Part Eight

“Eight Goblins, three wolves and four crows.”

“Ten Goblins, two monkeys, three wolves and a crow.”

“Three wolves, thirteen Goblins, a monkey, two crows, and a Minotaur.”

“Wait, what!? Where the heck did that come from?”

“It was stuck in the basement of a house. I’m honestly surprised none of you heard it screaming once it saw me. Damn thing was loud.”

“Seriously? But, uh, we weren’t scoring Minotaurs, so….”

“Are you really trying to stiff me on points? Cause don’t think I won’t complain about it.”

“Heheh, she does have a point Michael. We only settled on values for Goblins, Claw Monkeys, wolves, and Murder Crows. Not Minotaurs.”

“Et tu brute? Grrr. Fine, but I’ll remember this.”

“Why the heck are they taking this so seriously? I know my brother's a competitive dumbass, but I thought the other two were more chill than this.”

“Ahahaha, let’s just hope they don’t somehow rope us into whatever this is.”

“Hey, could the peanut gallery shut up? Alright then. If Goblins are one point, wolves two, monkeys three, crows five and Minotaurs none, then I’ve got…. Thirty-two.”

“Damnit, twenty-seven. I knew I should’ve followed those Goblins”

“And I’ve got thirty-four. Which means I win! In your faces!”

“Wow. Today I learned that Alicia’s a sore winner. I kind of figured this would happen when we designated crows as five points. I’m surprised you didn’t hunt more of ‘em.”

“I tried, but I spent the majority of our time dealing with a particularly annoying group of Goblins.”

Haaah, I would’ve won if I hadn’t spent so much time dealing with that blasted Minotaur. Killing it was easy, but figuring out how to safely get in and out of that basement took way too much time. Now I’ve got a horn for no good reason.

For whatever reason, the forest between where we’d landed and the town we were currently in was chock-full of insect-type monsters. Getting past all of the nests without causing a swarm of monsters to attack us had been….difficult, to say the least. We’d had to stand and fight more than once to get through. The whole ordeal had been rather stressful, especially the bees.

Ugh, I just remembered those bees. Why were there so many of them? So many stingers.

Once we’d found a relatively safe place to shelter in for the night, Gwyn had proposed the little game we’d been playing. And while Kalia and Gwen had abstained from the game, Alicia and I had been all for it. And of course we already saw how that ended.

“Welp, since Gwyn lost, he’s on first watch tonight. Hehehe, ah, victory feels nice.”

“So, this is going to be a thing with you from now on, isn’t it?”

Haaaaah. Why is everyone I know so goddamn weird?

***

We spent a hour after that shoring up the defenses of the house we intended on staying in, then everyone set about doing whatever training they felt like doing until it got dark. Gwyn and Gwen had gone upstairs to talk about something, Kalia and Alicia were sitting at a table looking through their Grimoires, and I was once again working on Accuracy. I was close to figuring it out. A few more tweaks and I’d have it.

“This is really weird. Why does every branch work differently? Shouldn’t it be unified or something?”

“It’s not actually that confusing. This is one of those things that’s deceptively complex. Once you’ve actually got a handle on the basics it’s easier to understand. Though mastering it is a different problem.”

“Uh, okay? I’m still not sure about this.”

“You’re the one who wanted help. I’m just trying to explain it.”

“Yeah, but I only want to learn Elemental Magic. I don’t really think these other ones are right for me. And we don’t have Grimoires for them either.”

“Oh, you’re right. Sorry, I got ahead of myself again. Uh, okay. Then for now, you should probably focus on Fire or Wind Magic, and maybe Ice or Magma as a tertiary school. It would give you a lot of choices in battle.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. My Lightning spells weren’t effective at all against those insects. Heck, I was barely useful today.”

“Hey, don’t say that. It was just a bad match-up. I’m sure once you learn a few more spells, you’ll have no problems dealing with these kinds of enemies. Besides, even Michael struggled against those bees.”

“Don’t remind me. I can still see that one that grabbed onto my helmet. Ugly buggers.”

“We don’t need to do able to do everything by ourselves. We can have each others backs to compensate for those weaknesses. There’s plenty we don’t yet understand, and plenty were sure to find out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the us a year from now think we were just being silly right now.”

“So you’re just ignoring me? Really?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Michael. I’m pretty sure he’s already given me that speech at least once. Though I like it more coming from you.”

“Oh, so it’s just ignore Michael day. Okay, sure. I’m not bothered by this at all.”

“Did you hear something? It kind of sounds like there’s some kind of sad, lonely puppy nearby.”

“Now that’s just going too far. I am not a puppy. If anything, I’m a-. Wait, why am I going along with this?”

I decided to ignore the two of them in favor of continuing to focus on training. Getting sucked into their conversation wouldn’t do me any good right now, especially when that conversation went to weird places.

Hm, am I doing this right? I feel like my vision's improved ever so slightly, but I haven’t earned the Skill yet. I must be missing something. But what? Maybe I should use more mana? Hm, well, what’s the worst that could happen?

***

“Seriously, what the heck were you thinking!? You could’ve blown your eyes out!”

Apparently, that was the worst that could happen.

Over the last hour, I’d been slowly increasing the amount of mana I was focusing into my eyes, which eventually caused a splitting headache and some of my capillaries to burst. Thankfully Kalia was right there to fix me, so there was little chance of me losing my eyesight. Still, Kalia wasn’t very happy.

“Are you always doing reckless things like this? Do you just have no regard for your own life whatsoever? Or is it okay so long as someone's there to patch you up!?”

“K-Kalia, this really was an accident. Please calm down.”

Even though this wasn’t really recklessness on my part, Kalia was still going to be angry at me for awhile. Though maybe this was my own fault. I’d certainly done enough back in the Siege Dungeon to warrant this kind of reaction from her. Haaah, yep. This takes me back. Rina used to yell at me like this after I got into a fight.

“Wow, I never would’ve expected for her to react like that? Girl's got fire in her belly.”

“Yeah, Kalia always reacts like this when she feels that someone’s putting themselves in excessive danger. She’s a bit of a worrywart.”

“And Michael’s too reckless by far, so he definitely deserves this. Someone has to try to talk some sense into him.”

Why the hell is everyone picking on me today!? And when did those two get here!? Ugh, I’m sick of this already.

***

Something woke me up. Which wasn’t odd in and of itself, but what was odd was the fact that Survival Instinct was completely silent, despite the fact that I could feel bloodlust in the air, a malice so palpable, that it awoken me from a deep sleep. So why wasn’t the Skill that was supposed to protect me reacting?

Knowing I wasn’t going to be able to sleep like this, I slipped out of bed and made my way to the living room to see if anyone else had noticed.

“Michael? It’s not your turn to stand watch. Wait, is this about earlier? I’m not going to apologize for worrying abo-.”

“Shush. Don’t you feel that?”

“Feel, feel what? Michael, are you okay?”

This was bad. Whatever had woken me felt magical in nature, so if the most magically attuned person in our group wasn’t aware of it, it meant that this was a really bad situation. That, or I was imaging the whole thing.

No one else seems to have woken up, and Kalia doesn’t sense a thing, so maybe I am just imagining this. No, I trust my senses, a they’re telling me that there is something bad out there. I don’t know how bad, but it’s bad. My heart’s beating so hard I feel like it’ll explode, and my stomach’s twisted itself into knots. I can’t rest like this. I can’t calm down.

“Kalia, open the door. I’m going to check this out.”

“Wh-what!? Why do you want me to do that?”

“I just need to check something. It’ll only take a minute.” Or much longer.

Despite her clear discontent, Kalia still helped me move the couch we’d put in front of the door. She knew that I’d clearly felt something, even if she hadn’t. Still, she did make sure to cast [Bless] on me before I went outside.

“One last thing. If I don’t come back in five minutes, barricade the door and wake everyone up.”

“O-o-o-okay.”

Brushing past Kalia before she could say anything else, I went outside and immediately checked right around the house. Strangely, the malice I felt went down once I was outside. Whatever was here was here for me. Maybe.

Okay, just focus and look for whatever it is. Thankfully the moon is almost full, so there’s plenty of light for me to see. I just need to be careful.

I quickly scanned the houses beside and across from ours, but found nothing. At first.

“…!”

I felt my breath catch in my throat. Sitting atop the house across from ours was what could best be described as a shadow, a figure of compressed darkness. It felt alien, and more malicious than any monster I’d ever encountered before.

“…”

It’s, its observing me? What the heck is this thing? …..ohmygod, I can’t Analyze it! Or rather, I can, but it fails! Does that mean this thing is B-Rank!?

There was a very distinctive feeling for when Analyze failed, kinda like stabbing your toe. I’d only ever encountered one other potential B-Rank monster before, and that had been bad enough. We’d been a fair distance from it, and the monster in question had been preoccupied at the time. This thing was right in front of us.

I was tempted to run back inside, but I felt like it would pounce on me if I let my guard down for even a second. Can I kill it? Can I even wound it? Uhhh, I don’t like this. Not one bit.

Just as I thought this couldn’t get any weirder, the thing spoke. Though calling it speaking may be wrong. I felt more than heard its voice.

“Perhaps I was wrong? There’s no way the pretender would have let this one live if his influence had reached this far. Then I suppose there was no need to make an appearance. Still, best not to ruin a perfect opportunity when it presents itself.…………Know this fledgling child of the Dark. You travel a road lined not with thorns, but with an unending horde of teeth and claws. Do not mistake the embrace of the Dark for that of a friend's, for it shall tear you limb-from-limb if you do.”

I watched as the thing rose from its seat, and turned away from me. The malice that had filled the air was almost completely gone. It looked like the thing would leave without incident.

“One last word of warning. Do not approach the city you mortals call London. You are not yet ready for the war brewing there.”

With that last cryptically ominous message, the thing took to the air, rapidly fading into the distance. The pressure that had been exerted onto me lifted, and I fell to my knees then and there. I could hear Kalia opening the door and rushing out to me, but I couldn’t really focus on her at the moment. My mind was consumed with a single thought.

What the hell was that!?