Five nights into his expedition into the deep wood, Velik decided it was time to turn back. He’d passed by the old dungeon without setting foot into it three days ago, killed so many monsters that he was sure he’d reach level 29 before the sun rose again, and accomplished precisely nothing of his real goal beyond exploring a few more square miles of the deep wood.

More levels, he decided. Even if he couldn’t find the source, he could still go on a killing spree, thinning out the thousands and thousands of monsters here and maybe gain more than just one level. It was dangerous, but that was nothing new. Besides, it was refreshing to fight enemies that he couldn’t effortlessly cut down for a change. It forced him to come up with new tactics instead of relying on his stagnating skills.

[Predator’s Visage] gained another rank on the fourth day, and [Stealth] did the same six hours later when he accidentally wandered into the hunting territory of something too big to properly fit between trees but more than strong enough to push its way through anyway. Velik hadn’t seen much of it beyond that it was bipedal and had arms thicker around than his chest. It was brown and green and hunted by smell, which made hiding from it a non-starter.

His decarma counter also rolled over to three thousand before he decided to turn back. Surprisingly, level 30 seemed to be some sort of threshold. The system almost always awarded him a decarma for each kill, and sometimes two. Once, when he killed a level 34 stone skewer boar, he got three.

What he didn’t get was the skill merger he was hoping for. [Stealth] was getting stronger, but it wasn’t folding into [Predator’s Visage], and he thought he knew why. He was using it to avoid fights instead of to hunt. That idea was part of what motivated him to give up on pushing deeper into the wilderness. The low food reserves certainly also contributed to that, as well.

Truthfully, Velik wouldn’t have even pushed things this far if not for the fact that he knew those two hunters were hanging around, killing monsters near the towns. For the first time in years, he felt like he could step away without a horde overwhelming a town and killing everyone, and he was determined to take advantage of that while he could. There was no telling how long the hunters would hang around before they got whatever it was they wanted and left.

So, he made himself a secure day to sleep in during the day where the monsters didn’t get up past level 25 or so, where he could pick off targets as long as he was cautious about it. At night, when [Duskbound] activated, he went farther north and started tearing through the monsters there instead.

Level 29 came on the sixth day, and with it another four points of physical and one of mental. His skills still refused to merge, but he could feel he was getting closer. He spent the night roaming the deep wood, killing various monsters as long as they didn’t live and travel in large groups, and even got an elite owl that almost managed to pick him out of a tree when it swooped down on him from behind.

The thing didn’t have the physical to stand up to his spear, though, and once its ambush failed, he quickly grounded it with a stab through its shoulder, then finished it off easily. The system awarded him five decarmas for the kill, a new personal record for Velik.

Things were going well – so well, in fact, that Velik was starting to get a bit paranoid. Something had to go wrong, and the longer it took to happen, the bigger he expected it to be. It wasn’t a rational fear, but he couldn’t dismiss it. He was in the deep wood. Disaster was to be expected. It was just a matter of seeing it coming from far enough away to survive.

* * *

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“I… do not know what I’m looking at,” he admitted to himself on the afternoon of his ninth day. The food he’d brought with him was almost completely gone and he’d taken to supplementing what little remained with foraged berries, tubers, and, once, a regular non-monstrous pheasant he took down by throwing his spear—shaped like a javelin—and skewering it mid-flight. That he’d cooked in a fire he’d lit in a hole in the ground to block the light. The smell alone had been enough to draw no less than six different monsters in over the course of an hour, and he was quick to abandon the temporary camp as soon as he’d finished eating.

Now, he was staring at an open field, or rather a hole in the deep wood made from a fire that had presumably burned out of control and cleared out an acre of trees. The strange thing was that there were no signs of fire damage on the edge of the field, meaning it hadn’t happened this season, but the ground was completely black and barren.

At casual glance, this fire had just burned itself out in the last few days, but nothing supported that idea beyond the field itself. He was hesitant to step out past the trees, just in case whatever had done this was still lurking around, but the truth was that this was the first unusual thing he’d found. It might just be a clue as to where to find the source. For all Velik knew, it might very well be the source. He doubted it, but he couldn’t just walk away without investigating.

The ground was charred and crunched under his feet, despite his [Stealth] trying to muffle the sound. Velik took a few steps in and crouched low, his spear in his hands and his eyes darting around. It was barely an hour past dusk, with a fresh moon risen overhead. Nothing was going to sneak up on him, not even another of those owls.

When no monster appeared to challenge him, he took a few more cautious steps forward. After repeating that cycle another three times, he straightened with a frown and prodded the cracked earth with his spear. What is this place? Is it really just some spot that lightning struck and burnt out? It can’t be with those clean edges, can it?

He was a hundred feet in when the trap sprang. A wall of fire flared up in a ring all the way around the field, easily ten feet tall and rising with each passing second. By the time Velik had spun in place to make his way back, it had risen to twenty. There was no way he was getting through without getting burned, but he was prepared to accept the punishment and use a healing potion if that was what it took to escape the trap.

Except the fire was getting thicker. It started as a wall perhaps a foot across, but he could see it rolling forward to two feet, then three. By the time he reached the flames, it was thirty feet high and he guessed at least ten feet wide. More than that, the heat rolling off it was so intense that he couldn’t even get close.

Passing through that wall was likely to kill him before he even reached the edge, and even if it didn’t, a healing potion was not going to fix injuries that bad. The monsters would get him before the next dawn. He needed a different option.

Velik backpedaled, then spun on his heel when a loud crack split the air. There, in the very center of the field, the ground had split open, and something red and black was climbing out of it. Its torso looked like it was made of black glass with fire swirling around behind it, and its limbs were charred earth with brilliant red veins cutting through the dirt.

It pulled itself upright to an impressive twelve feet in height, vaguely humanoid in that it had a trunk, two legs, and two arms, but that was where the similarity ended. Its limbs didn’t seem to have any joints, being more like tentacles than anything else. It had no head, though Velik got the brief impression of a wickedly laughing face in its chest fire before the visage disappeared.

Fully clear of the fissure, the monster took a single step forward. The ground closed up behind it, leaving Velik in an arena of scorched earth, surrounded by a wall of incinerating flames, and facing a monster twice his height made of earth and scorched fury. [Predator’s Visage] screamed in the back of his head that he was overmatched, that he had no chance at winning this fight.

To make matters worse, the system gave him a new notification, one he’d never seen personally, but which he was very much aware existed. Everyone knew about this message, even if only the most powerful monster hunters ever encountered it.

[You have entered the domain of a champion elite: Balzarith the Living Inferno.]

Yep, I’d say I’m just about fucked all the way around. Probably only got one shot at winning this one, he thought to himself, his hand straying to his hip pouch.