Max wasn’t a good man, he wasn’t a bad man per se, and certainly, he wasn’t evil, but to make an omelet you had to break a few eggs. You could say the same about turning a profit, that was what Max was most concerned about, gold, or money to be more precise, a lot of it. So far this trip had been a tremendous financial success, all the investments put into it by the adventurers guild returned ten times over in the form of all the magically potent resources and materials they had found in the jungles of this island. That wasn’t enough, not for Max, most of the earnings they got from that would go to the guild, not to mention the mages. They would take a substantial amount out of Max’s payday, if not most of it, and that was if they were feeling generous.

No, what Max needed was some personal gain, everyone knew that adventurers didn’t often live very long and those that did got out early. He wanted to earn enough money to one day retire hopefully sooner rather than later. To do that Max couldn’t sit around here and wait for the expedition to inch their way further into the jungle slowly. He did not doubt that they would eventually make it, the mages were nothing if not determined. They had spoken, quite openly, about the way mana behaved here, the further into the island they got the thicker it became, Max could even see it sometimes on some of their more successful forays, hovering in the air like heat waves in the desert. Whatever the source of all that mana was, it must be worth a lot of coin, or the old geezers wouldn’t be so obsessed about it. He suspected a discovery like that would be enough to set him up for life, and there might even be enough left over for his guildmates.

He couldn’t help the greedy grin that spread over his face as the plan to explore the forest on his own formed in his mind. He wasn’t alone though, with his party on the way back from yet another failed breakthrough attempt. He wiped the smile quickly from his face and looked around to see if someone had spotted it. As luck would have it, one had noticed it, but it was not the guild master as he had feared, but depending on her reaction, this might be worse.

He had not made a great first impression on Elyrianna when they first met by inviting her to sleep with him practically the moment he saw her. She had turned him down, saying he was not handsome enough. Typical elf, he was plenty attractive enough, just not in a conventional sense, and his skills in the bedroom were nothing to sneeze at. No one had ever complained at least, no, Anna was missing out in his opinion, but at least he had found out what a shallow person she was. He had plenty of scars all over his body, but he preferred to think of them as lessons, he had undoubtedly taken the teachings to heart.

What Anna probably found so unappealing was his encounter with an acid-spitting toad before he ever joined the adventurers guild. He had even dodged the hissing projectile aimed at his face, just not soon enough. It had hit a tree right next to him, making little droplets of the burning liquid rain over his right side, leaving that part of his face a cratered landscape of pockmarks. The fact that he was human and she was royalty, third in line to the elven throne, didn’t help matters, but over the years they had developed a sort of professional appreciation for each other. That happened when you saved each others lives on a bi-weekly basis, he’d like to think that they had at least grown to tolerate one another. The look she gave him now made him doubt her tolerance for him.

Elyrianna had been part of this current party from the beginning, so she knew about his tendencies to always seek new opportunities to earn more gold. Her expression cleared though as she shook her head and looked away from Max. When they were safely back behind the protective runes, he gathered some supplies, made sure his equipment and weapons were in good condition and got ready to go to bed. He would be up early the next morning to go into the woods. Using his stealth and invisibility to his best advantage, Max would avoid monsters and see if he could make it further into the island.

Max did wake up just before sunrise the next morning just as he had planned, but when he walked out the door, fully armed and armored, a small number of supplies in his backpack, someone stopped him in his tracks. Elyrianna stood there with arms crossed and narrowed eyes staring at him, he should have known she would do something.

“Did you tell Targal?” Max asked after a pause.

“No,” she answered flatly, letting her arms down by her sides, “not yet.”

“Well, are you going to?”

“That depends entirely on you,” Elyrianna said before sighing, she sounded tired. “I know you have some foolish idea in your head to gain you more gold so you can live out your days on some tropical island somewhere. But one of these days your plans will get you killed, and I’ll be the one that has to bring your body back.”

“Look, Anna,” he tried placatingly, but her arms crossed again as she glared at me. “Elyrianna,” he amended, “this sort of work is all I am good at, and I don’t wanna live out my days working my ass off at some farm for barely any coin at all.”

“There are other jobs you know,” Anna shot back.

“What other jobs?” Max asked in exasperation. “My sort of skills only apply to thievery and assassinations both career paths which often lead to an even earlier grave than adventuring, plus adventuring is legal.”

“If you think steady hands and the patience like steel doesn't apply to other fields, you are a bigger fool than I thought.” Anna said sounding pleased with herself, “I’ve seen you pick a trapped chest in bare seconds, and you didn’t even seem faced, one wrong move there and you would have been incinerated,” she punctuated her words by poking Max in his chest with her finger.

“Why Elyrianna, are you complimenting me?” Max asked with a cheeky grin on my face.

“I’m saying there are more opportunities out there than you realize, and if I can keep you from killing yourself due too some hairbrained scheme of your, we’d all be better for it.” She said, completely unfazed by my comment.

“Maybe there are things I haven’t considered, but this isn’t one of my schemes,” he said, trying to convince her, she raised one perfect eyebrow in response. “We both know that with our current method it’ll take ages for us to get anywhere, we need a subtler approach.” They had been here for a month and barely made any progress, and Elyrianna knew it. Max could see the gears turning in her head as she thought about what he had said.

“You are this subtler approach I presumed,” to show her what he meant, Max disappeared before her eyes and reappeared right behind her. She jumped a little, actually seeming startled, “I hate it when you do that.”

“But you get my point,” Max said, now fully visible again. “If you can’t spot me while I’m like that, no beast can.”

“No, but they might smell you,” she said, half-jokingly, but Max could see her resolve to stop him from going crumbling by the moment.

“Look, I’ll not go far, I’m just going to scout the area a bit, maybe find a safer path for us. I’ll be back by tonight if not sooner.” Max said, and she sighed.

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands, “But if you’re not back by tonight, as you said, we’re coming after you.”

With that, we parted ways, Elyrianna going back to her quarters as Max headed into the jungle. He kept up a steady jog as he made his way through the overgrown roots of the truly intimidatingly sized trees of the island jungle, looking up at them for too long frankly made Max’s head spin, he had stopped trying to guess how tall they were by the first week. Max paid close attention to where he placed his feet, to make as little sound as possible. Of course, his invisibility was always active, so nothing should be able to see him. Max didn’t want to grow careless and run headlong into a dangerous situation.

His invisibility had been a frequent topic of conversation among his party, at least at first, until they had grown tired of asking and left him to his secrets. No it was not an inborn ability, and no, Max didn’t have some hidden talent with the arcane as his companions had suggested, and he had neither denied or confirmed, letting them stew in their curiosity until it finally boiled over in a confrontation. In the end, Max’s skills as a rogue to the adventuring guild were considered too valuable to let go, so, he had been allowed to keep his secret, and they got access to his considerable skills, a win-win situation.

The truth of the matter was that his ability to disappear from sight stemmed from a simple enchanted ring on his left ring finger. To say that it was a simple ring might be pushing it a bit. The ring had been passed down to him from his father, and from his grandfather to Max's father and so on for as long as anyone could remember. Max didn’t know much about the ring, other than that at will it let him turn completely invisible.

The journey went relatively smoothly, compared to forcefully gaining ground by fighting their way through, this way, he made it further than they had ever been before. The monsters he did see he avoided, sometimes taking considerable detours to avoid trouble. At one point, he thought something was stalking him, likely some monster or animal that had caught his scent and was following him. He ran through a pack of treskles, none of them noticed him, but by the sound of it whatever was following him did catch their attention by the sound of angry roars and the sound of fighting behind him.

Max didn’t stay behind to find out which side won, but kept running. The day had truly started by this point, it was still early, but the sun was high enough to warm his skin and illuminate the forest. Speaking of the forest, it slowly changed as Max made it deeper. The plants and trees around him started glowing in gentle pulsing intervals. What hit Max the hardest was the total lack of sound, other then the sound of the wind blowing through the trees the forest was silent. Max stopped in his tracks as he came to this realization, the eerie silence was a bit creepy, to be honest. There had been a cacophony of sounds just a moment ago, as you might expect in a jungle, but now no animal or birdcalls could be heard, not even the sound of insects buzzing around could be heard. This spooked Max to an immense degree, something wasn’t right here, he had made it far enough.

Max was just about to turn back, to report his findings to the guild master, when something stopped him again. Splashing water could be heard from not so far away, and laughter, girlish laughter to be precise. This was strange to be sure, had someone else been planning to travel the forest too? His curiosity stoked Max forgot about the creepy woods and decided to investigate.