Hearing that, Symon whirled around, although he saw nothing but grass. He'd been walking in a mostly straight line, so there was an area of dead grass drained by his magic roughly an arm's length to all sides of him, as well as a trail of it stretching behind him where he'd walked. Beyond that, nothing but a sea of chest-high grass.

The monster was somewhere in there, and Symon had no idea where. It could be barely a metre away right now, and he wouldn't know.

His heart was hammering in his chest, so loud the monster could probably hear it. That thing was terrifying, and he didn't like the way it had been able to walk right up to him without being noticed. Although, that wasn't entirely accurate; Keelgrave had been able to warn him, somehow.

"C-can you tell where it is? I can't see shit in all this grass."

He didn't, but he could imagine it was a lot. He didn't have a convenient spell to tell him how strong a monster was, but it looked deadly. Just the blades alone were as long as his entire forearm — he wasn't liking his chances if that thing got close to him. He was half full in terms of vitality, which would have been enough to at least heal enough to survive a single good hit, at least on paper. In reality, the thing would savage him in a whirlwind of blows and wouldn't give him a chance to heal.

"Just tell me the second you sense it again, okay?"

No response came from Keelgrave, but he could feel the spirit focusing. The warning would be better than nothing, but if the monster rushed at him from behind he doubted he could react in time. He had no idea why it would deliberately reveal itself to him when it could probably have just killed him immediately, but he wasn't going to waste any more time thinking about it when he needed to act.

He needed to clear more of the grass around him to prevent the creature — a razor stalker, apparently — from getting the drop on him. He moved slightly closer to the wall of grass around him. It wilted away quickly, but only in a small area.

Once again he lamented his lack of range. Ironically, the only way for him to open up the area was to get closer to the stalker's potential hiding place.

Holding onto his metal pipe for comfort, he took a larger step towards the wall of grass. After a tense moment of waiting for the stalker to leap out of the grass, nothing happened. Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he slowly walked around the perimeter of dead grass, widening the circle as he spiralled outwards.

Eventually, he'd widened out an area he felt relatively comfortable in. Nothing strange had happened, which served to only make his nerves grow. He'd almost prefer to just be attacked, instead of constantly being on edge waiting for something to happen.

Symon wasn't sure what his best move was. He could retrace his steps back out to the sand, where the stalker wouldn't be able to ambush him, but that would mean getting further away from the coastline that was supposedly on the other side of this grass. It would also be obvious to the monster that he was trying to flee, which might spur it into attacking him before he could escape the grass — he still wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing.

Ultimately, fleeing would only delay the inevitable; he had to make it through the maze-like grass. He stood in the middle of his cleared circle considering his next action for a while without any further sign of the stalker, eventually deciding he would climb one of the nearby trees for a better view. It wouldn't do to waste his time planning with incomplete information.

The short trip to the closest tree he could see was disturbingly uneventful. He repeated his previous strategy of clearing the grass in a wide area around it before turning his attention to the tree. It had a thick trunk, with most of the branches concentrated in a wide canopy at the top. It wasn't very tall, so with a running start he was able to jump up and grab onto the lowest hanging branch, swinging wildly for a moment before hoisting himself up. It wasn't easy, but it was possible — even with his heavy bat tucked into his belt -— thanks to the strength gains he'd acquired in his trek through the sands.

It was amazing to Symon just how much stronger he'd gotten in such a short time. There were plenty of non-magical people back on Earth who were stronger than him, but it had taken him days to make the gains that they made over months and months. His muscles were still the same skinny size, he conceded ruefully, but hopefully when he got some food into him that would change.

With this strength, it didn't take him long to make his way up the tree before stepping onto one of the larger branches. Gazing out from his new vantage spot, he wasn't too happy with what he found.

As he'd seen previously, the thick wall of grass continued to grow in height and healthiness, growing greener as it got further away from the desert. The path of dead grass he'd left behind him as he travelled was the only thing breaking up the endless field of grass. Speaking of, his magic had been steadily leeching away the vitality from the tree he was on, although he was leaving the drain in its default state instead of consciously empowering it in an effort to keep the tree alive for longer.

It didn't seem to be working very well, as the already brown leaves had all darkened and begun to fall off. He was pretty sure that draining the tree would just kill it while leaving the structure intact — dead trees didn't immediately fall over, after all — but he didn't want to risk the branch he was standing on snapping any more than he needed to.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

With one hand on the trunk for balance, he did one last quick check of the area. There was nothing odd in the immediate area, no sign at all of the stalker. Had it just left him alone? He wasn't sure why it would do such a thing, but then again he wasn't sure why it would deliberately reveal itself just to hide away right after either.

The feeling of safety from being tucked away up on a tree helped Symon to calm down, but even with a clearer mind, he wasn't sure what the stalker was trying to do. Either it was stronger than him and should have just attacked him, or it was weaker than him and shouldn't have shown itself in the first place.

It wasn't acting like how he'd expect a wild animal to behave. Maybe he'd inadvertently walked into the creature's territory, and it was just trying to warn him away? If he thought of it as a protective mother bear, it made sense that it would just want him to leave. Perhaps it was useless to apply Earth logic to this alien creature, but it made Symon feel a little better to try and reason things through.

Right as he was about to climb back down the tree, a flicker of movement deep into the grass caught his attention. Or rather, considering the grass was constantly swaying gently in the breeze, it would be more accurate the say that it was the the absence of movement in an area that caught his attention.

There was a patch of missing grass, maybe a five-minute run from where he was now. It wasn't a very large area, but he definitely should have spotted it earlier — other than the dead grass he'd left in his wake and the occasional tree, it was the only thing breaking up the massive field of grass. He stared at it, trying to figure out why he hadn't noticed what looked like a crop circle earlier.

By now, the tree he was in was well and truly dead, the trickle of vitality long since stopped. It maintained its structural integrity though, allowing him to keep an eye on the clear patch for long enough to see something interesting. At first, he'd thought it could be the stalker clearing an area for some unknown reason, but the truth was something Symon was much happier to see.

Before his eyes, the edge of the distant circle expanded slightly as figures walked around the outside, slashing at the grass as they went. After expanding the circle to an acceptable size, they walked to the centre of it. The figures appeared to be communicating, one of them waving its arms around wildly before stomping off. The remaining three did something on the ground and, after a minute, sat down around a small fire.

Symon's mouth hung open. He'd done it, he'd found civilisation! Well, sort of. Only a 5-minute run and he'd reach what could only be a small camp of people. The razor stalker was still out there somewhere, but as long as he could group up with the others he was confident that they could at the very least fend it off.

Of course, he was pretty worried about being intercepted just before he reached safety... although maybe he could shorten the distance somehow?

"Hey Keelgrave, am I safe to let those people know I'm here? They're not gonna attack me or anything, right?"

Well, that was a relief — he was actually worried they could be cannibals or something. Shouting out across the grass plains felt risky, but that razor stalker already knew where he was, so it wasn't like it'd make things worse for him.

Steadying himself on the tree branch, he cupped both hands around his mouth and, after coughing a few times to clear his dry throat, let out a loud "HEY!"

Part of him expected an echo, but of course the flat field gave no response. Thankfully, the same could not be said for the people; the ones around the fire all stood up, while the one that had moved apart from the rest of the group walked a few steps in Symon's direction. It was difficult for him to pick out any precise details at this distance, seeing the figures more as brown and white blobs, but he thought the closest figure was shading his eyes against the sun with a hand while looking vaguely towards Symon.

With a laugh, he began waving frantically at the other people and before long the lead figure began pointing at him before shouting something back. He couldn't understand him, but he wasn't expecting to understand whatever language the group spoke. Even if he did, the distance would have made communicating long phrases impossible.

The man — it was one of the bigger figures, and their shout back was deep voiced — turned back to his group and began waving his arms about animatedly as he presumably explained what he was seeing.

Symon began climbing his way down the tree in a hurry — he didn't want to be rude and force these people to come all the way over to him. The grass was short enough that they'd just be able to see each other if they were both standing straight, so it wasn't like they could get lost on their way to meet each other.

He paused halfway down the tree, hands grabbing onto the small stub where a branch must have once been. He couldn't get too excited by the prospect of meeting people, he thought. The stalker was still out there, meaning he couldn't relax at any point. It wouldn't do to get eaten right before the finish line.

Actually, didn't the other people seem a little too relaxed? Symon was pretty sure that all but one of them had been huddled around a campfire. Shouldn't they be more concerned about the monster in the grass? Unless... they didn't know...

"Shit," he said to himself, dropping down the last couple metres to the ground. "Keelgrave, how do you say the word danger? In as many languages as you know."

"Varnak!" Symon shouted as loud as he could, cupping his hands around his mouth. The lead figure looked back at Symon and waved, before turning back to his group.

Not content to just shout ineffectual warnings from a distance, Symon had begun sprinting towards the other people, all caution thrown to the wind. It was risky moving so fast through the grass, but he preferred that to leaving these people unaware of the danger that could be right behind them.

When he shouted "Zaltei!" out while running, they all seemed to recognise something was wrong. He wasn't sure if it was because they understood the word, or if it was just the normal reaction to a stranger shouting something in a panic while running towards you.

Either way, they all turned to look towards him, the detail in the faces rapidly improving as he pushed the limits of his newly level four running skill. They were so focused on him that he was the only person to notice the razor stalker casually step out of the grass wall to their side.

Almost too fast for him to see, it dashed forwards before plunging both of its scythe arms horizontally into and through the lead man's chest, sending arcs of ruby red blood that glistened with the suns' light. With contemptuous ease, it lifted him off the ground and flicked him off the blades, sending him flying a dozen metres through the air.

It slinked back into the grass before vanishing, the whole process taking less than a second.

Symon was just close enough to hear a mocking hiss before the creature disappeared.