"...So do you think it'll work?" Alexx asked softly.

"Maybe? But I wouldn't bet on it," Zed replied.

"You know I can hear you?!" Alan shouted, his head snapping around so quickly he nearly smacked himself in the face with his ponytail. He had just put the finishing touches on his canoe and was dragging it towards the river. "If you're going to gossip can you at least help me?!"

Snickering, the two walked over to help.

Alexx and Zed had been making their way back to their shelters when they noticed Alan working on his canoe. It was a fairly large vessel, about 10 feet long, and made from the trunk of a maple tree. But what really surprised the two was how well-made it looked. Normally anything made by Alan looked like it fell apart and was being held together with random straps and ropes. This canoe, while clearly rough around the edges, still managed to look like a well-crafted boat.

Alexx and Zed walked to the front and back ends of the canoe, getting a firm grip before lifting.

"Hold on, how were you having trouble with this?" Zed asked, surprised by how light the boat felt. It couldn't be more than 70 pounds, which may be heavy for the average person but shouldn't be a problem for most of the players anymore.

"I can lift it, but you try walking around with something as bulky as a canoe and tell me how that goes."

"Sure," Alexx said, adjusting his grip. "Let me just-"

"I DIDN'T MEAN LITERALLY!" Alan said in a panic. "The last thing I need is either of you dropping it or accidentally breaking it with your crazy Strength stats!"

Alexx felt like he had more motor control than that, but he decided not to argue. If nothing else it was true that he could probably snap this canoe like it was made of paper mache.

After another minute of navigating the winding walkways of the village, the three made it to the river, right around the bridge. Alexx and Zed rested the boat in the shallow water as Alan tied a length of rope to a hitching point on the bow and tied the other end to an exposed beam on the bridge.

"Is that safe?" Alexx asked.

"Yeah, don't worry," Alan said, giving the bridge a hard smack. "She'll hold up just fine. Now then..." he walked over to the canoe. "Here we go."

Alan sat down in the canoe and pulled a large stick out of his inventory. He started pushing against the ground, inching forward slowly before Zed got impatient and gave the boat a hard shove.

"Careful!" Alan shouted at them, giving Zed a rather unimposing death glare, but his expression slowly shifted to one of shock and excitement as he felt the boat bobbing along in the river. He looked throughout the boat. "No leaks, no cracks...I-I think I got it..." He smiled. "It works!"

"Okay, not bad."

Alexx and Zed turned to see Soze walking up behind them.

Zed shrugged. "So what if it works, aren't we faster than this thing would be anyway?"

"Maybe you are, but not everyone is," Alan said. "And this is easier on the feet anyway."

"We'll definitely need some time to figure out how useful this actually is, but at the very least having boats won't be a negative," Soze said. "By the way, I heard that this was your third attempt. What went wrong with the other two?"

"I wanted to make them out of Birch instead of Maple since we have so much more of it, but we don't have any Birch logs thick enough to carve out a canoe." Alan sighed. "I tried everything I could think of to fill the cracks and hold it together, but every time I thought I had it figured out it would break or leak or sink."

Soze nodded. He knew that indigenous American tribes would use Birch trees for canoes, but he didn't have any idea how they did it. "Don't be afraid to keep trying with the Birch, you'll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, this one will be helpful for reaching out to the players down the river."

"Again, wouldn't just be faster to walk?" Zed asked, and Alexx nodded along.

"Maybe, but I'm also talking about potentially trading it to them," Soze said. "Assuming they haven't already figured out how to make boats they're more likely to want this since they live so close to open water."

"That's true, we can travel along the river but we can't exactly walk on water." Alexx paused. "Although I feel like some of us could probably swim pretty damn fast."

"Okay now I almost want to race against this damn thing," Zed said.

Alan was chuckling at the thought of Zed trying to out-swim a boat but stopped when a look of concern came over his face. "Do you guys think there are sea monsters out in the deep water?"

The other three's eyes widened.

"That...is a distinct possibility," Zed said slowly. He started to grin. "Sounds like fun."

"If there are I don't think they'll be too troublesome," Soze said. "If those players have a settlement near the water then at the very least any sea creatures are either not that violent or aren't worried about anything on land."

"Going out on boats might agitate them though," Zed said. "They might see it as invading their territory."

"True..." Soze shook his head. "There's no point in speculating on this right now. We can ask them about it when we reach out to them."

"So we're really going to have another expedition?" Zed asked. "Even while raiding the Iron Ants?"

"I'm going to ask around, see if anyone is interested. It should be less dangerous than raiding, but there is still a lot of space between us and them."

"Meaning plenty of space for a new and deadly monster to be hiding."

"I wouldn't be too worried about it," Zed said.

Soze glanced at him. "Another hunch?"

"I don't base everything on my hunches you know." Zed shook his head. "I mean that there are no natural barriers between us and the end of the valley. It would be too easy for a strong breed of monsters to move north."

"What makes you so sure? Almost all of that territory is unmapped and unexplored."

Zed paused and shrugged. "I don't remember seeing anything when we were up in the mountains."

"Yeah," Alexx agreed. "It just looked like open trees to me."

"Okay then. Regardless, we should be careful. Some animals don't seem to care about that and will just keep to themselves, like the Demon Bears."

Zed nodded. "Fair point."

"Why is that?" Alexx asked. "They could easily push all the way up to the river if they wanted. Why stay on the other side of the valley?"

Soze was about to say something but stopped himself. In the real world, animal territories were determined by any number of factors, including external threats, population size, food availability, and more. Entire books have been written on trying to understand and predict such large-scale behavior. Of course, he had studied the topic when he was in college and felt he could give a rough answer, but now that Alexx had pointed it out to him he couldn't think of a reason for the Demon Bears to behave like this.

"Maybe they don't think it's worth it?" Zed said.

"What do you mean?" Soze asked. "Why wouldn't they want a whole valley full of easy prey?"

Zed shrugged. "Probably the same reason we all stopped hunting in the western woods. Experience Points."

"Do...do you think they hunt for EXP too?" Alexx asked.

"We know they have Levels, so why not?"

"That might be true..." Soze said, thinking out loud. "We do know that they're more aggressive than real animals, so while they probably can't use menus they must have figured out that killing more can make them stronger."

"But what about herbivores?" Alan asked as he climbed out of his canoe. "I know they can fight, but I don't think they hunt right?"

"Maybe they have a different system?" Alexx suggested.

"I...don't think this is a question we can answer without actually seeing the game's code," Zed said hesitantly.

"Yeah..." Alexx yawned. He started walking away. "I'm going to go crash..."

Soze nodded, his own eyes starting to shut involuntarily. "It's definitely late, and tomorrow is going to be busy. Organizing the equipment and loot, prepping for the next raid, reaching out to the other players..."

"Meh...Sounds boring," Zed said as he started walking away. After a moment he turned his gaze north, staring up at the gigantic mountain that loomed at the top of the valley. "Though I guess there are some things to get excited about..."

~~~~~

Meanwhile, miles away...

A lone Iron Ant Warrior with damaged claws made its way across the empty expanses of the nest's territory. The players had already seen how the ants cut down trees, but as this ant moved further north the landscape became more and more barren.

Sparse trees gave way to fields of stumps, which were later replaced by pits as the roots of fallen trees were dug up and eaten by the Drones and Guardians. Further on the ground became a flat plain of short grass as the passage of time filled the holes of older trees and the movement of the ants stopped the grass from growing too tall.

Soon the lone Warrior reached a place where not even grass grew, where the density of Drones matched that of the Mountain Goat's canyon during a siege. Here the ground never saw sunlight for longer than a single second. Not a single blade of grass remained as the constant movement trampled all life out of the dirt. This ceaseless tide of Drones moved in and out of a massive cave at the base of the mountain. The entryway to the nest was almost 50 feet tall and nearly twice as wide. With the exception of Guardians, Iron Ants of every subspecies poured out of the cave, with Warriors and Drones on the ground and Soldiers taking to the air.

The lone Warrior followed the tide of ants into the mountain. They began to disperse as the cave went deeper, branching off to different sections of the nest for their various duties. The Warrior went deeper, seeking out one of the many food-storing rooms so that it could rest and recover its strength.

The room it found was filled with ants, some eating while others were distributing food around the room. Much of it was regurgitated slop, but there were a few solid items, such as chunks of a decaying Mountain Goat corpse or a pile of logs.

The Warrior looked down and mourned the loss of its claws, the iron bent and distorted from its battle with the player in the canyon. Moving over to one of the logs in the corner, it tried to swing its claws normally, but the balance was wrong, and it was thrown off target, the edge turning mid-strike and landing uselessly against the wood. The Warrior knew that it could not fight like this.

The Warrior had fought a few of those creatures before, the players. It had thought that they were weak. Their weapons of wood and stone broke easily, their flesh soft against its iron claws. But this player was strong and its unarmed striked delivered more power than the Warrior thought was possible for such a small creature.

A thought occurred to the Warrior. Facing the log again, it struck out and smashed the bent iron against the wood. There was a dull thud as the iron struck the softer substance, a decently sized chunk had been carved out of the wood. The Warrior repeated the action, faster this time and landed several strikes against the log in the time it would normally take it to slash only once. It was still weaker than normal slashing, but these strikes could be used with its damaged claws.

Furthermore, these attacks reminded the Warrior of that abnormally strong player.

Feeling a change within itself, the Warrior was about to strike the wood some more, when it suddenly felt an overwhelming presence from behind.

The Warrior turned around.

She was looming over it.