"Alright, let's stop here for the night!" I announced making the caravan grind to a halt.

The clearing we were in wasn't large but it was enough to hold all of us comfortably for the night. We were in for another large stretch of woods coming up and this was the last clearing for a while where we wouldn't have to chop down bushes or plants to make camp. While annoying to do so, sometimes it was necessary.

Plus, there was another reason we stopped here for the night. The dungeon wasn't far away now and we would make it either early or mid-morning tomorrow but it was still too far if we pushed through now.

Everyone began the practiced task of setting up camp and I saw Vinny break out his hammer and tools. He would be in for a busy night repairing people's gear.

I should help him if I find the time, I thought.

It had been a few days since we had the chance to set up like this and people's gear was in need of servicing. We had made our way through the low mana area and were fast approaching one of the hotspots on the map. Coincidentally, right where the dungeon resided.

As the mana rose, the levels of the things inside of it did as well. Beasts above level 50 started to appear and were becoming increasingly common.

Austin and Hal did a good job of keeping us secure but I had us take a different approach to the rising difficulty.

The scarcity of the beasts was a boon rather than a hindrance in that we could have a controlled atmosphere for some of the lower-level people in our caravan.

The beasts didn't carry the same advantages to those of us above E-rank but were a massive boost to those below it. They made for perfect training dummies while we were still in the area for it.

As we reached more difficult areas, we wouldn't be able to keep control of the situation and make sure nothing unexpected happened which made it important to utilize it now when we could.

Where we were now was perfect to get some of the lower level people some experience to level up. Plus, we now had over 8 E-rank people to make sure nothing went wrong.

Both Hal and Rachel evolved after our return joining the rest of us. Rachel waited for her bloodline which she bought right before the tutorial ended and Hal delayed for a different reason. He wanted to use the last wave to squeeze out a few more upgrades.

Plus, he wanted to see what he could get as a prize that would help him during his evolution.

His bloodline wasn't as fancy as Rachel's draconic one, but it had a weight of its own. He chose the Razorbeak Griffon as his bloodline and it was similar to Austin's in that it was a bird of prey bloodline. It boosted his perception and agility while it also boosted his Wind affinity.

He could enhance his arrows with razor-sharp winds that dealt devastating damage and rotated them around for an increased effect when they hit. He and my Mom trained together using the Winds similar to Gabriel and I.

It was a running joke that we had two birds out on patrol and the amount of times 'two birds one stone' was mentioned sharply rose. Both men hated that joke already.

While Hal could supervise the fights easily, he was on scouting duty and Jonathan was the one in charge of that effort. He was the best suited for it as his Spiritual Anchor was heavily tied to protection and his defensive skills were perfect for the task.

As their group broke off to find their targets nearby for them to fight, Austin and Hal came up to me. They both looked saddened somewhat as they approached.

"Chris, you should see this," Austin said in a low tone while Hal nodded.

I didn't have anything else to do and followed them as they led me through a trail in the woods that looked recently traveled. Not well traveled enough to form a natural path, but enough to tell human activity had been through the area after the change.

It looked like someone attempted to cover their tracks but wasn't proficient at it just yet.

"Where does this lead? Are there people around here?" I asked, grasping for my hammer.

If there was a group in these woods a little heads-up would have been nice. I was always ready for combat but they should have mentioned that before leading me away.

"No, not in the sense you are thinking," Hal said cryptically "You'll see."

His words made me leave the hammer on my back as we continued along the trail of broken twigs and ruffled leaves until we came upon a smaller clearing than the one we set up in. It was so small it didn't even show up on the map.

Inside the clearing was a two-story log cabin of a house that had a dirt road leading away from it and into the distance. It was overgrown with plant life but the remnants of the road were easy enough to see.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The cabin itself had seen better days but it held up remarkably well to the months of terraforming. All the walls still stood and only a handful of holes were in the roof. It looked infinitely better than the houses I had seen in the city which were barely standing.

Some of the houses in the city had collapsed down to the foundation level.

"What's this doing here? Is there a town around here we don't know about?" I questioned quietly.

Finding a random house in the woods wasn't what I thought they would lead me to. I had expected to find a monster of some kind or an unusual area they had found.

Austin had done that a few times in the past whenever he found something cool or unusual. One time it resulted in my foot getting snagged by a random vine that tried to strangle my thigh. Seeing it promptly frozen solid and shattered doused Austin's enthusiasm at seeing my surprise.

Other than the grasping vines that he discovered, he also tried to surprise me with a snake that could turn itself invisible. There were a few other oddities we had come across along the way that he dragged me over to see.

Finding a house was a new discovery.

As we were observing the house I noticed movement inside of it. A curtain moved inside a window and I immediately went on alert.

My hand whipped behind me but Austin's hand caught me before I could pull it off. I gave him a quizzical look at being stopped but he only shook his head slowly.

"What aren't you telling me," I whisper yelled quietly.

This experience was getting strange and I wanted to know what was going on. First the odd house and now he was stopping me from preparing.

"It's a child in there," He said, "She's barely old enough to unlock a class and she isn't even over level 10 yet."

Hal picked up after Austin stopped, "We came across her while she was traveling the woods. We expected to find more people around and followed for a while before being led here." His face set harder before ending, "There's no one else around."

Oh.

Just as they finished filling me in, a high-pitched voice sounded out from inside the cabin. If I hadn't known it was a child, there would have been no way to tell from the voice.

Its pitch was obviously feminine but had a sternness and determination to it that made it hard to picture coming from a child.

"Don't come any closer or I'll shoot!"

I looked at the two men next to me confused. Was she in there pointing a gun at us?

We had seen a few people with them but they were almost entirely phased out by the weapons people picked up in the tutorial. Swords or axes and the like were more commonly seen than guns since we had returned. Rangers with a bow could do the same amount of damage as a gun if they had the skills for it and were high enough level.

I was confident that I could take a bullet from a gun but that mostly depended on the caliber. Smaller caliber ones would be easy enough to shrug off but bigger ones with more power? Without any way to know what she had, I was uncertain if I was in danger.

For all I knew she could have a cannon pointed at me.

"We're just traveling through the area and came across your... cabin. We don't mean any trouble," I said back.

I put my hands up to signify that as I stopped approaching the house.

There was a few beats of silence before a figure popped up from behind a window. The curtains moved to reveal the person that was behind them and the origin of the voice became visible.

It looked like a young girl just above the age of 14 or 15. Dirt covered her face and was caked in her hair that made it look like she hadn't bathed in a week. I couldn't tell if her hair was naturally brown or if it was from all the dirt in it making it that way. We also weren't the cleanest but we looked better than her.

Those in the caravan with water skills could create enough to wash in while we traveled.

In her hands was a bow drawn taught, pointed right at me. It made me relieved to know it was a bow and arrow rather than a firearm, but it was still drawn on me. The bow looked like the starter ones the Rangers received at the beginning and I knew those weren't very powerful.

Strength could be deceiving now that you couldn't estimate it from muscle mass, though. Sure, muscles grew like normal but my 600 points of it didn't look all that different from Jonathan's 300.

Austin had already informed me that she was under level 10 but I shot off an [Identify(C)] just to make sure.

[Human – Level 9]

Even though I knew what it would say, it still shocked me. Just seeing that it was so low was something new. The lowest level I had seen since returning was the low 20s but this was even below that.

After [Identify(C)] pinged the girl, I got a better look at her. She looked half-starved and was sickly thin. Her arms were stick thin and trembled holding the bow pulled. I wasn't sure what she had been eating but she wasn't getting enough of it.

"Here, I have some berries and nuts you can eat if you want. Sorry, I don't have anything more but most of the food is at the caravan." I said drawing my snack food from a pouch on my belt.

I could see her eyes lock onto the offered food but she didn't show any other sign of letting up. Her bow stayed pointed at me the whole time.

"Is there anybody else here? Where's your parents?" I asked her.

At the mention of her parents, her eyes tore away from the food back to me with intensity and she tightened her grip on the bow. It was clear that something had happened to them.

"My dad should be coming back soon. He was here when we left and he will show up any second now and he doesn't like people near his cabin." She said sternly.

It was clearly a lie but it told me more than she knew. Her father was with her in the cabin before the tutorial started but he hadn't returned with her afterward. She had been alone in the cabin for over a week, made to fend for herself.

My heart ached at her predicament but it also bled for another reason.

Her father was dead.

We were able to speak with multiple different people who experienced different tutorials and all of them had the same experience. Anyone who didn't return was dead.

The System returned you to the same spot you were taken from and if that didn't occur, there was only one explanation. Hearing that saddened me and before I knew it I stepped closer to comfort the child without thinking.

Whether it was the sudden movement or the fact I stepped closer after being told not to, she released the bowstring before I could realize what I was doing.

My mind was so muddled I didn't even react in time until after the arrow pinged off my chest. The arrowhead broke off and the shaft shattered into pieces as it hit me. I wasn't wearing my armor anymore which made it clear to see where the arrow was aimed. It hit the left center of my chest, right where my heart resided, but it didn't have the power to penetrate my skin.

Both my Fortitude and my Body of Wood were enough to stop the weak arrow cold and shatter it to pieces.

As what happened filtered through my brain I couldn't help but look down at my chest and laugh.

Ha! She really shot me!