Liz was crawling through the forest, she used her magic sense to detect any creature stupid enough to not hide its presence. She was also hiding inside bushes and behind trees. After all, the hunter knew perfectly well that she could become the hunted at any moment.
After crawling for several minutes, she heard some noises in front of her. She slowly approached the source of the sound from inside some bushes, trying to make as little noise as possible. In front of her, the ground was slightly red due to the blood that was spilled.
Finally, her head poked from the bush, and she was met by the gaze of a big red wolf. Shit. The two predators were immobile, staring at each other, analysing every move the other made.
Red wolf (Alfa) —> lvl unknown.
Liz used soul glimpse on the wolf, and all the skill told her was that she had no chance of winning a fight, escaping with her life would be an impressive enough achievement.
The wolf seemed to know that too, because it swiftly jumped towards her claws first. Liz tried to dodge jumping to her right, but the wolf still managed to scar her left arm.
Liz ignored the pain as much as she could and used her right claw, which was still covered with her mana, to climb the closest tree. She used her legs to jump and then nailed her claw to avoid falling down.
The wolf tried to jump after her, but Liz was already more than 6 metres high. She continued climbing until she reached a thick branch at least 20 metres high, then she allowed herself to take a deep breath.
That wolf almost killed me… She thought as she examined her left arm. A long deep cut reached from her shoulder to her elbow. Her blue blood flowed steadily creating several blue stains in the ground beneath her.
She focused on her new skill, feed, to begin healing her wounds. In less than an hour, her arm had stopped bleeding and the wound was almost completely healed.
Notice: you have consumed 25% of your food supply.
Almost all the wolf isn’t enough to heal my arm, I really need some healing magic. She had been unsuccessfully trying to create a healing spell that worked on her new body. But she still didn’t fully understand how it worked, so all her attempts were for nothing.
As she considered her options, something disturbed the mana inside her magic sense effective area. It was subtle at first, but once she knew the general direction, she could focus in that area and rapidly discover what was hiding there.
As she slowly climbed and crawled through the tall thick trees, she approached her unsuspecting victim. Once she was about ten metres away from it, she managed to see it.
Silver monkey —> lvl 26
Liz slightly smiled, this was somewhat manageable. It was still far higher level than her, even if you ignored that her level had reseted, but she still believed in her chances, especially if she was the one to make the first move.
However, the monkey detected her when she was a few metres away from it, and managed to jump away to a nearby branch with ease. Before Liz had time to react, the monkey started creating stones in its hand and throwing them at her.
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Liz dodged the stones and tried to retaliate with her nails. Even if I suppress my mana this stupid monkey would still alert everything to our position. She thought as she jumped towards another tree to chase the monkey.
The chase continued for quite a long time, but it was clear that Liz couldn’t catch it. It didn’t matter that the monkey was weaker than her. It was still faster, especially if the chase took place in the trees.
Liz hid and suppressed her mana again. Even if she couldn’t win like this, it didn’t mean that she was going to give up on her prey. She spended the next hours stalking the monkey from afar. Her magic sense informed her of its position flawlessly.
Even if you try to hide, once I lock my sights on you, it's quite easy to track you. She probably wouldn't notice it under normal circumstances, but tracking it before it started to hide made her job much easier.
Finally, the monkey hid inside a hole in a tall tree, at least 45 metres high. Liz could sense another creature inside the hole, much weaker than the monkey.
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The monkey was cautious, it had never seen a monster like that in the forest, so it took a long detour and only gathered some fruits and returned to its hideout once it was sure the creature had left.
It climbed the tall trees until the hole that it called home appeared in front of it. Inside this hole, it's only offspring, a lvl 6 monkey waited patiently for its mother to bring him food.
The mother handed a yellow fruit to her son. She laid with her back against the wall and took a deep breath. Even if she didn’t know that the trees hid the mana inside of them, she always felt safe inside of them.
She was exhausted, and almost out of mana, her intelligence was enough to understand that she should increase her endurance and agility, but doing so would mean to neglect her strength, and therefore her ability to hunt anything but small fries that wouldn’t give her much more experience than simply eating fruits.
She bit her fruit as she thought of her options, but anything seemed like a bad idea. Her gaze landed on her son, the little monkey wasn’t strong enough to even lay a foot outside of the tree, and until it was, she would have to gather food for both of them.
Suddenly, her chest started hurting, a thin long grey arm appeared inside of the tree, and blue claws were piercing her chest. She didn’t have time to react, and then, the arm pulled her out of the tree, and the same creature that was chasing her hours ago was waiting outside with its big open maws.
Only one thought filled her mind, she was dead, the creature had waited patiently till she let her guard down and now…
Her thought process stopped when the creature bit her neck and its head fell away from her body.
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Liz had the death corpse of the silver monkey stuck in her claws, but her attention was focused on the other monkey inside of the tree. It was lower level than her, but it still looked at her angrily.
I think I might have just killed its mother. She thought. Well, it's not like I say no to free food. A needle pierced through the monkey's head, killing it instantly.
Liz entered the hole and began eating the monkeys, as the system’s voice echoed in her head.
Notice: You have killed a level 26 silver monkey. More experience is awarded for killing an enemy stronger than you.
Notice: You have killed a level 6 monkey.
Notice: you have levelled up to level 2.
Only one level this time… Apparently, even if she was level one in theory, the system understood that she was relatively strong.
Anyways, these trees are weird, they block most of the mana from inside out. She thought, as she inspected the inside of the hole.
It was fairly big, and probably could fit at least 3 monkeys without being cramped, but Liz’s body was quite big, and the hole felt rather tight. Even with its ability to block mana, it’s still worse than the cave.
As she was thinking that, Liz saw a snake approaching the monkey’s head on the ground. Liz silently crawled out of the hole, ready to hunt her next victim.
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Kancor and his old companions were waiting in an endless extension of nothingness. They were surrounded by countless souls that, like them, were waiting for their turn to reincarnate and return to the material world.
Everybody instinctively understood that, and a long ordered queue was formed, endless souls waiting for their turn.
“I still can’t believe that you were waiting for me.” Kancor said, smiling from ear to ear.
“Please, we knew you were going to end up hating yourself for what happened, you are that stupid.” Solka, the red haired paladin of their group answered.
“Beside, you were the one who said it right, we are a team, we'll be together through heaven and hell.” Kala repeated the words he said hundreds of years ago, back when they were just starting adventuring the world.
Everybody laughed as Kancor’s face turned red. “You were so childish back then.” Rexis laughed.
“Awwww, such a cute reunion.” A dark voice mocked them.
Everyone turned their head towards him, a muscular man with pale skin, his eyes were blood red and a pair of black angel wings peeked from his back.
“I have been waiting for you, HEEERO” He said that word as a mockery, and summoned a huge black axe in his hand.