Pretty soon, five minutes had turned into fifteen which in turn became an hour since they'd left the vantage point Kellin had found. Everything had gone swimmingly ever since. No more trip-ups, no strange things jumping out at them, no weird sightings... Kellin was almost bored while Gypsy seemed on edge, though he couldn't really understand why. He'd get it if things had kept popping out or trying to kill them, even he'd jump if random monsters had kept on appearing out of their vicinity. Yet still he could almost feel the suit jumping, and actually had felt it literally move against his own wishes once, every time a ground squirrel lept off a tree and crunched a leaf when it landed.

Still, they'd learned quite a bit about the area without going too far, Kellin being admonished by Gypsy all the while for how much noise he was making. He was happy with how things were going mostly though, easily able to navigate them back to the Hutch before running out of [Energy] even if they needed to [Cloak] the whole way. They'd only done wider and wider circles, after all, so they hadn't gone that far in a line away from their temporary home.

*crack*

Another stick cracked behind them, Kellin not even turning around this time.

-Captain Finnel's baseless confidence in his surroundings completely unfounded. Noise could have been caused by any number of living beings, yet you stopped looking after the second time. How do you know it will simply be a stick falling to the ground from a tree?- she questioned, irritated and on edge.

It had happened about five times, sticks falling out of trees and hitting the ground loudly within earshot, but Kellin just wrote it off as forest stuff after the second time. He'd admit it scared him the first time but after that... Well, he didn't really understand trees and if they shed their branches this quickly, that was fine by him. It sounded a bit windy, anyway. So long as they didn't land on them.

-Additionally, multiple sources indicate this many downed trees is NOT a common occurrence. Suggest returning to Hutch-

"Gyps, you need to calm down," he said, exasperated and stopping their movement to turn around and verify that yes, it was indeed another widowmaker that had fallen out of a nearby tree. "We are fine. Worry when we aren't, otherwise, you're causing yourself unnecessary mental stress. Thinking about what could happen all the time is going to leave you frayed and ill-equipped to handle danger when it IS happening."

Waiting for her response, if she would, Kellin thought out where they were in the little mental map of their hillside.

'About half a mile west... closest we've been to the Savul since our start,' he thought, wondering about how far west he'd have to go before they hit the river.

Gypsy chose not to respond, but he wasn't exactly expecting her to. Instead, he was considering whether or not they'd need to move closer to the Savul area to provoke a response. He'd been loud, bumbling, a bit meandering while waiting for something, anything Savul to come try to kill them, but like what he'd estimated, they seemed to have found a sweet spot close enough to the Den not to run into other predators, but far enough not to needlessly bring Savul upon them with just a step. Or at least, that's what their first scouting attempt was suggesting. Likely, the river masked a lot of the noise that they were making from the Savul as well, a small blessing they'd never get on Redmond.

Above-ground rivers didn't exist there.

Luckily, before he lifted his right arm and blatantly smashed it into a tree for another "perimeter noise test", the sound of something crashing through the dense brush from further west began reaching his ears.

Immediately after he picked up the sound, he felt their [Cloak] activate at the highest tier, before settling back to the middle tier. He sighed, pistol forming in his hand while pointed toward the direction the sound was growing louder from, allowing the blade to extend down and out from his left fist in case they'd need it. He could tell the creature was already confused and beginning to stray from its path towards them after a few seconds, so he deactivated their [Cloak] for a moment, only for it to reactivate as he fought the legs of the Combat Suit to keep it rooted in place. A much, much harder ordeal now than it had been back at the tree he'd woken up next to.

-We should,-

"Gypsy, you KNOW that sound," he interrupted as it got louder. "How many times have we heard it before? It's just one Swarmling. Small, from the makings of it," he continued, flicking off the gun's safety and just leaving their [Cloak] on at this point.

-Unnecessary risks,- she started, not getting far as a four-legged, angry as hell looking and small red creature burst out from around a few trees twenty feet to their front.

It seemed not to know where they were but did know where they'd been, making a line for their general direction with a very pissed-off look on its screeching face. The gnarled, muscled body looked able to tear through anything living or inanimate in the area within an instant if it wanted to, three talons extended on each of its forward limbs assisting in that task.

It really was a young one, however, and had yet to begin to vary in appearance in any major way from when it was born. It was the same with every Swarmling of a Den when they [Evolved], taking up the properties of their older brothers and sisters and becoming... different from the base creature they started out. They very rarely if ever varied in form in their own Dens, but between different ones, the similarities could be far and few between. Some had wings, some a third set of limbs, others gained a second head... truly, they varied.

This one would become a leaper variant with longer talons, if the fights the day before told him anything. One of the more common Den archetypes, sporting a direct increase in the damage they could output and the ability to close the distance to do said damage. In a forested area, it was an extremely complementary set of abilities, and facing a few adults at the same time seemed like it would be a daunting task for the future them.

For right now though, a single gunshot echoed through the forest just after the creature lept, louder than its screeching as the bullet tore a massive hole through its skull, directly above its two beady eyes.

[Massive damage modifier added for critical attack placement]

[Credits earned for the defeat of Infantile Swarmling Class Individual below your Threat Level: .5]

"Truly, an infant," Kellin said, the dog-sized corpse puppet losing its strings as its front claws hit the ground, body crashing into it moments later and coming to a tumbling stop about ten feet in front of them.

It had died so quickly he hadn't even gotten a chance to see how much [Health] it had total, but he expected around 30 if he were to guess. .5 [Credits] being the minimum he could have received and based on it being the smallest they'd encountered yet added to that theory.

Walking up to it, Kellin listened for other sounds but didn't hear anything coming from deeper into their territory. It seemed this one was alone and just on the fringes, likely a scout or simply not under control as it was young. Either way, he didn't care much.

"Nothing to be gained here, anyway," he mumbled, squatting down next to the corpse and turning it over. "Thing was too young. Claws would have broken on our metal, I bet. And you were so scared you turned our [Cloak] on twice," he finished with a chuckle, the [Skill] finally shut itself off after burning through 5 [Energy] in total.

No response came and Kellin stood up after a few more seconds and moved away, jogging lightly back in the direction of their Hutch while keeping his ears open for any other pursuing Savul that might have heard the gunshot.

"Anyway, that's enough for now. We'll have to confirm every chance we get if they'll become aggravated from any closer than that, but for now, half a mile is close but not on our doorstep."

"...Half a mile is detectable by some Den Mother variants," Gypsy pointed out, monotone voice coming through in full force.

A voice, though.

"Yeah, that's true, though rarely," he chuckled out, keeping their jog up for a few more seconds before speaking again. "You know... being nervous or anxious about all of this," he started, motioning around at the forest, "isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, you also know what you're doing. We know what we're doing. Luck doesn't even play a part in it; statistically, you should know the odds of our situation devolving into some unavoidable death because of rare Savul variants. It's low, extremely so. Though it may seem like things can go wrong at any time, and sometimes the dice will get rolled and they will... Maybe even as I'm saying this we'll get ambushed by a couple Savul Stalkers and boom, we're done," he said, punctuating the words with a clap of the gauntlets. "But more often than not, that's not the case. Things won't always go bad just because."

Another minute passed with no response, though he hadn't really expected one on this topic. The AI was extremely choosey with her words when she wanted to be, after all.

Ten more minutes passed and soon, their light jog had taken them back to the Hutch, the only safe place on this massive unknown planet. Kellin had felt eyes, a silent pressure, on his back the entire time they'd been out and even moreso now as he rested their gauntlet on the pedestal, but Gypsy hadn't reported anything and nothing odd had happened, so he resisted the urge to turn around randomly to check as he did every time a stick had fallen under the pretense of confirming with Gypsy it was just another stick. The pedestal disappeared into the ground and he moved toward the slowly revealed entrance down. They walked through it, down the stairs, and it closed in behind them, not a single notable thing happening the entire time, other than what he'd intentionally caused himself and the strange feeling of being watched he'd been constantly at war with ever since arriving on this planet.

Anxiety, he'd labeled it.

A deep breath escaped his lips as he shook his limbs lightly and let a content smile out, decompressing a bit. Experience or not, scouting was never something Kellin enjoyed. Anything could happen at any time and honestly, if it weren't for their slightly enhanced senses from the [Equip], he might not have even gone, as blind as he felt in his body right now.

Or so he liked to think, but he knew he would have. They had tons of experience doing this exact thing and staying hidden away in a Life Hutch was ironically a surefire route to death. Also, even with the circumstances being what they were, sometimes maybe even a bit of luck was all one needed for nothing to go wrong on a foray like this. Most of the time though it was simply because everything had already gone wrong at some point or another and now you knew how to avoid a repeat.

Either way, Kellin [Unequipped] the suit and laid down for a moment, not a scratch on either of them for the small victory trip out.

"We're going to head out again after a short break. We'll do the same first circle except for that initial uphill portion [Unequipped], since its complicated. We'll stay close in case we need to [Equip] though, then [Equip] and try to provoke another reaction from the Den," he said aloud.

Two normal beeps came the very delayed response, causing him to smile. His partner was nervous, but not unwilling it seemed. As long as he could keep convincing Gypsy that things were going to be alright, maybe he'd eventually be comforted enough to believe it himself.

She had it worse, after all.