Velik very nearly turned back on the spot when he heard Torwin’s voice drifting through the trees ahead of him. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the old hunter, not in the least because of the man’s obviously high level. [Predator’s Visage] was unwavering in its conviction that Torwin would crush him if it came to a fight.

It wasn’t even that Velik thought the old monster hunter was going to attack him, not after that conversation they’d had. It had been a different story when he was getting chased through the woods, but now he just didn’t want to answer any more prying questions about his personal life. There was also the fact that the apprentice had almost shot him purely due to bad aim, which Velik wasn’t quite up to forgiving him for just yet.

So, he kept his distance, even going so far as to travel a mile off to the side just to make sure they didn’t cross paths. Despite that, every few minutes Velik would catch a bit of conversation, just enough to let him know he was still moving more-or-less in parallel with the two hunters.

Damn it. They’re going to the old dungeon, too.

Velik’s plan had been to start in that area, hunting monsters until he could pick up his new piece of gear, then working his way out looking for pockets of dense mana. There were no other landmarks out in the deep wood, not that he knew of, anyway, so it didn’t make much sense for Torwin to be heading anywhere else. If Velik wanted to go there, he either needed to speed up, or he needed to wait a few days and go in after the others left.

There was another reason to turn back, though. If the professionals were out here, that meant nobody was patrolling around the towns. For the moment, the monsters weren’t yet strong enough to pose a real threat to the watch, but all it would take was one elite coming by and forming a small horde. Without him or Torwin there to prevent that, he might return in a few weeks, only to find there was nothing left to protect.

At the same time, he’d been trying to wait out the storm for months, and it was only growing worse. If he turned back now, he could maybe push back the monsters until winter. After that, it was anybody’s guess. Perhaps the monster hunters’ fee would be money well spent and they’d take care of the problem.

If we’re both working on it independently, that’s a better chance for one of us to figure out what the problem is and eliminate it. The towns will survive.

He wasn’t sure he really believed that, but he didn’t trust that Torwin could find a solution. After all, Velik had been looking for one for years without a single lead until he’d stumbled across that champion elite. Torwin was just going to look at some empty ruins and a big hole in the ground.

Deciding that he didn’t really need to start out at the dungeon, especially when he still had a few days of hunting monsters in the deep wood ahead of him, Velik shifted to a more north-east course for an hour to put another ten miles or so between himself and the other hunters, then corrected straight north. Now he’d be a good thirty miles or more from the dungeon by the time he stopped.

That didn’t mean the monsters stopped showing up, of course. Even without going out of his way, he still found a swarm of wasps, each the size of his fist and level 18 or 19, a stoat that had grown to be six-feet-long and covered with metallic fur, a pack of ebonfur worgs, all level 25 or better, and a single hookfin sky swimmer, level 31.

That was a fight, with the floating fish darting through the air and harrying him in a running battle that lasted almost half an hour. It weighed half a ton and had a mouth big enough to swallow him whole, but was agile enough to slip through trees without so much as rustling the leaves. That, combined with its natural magic that let it spit out jets of pressurized water, made it a tough opponent, one that didn’t die until Velik managed to shape the tip of his spear into a giant fishhook after jabbing it into the monster’s mouth, then hauled it down to the ground to crush its skull with repeated stomps.

Ugh, it’s a good thing these boots repair themselves, he thought with a grimace as he pulled his foot free of the monster’s skull. Brain matter and black ichor coated the leather, but it would dry and fall off as the boots worked their magic. He ignored the mess, confirmed the kill notification, and kept on walking.

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Even moving at top speed, it wasn’t a one-day trip back to the deep wood. Though he bypassed most of the monsters unless they were directly in his way, Verik couldn’t get there in under three, and even his stamina was nearing its limits from the hard run. He hadn’t stopped to sleep, not wanting to take the time to find safe holes to rest in.

When he finally got to an area where most of the monsters seemed to be in the mid-to-high thirties, it was around noon. Velik spent an hour locating a den, baited out the monster nesting in it, and killed it a hundred feet away. Then he cleaned out the mess left inside, mostly old, gnawed upon bones and waste better left unidentified, dragged some shrubbery he ripped straight out the ground in front of the entrance, and closed his eyes to sleep.

* * *

[You have slain a burrow skinder (level 36).]

Velik checked his decarma total. Seven thousand. Getting closer.

* * *

[You have slain a noxious stag (level 34).]

[You have slain a bile-heart doe (level 33).]

Nine thousand. Almost there.

* * *

[You have slain a black-tongue giant salamander (level 38).]

[Spear Warden has advanced to rank 6.]

Oh, perfect! I was wondering if that was going to show up soon. And… ninety-five hundred. Not quite there.

* * *

Five days after he arrived in the area, Velik finally crossed the threshold he was aiming for. With ten thousand decarmas, he could purchase an item the system store described as a mana compass, which he’d found when he’d switched tactics from gear to utility items. He was actually a bit chagrined that it had taken him so long to think of that, but as soon as he had, he’d found exactly what he needed, and at a far more reasonable price.

With a bit of melancholy, he watched as his hard-earned wealth vanished. A moment later, an ornate compass appeared in front of him. It floated in place for a second until he plucked it out of the air to examine the strange device.

Normal compasses weren’t something Velik really needed. It was easy enough to navigate by the sun or the stars, and besides, compasses were an expense he didn’t need. So, he wasn’t sure exactly what they were supposed to look like, but he was guessing it was nothing like the thing in his hand.

It was round, about two inches across and a quarter-inch thick. That part seemed normal enough, but from there, things started to get weird. It was made out of brass, he thought, but with little squiggly lines carved in a circle on its backside and filled with some sort of glittering white stone. In the center of the circle was a wide, flat ruby that seemed to glow with its own light.

Its face was even more strange. It reminded him of a clock he’d seen in the mayor of Deshir’s house as a child, with numbers inscribed in a circle that long black arrows pointed at as they spun in slow circles, over and over again. He’d stared at it for hours when he’d first gotten back after the incident while the adults kept him waiting so they could argue about what to do.

The mana compass looked like that, except Velik didn’t recognize any of the six symbols arranged around the center arrow, which itself was more of a flat, red triangle. The whole thing was under glass, and little red and blue sparks chased each other around the symbols as the arrow flickered back and forth while he examined it.

I… have no idea how to use this. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just have to figure it out. This thing probably does a bunch of stuff that’s more advanced than what I need. If I point it at where I know the monsters are stronger, and assume that means more mana, I can tell which symbol means ‘mana ahead.’ Then I just follow the arrow and we’re set.

It wasn’t that easy, but Velik wasn’t about to give up so soon after spending such an exorbitant amount of decarmas on the mana compass. He messed around with it for the rest of the day, trying to see if he could correlate any of the symbols with monsters, or mana, or the cardinal directions.

Eventually, he was forced to concede defeat. The compass’s system descriptions were useless—[A device designed to detect and measure the density and distance of various types of mana]—and whatever the little symbols meant, he couldn’t figure them out. The compass was functionally useless to him unless he could find someone to show him how it worked.

He could think of one person who might know, but asking for help irked Velik. It could be a moot point, anyway, since the hunter duo was probably already long gone from the dungeon. With no other options besides going back to the towns, Velik set out in that direction anyway. He wasn’t sure if he hoped Torwin would still be there or not, but he wasn’t one to shy away from doing what needed to be done just because it was unpleasant.

Two days later, he reached the ruins of the old dungeon, as empty and foreboding as they’d always been.