Mike let go of the swords he had been using to hold on to the back of the monster and stood up. Taking a deep breath, he looked around to see if there were any other threats he needed to deal with. Seeing nothing, he said, “All right. Let’s get our perimeter set up. We’ll base from here.”

Heather stepped out from behind the tree she had been using as a firing position. “Aren’t we a little too close to the ambush site?” she asked.

Jerry appeared as he dropped his essence cloak, replying, “No. This is perfect. This monster has cleared the area. Not that it really matters. If that was the strongest thing around here, we don’t have much to worry about. We will probably have a day or two before anything else tries to take over. A simple misdirection ward should be enough to keep us from having to deal with constant attacks.”

Mike pulled out his swords, then hopped off the beasts back. It was around 10ft tall at the shoulder, and looked like a deer crossed with a bear. The thing was already dispersing, and he hurried to get the essence before the corpse lost too much into the ether.

Heather said, “So tomorrow then?”

Activating the essence collection rod, Mike said, “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

Jerry got to work securing the campsite, while Heather kept watch. Mike finished collecting the essence and tossed the crystal into his backpack. He stood up to watch his teammates work. They were both professionals, and he was glad to have them with him.

Sighing, he told himself that everything was going to work out, and in a few days they would all be rich.

-----

“Did you just waste your entire center on the first monster we’ve seen? It hasn’t even been 30 minutes. What the hell is wrong with you?!?” shouted Nick.

Nero lowered his hands from his victory pose and cocked his head in confusion. He was pretty sure that he had plenty of center left. Rather than answer prematurely and look like an idiot, he checked his identity.

Name

Nero Walker

Level

11

Race

Human

Growth

81%

Tier

1

Condition

98%

Age

14

Center

72%

Body

3

Mind

4

Soul

2

Confluence

10

Stars

0

Pillars

1 / 1

Scoffing, Nero said, “I’ve got over 70% left, I’m fine. A little walking meditation and I’ll be back to full.”

Everyone was still grouped up in front of the smoking bear/beaver monster thing. No one had moved, they just kept staring at Nero like he was a broken lamp they didn’t know what to do with.

Nero waited a few seconds and said, “Stop staring at me like that. It’s freaking me out.”

Nick took a few steps forward and said, “Sorry Nero. It’s just that it is very unusual for someone who just broke level 10 to be able to do what you just did. Putting that aside, the standard practice when facing a monster is to slowly increase how much center you use during combat until you find how much center is required to break a monster’s essence field. You’d know that if you had bothered to read the deployment packet.”

While Nick was calmly talking to Nero, Cathleen had taken a few steps away and was looking around to see if there were any other threats. Rose was still staring at Nero, but she now looked more confused than scared.

Sergeant Wesker had taken off his backpack and was reaching for something inside.

Nick kept blathering about how odd Nero was, and what kind of conclusions could be drawn from what Nero had just done. It got very technical, very fast, and Nero had stopped listening. The sergeant was doing something interesting, and it had drawn Nero’s attention.

Walking toward the deceased monster, Nero interrupted Nick by asking, “What’s he doing?”

Nick looked over at the sergeant and said, “He’s going to use a harvester, usually referred to as a ‘collection rod’. Hunters who aren’t very talented in essence control tend to use them to gather essence crystals.”

Apparently, Sergeant Wesker heard Nick’s answer and angrily interjected, “It’s just easier to do it this way. My essence control is fine.”

Nick gave Nero a look like he didn’t believe the sergeant at all, but was willing to humor the poor man.

Nero spread out his psychic field to watch what was happening while walking over to take a closer look. The sergeant had pulled out a hefty two foot long rod, with a large hoop on the end of it. The thing looked like a giant bubble maker, but it was made entirely out of inscribed steel. It was shiny, and Nero had a strong urge to play with it.

Holding it over the monsters head, the sergeant firmed his stance like he was wielding a sword, or a fishing rod. The hoop started glowing light blue, and seemed to gain weight as the man started looking like he was trying to reel in a big one.

In the ethereal plane, Nero could see something being pulled out of the monster. Originally, there were small wisps floating up from the corpse, but now it was all being pulled into the center of the hoop. It looked like a psychic vacuum cleaner. Nero felt some shock as he watched a small crystal start to form inside the hoop. It was suspended in the center, seemingly held up by an invisible force. Nero didn’t feel anything connecting it, and the crystal itself felt weird in his senses.

Nero was now close enough to get a good look with his eyes. He saw the small crystal grow like one of the cool crystal growing kits you could get online. It started to take the shape of a hexagon, or more accurately, a squished 20-sided die.

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By the time all of the essence was pulled out of the monster, the crystal was about 2 inches wide and maybe half an inch thick. Nero was in awe. He was looking right at it, but his psychic senses were telling him that the thing was barely there. It was like it wasn’t fully ‘real’.

When the hoop stopped glowing, the crystal fell to the ground. Sergeant Wesker stood up straight and blew out a deep breath like he had just pulled in a marlin. The man said, “All right, I’m not going to be carrying around your loot, so pick that up and try not to lose it.”

Nero could hear the condescension in the man’s tone, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He tried to mentally pick up the crystal, but he couldn’t get a good grip on it. It kept slipping through his mental hands. Rather than give up, he just stood there staring at the crystal with an intense look on his face.

Nick broke his concentration by saying, “Just pick it up Nero. You won’t be able to interact with it. You’d have to resonate your psychic presence to the frequency of the plane from which the monster’s pattern came.”

Nero turned to look at Nick. He said, “Anyone ever tell you that 90% of what you say is just gibberish that vaguely resembles a sentence? All the words are clear in their meaning, but when you put them together it’s completely absent of any useful information.”

Rose had been standing next to them the entire time, and at Nero’s statement, she burst into laughter. Both Nero and Nick looked over at her, and she tried to stop laughing. She was nearly biting her fist to shut herself up. She said, “Sorry. It wasn’t funny. I’ll go over there now.” She turned and walked over to Cathleen, who was diligently scanning the forest for threats.

Nero bent down and picked up the essence crystal. It felt like a typical crystal, it wasn’t even that heavy. He felt like he could break it pretty easily by throwing it at a wall, or hitting it with a hammer. He turned to Nick and asked, “How durable are these things?”

Nick raised an eyebrow and said, “They are pretty solid. You can break them, but it would just be a waste of money. They’re not dangerous if that’s what your worried about. If you were to break the containment form, the essence inside would just disperse into the ether and you wouldn’t even have a residual material echo. You need to remember, that’s just a construct with an internal potential for identity.”

Nero shook his head in defeat. Sometimes he really hated talking to Nick. Everything felt like a lecture. The man was incapable of speaking like a normal person. Putting the crystal into his bag, he asked, “Are we just going to leave the monster here? Shouldn’t we harvest it or something?”

Sergeant Wesker was the one who answered him. “It’s a monster, not a beast. If you look closely, you’ll see it’s already starting to disperse.”

Confused, Nero turned back the giant smoking monster. Looking closely, he saw that it wasn’t smoking from his lightning bolt, it was slowly losing mass. Some of it was staying put, but most of it was dispersing into the atmosphere. It’s like it was construct that was losing cohesion. He felt like saying, “Fascinating” in a cold tone while raising one eyebrow. Luckily, he held himself back, as no one here would have gotten that reference. While Nero may have never seen a full episode of the original show, he had seen plenty of clips.

Deciding that he was just wasting time, he turned back to the rest of the team. Sergeant Wesker was tapping his foot, giving Nero a not-so-subtle hint that he was ready to go. Nero nodded to the man and said, “Alright, I’m done. Do we have to do an after action report or something?”

Sergeant Wesker gave him a hard look and said, “We’ve been here like half an hour. I’d barely consider us ‘in the wilds’. This was nothing. It was barely an encounter. The monster didn’t even have any abilities. What’s there to talk about? Get back in formation, we have a long way to go.”

Turning on his heel, the sergeant walked off. Everyone fell into position around him, and they continued on their way. Nero tried to wrap his head around the idea that a gigantic mutated monster was nothing to make a fuss over.

As they walked through the forest, everyone kept their eyes peeled. This time, Nero had his psychic field spread wide, gently touching everything in order to have an idea of what was around him. His field had grown a lot, and he was rather proud of it. It may not be very impressive to most people, but having a 40ft bubble of perception was enough for Nero to feel like he was making solid progress.

While trying to pay attention to his field, he also tried to keep his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Nero knew that there were animals and beasts who could hide their essence signature, and he didn’t want to be caught off guard. He payed special attention to anything that disrupted his field.

Even though they were just walking, Nero still had a great deal to pay attention to, and he was having trouble trying to free up mental energy in order to reflect on what just happened.

As time passed, things kept grabbing his attention. He felt birds in the trees along with small bugs flying around. Small animals were scurrying under the bushes. It was uncomfortable to see how his team’s mere presence was upsetting everything. Although they were just walking, everything they did seemed to startle something. Even the ambient essence flows were being disturbed by their passing.

Whispering, Nero asked without turning, “Why is everything running away from us?”

Nick answered, “Do you want things to run toward us?”

Nero said, “No, that’s not what I meant. I was just -” His mouth slammed shut, as midway through his sentence he felt a presence flicker among the tree branches. His eyes snapped up and he saw something shimmer in and out of existence.

Sergeant Wesker paused, and whispered, “Did you see something?”

Nero nodded and said, “Something is in the trees. I think it’s moving around the branches. I can’t really see it, but I kinda felt it with my field.”

The sergeant asked, “Anyone have eyes on it?”

Everyone grouped up in a circle, their eyes on the branches floating above them. No one said anything, but they stood ready to receive an ambush. Nero used his field to actively sweep the area, mentally poking anything that caught his attention. Even though he was ready, he was surprised when one of his probes caused a 6ft long large black cat to briefly materialize above them.

The beast’s eyes were yellow, but everything else was black. It was too bulky to be a panther, and looked more like a giant fluffy house cat. It’s edges seemed to be a little blurry, and its coat was so dark that it made the shadows seem bright. There was a slight shimmer, and the beast disappeared again.

Sergeant Wesker shouted, “Contact left! Camouflaged feline variant.”

Nero was trying to figure out where it went, when he felt Nick’s psychic field spread out and seemingly ‘shook’ the ambient essence. Apparently, the beast hadn’t moved, and it shimmered back into view in the same place it had dissapeared. Whatever Nick had done seemed to have disrupted the cat’s ‘essence cloak’. Nero had never seen anything like that, and he did his best to figure out how Nick had done it.

While Nero was busy trying to figure out Nick’s technique, Rose was releasing arrows at the now visible cat. However, the cat seemed to realize it had been spotted and started bouncing around the branches. Nero felt the essence around the cat shift, then watched as the cat vanished. Nero had been staring at it with all his senses, and it looked like this time it had actually teleported. Shocked, Nero felt around for where it had gone.

Before he could offer a warning, he felt it appear behind Rose. Spinning around, he was just in time to see her get grabbed by its large jaws. The cat had clamped down on her throat from behind. Everyone turned to help, but it was too late. With a shimmer, the beast vanished along with its prey.

Nero was livid, but he also wasn’t fooled. The beast hadn’t teleported, he could feel its presence dragging off his teammate. Stamping a spell-form, Nero shot out a simple foot-long iron spike at where he felt the beast hiding. With a yelp, it reappeared and dropped Rose. Nero’s large spike was stuck in its chest, but Nero saw the spike was already losing cohesion.

Before he could cast another spell, Cathleen’s spear flew across the short distance and buried itself several feet into the side of the cat. Even though the beast must have weighed several hundred pounds, the spear had carried enough force to send it flying into a tree.

Nick was already running over to Rose’s body. Seeing that the beast was dead, Nero dropped his hands that were about to cast another spell. He slowly walked up to Nick, watching the man cast a healing spell on Rose’s dead body. Nero could see the tissue reform, and in no time at all she was restored. Without missing a beat, Nick switched to a resuscitation spell. Nero hadn’t actually ever seen the spell being cast, even though he had been on the receiving end more times than he could count.

With a gasp, Rose sat up. She was shivering, and looked like she had just emerged from an ice bath. Nick leaned over and hugged the young woman. She clung to Nick’s shoulders, her eyes wide in fright. Panting, she started sobbing.

Not knowing how to help, Nero just stood there and watched. He felt powerless. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cathleen return to watching the forest. Then he saw the sergeant heading over to the beast to retrieve the essence crystal.

‘We’ve been here for like an hour and half. This place is everything they said it was. Maybe I should have stayed behind the walls and spent some of that money I won. What the hell was I thinking?’ he thought to himself.

“Walker, get over here and put this somewhere safe. Then watch my back while I skin this beast. I’m betting this pelt will be worth something,” said the sergeant, while holding a small essence crystal out to Nero.

Shaking off his fear, Nero went to grab the crystal and keep watch. He tried to follow Cathleen’s advice from before they had left the city, doing his best to ‘focus on the here and now’.