The Wyldwalkers and Sasha moved horizontally through the titanwoods, selecting routes that were marked by large braided ropes. As they went, Niko recognized markings upon the ropes, a numbering of some kind, and as Niko realized they were counting upwards the further away they got from Riizen, along with a letter designation for the particular route, he understood that they were demarcating their distance out from the city. Niko didn’t know the specific unit of measurement they were using, but if he had to guess, it was in kilometers. Perhaps they were able to better estimate distances thanks to the forest itself, being that essence could apparently travel through them like a biological computer of sorts.

They weren’t taking any kind of transportation this time, because their destination wasn’t in areas that the Moxxa were necessarily safe in. Whatever could hunt them, Niko didn’t know, but apparently it was a specific predator that was often a major issue for Riizen to deal with.

And that predator was exactly what they were going to be hunting, albeit with a certain caveat.

“So, these Thimurge… We’re hunting the younger ones?” Niko asked Sasha as she guided them forwards.

“Indeed. The adults aren’t actually that much of a danger, but they don’t roam from their territories. They’re generally very sedentary predators and can hide themselves from Moxxa senses.” Sasha explained, then added, “Their spawn are active predators from the moment they’re born, and they travel in loose groups. They’re not exactly pack hunters, though.”

“Are these monsters or beasts?” Ronald asked, curious to see if they were something that anyone could communicate with regularly.

“Firmly in the monsters category,” Sasha answered, “They attack anything not them on sight, unless it’s clear they can’t win. Even then, some might still try. We regularly have patrols formed from the various families clear them out, otherwise they can become an infestation.”

“Has anyone tried to exterminate them?” Mithel asked the question that Niko had just been wondering about himself.

“Yes, but they’re resilient. In their larval forms, they dig into the bark of the trees or hide on the leaves up there. Thimurge exist in much greater numbers in the lower canopies, supposedly, but they come up and spawn here.” Sasha shrugged then, “Eventually the adults appear to lose interest in hunting here, due to how the only things they can actually beat up tend to be inexperienced beasts and Moxxa. Still, they get strong enough here and then go down below.”

“So, in other words, the lower canopies are probably filled with much stronger creatures?” Skye asked, casting a wary glance off the side of the branch they were running along, unable to see through the dense foliage, some of which almost looked like mulched earth for how much fallen leaves and debris had fallen and been caught between the boughs.

“Probably,” Sasha shrugged, “That’s an entire other problem though. Today we’re just trimming the Thimurge population. They’re somewhere between spiders and ticks, so if you see a small one, be sure to kill them. Removing them is exceedingly unpleasant.”

Niko made a face at that, doing his best not to imagine what that might look like.

They moved quickly through the titanwoods, though, and Niko relished in the feeling of being on a hunt once more. Moss and vines grew abound, and while it wasn’t the same as the Evergreen, it wasn’t so alien that he couldn’t use his experience at all.

They crossed over several more branches until finally they left the marked route. Given that they could all run much faster than an ordinary person, Riizen was actually a respectable distance away. With his Aether Sight, Niko began to inspect their surroundings, peering through the tides of essence that moved through the forest gently.

Then paused as he noticed that the essence movement coming from below seemed somehow slower, thicker. Like molasses boiling up in a pot. Oddly, the essence began moving more quickly as it mingled with the more active flows at the boundary, but Niko noticed how he might have missed it before.

It was subtle, and given that it was in the layer beneath, he’d paid it no real mind other than a cursory inspection before.

‘Weird, not sure if that’s a problem or not, though.’ Niko frowned, but pulled his attention away from it. The others probably wouldn’t know much about this, given that none of them could actually see essence like he could.

That said, he did spot something much more interesting in the distance. “Hey, do Thimurge look like triangular spider-things? Two segmented bodies?”

Sasha nodded, “They do. Do you see some?”

Niko pointed off to their right side, “Just past that tree. They’re not really concealing their essence, and there are several of them.” He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus in through layers of essence inbetween them, “I think they’re eating something.”

Sasha chuffed in annoyance at that, “How many?”

“Kind of hard to tell, they’re practically on top of eachother… But, I’d guess at least four? Tier two, I think.” Niko glanced over to Sasha then, “Doable?”

She nodded, looking around at the rest of the group, “Should be fine. On that note, I have a few suggestions; these monsters are dumb, they charge at their targets and don’t bother doing much dodging. They rely on their exoskeletons to get them close up where they can stab with their limbs or bite with their mandibles. They don’t have any poison to speak of, and their heads don’t have their eyes. Those are located on their abdomens on top. Their blindspots are directly in front of their face, and directly beneath it.”

The Wyldwalkers took in the information, before Ronald dictated their formation after a brief deliberation. Thimurge were a known monster, tier ones having reinforced bodies, tier twos doubling down on that and gaining the beginnings of a type of vegetation manipulation through their patterns. Nothing dramatic, though, and so their strategy would be fairly simple.

Their frontline would stop any direct approach, the midliner would work on catching any attempts to flank the group, while their backline would focus on containing and destroying the threat.

With that plan in mind, Ronald was up front, Sasha and Niko in the middle, and Dachna, Mithel, and Skye in the back. With a flare of essence, each of their respective patterns came alive, Ronald’s glaive seeming to shine with an inner, white light. Mithel held a pair of potions in her hands, both sparkling with the promise of alchemical potential, before handing them off to Dachna. She loaded a second round, giving one to Skye, who then tied it with a bit of string to the head of an arrow, she would be using her bow until enemies closed in.

Sasha and Niko stood side by side, but even so Niko could only barely make out the sabrecat as her stealth pattern came alive. It had clearly been improved upon, because before he could at least see her with his Aether Sight fairly well, but now even that was obscured, almost like she was pulling ambient essence over herself like a curtain. It now also had a more subtle ability that led his attention, and hence his perception, to slip right over her.

“That’s a neat trick, when’d that happen?” Niko whispered to her as they moved to the trunk of the tree and then around to the other branches from the knotted, gnarled grooves in the thick bark.

“Recently. I had a very fortunate insight into how my concealment seemed to work, and could be improved, thanks to your description of how it looked to you.” She inclined her head in thanks.

Niko nodded at that, remembering the topic as it had come up the day before. He hadn’t really spoken of it with the intent of helping, he had just been curious about how it worked for her, since he was looking for ways to reinforce his own stealth abilities if possible. Considering how difficult it was to make any alterations to one's patterns outside of the advancement into higher tiers, Niko expected that Sasha was intimately familiar with the ins and outs of her stealth pattern. He didn’t blame her, considering it seemed to be her favorite by far.

He was nowhere near that level of familiarity with his own stealth pattern, but, with luck and effort, he hoped to be able to approach the same quality hers had. Niko feared that he might have to use his advancement into the next tier, to make any meaningful changes, though, considering how much he’d put into his Wyldstrider pattern.

Drawing himself back to the present, Niko and the others came around to the base of the branch that held their quarry. Sprouts of smaller branches, untempered growth in the truly wild regions of the titanwood, obstructed some of their view ahead, but not enough to block the sight of the feeding group of Thimurge.

A corpse of something twice the size of Niko was splayed across the branch, with five oddly geometric, moss and plant covered creatures gnashing their mandibled maws into its flesh. They were messy eaters, and as half of the meal had vanished down their gullets, they began not so subtly moving in on areas their companions were eating. Snapping fangs and high pitched growling was the response to that. In just the few short seconds that the group had watched them, the Thimurge seemed like they were going to erupt into a fight among themselves at any moment.

Ronald gestured wordlessly forward, essence building within him as he prepared to create a barrier. Niko took in a deep breath, focusing on his lungs and his Call pattern, while the three Wyldwalkers behind him each wound up for their own attacks.

Then, in short order, they began their attack, with Skye and Niko holding back their own strikes for just a second as Mithel and Dachna pitched flasks filled with orange liquid. They looked almost like they were going to soar over the group of Thimurge, but Mithel pulsed her connection to the flasks, and the liquid explosively expanded.

At the same moment, Skye let loose her arrow, sending it straight into the center of the feeding Thimurge - right into their meal - with the teal colored flask she’d tied on cracking and exploding outwards. The Thimurge didn’t get the chance to react as the teal fluid transformed, blasting frost and ice across their chitinous exteriors.

And as the orange dust made contact with the ice, Niko braced, the two substances reacting violently with one another and exploding in a flash and localized thunderclap.

Niko let loose his Carrion Call, further debilitating them with a bombardment of disorienting noise and force. Though, Niko wasn’t certain that his intervention was at all necessary to discombobulate the five of the Thimurge.

The Thimurege, still cold but no longer covered in ice, now sported thoroughly damaged carapaces. Whatever the purpose of the plants that had been upon them was, there was little left of it. They staggered under the force of their injuries, drawn to the group through Niko’s bellow.

For a second or so they made no meaningful moves, and Skye hit one of them with three arrows in rapid succession, her Wyldform pattern active and enhancing her physicality. That one she hit stumbled back, each arrow deeply embedded into its abdomen, but Niko could tell it wasn’t yet dead.

The other four scrambled forwards, two of which knocked into each other with their damaged limbs, further slowing them.

‘Are we just bullying these things at this point?’ Niko thought to himself, but remained alert. He knew better than most that an injured opponent could be even more dangerous than one that wasn’t.

Ronald struck out with his glaive, energy projecting ahead of it in a form identical to that of the weapon. It cut into the Thimurge’s head and through into the abdomen with the combined force of the stab and its own charge, where the monster immediately collapsed to the ground. Essence blossomed outwards from the Thimurge in Niko’s sight, and confirmed its demise. Niko felt outwards, latching onto the stray essence that didn’t flow into his companions, greedily feeding it down into his essence body.

Then, a reddish energy flowed across the gap in the air from the body, drawn down into the brand on the outer shell of his soul. Strength surged within Niko at that, as well as a rising battle lust, but he tempered it, even as the Wyldwalkers around him started in surprise.

Still, they kept to their training, and didn’t allow that to distract them for long. Dachna threw out several daggers in rapid succession, hitting the joints of the next Thimurge. It fell, and Dachna switched targets to the next, still mobile opponent.

Before Niko could even consider attacking with a weaponized Call attack, a flurry of arrows dug into the last still mobile monster, stopping the entire group in their tracks. Mithel doubled down on that, throwing a pair of flasks that Niko recognized as the sticky slime that she had made extensive use of previously.

The three remaining Thimurge that had charged were entangled, and the one that Skye had first hit with arrows didn’t get the chance to even make it as far as its kin had. More daggers and arrows quickly took it out of commission, its shattered carapace doing nothing to keep them from defeating it.

Instead of using any more projectiles, Ronald simply charged his lancing strike three more times, ending the immobile Thimurge without any risk to the party.

And each of them sent a trickle of reddish energy into Niko, where it settled deep into his body, stoking his drive for violence, but failing as he suppressed it and pushed it into the brand. It faded from his direct awareness, but he felt as though the brand itself might have grown just a bit stronger from it.

‘Hopefully that’s not going to be a problem…’ Niko groused, as the others looked to him inquisitively.

He shrugged, “It’s complicated. Basically, it’s a trick I stole from the goblins.”

“You mean that crazy berserker rage thing that they got from killing things?” Dachna arched his eyebrow.

“Yup, that’s the one.” Niko nodded.

Dachna blinked and looked back to the bodies, before studying the Phorus again, “So, is that as terrifyingly strong as I think it is?”

Ronald grunted in amusement, “In any case, good work, everyone. Lets collect anything salvageable, and while we’re at it, does anyone else have any new and undisclosed abilities they’d like to bring up for future plans?”

Niko cringed at that, before giving an innocent trill and trotting over to the bodies. Skye snorted in amusement at that, “Nothing concrete.”

“Probably?” Mithel shrugged, “It’s still in testing phases.”

Ronald, speechless, snapped his gaze over to Sasha and Dachna, the former vanishing once more, leaving Dachna stammering, “Uhhhh… yeah, I, uh, might have a few things.”

With a groan that Niko felt from where he was, Ronald continued, “Right, then we’re going to check the bodies for alchemical uses and have a strategy meeting.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mithel’s eyes practically shined as she studied the bodies in a way that Niko would call unsettling if anyone else was doing it, “These things are so weird. I’ll bet they have at least some kind of use!”