Day 3
Darshan
"C'mon, boss! Yer can't expect to sleep n' the woods for two whole moons in a row now can ya?..." - ???
"Quit your yamring, Yrl. You seed to enjoy last night just fine." -
I gave her a cheeky wink, as I strolled smugly forward.
"Ai! Don't give that. The woods are just so unpleasant to sleep in, and I've had it with taking em' night shifts too." - Yrl
"Will you two keep it down? You'll make the monsters all the way from Elderwood co storming here." - ???
Looking back at the stocky elderly man carrying a massive two-hander on his back, who for so reason always gets really touchy about his age when asked, I grinned sheepishly. As being the oldest in the group, Hannard had always been the one to keep the group in check and serious when I was unable to.
(Sigh)
"Yeah, Hannard - my bad, my bad." -
"Besides, I already have it tough, having to deal with them small rabbit critters when you and Yrl (Cough) 'swap' shifts." - Hannard says, while ending the sentence with a slight chuckle.
Suddenly feeling rather embarrassed I refocussed my attention on finding the road back to the village again, attempting my best to ignore Hannard's ruckus laughter. But before I manage to do that another voice speaks up.
"If just that fat alpha rabbit wouldn't have had run away, we would've already been done with this quest last night." - ???
Giving a glance at our group's 4th mber I simply sighed.
"Yeah... Mother luck seems not to be on our side in this excursion. But Elias you are the fastest of the four of us, you should've probably have been paying attention the to alpha instead of playing with the smaller ones, and letting it just hop on away." -
Winching upon hearing my slightly off-handed remark Elias decided to wisely just shut up for now. But all of a sudden, I felt the pain of a strong hand slapping my ass, promptly followed by a Yrl hastily running past .
Turning around she called out.
"Oi, boss! The trail is over here." - Yrl
Rubbing my left ass cheek, with a painfilled expression, I annoyingly looked at Yrl, who just shot back a cheeky wink as a bit of payback from my previous comnt.
When saying that Yrl was physically strong, it could be a bit of an understatent. Due to her class being that of a close-range fighter she specialized in the strength attribute.
But I don't really mind that, rather due to her high strength and her daily routines of training, she had a fucking banger of a body. Toned abdon, with long legs and firm thighs that could bend a nickel if you threw it in there.
Tight and round perky breasts and slender face to match. And down all the way to the small of her back runs a long braided tuft of almond hair. Not to also ntion her being a complete wildcard during our 'nightti activities'.
Clearing my thoughts about the woman in front of before it arises anything else than appreciation in , I waved to the other two mbers of our party to co with.
Walking towards Yrl we all laid our eyes on the road at the sa ti, and collectively let out a series of sighs in pent up exhaustion. But before we all could step onto the road make our way back out of this rabbit infested forest, Elias suddenly perked up and gave us a hand sign that told us all of potential danger. It was essentially a command for 'Shut up, and keep quiet'.
Tensing up I stared at Elias's back as he silently scans the foliage. Elias was our scout, so he was in charge of information gathering and making sure we didn't stumble into any strong creatures beyond our capabilities. So when he notices sothing, it was vital we all followed his lead without question.
Adventurer groups that neglected their reconnaissance and more experienced mbers always ended up dead, sooner or later. A minute went by in muted silence while our hands were gripped tightly around the handles of our weapons.
Elias suddenly gave us a hand sign, signaling us to stay and that he would investigate. We all simply nodded in affirmation. Activating his stealth-based skills Elias beca very hard to focus on as if he's blending into the very forest itself.
Walking into the foliage he disappeared from our sight, and only about five minutes later he ca back with his stealth deactivated.
"Hmm, I heard so very weird buzzing, like that of an insect. At first, I ignored it, but then my danger sense kicked in, and it felt like sothing was watching . But it would appear that it had already escaped when I went searching for it." - Elias
I didn't know of any insect creature strong enough in the area to warrant a danger sense activation, so I simply put it in the back of my mind.
"Huh, how weird... Let's keep a guard up, for now. We're only about a 1-2 hour walk back to the village." -
And as such, we went begun our track back to our place of rest.
Micheal
Holy fucking shit! That was seriously way too close!
My god, I thought I was really to die right then and there.
I was so nervous that I had frozen in place and wondered if my tiny mosquito heart was even still beating...
5 minutes before
Slowly moving from tree to tree, I stalked the humans. While the party of people, that looked like adventurers, talked in between each other in an unknown language, I started quickly inspecting them, gathering any information I could.
Firstly I paid attention to their weapons and clothes that looked to be made mostly of rough leather and cloth. Other than that, it seed that only the big and elderly-looking man had a chainmail vest covering his large fra over a thick jet black tunic.
The one walking mostly in the front, a young man, was carrying a standard iron sword. While the big elderly man was carrying what looked to be a massive broad sword or a zweihander on his back.
For the athletic woman, she seed to only have a single dagger on her hip. But due to her hands being wrapped in thick layers cloth with sothing looking like tal beneath it, I had ample reason to believe that the dagger is only for reserve. Looking at her weaponized hands, it reminded of so of the poor rabbit corpses that looked like they had been blunted to death.
For the last one, it was a smaller and thinner young guy, who had a dagger on each side of his hips.
Done inspecting them, I began to use Appraisal on them.
-Appraisal!-
[Appraisal: Darshan]
Na: "Darshan"
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Rank: G
Level: 15
Health: 110/110
Stamina: 56/62
Mana: 0/0
[Attributes]
STR - 18
VIT - 15
AGI - 19
DEX - 17
INT - ???
CHR - 13
WILL - ???
MAG - ???
[Trait, Titles, and Skills].
Skills - ???
Traits - ???
Titles - ???
[Resistances]
Phy. Resistance - ???
Mag. Resistance - ???
n. Resistance - ???
[Class]
Main Class - Apprentice Swordsman / Tier - 1
Sub Class - None / Tier - None
[Appraisal: Yrl]
Na: "Yrl"
Race: Human
Sex: Female
Rank: G-
Level: 12
Health: 92/92
Stamina: 50/55
Mana: 0/0
[Attributes]
STR - 18
VIT - 12
AGI - 15
DEX - 15
INT - 12
CHR - 15
WILL - ???
MAG - ???
[Trait, Titles, and Skills].
Skills - ???
Traits - ???
Titles - ???
[Resistances]
Phy. Resistance - ???
Mag. Resistance - ???
n. Resistance - ???
[Class]
Main Class - Apprentice Brawler / Tier - 1
Sub Class - None / Tier - None
[Appraisal has reached LVL: 4]
[Appraisal: Hennard]
Na: "Hennard"
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Rank: G
Level: 15
Health: 145/150
Stamina: 55/80
Mana: 0/0
[Attributes]
STR - 20
VIT - 24
AGI - ???
DEX - ???
INT - ???
CHR - 10
WILL - ???
MAG - ???
[Trait, Titles, and Skills].
Skills - ???
Traits - ???
Titles - ???
[Resistances]
Phy. Resistance - ???
Mag. Resistance - ???
n. Resistance - ???
[Class]
Main Class - Student Swordsman / Tier - 2
Sub Class - None / Tier - None
I was extrely delighted in the increase in skill level, plus all the useful information I was currently getting about humans. But before I got a chance to appraise and check the last one's status, they all suddenly moved over to a place, after the guy nad Darshan called them over.
The problem was that they are now out of range of Appraisal. So I decided to move closer and land on a tree that gave a much more accessible spying vantage. Once in range again, I stared at the last guy. He was on the smaller side, and I guessed his age to be about 22 or sothing near it.
Focusing intently on him I use Appraisal.
-Appraisal!-
[Appraisal: Elias]
Na: "Elias"
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Rank: G-
Level: 12
Health: 79/79
Stamina: 42/50
Mana: 0/0
[Attributes]
STR - 13
VIT - ???
AGI - 20
DEX - 18
INT - ???
CHR - 11
WILL - ???
MAG - ???
[Trait, Titles, and Skills].
Skills - ???
Traits - ???
Titles - ???
[Resistances]
Phy. Resistance - ???
Mag. Resistance - ???
n. Resistance - ???
[Class]
Main Class - Apprentice Scout / Tier - 1
Sub Class - None / Tier - None
After quickly inspecting and then dismissing the prompt, I noticed that sothing was off. The entire party of humans had suddenly tensed up, and put their hands around their weapons, clearly alerted by sothing.
-Or rather not the entire party; soone was missing!
Seeing that the one called Elias missing, who was the one I had just appraised, I feared the worst. While sowhat panicking, my mind went through nurous different options all at once.
Firstly knew it would be a bad idea to try and escape while flying away since that would definitely create a lot of noise and alert them to my presence. And especially after looking at the status of the guy nad Elias, who was probably looking for , had agility and dexterity so highly I doubted my ability to escape.
Plus, he could probably hurl one of those daggers at and pierce straight through and through if he'd wanted to. Not wasting any more ti, I decided to simply hide in the tree that I'm currently in and pray to any god that might be listening to let stay unseen.
As silently as possible, I climbed up higher into the tree. With a wisp of sudden inspiration, I hastily took so of the large tree leaves with each of my six spindly legs, making it so that they would cover fully - or at least mostly...
A minute went by without anything happening. I had left a small opening in my makeshift camouflage, to be able to see what's going on, peeking around with nervous tension straining my body.
At first, I didn't notice anything. But suddenly, right beneath , I spotted a blur in the vegetation of the forest. It wasn't a blur from sothing that would be produced whenever sothing was moving too fast, but a blur similar to the one the lizard from the swamps created around itself; a blurry distortion of sorts
Imdiately realizing that it was most likely that Elias fellow, I tensed up, making sure not to stare at the blur so as if not to alert him to my gaze or presence.
The blur stood still a few bated seconds and then perford a movent that seed to be him moving his head and its gaze directly upwards into the tree I'm in.
I felt as if I was about to shit a brick from the intense stress I felt at the mont. Hiding within the tree, while covered in leaves, I tried desperately to will all of my being to be as inconspicuous as possible.
Five very long and agonizing seconds went by before the blur retrained its gaze elsewhere and moved on, causing a ntal exclamation of a tension-filled sigh to sound out in my head.
[Hiding has reached LVL: 5 and can now be advanced!]
Feeling like my tiny little mosquito heart was all up in my throat, I took a few minutes to calm my nerves before hearing the voice of Elias yet again. This ti he had appeared back at the group of humans and was talking to them with sowhat of a confused expression plastered on his face.
Present
Holy fucking shit! That was seriously way too close!
My god, I thought I was really to die right then and there. I was so petrified in place that I wondered if my heart was even still beating...
Shaking the last vestiges of stress from my nerves I steeled myself for what I was going to do next. Equipped with the new information I continued to follow the party of humans. Though this ti I at least doubled the distance between us and made damn sure not to keep my gaze on the scout; in case he would suddenly notice my presence again.
About an hour later, sothing ca into my sight which filled with awe. For the last three full days, I had been completely encompassed by a seemingly endless forest expanse. But now - just before , were long and vast plains that opened up for into the horizon.
Sothing in the distance suddenly caught my attention. It was kinda blurry and looked like a brown smudge from the sheer distance. But I didn't take long before I ca to a conclusion of what it is.
Is that a... village?
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