Alyx didn’t stay much longer, heading home with a promise to return in the morning. Beth and Camila practically demanded that Zion go to sleep. They stayed in his room as dreams took him, and he was pleased to sleep soundly, not haunted by bad memories.

The following day saw them getting supplied for time out of the city and the possibility of camping in the wilderness. Camila awkwardly handed him over two thousand gold, from the sale of the dungeon core. She blamed the swift movement of the events for his blunder, but Zion honestly believed she had forgotten all about the money.

“Okay, everybody got everything they need?” Zion asked as they walked out of the general goods store, his bag filled but money pouch hurting.

“Yep, me and Cam were pretty much set from Valor,” Beth said, stretching out some muscles from waiting for them to finish. “Still think you need new gear, Zion.”

“I’ll be good, I promise, but I do have one more stop before we're done,” he told them, leading the way down the street towards the main gate. All three gave him a confused look, as this should have been the last store. They walked for a bit until they finally reached a store called Ms. Bodevs Swimwear.

Both Beth and Camila squealed before plowing through Zion to reach the doors. He laughed as he was tossed around and gave Alyx a wide grin. “Ready to go swimming?”

Alyx shook his head as he laughed, “You dang tourists. I guess I did promise you we’d go back to the water.”

The boys joined the excited girls inside the store and watched as they practically bombarded the clerk with questions about swimsuits. This led to them grabbing twenty different styles and trying them on. Zion, for his part, grabbed a simple pair of black shorts and made his purchase.

“Zion, you and Alyx head to the water, we'll meet you there,” came the call of Beth’s voice as he heard her struggling out of her gear. “Ok?”

“Sounds good. See you two in a few minutes.”

It was not a few minutes. Alyx and Zion waited for what had to be closer to an hour before they saw the girls appear at the main gates, walking was too much of a hassle in their glee.

Zion's jaw most certainly dropped when he finally got a full look at them. Camilla had kept her theme, choosing a ruby red bikini that highlighted her assets. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, giving onlookers a wonderful view of the girl. Zion looked away quickly before he was murdered.

That's when his eyes landed on Beth. Unlike her sister, Beth had chosen a blue one-piece that highlighted the gorgeous color of her white skin. It hugged her body in a perfect way, accentuating her figure without being overly revealing. It left him speechless, and he kept staring as they walked forward, not realizing his eyes had lingered the whole time.

“If your jaw drops any further, you're going to be licking the ground,” Camila finally said to him, before he realized what he was doing.

He awkwardly looked away, his whole body flushing as he stammered an apology to both of them. He got cute giggles as a result of his actions and soon found a hand grabbing his. Beth had taken him and was leading him to the water in a rush, her face alight with joy. That face was worth the price of any embarrassment he had felt.

They enjoyed the water for hours that day. Swimming and frolicking in the waves was a joy Zion had never thought he’d get to experience. And having that joy with his friends meant the world to him. The hunters did a great job of patrolling the area his group was swimming in, and he felt that might have been on purpose. These kind people were giving him and his team one day to just relax and not worry about the responsibilities they carried.

When they left, all four of them parted for some much-needed rest. Zion had not realized just how exhausting the water could be. Even when not fighting monsters, the liquid seemed to sap his strength. That tired feeling allowed him to pass into sleep immediately, the dreams of new adventures filling his mind.

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The quartet left for the gates the next day, nerves slightly elevated by the impending task. It wasn’t the monsters they were afraid of; on the contrary, every single one of them was a match for most mobs in this Sphere. They were more nervous about getting encircled by a throng of monsters so thick they couldn't escape.

They had been assigned the southern region, a region denser with normal forest than the swamps of the east and north. Not that there weren’t still loads of water everywhere they went, a problem Camila had no problem bitching about the whole trip.

According to Mavik, the entirety of Tidus was about twenty-five square miles, and the scouts had seen internal movement around the twenty-first-mile marker. The plan was for each group to harass the enemy until the tenth-mile marker, which would give time for supplies to be built up. Once they hit that point, each group was to retreat back to the city proper for siege defense.

They moved at a steady pace, watching the giant trees fall behind them. It was peaceful where they currently traveled, a sign of the lack of mobs infesting the woods currently. Alyx informed them that usually, they would have encountered something at this point, even if it wasn’t very strong.

By the time they reached the fourteenth mile, they were becoming a little paranoid due to the lack of any sounds. The canopies above them held stock still, not even being rustled by the prevailing winds. The mud and dirt of the ground showed no signs of animal tracks of any kind.

They took this as a sign to set up camp for the night and found the driest patch of ground they could, which wasn’t saying much. Tomorrow they would reach the hit-and-run point, and they wanted to be decently rested before battle began.

They rotated shifts, making sure everyone got a decent night's rest. During his own shift, Zion felt pinpricks from the eerie stillness surrounding them. He couldn’t believe that he would have rather seen something barreling through the undergrowth than experience utter silence. It made him worry just how many mobs would be waiting for them.

The following morning, they dispatched and made ready for another day of walking. This time they had weapons in hand, knowing one way or another fighting would start today.

As they got to the nineteenth mile, they finally started to see signs of life, and they were not pleasant. All around, the forest trees were bowled over, shrubbery was ripped apart, and the ground looked like it had been eroded by thousands of feet. They started to see small carcasses of lesser monsters, and to their sickened stomachs, bodies of civilians.

When they hit the twenty miles, they physically saw their first mobs. It was a herd of batcats, their rubbery wings laying upon their slick black skin. The eyes of the monsters were darting all around the forest, as if in search of prey. Sadly for them, batcats had a low range of vision, which meant they wouldn't know what hit them.

Zion held up a hand for the group to stop and then gestured for them to gather together. “Let's try to take this herd out quickly and quietly. Camila and I will run point, Alyx and Beth, don't let any stragglers break free.” The words were barely a whisper, but everyone seemed to have heard and gave nods of acknowledgment.

Zion and Camila placed themselves at the head of the group and moved silently forward. When they were within thirty yards, they both burst forward, Camila quickly stepping off the air and Zion using kinetic movement to appear in front of the first batcat.

He felled the first mob with a quick sweep of his blade and then sent a barrage of mana missiles at six of the further enemies. The batcats realized they were under attack at this point, and two jumped for Zion's throat. He pierced the first one in the ribs with a side thrust and then blocked the second with his buckler, unleashing the mana spikes into its sensitive paw.

On instinct, he rolled and felt a swipe barely miss the back of his neck. One of the mobs was flying behind him and came in for another strike. It fell to the earth as an ice bolt pierced its eye socket. He nodded his thanks to Beth before stomping on the head of the one he had used mana spikes on.

The battle was over quickly, the monsters falling easily to the might of their full group. In the end, none of them had been hit, and the monsters hadn't even had a chance to escape. Alyx went through and collected the corpses into his sack, hoping this would deter some scavengers from coming to look right away.

“Looks like they've already moved another mile in, I highly doubt we will have the three weeks or so we hoped,” Alyx said after he had finished gathering the corpses.

“We're too far out to send back a comm message,” Beth commented, fiddling with her comm bracelet. “When we go back to Valor, can we all agree to get some better comm devices? This limitation sucks.”

“Wholeheartedly agreed,” Zion told her as he glanced around the area. “I say we keep moving and try to get as many groups as we can today and then fall back about three miles. I really don't like that they're this far forward already.”

The group chorused their agreement and they plodded on through the terrain. It didn't take them long to find a second group, and then a third. After an hour of traveling the area, they had taken out two groups of batcats, one of landsharks, and five groups of hobgoblins. The last one had Zion the most concerned as he hadn't realized they had bipedal mobs in this Tidus.

“Alyx, how many bipedal mobs are in this sphere? That could become a real issue if they have someone smart enough to design siege equipment.”

Alyx chewed on his lip as he lost himself in thought, before he finally replied in a dissatisfied huff, “I can’t give you an exact number because normally they stay on the outskirts of the Sphere. They learned long ago that moving inward never served them well.”

Zion didn’t like the answer, and it became apparent as they kept taking out groups that the mob type was more than populous, as it was the most common mob they were dispatching. By the time they decided to rest for the first day, they had probably taken out over a thousand hobgoblins and maybe another two hundred kobolds. Both creatures known for being semi-intelligent.

They retreated about four miles for the night, after seeing just how many creatures had showed up during the day. If the rate of fighting kept up, they had a bad feeling the number the scouts had reported was entirely inaccurate. They went to sleep that night expecting a long week of fighting.