With painfully slow movements he was pushing himself upright. The words began to form meaning in his mind.
Oh no, stop. Did they come looking for me? Hide! He froze in all his movements. Just his heart didn’t seem to listen to his commands of reducing noise.
“They will figure out that one of their own is missing soon,” said the first voice.
Options rustled through his head, none safer or with higher chances of success than just sitting tight. For a second the thought of activating the cloak crossed his mind.
Eight seconds won’t be enough to get far enough away for them to not hear my running.
He took long, deep, but quiet breaths. He had to figure out what was going on first.
One of their own is missing. Did they kill a villager? Did the village send someone to check out what happened here?
A somniferous turrl had bitten him. He had encountered the sleep-inducing compound. Given his abyssal stats, it was no wonder that he had fallen asleep within seconds moments. That was the only thing he could be sure of.
His knowledge of the monsters could be reduced down to physically weak for their level with extremely strong poison. It could knock out people of even several times their level for extended amounts of time. Thankfully it seemed to not have any harmful side effects, which made sense. He had heard of the saliva being traded as a commodity once.
One of the men grunted.
“Not like that’s gonna matta. Rest’f the army shoul'be here in a few days,” came the response of the second voice. “Stupid quests!”
“Should we just leave the body…” the voices moved further away and were no longer decipherable.
Shiiiiit.
The previously spoken sentences ran through his mind again and it clicked. He must have set off the zone’s warning function, either through his own actions or through baiting the turrls.
Have I killed someone? Was the question that ended up occupying his mind for moments, moments he might not have. Kent had not been great at compartmentalizing ever, but with the adrenalin of potential death running through his body he managed. Philosophy was for later.
Who are they even? Why do they have an army? Who are the others?
He knew that the potentially best option for everyone would be to alarm the village of an invading force. Just that he was no longer part of everyone and warning them would no doubt result in his death. He couldn’t say for sure that it was a cost he wanted to take upon himself.
Then again, the other ideas that were rushing through his head, didn’t offer good chances of surviving as well.
The best would be to run away, leave everyone behind and look for a new home. A place like Reinsteel. Would he even get in if there was an attack on Blueleaf? If an army was just a day’s march or less away. It was doubtful.
What he needed was more information. More information on the army, his situation, who had been killed, and so much more.
As quietly as possible he crouched towards where the voice had originally come from. Only a few dozen paces away was a bloody and cut-up body. He couldn’t bear further looking at the decapitated head. The curly hair an uncommon marker in Blueleaf. It was most likely Lon’s father, a trapper whose name escaped him right now.
Unexpectedly a tear ran down his cheek, and once the realization hit him, he broke out in quiet sobs. Thoughts spiraled once again, the stress of facing murderers, a potential army, days out, and now finding his friend's decapitated father was too much to stomach without a reaction.
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Kent just sat there for a while trying to come to terms with what would happen soon.
His family would die, his friends, and everyone he knew. He might not be on good terms with his family, and the rest of the village – a natural reaction to being exiled he found –, but he didn’t want them dead. For what was life without family and friends, without people to share your joy, grief, and love with.
He thought back to the many great days he had spent with most of the farming community, working the fields, preparing for winter, or out early in the year sowing and plowing the fields. It had been easy-going, the leveled people of the community doing most of the work, with the children just running around helping.
A life without your friends alive wasn’t worth it. He could try something though. Hesitantly he turned back to Lon’s father, to see if he had anything he might be able to use.
The bloody task of handling the older man left Kent disgusted and uncomfortable. He had found a dagger on the man, a canteen filled with water he quickly emptied, several tools he only had a bare understanding of, and a small – but larger than his current – knapsack.
Lon’s father had also carried an unstrung bow, a handful of arrows, and a knife holster. The latter he equipped. He would have taken a bow as well and he might go back soon to take it, had he known how to use it properly. Even after he had strung the bow, he hadn’t been able to pull the string back. He had a high suspicion that it was somehow enchanted or crafted for someone way stronger.
His next preparations were straightforward and just as gross as the last task.
At first, he scratched off the last remaining and mostly dried saliva off the turrls and put as much as possible into the canteen. Seeing that he had nowhere near as much as he wanted, he grabbed the newly acquired dagger.
With an edge sharper than his kitchen knife in hand he got to work on dissecting the turrls. He messed up the first body badly to find the glands that produced the sleep-inducing substance. The head of the creatures being just slightly smaller than fist-sized wasn’t helping. The tough bone was hard to work through, but with enough well-applied force, he managed to get through it.
He had finally located the pair of glands over the jaws, inlayed into the jaw structure, but protruding from it.
Each only offered around a thump-size of the potent liquid. He chose to discard the first gland since it had been punctured and the liquid had turned a bit murky from the blood it had been contaminated with.
Stories of snakes being immune to their own poisons lead him to the idea that some part of the blood might have the same effect on the somniferous turrls.
The remainder of the turrls were processed quickly and efficiently, without another unwanted gland puncture. The half-filled canteen would have to be enough. He couldn’t risk attracting more turrls.
He strung his dagger to his belt and left everything that might hinder him in the future behind. With cloak on his back, knapsack half-filled with tollkirsch on top, and his hood pulled up he grabbed the canteen and sneaked off towards where the men had been headed.
Walking through the shrubbery as he was, trying to be as quiet as possible, proved more difficult than anticipated. The monsters this close to the zone would be low-leveled and have low perception abilities, humans, especially classed ones could have far higher values in the relevant stats, and would notice even fewer disturbances if they were paying attention or had a high mind stat.
Each step that didn’t result in a cracked branch or rustling leaves let him breathe a bit easier. Each sound he heard had the opposite effect.
After a track that felt like hours but can’t have been more than a few hundred paces, Kent noticed a flickering of light further down on his path. As carefully as possible he approached the flickering campfire.
Instead of a wakeful patrol that controlled the campsite, he found a few dozen tents strewn between the trees, in an area with less shrubbery. A larger tend stood a bit to the side with an open flap. Inside a man was rummaging around, but that was all that Kent could initially detect.
The cloaked man crouched further around the area, keeping a safe distance from the tents, to glean any useful information.
He noticed movement off to the side, closer to the fire of a man holding up a peculiarly shaped object as though in a mocking prayer.
“You mad lad di’it. How’d they not notice the spirit,” came the one of the previously heard voice.
Kent winced. He hadn’t noticed that another person was awake, or even standing somewhere. It was obvious in hindsight. There had been a couple in the first place.
“As if they care what we do. They probably thought it would help with good moral,” returned the man standing by the fire.
Why aren’t they quieter? Do they want to wake up their comrades? Wait, that is a bad assumption. What if everyone is awake already?
Such musing didn’t help, he had to gleam the situation he was in better. He had already a few approaches he could take, that might be more viable than just poisoning the food supply.