Of course, this benefit during leveling is not the only advantage that adventurers can hope for inside a dungeon. Mana regeneration is increased, allowing for more practice with spells. Monsters are plentiful, allowing for easy experience gain. Additionally, these monsters are more likely to award Evolution Points due to the high Wild Mana concentration. Of course, there is also the primary motivator, hidden treasures. Whether ancient weapons, lost spells, or secret techniques dungeons often protect powerful tools even if they were not created by the Alpha Testers. Some researchers hypothesize the dungeons collect or create these as bait, though that would require an admission that some overarching intelligence controls them. A terrifying, if awe inspiring, idea. Others are of the opinion that these are simply the treasures of defeated adventurers long passed, horded and protected by some instinct of the dungeon denizens. - History of a New Age, pg 31 (cont.)

Some part of Elijah had hoped his first night had been a fluke. Some special occurrence that had resulted in a night of terror, desperately hoping nothing would discover him hidden in his tree. Unfortunately, the following nights quickly dissuaded him of the notion. Each evening, right before the very last little bit of light disappeared from the sky, those pained cries would fill the forest. In the end though, for good or ill, Elijah had slowly gotten used to this new daily ritual. After the third night he had simply hit a point where he didn’t have the energy to continue being scared.

The nights had begun to fall into a routine. He would find his hiding place for the evening, usually a crook in a tree, and lay out his sleeping bag. He had avoided sleeping actually inside the thing after that first night, in case he needed to be up and moving quickly. Instead, his last evolution points had been spent to buy a blanket to wrap around himself. Spending the points had hurt, but the increased sense of safety was worth it. After getting his sleeping space ready, he would make sure his sword was within easy reach should he need to defend himself (or cut himself free) and then tie himself down to avoid rolling or being knocked out of the tree. Finally, after double checking his work, he would settle in and wait for the nightly cries of soul wrenching agony.

Once those were done he would spend a short while making sure nothing seemed too close or to be approaching him, then he would try to get a little bit of sleep. His sleep was universally short, constantly interrupted by the smallest noise in his vicinity, but better to be a little tired then to be eaten.

Like his nights, his days had slowly fallen into a regular rhythm. He would wake up with the sun and walk as far as he could, keeping an eye out for rabbits or fowl as he went. Usually he would find one within a few hours, then use his Blood Roil Aura to quickly kill it. He would then cook it so he had food throughout the day. At least that had been his norm, a pattern to help ground him and to make it thought the day. Lately though, something had changed with the surrounding forest.

While originally he would have said that the forest was experiencing late spring, now he would say the forest was well into the summer. Cherries, plums, and various other summer fruits had begun showing up in the trees, providing a quick and easy supplement to his diet and removing his need to hunt as often or stop to cook his kills so early in the day. It was strange to walk for a day and visibly see the fruit ripening as he walked, but this was a different world and there were more dangerous aspects of this forest to keep him from worrying about such a benevolent display of magic. At least for now. If the trend continued he would need to make plans to deal with winter in the coming days. If winter only lasted a few days as well though, that shouldn’t be too bad.

Thanks to this abundance of food, he would usually save whatever meat he caught during the day for dinner. He had learned his lesson from the first night though; he would cook early in the evening and after he was finished any remains would be burned along with the offal. Following dinner, he would put as much distance between himself and his cook site as possible. The effect of these precautions had steadily proven themselves to him as he hadn’t had a repeat experience involving the apparent start of all-out war by hungry creatures. At least nothing that had occurred close enough for him to hear it.

Instead he would hear occasional, smaller fights throughout the night. From the sounds produced they were quick, brutal affairs. The first sign of such an incident would usually be a scream of – well he wanted to call it pain, but it really seemed more like rage - as one of the creatures was struck by a hidden assailant, only to be followed by slowly weakening grunts and mewls. He hardly ever heard any evidence of a creature escaping, and only once did he hear something that sounded like an actual fight and not a predator blindsiding their prey.

That incident had been much more similar to his first night. It had started when a deep, loud roar with the guttural, rolling quality of large bears had broken the silence of the night. Whatever it was, the creature announced its challenge with such volume that it could only be gigantic. It put to shame the lion roars he vaguely remembered from long ago zoo visits, leaving him feeling small and insignificant. The responding wolfish howls had been less overwhelming, but their sheer number flooded the surrounding. The end result of the chorus of cries was a sense that the pack was coming from everywhere, leaving no escape.

This time things hadn’t gone so well for the large creature as it’s bellows had slowly gone from powerful, angry calls to little more than grunts. Meanwhile the pack had gotten more excited as the fight went on and their victory manifested. By the end the number of howling voices were noticeably fewer in number, but their opponent was totally silent. Their victory announced by various, lesser growls as the creatures fought between each other over individual parts of their new meal. More serious than he would have expected, but far from the outright hatred that he was used to hearing in these things’ voices.

When it was over and everything had gone quiet, Elijah had finally been able to settle down and try to sleep for the night. It had been a distasteful affair that stuck with him as a vaguely bitter flavor. These creatures seemed to have almost no sense of self-preservation, caring only about their next meal. The fight had also provided another example of something Elijah had slowly come to notice. After the initial scream of agony that took place at the beginning of the night, he never heard a single sound of discomfort from these things.

The first night could have been explained by his fear and surprise, combined with the sheer number of combatants taking part. The sounds of pain could have been drowned out by all the other fighting. The various sneak attacks he had heard could have been due to adrenaline or the prey simply being taken down too quickly to fight back or feel pain.

This fight had been a slow battle of attrition, lasting at least half an hour, and not once had he heard any evidence of suffering in any of the creatures’ calls. Even the losing beast’s grunts towards the end had seemed more like the creature had been physically unable to get the air needed for its earlier roars rather than some byproduct of pain. It was a concerning thought, but that lack of any sense of pain would fit with their similar lack of survival instincts and willingness to throw themselves into any fight for even the possibility of food.

The creatures themselves were still mostly a mystery. He had only seen the bones at the cook-site and a brief glimpse of some shadowed creature passing through the bushes below his tree during one particularly tense night. While it had been large, larger than the skeleton he had found, it didn’t approach the size required to leave pawprints such as those created by the victorious creature of that first night. From what he had glimpsed of this new creature, it had been very front heavy. Large knots of muscles upon its forelimbs, continuing on to cover its front shoulders, and causing a bulk that was off putting when compared with its relatively lithe rear half. The overall affect had reminded him of weight lifters who skipped leg day, a rather unbalanced look that left him expecting the beast to topple over any minute. Despite this, the imbalance of the creature’s musculature didn’t seem to affect the creature’s ability to quickly skulk out of sight. Or the amount of terror it was capable of instilling with the clearly predatory intent in conveyed. He could have sworn he caught the moonlight glinting off its fangs as it left, though that was likely his imagination.

#

It had been a week and he had yet to come face to face with any of the various creatures that skulked the forest throughout the night. Despite this, he had pressed on hoping to find the edge of this apparent death trap. Unfortunately, this particular evening he had been unable to find a good place to hide off the ground. He had, however, found a tree with hole in the base just big enough for him to slip through. Inside, the trunk had been hollowed out and, as far as he could tell, had only the one entrance. He didn’t like the idea of having no escape route, but it was the best he had found and he didn’t have that long before he needed to settle in for the night.

Working quickly, he found a branch thick with leaves and prepared to cut it from the tree. In preparation, he sliced his thumb on his short sword and held the cut over the blade. As blood gushed from his finger, he couldn’t help but recall his initial worry when such a tiny pin prick resulted in such a vast amount of ruby liquid escaping his body. Thankfully, it had quickly become apparent that the blood he “bled” was not equivalent to the blood he lost. Despite easily losing a gallon or two of the stuff, he showed no signs of anemia and could only assume that the extra blood was created by his mana to fuel the spell.

Using his will and magic to guide the blood into place, the result was a bright red ribbon of blood wrapping around the edge of his short sword. Through earlier experimentation he had found that by doing this, his Blood Blade spell could be layered over his short sword to drastically increase the weapons sharpness. By doing this, he found he could easily slice through the tough wood of branches even half as thick as his wrist without apparent effort. The ease with which the sword cut through the foliage helped to reassure him and gave him hope that if worse came to worst, he would be able to cut his way through the trunk of the tree using the combination. If he was unable to hide from or ward off whatever was attacking him, at least this gave him a plan for escape.

Collecting the branch, he placed it next to the entrance and crawled inside. Once within the surprisingly large trunk, he dragged the branch over the entrance and tied it down to a few of the surrounding roots, hopefully camouflaging the entrance well enough to make it through the night unnoticed. Then he set up his blanket and sleeping bag so he was leaning against the wall opposite the entrance and prepared for the night to begin.

From there, the evening was business as usual. The screams came, he kept watch, nothing seemed to be close by or investigating his hiding place, and he settled in for some restless sleep. This wasn’t even the first time he had been forced to sleep on ground level. His second night here, he had had to spend the night hiding in a hollow between a pair of boulders. Much like now, he had disguised the entrance and done his best with what he had. The night had been more stressful than the previous one, especially with such recent memories of the streamside slaughter, but nothing had found him and he had made it through unscathed.

Hopefully that would be the case tonight too. No reason to think that wouldn’t be the case at least. His last thoughts before drifting off to his first round of fitful sleep were “I wonder what Jason is up to?”