Part Thirty-three

Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT! This is a fucking disaster!

“Mraaagh!!”

I ducked under the outstretched arm of a Minotaur, dodged around two Goblins and jumped over a wolf. If it weren’t for the Sonic Boots, I never would’ve survived this. The increase to my evasive abilities really saved my ass.

Where the hell am I!? I’m so turned around that I’ve completely lost my bearings. It doesn’t help that this damn forest is nearly identical no matter where you go!

Nearly five minutes had passed since I had gotten separated from the others. Everyone had scrambled to escape before we were surrounded and monsters had rushed in in the confusion. Even as we fought back, we were pushed further and further away from each other. I had managed to stay with the others, at least until a Minotaur Soldier had charged towards me, forcing me to veer away from them.

After that, I’d gotten progressively further from them as we went, until I could no longer see them. All I could do was to focus on my own survival and hope they pulled through on their own. I’d already been forced to use Beast of the Nightmare again, meaning I was dangerously low on mana. I should have enough to escape in a pinch, but not enough for prolonged fighting.

With no allies and little mana, things seemed dire. Maybe even worse than the time I’d nearly been killed by the Orc General, but I wasn’t one to simply roll over and die. I’d promised myself that I would survive, no matter the odds.

Good, good. That cements my resolve. Now I just need an actual plan. There’s definitely too many monsters to fight head-on and I don’t have many options for thinning them out. Combustion Bombs are out of the question. Not only could they possibly burn down the forest, but they might even attract more monsters, which is the last thing I need.

No, what I need is something simple, but effective. A way to avoid fighting all together. Hm, I’ve got those Smoke Bombs, but not nearly enough to shake off all the monsters chasing me. I need to bolster their effects. It’s not enough to merely obscure their vision, I need them to completely lose track of me.

Now what could I do to do that? It's not like I have a Cloak of Invisibility just sitting in my ba-. Oh fuck, I DO! The Cloak of Shadows! How did I forget about it!?

To be fair, I hadn’t actually needed it in awhile. After Alicia had learned Stealth, she had given the Cloak back to me because it was too difficult to wear into battle, something I completely agreed with. She did occasionally request to sleep with it, as it was quite fluffy. But then it got hot and it was shuffled to the bottom of the bag.

Okay, which one did I put it in? It’s either in this D-Rank bag or in my C-Rank one, but I don’t know which. Haaah, these things could be a little more user friendly. No doubt this is the work of the System.

Accessing items stored in a Magic bag wasn’t simple. They didn’t have some convenient feature to magically show what items were stored inside, nor could you will something into your hand just by reaching into it. Nope, if you wanted something, you had to manually search for it. Though thankfully it wasn’t like everything was piled on top of each other. It was more like it was all on a table for your perusal. Not exactly convenient, but still better than the alternatives.

But anyway, because of the complexity of retrieving items, I carried five magic bags. I used two E-Rank bags for any consumable items I might need to use quickly, like Combustion Bombs or knives, and a D-Rank bag for whatever food I was carrying. The three of us had decided to carry our own rations, just in case we were separated for a long period of time.

The other D-Rank bag was for extra changes of armor, mostly Striker’s Equipment as I favored speed. And the last was obviously my C-Rank bag, which was what most of the extra equipment the party didn’t want went into.

Now, which bag is it in? Knowing me, I probably put it into the small one, seeing as the Cloak is mine, but maybe I didn’t. Yep, I can’t find it, so it must be in the bigger bag. Geez, this damn thing is far too deep. A thousand meters of space sounds good, up until you need to urgently find something inside it.

Remember, I was still being chased by monsters even as I searched through my bags. Though I should mention that I was using Skanda while doing so in order to give me time to think. It was definitely a useful Skill, if only it would rank-up faster.

I’ve gotta be close now. I think that was that beetle bike helmet. I showed that to Alicia as a joke and that was about the same time as when she gave the Cloak back. So it should be right around-. What the hell? Was that a vial? I don’t remember getting any vials and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have put them in the big bag.

“MRAAAAAAAGH!”

Another Minotaur came charging at me from the front, temporarily drawing my mind away from the mysterious vial. Considering that I was still being chased, I didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with something else.

Momentarily dropping my search for the Cloak, I dropped into a baseball slide between the Minotaur’s legs before it could react, all the while making sure to cut both Achilles tendons as I went by. It fell to its knees, only to get trampled by the parade of blood thirsty monsters chasing me.

I had to hurry and find that Cloak. I estimated that there were close to three hundred monsters chasing me and that number was only going up. If I was unlucky enough, a monster that could match my speed would show up.

Gotta find that Cloak. Ignore the stupid mystery vial and find the damn thing that can save your life! No, no, no, no! Where the hell is it!? Come on! Why the hell do I need to carry so many trash drops!? I shou-. There it is!

With the Cloak finally found, I could put my plan into action. I hurriedly put it on, before grabbing three of the Smoke Bombs I’d gotten and throwing them right in front of me. The resulting smoke cloud was thicker than pea soup and just as foul smelling, but as it was my only hope of survival, I plunged through it.

Damn! I can’t see a thing in here! Perfect. Now I just need to climb a tree and activate Stealth. I should have just enough mana for this. I hope.

Of course, I wasn’t going to rely solely on one Skill. I planned to climb as high up the tree as its branches could support. Thankfully, I was decently skilled at climbing trees thanks to Rina. She would always drag me out of the house to go outside. Never thought something like that could save my life. Guess I owe her yet again. Not that she’ll ever know about this one.

I climbed and climbed, moving from branch to branch as I went. Within a minute, I’d already risen above the smoke clouds. But that wasn’t enough, I needed to go further.

It’s a good thing this tree's branches are so thick. It easily supports my weight without even creaking. Actually, isn’t this tree bigger than a Redwood? What species is it? It just looks like a normal oak tree to me, but it’s so much bigger than any I’ve ever seen. Haaah, why am I thinking about it so hard? I’m in a Dungeon. Gotta stop trying to reason things out in here.

Upon reaching a sufficient height, I curled up in the space between two branches and activated Stealth. The smoke had spread out enough that even the monsters not inside it couldn’t see up to where I was hiding, so I at least had a moment to rest. And to check that damn vial.

Okay, okay. I can stay here for the time being and hopefully the monsters will give up on me or go somewhere else. In the meantime, I can recover my mana and stamina, because I’m certain I’ll get chased again at some point. So that leaves me with one last thing to do.

[Finnél’s POV]

“The pawns have almost finished Young Master. A few more minutes and we can return to the fort.”

“Good. I’d like to get out of here before we get embroiled in that rat's mess. Returning to the fort should be easy, so long as we leave quickly.”

A number of monster corpses littered the clearing with the cache. Each one had been killed by a single thrust to the vitals. And only Finnél’s weapon was bloody. One might think he was kind enough to protect the pawns under him, until you realized that he was trying to keep them from getting too strong. Each monster they killed would make them that much stronger and therefore that much harder to control.

“Master, we’ve discovered several items inside the crates.”

The pawn handed him the bag, then went back to work. Finnél had suspected that there might be something of worth inside the cache, so he’d made the pawns search through it. And low and behold, there was indeed something of value.

Hahahahaha. If those fools had thought to look through the first one, they wouldn’t be having such a difficult time of things. Oh well, not like I would’ve made it easy anyway. Though maybe I should make a little extra insurance. That rat has the luck of a hundred men. He might survive if I do nothing.

The howling of monsters had been echoing in the distance for roughly ten or fifteen minutes now. That meant the third and final team had been dispatched. No doubt they were experiencing a tiny slice of hell right about now. But….

Hmm, yes. I suppose I have no choice. I’ll send three of the pawns out. It won’t be any real loss even if they don’t return.