offended, as Gera washed the knife with some water. At least she also washed away the blood from the other three blades.

Meanwhile Jake had started a small fire with a spell crystal and he started whistling a song. He took out a cooking pot from a storage pouch and some ingredients for whatever food he was preparing.

That’s interesting. I wonder what he is cooking. When it comes to food I’m always open to new discoveries….I have those eggs with me and those vegetables are quite delicious together with fis…?? Zortex was so busy studying the cooking that he almost missed it. In the tree branches on top of their heads there were two more centipedes that had not been there two minutes before. He would have heard them earlier if Jake wasn’t whistling so loudly.

“Decay bolt” he whispered.

A mass of darkness formed on his hand and he shot it to the closest to the two centipedes. The monster interposed the tree branch between itself and the attack, but still the momentum of the shot was enough to shook the branch so much to detach it from the tree and it started falling to the ground. While it was still falling down, Zortex had already prepared a new bolt, which he threw at the other centipede rather than attack the first one again. Both attack connected, but did almost no damage because all of it was absorbed by the tree, however the beasts were now on the ground, disoriented and ready to be attacked.

Zortex took his sword in hand and pounced on the first of the centipedes. “Poison” Zortex whispered and his weapon became slightly coated in a layer of greenish liquid substance. Pravin on his left shoulder launched four tentacles to the other centipede and launched himself after constricting it with his attack.

The centipede took head on the sword slash, which rebounded from the pincers in front of its mouth, but its whole body was pushed back a couple of meters and the monster was now laying on its back, becoming easy prey for two more sword slashes which killed it with ease. Zortex hadn’t trained much with his sword, but he was well equipped and competent enough to deal with such low level monsters. Meanwhile Pravin was keeping blocked the other centipede with his tentacles. In a normal situation he would have attacked the head to suffocate his enemy, but the monster in this case had his pincers located there, so the slime would just become easy target to the attacks of the enemy. Zortex just jogged to the last centipede and slashed its neck three times with the sword to severe it. Both enemies were level 4, even weaker than the one before although the difference was basically irrelevant.

Zortex waited a second, but he could not feel other enemies nearby, so he relaxed a bit and went back to his teammates who were still close to the fire. Although they had not taken part in the engage they had prepared for battle, Gera’s rapier was in her hand, Jake with his spear pointed at Zortex and even Rizza had some electricity moving through her fingers.

“That was unexpected. I didn’t hear or see anything, but the blind guy was the one to spot the enemies. We should be ashamed of ourselves” Gera remarked.

“I told you he is not blind. He can see better than us. There is a mystery behind his shadows and bandages. They must be magically enhanced to grant vision, or at least some other ability that allows him to sense everything.” Jake told her.

“Bah…still shame on us for not noticing. If they took us by surprise they could have killed someone. I don’t want to think about those pincers around my neck. Good job Shad and…slime. You deserve the best part of the meat.” Gera spoke.

“I leveled up” Rizza said. “I got 4 points in Spirit and 1 in Agility”

“I also leveled up. 2 points in Strength, 2 in Agility and 1 in Endurance” Gera intermitted.

“Lucky girls. Just a tiny bit more and I would be level 3” Jake told the team. “Ok, we eat fast and then we keep hunting here. Even if we find no Srenc this is good territory. A few more of these low level monsters and we will get the experience to better handle the future battles.”

The group had their meal and then resumed their march through the woods for many more hours before stopping for the night, but nothing else appeared on the ground. There were a few monsters flying over the trees, but none of the team could read their levels, so they preferred to stay hidden and avoid any confrontation. After one day and a half, the five companions (counting Pravin) started to move back. Their mission stated to be in the camp after 48 hours, so they were already late to make the whole trip back to get there on time. They rushed through the woods paying less attention to possible dangers, hoping that nothing had settled on the way they came from. When it was dark the sky was clear and there was a full moon, so even under the canopy of trees a little bit of light was passing through and they decided to proceed at a low pace. It was almost morning when they finally saw the village the Captains had chosen as base. It had changed quite a lot from the time they first arrived. The few broken houses had been restored well enough to grant a decent place where the NPC guards could reside in. On the other hand the main effort was put into building a wooden wall to surround the camp. The barricade was just at the first stage of construction, but Zortex could already see the layout of how it would be arranged. The main wall would be facing the forest and the rest of the fort would have a semi-circular shape to avoid to leave their flanks unprotected. At the speed it was being raised it would probably be one more week before it would be in a condition to stop an assault.

The five companions entered the camp together, but Zortex separated from the others right away. He had spent two whole days without sleeping and his head was hurting like hell. Being outside in the woods made him strain his senses to recognize any possible danger, but that also meant that his headache was getting stronger and stronger. Nonetheless this was actually the training he had to put himself through to someday getting control over his inhuman senses. Zortex just found his favorite spot and laid down to fall asleep.