“Huff, huff,” Akira kept running forward breathing hard. He kept looking behind his shoulder every few minutes to check and see if he was still being followed, causing him to almost trip over his feet.

Why was he running?

Because he had gone slightly insane and lost his mind last night. He had felt invincible, the power he had while he was transformed along with the refreshing giddy feeling when he had leveled up after a few hrs of hunting. The power had all gone to his head causing him to be so overconfident that he attacked anything he came across.

While in that state of insanity he managed to find a large boar just as tall as him.

He had attacked it without stopping for even a second, to check and see what level it was.

The Boar angry at being disturbed, headbutted Akira right in his gut sending him flying backward several meters crashing through two trees before stopping after slamming into a third tree.

The pain he received from the attack and crashing through the trees had woken him up from his short-lived insanity. His hp bar had lost over a third of its health with that one attack. His leather chest armor had been torn and shredded into a state that no amount of patching and sewing would be able to fix it. You really could not call it armor anymore.

He had checked to see its level only to find that it was level 15 with a skull icon next to its name.

[💀 Enraged Boar lvl 15] a message window popped up and helpfully explained that the skull meant the [Enraged Boar] was a field boss.

The [Enraged Boar] was far too strong for him with his current strength even while he was transformed. He had to retreat or face being headbutted and gored to death! He was not running away, it was just a tactical retreat.

Akira had lost track of how many hours had passed since then, as he was to busy running trying to escape the damn [Enraged Boar]. Currently, he was in his human form and was extremely tired and hungry. But he was forcing himself to keep running or the head start he had gained would be lost.

Reaching into his bag he took out a piece of bread and began to stuff it into his mouth eating it while on the move.

All through the night and most of the day every time he thought he had lost the [Enraged Boar] and slowed down, minutes later in the distance he could hear the sound of the boar running after him grunting in anger.

Earlier in the day he had run into a small forest and climbed up a tree to try and escape the boar. It was a success and allowed him to regain his breath and rest for a short time.

When he climbed back down and started his escape from the woods, he was struck with rotten luck. He ran right into the [Enraged Boar] he was trying to run away from.

Thus the game of cat and mouse continued until he ended up in the current situation of running for his life.

He was currently far enough ahead of the [Enraged Boar] that he was searching for a suitable tree to climb up and escape. Most of the trees around him were too small and would break if he tried to climb them.

He spotted a large tree a few hundred feet ahead of him and urged his tired body towards the tree. As he neared it he took a running jump and grabbed onto one of the trees lower branches. After pulling himself up he began climbing up the trunk with the help of the branches until he was nearly at the top and began waiting.

Five minutes later the [Enraged Boar] could be heard running towards the large tree he had climbed. It stopped under the tree and began grunting and sniffing the ground where Akira had jumped from.

The [Enraged Boar] spent several minutes searching the area for more signs of Akira. With a loud grunt, it finally ran off when it was unable to find anything.

Akira let out a huge sigh of relief releasing his breath he had been holding. With the dumb [Enraged Boar] gone a great weight was now off his shoulders.

He decided to wait for a longer period this time to regain his mana and stamina that were empty, and also let the boar move farther away.

Akira's dry throat and empty stomach slowly returning to normal as he stuffed his face with the meat he had cooked the night before while gulping down some water nearly choking.

After finishing eating he grabbed for a thick vine hanging from a branch above him, to help support himself so he could move around and get into a better position to rest.

He checked the strength of the vine by tugging on it only for the long vine fall into his lap.

“Hissssssss!”

“Crap!” shouted Akira as he began wrestling with what he thought had been a vine. It was, in fact, a large green tree snake.

He avoided the bite attacks of the snake, while also trying to keep his balance and stop the snake from wrapping its body around him, which would lead to him being suffocated and his bones broken.

The fight with the snake would not have been a challenge for him if he were not so tired. After a few minutes of struggling with the snake, he was able to grab a hold of most of its body, he quickly threw it over the side of the tree out, this high up it would die from the fall.

As he was tossing the snake it launched a last-ditch attack and successfully bit his arm.

Grabbing onto the neck of the snake he pried its jaws off his arm. While in his rage Akira ripped the head off the tree snakes body defeating it.

You have been poisoned.

The poison from the snake's fangs began to take effect causing him to see twos and threes of everything. All in different ever-changing colors, making him feel as if he was going insane.

Although he had lesser poison resistance it did not stop all of the effects.

The poison along with his tiredness caused him to faint, slouching down on the tree branch sitting with his back to the tree trunk.

***

Night time.

Smoke floated up the tree waking Akira, his throat raw and drying from breathing it in.

'Why's there so much smoke?' thought Akira, still groggy from the unrestful sleep he had due to the small amount of poison from the tree snake.

“Wait... smoke?... Fire! Damn is the tree on fire?” said Akira. His head quickly cleared up due to the potential crisis of sitting in a burning tree.

He quickly looked down at the bottom of the tree to find it was not on fire.

The light of a fire along with the smoke was coming from a place not too far away from the tree.

'Ah, thank goodness the tree's not on fire.'

Now that he was fully awake he could hear the humming of someone at the base of the tree.

'Ah most likely a hunter, better get down and introduce myself and warn him about the boar.' thought Akira.

He did a few stretches before slowly descending the tree. Nearing the bottom of the tree his foot slipped on a branch, causing him to lose his balance and fall.

“Ufff...Owww,” said Akira as he landed on his back.

“Huh, would you look at that, humans falling from the sky. Never seen that before,” said a male voice right next to Akira.

Akira slowly sat up holding his back, quickly checking to see if anything was broken.

Nope, nothing was broken. His body was still sore from the poison, the endless running, and now also from falling.

Akira looked over at the person who had spoken to him. It was a short male Dwarf.

“Sorry to drop in on you like this. I was hiding in this tree earlier and fell asleep. Ah! I almost forgot you should be careful there is a large boar that was chasing me all day. It might still be around here,” warned Akira.

“That won't be a problem,” said the dwarf as he turned a large piece of meat over the fire. Making sure the other side was evenly cooked.

“I'm serious he's a dangerous monster,” said Akira.

“It's already dead,” said the dwarf, pointing at the meat cooking over the fire.

“How did you kill it? It nearly killed me with one of its attacks, two more an I would have died,” asked Akira amazed just then noticing the smell of roasting pork.

“Three hits? You must be stronger than you look. I didn't kill it. I hired some adventures to hunt for some monsters in order to get some decent leather. They've already gone back to the town with the leather and other materials hours ago,” said the dwarf.

“Ah! So I'm close to the dwarf villages,” said Akira.

“Oh, what brings you to the mountain city's?” asked the dwarf staring at Akira intently, judging whether or not he was going to cause trouble.

“I'm supposed to meet up with some companions, but I forgot the city's name,” said Akira sheepishly.

“I'll be traveling back to my hometown soon. If you would like we could travel together and check the city's for your companions as we pass, I can also make sure you don't cause any problems,” said the dwarf. The last part was said just loud enough for Akira to hear.

“Thank you that would be a great help if you would lead the way. Since we will be traveling together it would be best we know each other's name. My name is Akira, and your name is?” asked Akira.

“Delgar,” said the Dwarf before turning his attention back to the cooking meat, ignoring Akira and taking a large gulp of what smelled like ale from a waterskin.

“I'd offer you some of the meat but it has a bit of poison in it. Since you're human you would probably die,” said Delgar.

“Don't worry I'm able to eat the meat of monsters that only have lesser poison in it,” said Akira.

“Hmm, you're an interesting human, you can take a few good hits and you also have poison resistance. You must be one lucky guy,” said Delgar as he passed Akira a stick, with a portion of the greasy boar meat.

'I never said I was a human,' thought Akira, as he ate the spicy boar meat.

***

In a castle near the borders of Beorin and Freeopia, Brutus was reading the reports handed to him by his second in command.

“Still nothing? He couldn't have gotten that far. Even if his wounds have healed by now, the troops should be ahead of him. This is turning into a big waste of money. It's been over a month and not even a whiff of news pointing to where he could have gone,” shouted Brutus as he tore the paper up and threw the bits into the fire.

“The soldiers have gone through most of the villages in the surrounding area. I have also sent messengers out to the larger cities adding him to the wanted list with a sizable amount of gold as a reward for his capture. It is more than enough to find him he won't be able to escape. If you would like we can call the troops back,” said Alan.

“This is vexing, but I have other things to worry about now that the king has regained his senses, and is trying to repair the burnt bridges. To think that after all this time Rodger is actually getting engaged to a princess. Granted it's not the one promised but nonetheless once the king dies Rodger will be king!” said Brutus shouted with glee while slamming his fist on his desk.

“How is Rodger doing? With all this happening just after losing Akira who he viewed as a brother?” asked Alan.

“Forget about Akira. In his last letter, he wrote that he had arrived at the capital without any problems. The engagement party is set to be held in a few months. The invitations have been sent out giving all the nobles plenty of time to travel to the capital. I'll be leaving soon as well to head to the capital. The castle will be under your authority while I am gone, send out the orders for the soldiers to return,” ordered Brutus.

“As you command, it will be done,” said Alan bowing and exiting the room.

“Don't think you have gotten away from me Akira. When I find you, you'll be back in chains. This time for good,” said Brutus with a sinister smile.

***

Akira and Delgar slowly traveled making their way through the rough roads of the mountains, making sure to stop at each town and check for Grand and Yuki.

“Well, we have arrived at my town it's one of the farthest towns that allows other races to enter, so I doubt they would be waiting at the others cites. If they aren't here I guess you can call it bad luck that you missed them,” said Delgar.

Mustering the last bit of hope at finding them, Akira quickened his pace to reach the town's inn.

“Where you going?” asked Delgar from behind.

“Oh yeah, I don't know where the inn is. If you could lead the way,” said Akira as he slowed his steps back down and followed Delgar.

They soon reached a building that was built into the side of the mountain with a sign marking it as the [Forgotten Inn]. Akira went inside and asked around if Yuki and Grand were staying at the inn.

After giving their descriptions to the male dwarf behind the front desk. The inn owner thought for a moment before replying.

“No one with those descriptions is staying here. But I do think some weeks ago, people matching your description stayed here for a week or two. I guess you missed them,” said the dwarf.

“Did they say anything about where they were headed?” asked Akira.

“Not that I can remember, and if they did I don't think I would have remembered it anyway as it's not of any importance to me,” said the dwarf.

Akira sighed, he was back to square one. He left the inn meeting back up with Delgar who waiting for him outside.

“No luck huh. Well, don't dwell on it too much. I know a good tavern we can go to and get some food and have a good drink. You can worry about it later after you have a full belly and a night's rest,” said Delgar, after Seeing the dejected Akira.

Delgar gave Akira a few “gentle” pats on the back, which were strong enough to nearly knock Akira off his feet.

“Let's go drink!” shouted an energized Delgar, happy at the thought of drinking some of the tavern's ale.