For my first mid-tier monster hunt, I will start easy. Well as easy a mid tier can be for me. A serpent should be alright but annoying but it’s the best I can come up with.

Tom was busy helping the stranglers of our age group, acting as their couch so they can survive the trial. Instead, Beep was sent to me. The stickbug man was practically jumping for joy when he saw me. It was only been a day since we last meet…

I go to replace another one of my daggers. I go straight to where the daggers are in the discarded section. The fact that I am getting to know this part of the armoury so well is concerning. Beep has a short bow and quiver of arrows slug on his back. Like me, he wore the leather patchwork abominations of the tailoring apprentices.

Venturing through the woods, I grew curious of Beep’s ability with a bow, so I told him to shoot an apple on a nearby tree. He would give me a gaze of bafflement and asked if that was all he needed to do. While I know he does not mean to be cocky, it still infuriated me. I instead asked him to hit a far off black rabbit for us to eat. He pulled out an arrow and loosed it from his bows, finding its mark. Going towards it expecting it to be dead, a screech I can only describe as similar to nails on a chalkboard.

The surrounding environment grew dark as a fog rolled in. Though the mist, a shadow of what looked to be a large rabbit head. From the mist, a long arm that looked like it belonged to a gorilla and covered in black fur slammed into me. The arm does not feel likefur though. It felt rough and hard. The arm remained and kept me down even as I struggled. It wants to play with its prey, does it huh? This thing is as much an asshole as that green fucking gremlin a few months ago.

Beep shot an arrow at it but it either did not care or did not even notice it as it made no reaction to the projectile burrowing in its arm. Panicking, he did the only thing he could think of, climb the arm and stab it with his backup knife. Weirdly, he seemed very adept at it. He kept stabbing and stabbing until he cut off the fucking arm. What the fuck is Beep’s sheer tenacity?

While he celebrated his feat, I looked for the head but it was nowhere to be found. Must have disappeared into the fog for its next attack. However, the behavior of it is strange. If it wanted to, it could crush us with overwhelming strength considering its size and if it wanted to you with us, it would have done something already, especially since we severed its arm. Something was off.

I dragged Beep away from the arm, which he looked at while drooling. This dumbass. Although I was terrified, we wandered through the mysterious surroundings, a light shone in the distance. I tried to hold him back from it wanting to be cautious, but he slipped past me and ran at the light. Not so far into his escape from me, out of nowhere, a fist emerges from the darkness and drives into Beep. Being Beep, he grabbed onto the fist. Screaming in pain, he rode the fist as it retracted and extended. What the fuck is going on. The back and forth movement shrunk less and less until it stopped where Beep once was.

I slowly put one foot in foot of the other approaching Beep. I whispered, “Hey Beep, you alright?” He would reply, “It hurt very much. But swinging around was fun.”

He would drop back to the ground but tripped and face planted from vertigo. I extended my shakes arm to feel it while ready to book it if it moved I felt the stationary arm and I realized it felt like wood. Thinking for a moment, I came to a conclusion, I came to the truth, we were trapped in an illusion. All these were traps, not the monster.

Tuned out, Beep would shake me to attention and pointed to the light which was retreating away from us. “Shiny is going away. I want to eat it,” he would frantically say.

Wait a minute. Is that light what I think it is?