The tension was pretty tense, around 20 people had shown up and were now awkwardly standing around while the superiors talked freely. It seemed everyone was about as new to this as Derb, which made him feel a bit better. Eventually one of the superiors, an old man with embellished leather armor and a slight limp to his walk, came up to them and spoke. He started slowly, as if just the act of speaking too brashly would send him to an early grave. “Alright, now that the chuff is here we can begin our conquest, how many of you have taken out a forest core before?” The old man said with a narrowed gaze, obviously unimpressed with any of us.

No one raised their hand, apparently this was embarrassing to some of the older folk mingling amongst them. Some were even clenching their hands as if it was unacceptable. He didn’t even know what the hell a forest core was. Not like he would ask, that’d be a surefire way to get ridiculed. Luckily that didn’t matter, despite the man’s frail voice he sure liked talking. “I see. Not that it matters, as long as you follow my orders I’ll make sure that every one of you gets out alive.” He smiled after, but the way he worded his speech made it seem so threatening.

This got a response from everyone, whispers reverberating around the small room. Some of the younger ones even started looking nervous, looking around as if to make sure this was okay. The old man coughed, raising a hand up to stop the discourse. “Yes, yes. I know this might seem a bit dangerous. The reason for that is because it is.” He looked at the group below, a snarl appearing on his face. “But I know most of you from when you were children. My granddaughter is about to turn 11 today… I won’t let some rogue forest ruin the place she was brought up.”

He looked around, his eyes softening sometimes when he met a familiar face in the crowd. “I’m sure most of you have something worth fighting for in this town, something to protect. Follow me and I’ll make sure you get to come back to them.” Derb noticed the older men clench their fists even harder. He was wrong about it being a wound on their pride, their reasons were much nobler. He wondered how many people here thought they wouldn’t make it… would he? Those thoughts wouldn’t get him anywhere. He instead focused on the resolved and proud looks of the warriors next to him.

“The only thing keeping the forest from turning into something that can tear apart kingdoms is us. If we don’t stop it at its roots then we won’t have anything left to come back to.” The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. He could feel the heat of anger come from everyone in the room. “Fortunately, you have me, and a few other peacekeepers.” He pointed back to the other four who were standing behind him, neatly in line and with the same calm expression. “These are my students, i brought them along to teach them how to protect others.”

He smiled warmly, looking forward with great pride. “Not a single one has passed thirty in age and they’ve already reached the level of peacekeeper. They’ve done me proud to have gone this far.” He tapped his cane on the ground, making the four behind him kneel on command. “They will help you on anything you want, make sure to ask them for anything regarding the mission that you don’t know. We’ll be talking about the mission now, so pay attention.” He said, as he took out a fist-sized cube, a dull brown color.

“This is a mana core. It’s something you can get from monsters stronger than many of you can handle. It shows the strength of the monster involved, how far ahead it was from the rest of the pack.” He placed it on the floor, walking towards a chest and pulling something out with both arms, struggling as he did so. With a final pull he lugged a 3 foot cube, colored a dark blue tint. He brang it back and dropped it next to the comparatively tiny monster core. “This is what we’ll be facing off against. Something the scholars love to call ‘dungeon cores.’ I’d spit in their face before I call a forest a dungeon, though.”

He straightened his back as he coughed, the strength he used carrying the cube taking the wind out of him. Derb noticed the anxiety on the peacekeeper student’s faces, it seemed they also seemed worried about his health. Everyone else seemed anxious too, for entirely different reasons. He could hear the whispers. “We can’t fight something like that... ” “Why weren’t we told about this...” Derb was also feeling scared, he thought he’d be facing something big but something at that level… The old man cleared his throat loudly and spoke, shutting down the crowd. “It’s not a monster we’ll be facing, you dolts. If a monster with a mana core like this existed, forget the town, not even the nation would be able to bring it down.”

He sat down on the cube, sighing as he rested his old body. “This thing we’ll be fighting is the forest itself. If it could fight, my family and I would have already been miles away. I can't however, instead choosing to pump out monsters far weaker than it to protect and spread its territory. Usually, we’d let it do so and then hunt the monsters down for profit, the only problem is the size of the dungeon core is big enough to overtake the town.” He patted the core he was sitting on. “About half the size of this.” The collective sigh of relief was loud enough to have the old man chuckle.

“Scared you, didn’t I? Don’t get too comfortable. The closer we get the more monsters we’ll have to deal with. At some point, we’ll be knee-deep in bodies, hopefully the monster’s as long as you follow my directions.” He got up, walking towards the exit, motioning them all to follow along. “We’ll go in four carts and get there in about two hours. Once we stop I want you all to get out and line up as fast as possible.” He walked towards a cart before turning back, pointing at Derb. “You’ll come with us, we have questions for you.” He walked towards the only cart without a cloth covering the top. His four students already sat down.

Derb knew he was probably going to just ask questions about what he saw in the forest but the way the four students looked at him made him feel like he wouldn’t live past today. He got in and sat down next to one, who was very blatantly showing contempt for him. It took a while before the old man could get on. He was helped up by his students and slowly took a seat, leaning on his cane the entire time to take the weight off his knees. By that point the other carts were already long prepared, waiting for the signal to move and only making Derb more impatient and nervous.

After everything was set and the convoy started moving the old man “Child, we heard that you saw a brute rank monster, a poison one at that.” He said, his eyes closed as if he was calmly enjoying a vacation instead of being sent off to fight. Derb shook his head, “No, I didn’t see it. I only saw the scene it left behind. It was able to pull apart hunter-level monsters like they were nothing.” The old man nodded, before taking out a journal and handing it over to him. “This is a journal based on the monsters we can expect to see in this excursion.

Derb flipped through the pages full of poison monsters, the ogre wasn’t part of them. “Why aren’t the ogres on here? There were six together the last time I saw them.” He handed the journal back to him, only to have one of the students answer his question. “Ogres are known for their strength, but are extremely weak fighting against anything poisonous. The forest has been creating them but they’ve been getting wiped out by everything else almost as soon as they’re born. You were lucky to have found a group before the poisonous creatures started inhabiting the forest.”

The student who explained everything suddenly took out a small, disgustingly goopy, purple vial, shining it in the light of the sun. “We’re lucky, poisonous creatures are much easier to take care of than stronger ones. Especially since we have antidotes. We’ll basically be fighting monsters on the level of goblins thanks to this medicine.” He tossed it towards Derb, who anxiously caught the weird vial, unwilling to let it break all over him. “We heard you have a freakish anti-poison body, so make sure to only take this if you actually feel like you’re about to pass out. We don’t have too many and we wanna keep these for the weaker ones.”

Derb opened the vial and took a whiff, instantly regretting it. His hair stood on end as his body was filled with nausea. By the time he came to he realized he was slumped over on his seat, a glob of drool going down his chin. Everyone inside the carriage was trying to suppress laughter, their teacher didn’t look so amused. “Uh, god. You expect me to drink that?” He realized he didn’t have the vial anymore, it was back in the hands of the one who gave it to him. Holding it an arm’s length away from himself.

“That’s why I said to only take it when you’re about to pass out, you’ll pass out either way.” He pugged in the vial and handed it back to him, no longer looking so serious. “How the hell did you beat things that large, by the way? You can’t even handle an antidote.” Derb took a bit snappily, shoving it into one of his belts. “It’s not like I had a choice. I really needed the money and I knew those things cost a lot in the-” He was interrupted by one of the students, a smaller, gawkier one with round, tired eyes.

“You did it for money!? We heard you were almost killed. Everyone said you were ambushed and had to claw your way through them. People said you looked like a crushed metal bucket.” Derb took off his helmet, wiping off the saliva on his jaw with his cloak. He made sure taking that antidote was only for worst-case scenario. “Well, it started off simply enough. I split them up and took care of the leftovers, but they were weirdly smart for giant monsters. If it wasn’t for my… if it weren’t for my quick thinking I think I'd have been crushed to death.”

He still remembered it, it was almost comedic when he remembered the ogre trying to steal the other’s club. The memory was ruined by the sound of tearing flesh and copious amounts of blood. “One thing led to another and I managed to get all the heads back to town.” He thought back to how easily he could have redone that situation. He could have gone for the sleeping one while the others weren’t looking, he could have taken one farther away and picked them off. The fact that he almost didn’t survive made him feel even stupider, he should think things through more! What was happening to him… he wasn't like this before, at least, before he came to this world.

He came out of his little crisis to realize everyone was looking away, an awkward tension filling the room. What happened while he zoned out? He got his answer when the old man put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You made it out, and that’s all that matters.” Derb reeled back a bit, he wasn’t sad about the fight… Well, not just that. He was feeling terrible about what he was becoming. He just hired a whole platoon of goblins on a whim for fuck’s sake. He remembered his teacher telling him recklessness came with the darkness attribute but he also told him the ritual attribute would cancel him out.

...He was training his ritual attribute, sort of. He remembered how patient he’d felt at the beginning of the trip, back when he actually spent time learning on rituals. Even then he felt out of control but it was nothing like now. He couldn’t worry about that now, though. Especially since the old man seemed to start looking worried. “Nah, I'm fine. I was just thinking about how much I missed home, I guess.” The old man nodded wisely, “I see, you must really miss your teacher. They used to call him the Lightbringer, did you know? How is he, by the way?”

Derb almost choked on his spit when he heard that. Suddenly being surrounded by six people he didn’t know seemed a lot more dangerous than before.