Luckily, the scent of death I had smelled didn’t come from the farmstead I was approaching. When I reached the long driveway to the lit farm, the scent was still blown in my face by the wind, roughly coming from the direction I had been going in. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, not in the darkness with the various shrubs and trees interspersed between fields and the few buildings out here, but I was glad it didn’t come from my destination.

Walking down the driveway, I considered my options. Wait or go, try to enter their farm in the middle of the night, possibly trying to stay hidden as I did or wait until it was light out and openly move in before dawn. It was just as annoying a question as it had been when approaching the gym for the first time, with no correct answer. Trying to sneak in would mean I was safe and wouldn’t expose myself to danger, in case the people here were hostile. Sure, I was almost certainly higher level than them individually and easily capable of killing them all, but that was only if I moved during the night. Once daytime came around and the sun hit me my strength would drop to the point that nearly anyone could overpower me. On the other hand, sneaking in could easily be considered a hostile act and if I got caught, or chose to expose myself, things could get troublesome. Again, the Curse of the Sun meant that I couldn’t just leave.

Shaking my head, I decided to make a third option. Not sneaking in but also not openly approaching in the middle of the night, instead, I would approach about an hour before the sun crested the horizon, when the false light of dawn gave humans enough light to see but not enough to weaken me. In the meantime, I wanted to move around the area and find some shelter, just to make sure I had another option if I wasn’t welcomed.

Looking around, I realised I was a little out of my depth. In the darkness of the night, even my sight was limited, even if it was far superior to that of a human and getting better with each day. But differentiating whether a vague shape in the distance was a figment of my imagination, a building, or shrubbery was difficult, if not impossible. That was made even worse by the fact that, most likely, the buildings were concealed by shrubs or trees, shielding them from sight and noise from the road.

Given that I had no desire to run into whatever I was smelling from the road ahead, I turned back, moving towards a driveway I had passed some ten minutes ago. If there was a driveway, there would be something to drive to, or so I thought.

Following the muddy dirt-and-gravel road was no fun, the wet sludge clinging to my boots and trying to drag me down and drown me in the dirt. Silva seemed to enjoy the surrounding area quite a bit, padding off to sniff at various things and occasionally squatting to mark her territory as we went.

Finally, we reached a fence with a gate and I stopped, letting out a long sigh. Sure, the path had gone somewhere, only that somewhere wasn’t a place where I could take shelter. Not directly at least, there was a large, dark shape nearby, maybe some sort of shed or a trailer, but I couldn’t easily tell in the dark. Hanging on the gate, beneath the wrecked electric wire, was a sign, telling people that the horses were well cared for and didn’t need you to feed them, with some warning that feeding them the wrong stuff would make them sick.

As I was looking around, I noticed some weird sounds coming towards me but was unable to place the. Focusing in the direction I heard them from, I saw a rather ominous sight, a massive beast of a horse trotting towards me with its ears laid back and the tail flicking back and forth. I wasn’t sure how powerful the thing was, but just physically, it was intimidating. Standing at almost twice my height and likely fifteen times my weight, I wasn’t interested in a physical confrontation, especially not without additional information. Concentrating on the concealment rune, I pushed an Observe through, checking its level.

The result came back as level five, so not necessarily a threat, only that the thing seemed to have noticed my actions and came barrelling towards me with flying hooves, ignoring the gate and fence between us. Calling on my magic, I pulled out my Frozen Shuttle and sent it shooting towards the charging beast. Instead of trying to dodge, a red aura, familiar in hue but far, far weaker than what I remembered from Sigmir, surrounded the beast and it just kept going. The Frozen Shuttle managed to tear a deep, bloody wound into its side but instead of trying to flee, the aura around it simply turned up in intensity and it accelerated.

Silva let out a deep, threatening growl but with the sturdy fence between us, she couldn’t easily intercept it, so she simply readied herself. Just before the beast hit the fence, it managed to stop in a manoeuvre I wouldn’t have thought possible, turned on a dime and kicked out both its hindlegs, smashing into the fence and sending splintered wood towards us. But even worse than the splintered wood was a wave of pure force that travelled through the ground, strong enough to unbalance me and cause me to slip in the mud, almost making me fall.

Once I had my balance back, I realised that the horse had already fled, with Silva having turned back to me after running a few metres after it, unwilling to chase down the beast. Grumbling, I called back my Frozen Shuttle, annoyed at the mud that was no caking my legs but also fascinated. The beast clearly didn’t stand a chance and from the looks of it, it had been well aware of that. Its charge had likely been a feint, followed by a distraction that gave it time to flee. Why it hadn’t fled in the first place, I wasn’t sure but it might have tried to buy time for others, horses were herd animals after all.

After taking a few more minutes to make sure no further attacks were incoming, Silva and I moved towards the shed I had noticed before. If it wasn’t too flimsy, it might serve as an emergency shelter but I didn’t want to rely on it without checking.

As t turned out, it used to be a construction trailer that was now set on a simple brick foundation. Breaking in was rather trivial, there was just a simple padlock keeping the door shut, so I placed a runic formation to conjure some Ice before it, carefully filling the lock in order to make a key. It didn’t quite work out, my fine control wasn’t what it used to be on Mundus and instead of making a perfectly fitting key, my Ice broke the mechanism, forcing me to flex my Astral Power and fully break the lock.

Regardless of the method used, I got the door open and entered the trailer, looking around in the storage space, a little amused at the state of it all. The small windows near the ceiling were covered in dust and grime, making me wonder if any sun would make it through. There were a few saddles, some bridles and assorted leather equipment, in addition to multiple boxes that smelled of horse. Looking into them revealed a wide variety of brushes and other tools, non of which I could place. Not that it mattered, from what I could tell, the place would work. There was even a sack of carrots and a few apples if I actually got hungry. They didn’t look perfectly fresh but that was true for a lot of the food out there. Unless it was non-perishable, things were starting to spoil. Luckily, the relatively cold weather delayed things a bit, but that wouldn’t work for long, especially given that spring should soon arrive.

Confident that the trailer would work as an emergency shelter if I wasn’t welcomed at the farm, I made my way back there. Sun wouldn’t rise for another two hours, so in about an hour, the sky would be bright enough that humans could see me approach.

Hiding in the shrubs near their driveway, I settled down a little, trying to focus my hearing on the farm. It didn’t really work, there simply weren’t any loud noises, but that was a good sign in my eyes. Loud noises could mean combat and from the moving lights I occasionally could see, there were people moving around.

Finally, I decided there was enough light out and started to make my approach, staying on the driveway and even dispelling the concealment I normally kept up. Hopefully, this would go just as smoothly as the introduction to the group at the gym.