I wake up with a hangover. Not a head-splitting hangover, but a hangover nonetheless.

Because of It, I just want to stay in bed, but I know I can't do that. I have a thing to meet up with- An Adventuring thing which is pretty cool if I say so myself.

Yesterday I joined up with The Adventuring Guild to start my adventure in this world. For some reason, I was lucky enough to find a group immediately.

Because of me being new to the whole adventuring business, they decided it would be best if we did a simple quest. Kill a portion of the new wolf tribe. It was fun, and I learned a lot about the group formation and that sort of stuff.

I was invited to celebrate my first quest, but I politely declined it, and just went back to the Inn.

And where in that was there something which would give me a simple headache?

It looks like I had tried out something called “The Dwarven Shots”. In the middle of the night, I found out that it was impossible to sleep due to the noise downstairs. The Inn had just gotten their new batch of alcohol, and in that batch was some of the Dwarven shots. As it was impossible to sleep, and I had just earned some money, I decided to test out these shots.

Let's just say one word that describes the shots. Strength

I could not even taste it as it was in my mouth, but when it fell down my throat, I felt the fire of a thousand suns.

It was unbearable for about two seconds. Then it disappeared. I was a little drunk from one shot, and I will have things to do tomorrow, so I decided to just go to bed again.

For some reason, I slept like a rock that night. Weird.

Anyways, I need to get up, or I'm going to be late!

I try to stand up… and hit my head on the ceiling.

Tip of the day: don't try to stand up in a bed when there is a low ceiling.

I get out of bed, take some clothes on, and head down for breakfast.

Like yesterday, the place is not full in any way possible. There are about two tables between every person sitting here, so not that crowded.

I sit at the bar and make a gesture to the bartender.

He walks over to me and asks “What do you want?”.

I ask for the breakfast, I got yesterday, and he just nods while walking into the back room.

After a couple minutes, he comes out with a bowl of the oatmeal. I gulp it down in 2 minutes, leave a little tip to the bartender, and head upstairs to my room.

When I got inside my room and had locked the door, I opened the book on primal magic, while looking for a particular spell.

Yesterday I had seen a spell called entangling vines. It would entangle the target's feet in vines, making it impossible for them to move, without first having them break the vines. Because we were killing weaker creatures in larger groups, it would not make sense to have or use, that spell, because it would just be a waste of mana using a single-target spell.

Today was different. Instead of focusing on weaker creatures in larger groups, we were focusing on stronger creatures in, at maximum, pairs. Because of the spell being single-target, it would make sense to have and use, it today.

After a minute, or two, I found the spell.

Command: Entangling Vines

Description: Entangles a target's feet in vines, making it impossible for them to move until they have broken free. Efficiency, and cost, of the spell, depends on the area. Most powerful, and cheaper, in forest areas. Weakest, and most expensive, in desert areas.

Warning: DON'T USE IN DESERT AREAS.

I memorized the spell, closed the book, and put it down on the table.

While I was walking towards the door to leave, I hear the sound of the book falling on the ground. I turn around, and look at the page the book opened up to.

Resurrection

It was on one of the last 20 pages of the book, so it should have been the most complicated spells on them all. There has been just one problem with that theory. I could understand the words. The sentences had meaning!

I looked through the different kind of spells, and I found a problem with them. Almost all of them had too high mana cost for me to cast them, without dying of exhaustion.

There were only one of the spells I could cast, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to ever use it.

Command: Emergency resurrection.

Description: This spell has a few restrictions. It is based on some parts of necromancy, so the resurrected person will have some similarities to a person resurrected purely by necromancy. They will look normal, and still be themselves. It's just that they can't support themselves. They don't have any life energy, because they already died, so they are not generating life energy. They automatically use your mana as their life energy, and its a constant drain to your mana reserves, but don't worry. If you can cast this spell, your mana regeneration speed should be fast enough.

Warning: This spell is frowned upon in most parts of the world. If people find out about the person resurrected by this spell, they will most likely be killed immediately.

While I wanted to not even look at this spell, I knew I had to take it. For me, this was the only way for me to resurrect somebody in an emergency, and I would not be able to forgive myself if I didn't use it.

I memorized the spell and went out of the Inn.

Time for my second quest, I thought.

I was a bit late when I showed up. The rest of the group had been waiting for 15 minutes and were discussing just going without me when I showed up.

“Sorry for being late”, I said.

“Don't worry about”, Eros said, with a smile on his face. “Let's hurry, just so we don't have to be out here until midnight.”

We began walking out of the town at a brisk walking pace. I went over to Eros, hoping for some small talk along the way.

“So. What kind of creatures are we exterminating today?”, I asked. I was only told that we would go face stronger monsters, with maybe a boss at the end, today, so I was quite excited about what we were going to do.

“Ever heard of a creature called Aranea?”, Eros asked, with a smile on his face.

I shake my head, making Eros go into explaining mode.

“An Aranea has the ability to change its shape into that of a humanoid, or a spider-humanoid hybrid. It has the poison and web-spinning ability of a spider, as well as the ability to cast spells like a mage. As this is a mating season for them right now, they will breed a lot. Like, up to 150 babies per couple. Because of that, we will have to exterminate a good chunk of them, or we will get overrun with them in a month or two. That's why the town is so good money to us for exterminating them”, Eros explained, having a self-approving smile on his face.

“How much will we get per person today?”, I asked, with the smile of greed almost showing on my face.

“At a minimum, we should get 1 gold each, and at maximum, we can get 6 gold each, but that is only if we defeat the boss.”, Eros said, with a smile of greed showing on his face too.

Greed is one of the ultimate motivators in this world, it seems, I thought to myself.

Instead of yesterday where we only had to walk for 20 minutes, today we had to walk for almost 45 minutes. It was really boring, and I could not keep watch for dangers constantly, because it just was so boring.

That was until we met them. Two Aranea´s. A couple probably.

When hearing about an Aranea, you would probably think: Aranea? They don't so bad.

Whoever thought that would be wrong. Before we even began fighting I was almost shocked at how real they looked. Like I had forgotten all this was real. These creatures appeared to be giant humpbacked spiders with some subtle differences. They also had a pair of short arms ending in many-jointed fingers and double-jointed thumbs, which extended from below their mandibles. It was not a pretty sight to look at, to be honest.

After a couple of seconds the two Aranea´s screech simultaneously, and the fight began.

Like yesterday, Eros tried to take one out in the start of the fight but missed though to the Aranea having seen it coming. They quite agile creatures.

They leaped towards Lozen and Egil, trying to get them knocked out, so they could kill with their acid. Lozen and Egil would not let that happen though. They hold them off for a couple seconds until Alex quickly took one down with his knives.

The other Aranea seeing this became furious. Arena was quite the loyal creatures, and if their partner died, so would they. The Aranea lost all forms of defense and began attacking viciously. Lozen and Egil were beginning to lose ground, and Alex could not get close to it.

That's where I came in. When it was about to leap, I cast Entangling vines, making it loss balance. While it was trying to get out of the vines, Eros hit it in the head, using an arrow.

“Nice shot”, I said. And it was a nice shot. The arrow had landed in the eye in just the right angle to go through the brain.

“Thanks”, Eros said, while walking over to grab the arrow.

We did this many more times and found out the basics of their fighting style. They would take advantage of their webs and acid, immobilizing or distracting the most powerful opponents first, and then attacking the weakest.

It was all play and games until we finally came close to the hearth of the problem. The boss, as you could call it, was basically an oversized Aranea, but if it was just that, there would not be a hefty reward for killing it. The oversized Aranea had been seen to be able to use magic. People were not sure what talent it had with magic, but they were certain that it had something to do with its natural abilities like webs, acid, and movement.

Before we even came close to fighting this boss monster, we had a little talk about if we even should do it.

“Are you sure we should do this? I mean, Jack is still new to this, and hasn't got the mana reserves to even fight a normal Aranea in a 1 versus 1 fight.”, Alex said, with a look showing he was a little uncomfortable with this situation.

“Nonsense. Jack is the support for a reason. He is in the back with Eros, so that in an emergency he wouldn't be a liability.”, Lozen said while having a smile on her face.

“Yeah. As long as Eros is with Jack, we won't have anyone in danger, and, I mean, 6 gold each for killing a single boss is not an opportunity to say no to”, Egil said, while having the same smile as Lozen.

“Then it's settled. We will fight the boss”, Eros said, with a smile.

We continued down the trail, while slowly turning more and more serious.

After a couple of minutes, we saw the cave opening where the boss resided. We looked at each other and nodded. We slowly walked into the cave while in group formation.

I would have expected the cave too dark, but it wasn't dark at all. Things in the cave were glowing. The moss on the walls was, in particular, glowing a slightly lighter blue. It was kinda beautiful.

While we were walking down the cave there was something we all noticed. The smell.

The smell of blood. The smell of death.

Everybody became focused, turning their heads at every sound, or if there was something out of the ordinary. Everybody was becoming slightly panicked. We were hearing sounds constantly. Some were from our footsteps, and some were not. We did not know which.

After 10 minutes of just walking in a slightly panicked state something different came up.

A turn. It was not the fact that there was a turn that scared us. It was how it looked. All the other turns in this cave looked natural, but this one didn't. This one was a clean 90 degrees.

This one was not natural. This was artificial.

We didn't want to walk back, so we had to move forward. We turned the corner and found something we hadn't expected. We found the source of the smell. The smell of blood and death.

“What the fuck”, I heard Alex whisper. He was right to think that.

The source of the smell wasn't a bunch of dead animals that the boss had killed.

It was the boss.

The boss was dead. It didn't look like the typical dead corpse either. It was gray like its very life was sucked out of it.

“Do any of you know how this makes sense?”, I said, without really thinking.

Everyone stared at me before Eros answered in a quiet voice.

“It seems someone has killed our target. This doesn't make sense, as we are the only ones who have accepted the quest. This means that it must be a monster. But, what kind of monster can kill the current apex predator?”, he said.

The only thing that can kill an apex predator is another stronger apex predator.

“If it is a monster that killed, how do we know it isn't still here?”, asked Lozen, with an almost scared face.

Eros stared into the empty air for a few seconds before answering.

“We don't. We should get out of here immediately”, he said, with a face almost identical to Lozen.

We heard a low growl.

Shit.

We all looked over at where the growl came from, but we couldn't see anything.

Nothing but a pair of eyes.

White glowing eyes.

“GROUP FORMATION”, Eros shouted, knocking an arrow on his bow.

And with that, the battle began.

Let me take that back. It wasn't a battle, but a slaughter.

We started the battle, with the first move.

Eros fired an arrow, with his bow, at it, but it just went through it.

Meanwhile, the creature came out in the light. If it even counts as a creature.

It was about 4 meters tall and 2,5 meters wide. It wasn't made out of anything physical. Except for its eyes and mouth, it was completely see through. It was made out of something that looked like fog contained in a shape. The shape of a bear.

I'm just going to call it the bear

The bear charged the frontiers and struck them with its paw. They tried to defend, but the paw went through anything but their flesh. Lozen and Egil out of the picture

While I wanted to run to their rescue, I knew it would be stupid. I couldn't defend them when it was immune to physical attacks.

But what about magical attacks?

I fired a lesser fireball at it. With it came one good news and two bad news.

The good news was that it hit it.

The bad news was that it almost didn't do any damage, and it was now heading right for us.

When it came running at us I froze up. I told my body to move, but it didn't respond. I was literally frozen with fear. The bear puts up one of its paws while running towards me, ready to attack when it came near.

It swang the paw, and it was going to hit me right in the chest.

But it didn't. Eros had not frozen in fear and had saved me at the last second.

The bear stopped abruptly and looked over to our dead groupmates. They were slowly withering. Becoming gray. It was as if their very souls were being taken from their bodies.

The bear became in some sort of trance and moved slowly towards them.

“We need to go now!”, Eros half-shouted at me, his face serious.

I nod and we begin running out of there. While we wanted to take their bodies with us, for a burial, we knew we could not without being killed ourselves.

We ran out of the cave and ran as long as we could until Eros abruptly stopped.

“What's wrong?”, I ask, with a very worried face.

“It seems that I got hit”, he said, in a calm voice.

“What?! Shit! Are you okay!”, I ask him, in a hurried voice.

“Yes, I'm fine. Just need to lay down for a bit”, he said, in a lower voice before.

Suddenly we heard a loud roar. It came from the direction of the cave. I froze again while staring at the direction of the cave.

I just stared at the cave for a minute or two before I came out of the trance.

I looked over at Eros to see how he was doing.

I widen my eyes at what I saw. He had died while I was in the trance of fear, and he was slowly turning gray.

Shit! No! I won't let this happen!

I put my hands on his chest, begin channeling my magic.

I begin channeling the magic of my most expensive spell.

The emergency resurrection.

All of my other spells were instantaneous, but this one took time.

I felt as my mana reserves dwindled fast, and the surge of tiredness came over me.

I fought to stay conscious, so I could finish the spell.

The spell stopped taking any of my mana. I had so little I had trouble even feeling it.

I no longer fight the tiredness, and it came over me.

But not before seeing his eyes open.