Hana couldn’t talk, she was shivering uncontrollably and was hardly able to walk which made going back very difficult. Again, I was thankful to Ara for letting us keep our shoes on. When we finally reached the spot where we entered the river, Ara spoke again.

I followed her instruction then started drying Hana off who sat in a foetal position on the ground as I vigorously rubbed some life back into her as I dried her off. When she started protesting at me insisting on drying her front end, I realised she would recover just fine. She grabbed the piece of clothing, which happened to be a spare cotton shirt and started to shakily dry herself. When I turned back there were objects on the core.

The straps fitted both lower legs above her boots. One around her waist, two on her wrists and one on her neck above the slave collar. From a medical perspective I could understand what Ara was trying to achieve with the straps. All those areas the straps were on, were areas where blood vessels congregated and were easily accessible. Gently heating up the blood vessels, heated the blood which in turn would increase Hana’s core temperature.

“Okay Hana, we survived the first round. Now comes the next round. We need to head back to where I pulled up that grass. We can’t dress here; they might come back within that time.”

“O, o, okay.”

I helped her up.

“You can see better than I can. You lead, and I’ll follow.”

She carefully started to walk forward as I walked to her side whilst holding her shoulder. Soon Hana was able to start walking faster as she warmed up. All I could think is what a barbeque story the whole saga would make in future.

Arriving somewhat later than planned at the spot where I pulled the grass, we had to double back to find it, having missed it somewhere in the dark.

I intended making a high frequency light source. Infrared light wouldn’t penetrate the forest easily and hopefully make us less visible to the monsters of the forest. There would be just enough light for us to see in front of us.

While we were getting dressed again, I wondered why the elves who created Ara and all the amazing technology like the core, never made something as simple as an infrared light. That she needed to model an infrared source first, meant that the elves never took the theory much further into practical uses.

Well she hit the issue on the head. By then I was nearly dressed. Once again we left our armour off but I kept my sword and Hana, her bow. Weight was a big consideration.

A map depicting all the areas we covered over the last few days were shown. Ara highlighted the predicted cave position with a circle in a dark area of the map. The good news was that we would be heading closer to Shimmerstal. What was the bad news you ask? It would take us four hours of walking to get there.

She was reading my thoughts again.

I didn’t like the sound of that. When Ara explained further, I liked it even less. When I explained it to Hana, she didn’t like it at all.

“You want me to do what?”

“We need to take that ogre dung over there and smear it all over us.”

“I’m still recovering from an ice-cold bath that nearly killed me. Are you kidding me?”

“No point arguing. Get on with it.”

There is no stench in the universe that compares to ogre poop. Its stomach biota must be the toughest in the universe to produce such a foul-smelling odour. What else could I say to her but lead by example? Yes, once again the personal odour removal programme kicked into gear.

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Once I’d spread the fun around, we took off to the south, but not before Ara made us two infrared torches with the core. They were about the size of a cigarette lighter, heavy with on end coloured red. The opposite side had a small hole in it which is where the light would come from.

“Here Hana, take this. When you touch the red end of this torch like this…”

When I did that, a dull red light flooded the ground in front of me.

“Whatever you do, do not look into the light, or shine it in anyone’s eye, it could permanently destroy their vision. Treat it like a notched arrow, that way it’s easier to remember.”

Like a kid playing with a remote she switched the light on and off as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Okay Hana. The idea is not to attract attention.”

She huffed and looked away.

“You stink.”

That was an understatement. I couldn’t agree more. I was trying not to breathe through my nostrils. How we were going to get that stink out of our clothes was anyone’s guess.

From there Ara took us on a direct route to the hill. We were already exhausted, having already been active over eighteen hours, but we had to hold on. An hour and a half into our walk we bumped into our first goblin patrol. They were sweeping an area behind us, which forced us to move further south to avoid them. From then on, we met numerous patrols doing to the same sweep, but we were always able to keep ahead of them. After we managed to avoid the latest sweep Hana couldn’t go on anymore.

“I cannot go any further.”

Hana collapsed onto the ground, fully exhausted. I knew exactly how she felt.

When I did that the items slowly disappeared like my ring from before.

There was no complaint from Hana while I did that. She was already fast asleep next to me. I didn’t dare sleep. I wasn’t sure if we would ever wake up again. After five minutes a few blue coloured metal vials came out of the core. They were all capped with screw on lids. They looked about the size of test tubes.

Great, I didn’t like the idea we wouldn’t be able to stay awake but right then, five hours were precious minutes to us.

“Argh, what’s this stuff? It tastes awful.”

Hana looked at vial with disdain.

“It’s going to keep us alive, that’s all. You’ll feel pretty good soon.”

She drank the potion while trying not to throw up. By the time she completed the second vial, she already felt better.

“Oh my…what did you put in it. I feel so much better and alert.”

If her experience was anything I was feeling, then we could’ve walked to Shimmerstal and back again.

Well, I guess I should consider that case closed. Our journey to the cave felt endless. We constantly dodged large goblin scouting parties and after a few hours we made it through to the cave without engaging them. Thanks to Ara’s analysis we found the cave almost dead-on. At the top of the outcropping a surprise awaited us. In the dark I heard a stern challenge from an adventurer hidden amongst the rocks.

“Who goes there?”

“Shane and Hana from the adventurer guild.”

Since Hana hadn’t registered as an adventurer yet, we didn’t officially exist as a party in the guild’s eyes.

“Shane? What the heck. Quickly, follow me.”

With Hana in tow, we followed the shadow into a nearby cave entrance. We had to duck into the low hanging entrance but a few steps in, we walked into a large cave where we were greeted by six adventurers who had been sleeping around a fire but woke up when we entered. I immediately recognised them as the Harpies and Matheus was the one we met standing on guard outside. I greeted them.

“Hi folks, don’t mind if we drop in for a bit of tea then? Atrocious conditions out there don’t you think?”

They all chuckled at that, but they could see we were finished.

“What the heck? You smell like you walked through an ogre sewage farm.”

One of them retorted.

“You like it? I call it Ode de Toilet. A new range of perfume I’m thinking of selling.”

“Bloody heck, only if you’re looking to ogres for customers.”

“Hey Shane, washed up. There’s a good source of water at the side of the cave by that divide.”

Matheus pointed to the neck-high leather screen giving some privacy in the ablutions area. I assumed it stayed there on a permanent basis for other teams’ use. Hana immediately dived for the area and started stripping own and washing herself. I couldn’t blame her.

“Yeah, we had to hide our scent from the goblin scouts. Bloody buggers got a bee in their bonnet about something and destroyed the cart as it came to pick us up. The driver never stood a chance, we hardly managed to escape ourselves and have been running from them since.”

Matheus looked sad when he heard about the cart. He must have known the owner well.

“You’re lucky to have survived. We’ve cut our quest short when the goblin numbers increased. We managed to dodge the scouting parties ourselves and managed to cut northeast to this point. Good that you knew about this place.”

At that moment, a female archer stood up and spoke to Matheus.

“I’ll take the rest of your guard shift. You talk with them.”

He thanked her and continued speaking with me.

“Um, Matheus can you hold for a second.”

I walked over to Hana and handed her the creation core over the divide.

“Put all your dirty and wet clothes on this.”

It will clean them for you. She looked uncertain but didn’t comment as she took the core. I’d naturally transferred all the EE required and conferred with Ara to do the necessary programming. Luckily it only required a few seconds of programming. I’m not sure how the Harpies took all that in, but they didn’t comment, deciding to look and see, I guess.

“Matheus, once I’ve washed I’m not sure how much longer Hana and I will be able to stay awake. Both of us took vitality potions and I think we will end up crashing soon.”

“Crashing?”

“I mean falling asleep. Not sure for how long though, we’ve pushed ourselves far past our limits.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll look after you. We’re not planning to go anywhere until all the hubbub outside dies down, and then it we’ll probably head back to Shimmerstal anyway.”

A swordsman from Matheus’ team offered me an alcoholic drink from a flask.

“Here, drink this. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

He didn’t realise my Japanese heritage made that a problem, but I took a cautious sip and sputtered as they laughed. It must have been close to pure alcohol. Having had their laugh, they offered me some stew to eat from their reserves and as I washed, I considered how lucky we were to have made it to that point. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t out of the woods yet. Something still didn’t add up for me and that realisation didn’t hit me until late into the next morning when I finally woke up and discovered another four adventurers joined us while we were sleeping. Matheus introduced us.

“Ah, Shane. Meet the leader of the Smashing Owls, his name is Vascillius.”

A strange team name, where did they get those from? Wasn’t sure who was doing the smashing in the name, the owls or them? It turned out they arrived just around the morning and like us, were forced to divert their quest to avoid the large number of goblin scouts. They too ran into ogres. It was then that my warning bells started to ring.

A few seconds later.

In Africa, a way of hunting animals was called a game drive. The process usually focused on a range of animals you knew were somewhere in the bush. Using people called beaters, who would make a noise and scare animals into fleeing into a particular direction. By the time the animals realised it, they were trapped into a concentrated area, making it easier for hunters to hunt them down.

“Matheus, Vascillius I have an idea what’s going on with the goblins, but I need to confirm something with you first.”

They didn’t have any problems with my request. On the dusty floor of the cave, I drew a large map Ara overlaid with my heads-up display. I showed them the goblin troop movements in the forest in relation to Hana and my situation and asked them to do the same with theirs. When they were done, our situation was crystal clear. The goblins were purposefully herding us into that cave.

“Bugger, I thought it was too good to be true.”

Matheus swore under his breath.