After about half an hour of trudging through thick moss they came across a small pond no more than a few meters from edge to edge. Although Eik was hesitant to put his face into the water, he also realized the importance of locating a drinkable source of water before their rather limited supply began to ran out.

What they had managed to bring would last them at most three days, and especially since they expected plenty of walking three days of supplies would be up before they knew it.

Letting the smallest trickle of water enter his mouth, Eik swallowed and waited for the effects of Noxious Invigoration to start appearing. Unfortunately, after about ten seconds they did and that dismissed the pond as a possible source of drinking water.

As soon as that was confirmed Eik let Profound Toxin fill his mouth and swallowed the bitter fluid in three gulps. He repeated it three more times, just to make sure that any alien parasite that might have been present in the water had been utterly annihilated.

“Can you estimate the severity of the toxins in the water, Eik?” Sonja asked.

Eik tilted his head from side to side with a contemplative expression. “Not really, to be honest. I’m just not familiar enough with the efficacy of Resistance: Toxin to make an accurate judgement based on that alone. Even toxic herbs and plants that could be fatal to an unawakened under the right circumstances barely bother me anymore.”

He tried to feel around his body for the symptoms of the poison in the water, but it was difficult to pin down under the layers of resistance. “Maybe a neurotoxin of some kind? It could be something I’ve never encountered, or that might not even exist on Earth.”

“Do you think one of us should try to drink it to test? Maybe it’s just a slight irritant or something,” Sonja suggested, Michael and Heath taking a few steps back.

Eik gave it some thought. “I think we should look around for others sources first, and then if we end up trying it, we’ll have to be ready with one of those new healing potions Atla gifted us.”

She nodded, more than willing to yield to Eik’s expertise on the topic of toxins. “By the way,” he said as they started walking again. “remind me to ask Atla to teach me how to make those healing potions. They’d fly off the shelves once I get Eik’s Excellent Elixirs up and running again.”

“You’re going to open your store again? What about our team? What about that thing where you’re probably the most important man in Forest right now?” Heath asked.

“No no, it’s just going to be a side project at this point. I’ll mix some stuff when we have downtime. Might employ some poor chap to run the place since I won’t have time to be there much. But maybe I'll expand if I can get my hands on alien recipes. You’re the one who suggested that a while back, remember?”

Heath pursed his lips in thought. “Vaguely.”

“Don’t worry, Heathy. We’re taking this team to the top of the multiverse!”

It was another ten minutes before they encountered something disturbing.

After that long without anything more dangerous than the poisonous water, they had begun to grow complacent. Heath had dropped his shield to hang loosely on his arm and their usually tight formation had grown sloppy and disorganized.

Abruptly, while Michael and Eik were discussing the possibility of building a greenhouse in Eik’s back garden to establish a dedicated production of cocoa, Sonja pulled Mike back behind one of the massive mushrooms by his shirt.

“Stop! Get back!” she hissed with a voice barely above a whisper. She was gesturing wildly for Eik and Heath to follow them into hiding.

“Look,” she said, pointing in the direction they had been walking as they gathered around the fleshy trunk. “Look at that thing.”

To begin with it was difficult to spot what she was talking about, but once they saw it it became impossible to unsee. With eerie, slow movements, a ten meter tall stick was striding along one of the many streams that patterned the landscape like a spider web.

“That’s… so creepy,” Michael commented as they peeked out from behind the mushroom.

“Where is it going? It’s following the water so carefully.”

With purple hues mottling a brown carapace, it was able to blend into the environment incredibly well despite it’s staggering height. On six spindly, almost invisible legs Eik didn’t doubt that they would have nutmegged the bastard if Sonja hadn’t been smart enough to stay vigilant.

“Which side is its face and which side is its ass?” Heath asked, staring open-mouthed.

“The side that’s walking away is obviously the ass, dude. Face is going forward. That’s the law of nature,” Eik whispered.

“Not trichoplax adhaerens. It has no front and no back. In fact, it doesn’t really have anything — it has no stomach, muscles, or even blood. It’s just a hairy plate, basically,” Michael broke in, his eyes never leaving the odd-looking strider.

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Eik and Heath stared while Sonja sighed quietly. “How the hell do you know that kind of stuff?” Heath questioned.

“So I’m interested in biology, okay? Sue me!”

“What should we do about the monster?” Sonja asked, cutting their discussion short.

“I mean, this is the E-rank practical, right?” Eik said. “And we’re mostly E-rank, so we should be able to take it.”

“Good point.”

“But wouldn’t there also be monsters we should keep away from because they’re too strong. If it’s supposed to be a simulation of the real world, that would make sense,” Michael added.

“That one looks weak though,” Heath said.

“I’m up for trying it,” Eik said. “We’re probably going to have to get a feel for the monsters in the place soon or later anyway.”

Once what they presumed to be the monster’s face was angled away from their hiding spot by the pattern of the stream it was following, they legged it to the next trunk and then the next, approaching cautiously despite their earlier chatter.

The strider didn’t appear to take notice of them whatsoever, even when they got close enough for any Earth monster to have charged them already. “Hey, look,” Eik whispered as they stepped clear of the last trunk between them and the thing. “There are feelers hanging down from its body.”

“They’re so thin. Like hairs.”

The strands hung around it like the tentacles of a jellyfish, swaying slightly as a soft breeze passed.

“Maybe they're its weak point. Everything else looks like carapace,” Eik suggested and Heath immediately stepped up and slashed his sword into one of them before they could stop him, failing to sever it despite its apparent fragility.

As if the thing had been waiting for them to do exactly that, one of the gangling legs rose high into the air and drove downward, impacting Heath’s thick metal shield with the force of an industrial hammer striking an anvil.

Heath’s knees buckled under the power of the instantaneous attack and it would have forced him down if the pointy leg hadn’t slid off the surface of the shield and thunked deep into the earth. A second and third leg followed with lightning speed, one glancing off Heath’s shield again like the first one had while the other tore a nasty scrape across his thigh.

The tank stumbled back with a gasp, two more legs missing him completely. “They’re all aiming for the exact same place, even after I moved! I don’t think it can see!” he shouted through clenched teeth.

It plunged another spear-like limb into the earth before it begun to spin around creepily, legs moving rapidly as the feelers flowed outward like a twirling summer dress, searching for its attacker.

Michael began working on Heath’s wound, his hands humming with the regenerative green magic. “Please give me a heads-up next time, Heath,” he complained. “I didn’t have time to cast Single Protection on you. This gash could have been avoided.”

“Sorry,” Heath mumbled.

“Should we use one of the new healing potions?” Michael asked as the monster continued to spin around in search of them.

Eik examined the leg injury. It wasn’t as bad as he had initially feared. It had barely hit him but the sheer force of the attack had essentially shaved off the surface of skin and flesh. “I think your healing and one of my healing chunks should be sufficient for something of this severity.”

“It's coming closer!” Sonja warned and they moved back further.

“Shoot it with arrows!” Eik said. “It doesn’t seem capable of much outside the range of those feelers.”

She did as advised but narrowly missed the first two shots, the many wiry sections of the stick insect-like monster’s body moving too quickly and erratically to get a proper aim. Miraculously the third struck one of the legs, a bony crack announcing a break.

The leg broke almost cleanly in two, the dangling limb hanging on by nothing more than a pale string of flesh. A shrill wail pierced the air like a needle. Stumbling, the monster took a moment as it struggled to realign its balance to only five legs.

“Mike, cast Bind! On its healthy legs, now!” Eik shouted, seeing a chance to catch the beast off guard.

Weaving his fingers in a smooth pattern, the healer obeyed and golden strings sprouted from the ground like glowing roots, snaring two of the spindly legs. The Bind advanced rapidly up the leg to hook on some of the sharp spines protruding from the strider’s body.

The monster crashed to the ground with a crisp, pulpy crunch, its towering height proving devastating. Whether the thing was still alive after a fall like that was not clear, but Michael still rushed in and smashed his heavy metal mace into its alien head.

The squelch as fragile carapace gave in and brain matter spilled out into the stream left no doubt.

“Dude, you took that thing down like a champion!” Eik exclaimed, congratulating Michael on his first almost solo kill. “I didn’t even get to do anything.”

“It was just the perfect opponent for my only remotely offensive ability. Nothing more,” the healer answered humbly.

“Only offensive ability so far,” Heath pointed out. “And your mace wasn’t a bad fit for its head either.”

“I wonder where it was going,” Sonja wondered out loud. “It seemed to be following the stream pretty religiously back there.”

“It might be worth checking out. It could just be a coincidence but we don’t have any better ideas right now,” Eik said.

Following the stream in the same direction the creepy strider had been, the formations of oversized mushrooms gradually began to grow denser and more robust. Several times as they walked, their stream joined another as they all appeared to be flowing toward a shared center.

Soon they encountered another of the tall stick insects striding along a bubbling stream similarly to the first. They felled it like the first, using Michael’s Bind ability to target its height and awkward movements. This one was crushed from the fall as well.

These glass cannons offered well deserved and necessary chunks of ability progression for Michael which brought him closer to the others. It was a commonly accepted truth that healers and Awakened specializing in support could have difficulty keeping up with teammates, so any extra advancement was something to celebrate.

They encountered two more as the mushrooms grew frequent enough to warrant the descriptor of “forest”. With those four kills Michael had managed to level up Bind to level 10, and his Heal had hit level 19 while Single Protection had only advanced by one from level 8 to level 9.

For another fifteen minutes they trudged through the soft moss until the scent of grilled crab reached their noses. They followed the smell for about a hundred meters where the source of smell became clear.

“Is that… another strider?” Michael asked as they stood over the corpse.

“But it’s already dead,” Heath said. “Burnt to a crisp it looks like. What did this?”

“Maybe there’s a fire breathing monster living in this area,” Michael wondered.

“No, that’s not it,” Sonja said, kneeling by the corpse as she studied the head of the downed beast. She ran a finger along a bloody wound. “This is from a blade. It wasn’t done by a monster.”

Eik said out loud what everybody was thinking. “Someone’s here with us.”