There were still several hours until sundown, but that didn't make Loran relax at all. The last time they set up a small camp was on the first day in NEO before they knew for sure that there were predators in the woods, and more importantly, there were enough of them to sleep in shifts. Now, Loran and Yang knew for certain that there were possible threats, were camping with too few people to set up a proper sleep rotation, and were less than 100 feet away from a pile of Moss Wolf carcasses which would probably lure over every predator and scavenger in the region.

Once Loran had gathered enough wood to get a fire going and carried over one of the Moss Wolves for dinner, he set to constructing a perimeter of wooden spikes around their campsite. It was a slow process. He didn't have the time, skill, or energy to convert whole tree trunks into smaller spikes like was done for the village, so he walked around chopping adequately sized branches instead. It was time-consuming, as was the process of driving them into the dirt firmly enough, but as the sky was beginning to turn orange they had a barrier that would probably keep most of the predators away.

As Loran was building the camp, Yang started a fire and had been cooking a few strips of Moss Wolf meat. As Loran sat down breathing heavily, Yang handed him a skewer that had just finished cooking.

"The wolf bodies might be in our favor now," Loran said, taking a bite of the roasted wolf meat, "easier to help themselves to that than it is to try and attack us."

"Hopefully," she said, picking slowly at her food. Yang had been quiet for a while now and it was starting to make Loran uneasy. As much as he preferred avoiding small talk he was well aware that Yang didn't like to keep quiet unless she had to. The journey out here had been an endless back and forth of her starting a conversation about some random thought, Loran giving a halfhearted response and requesting she stop talking, and her ignoring him to talk about something else.

"....Alright, even I can tell you're upset about something, so what is it? Are you mad you got your leg messed up by an ant?"

"No, well sort of, I- look that thing was an ant from hell okay," she said defensively.

"You're not wrong. So if that's not the problem what is?"

"I'm just....worried sis is gonna come out here looking for me."

"....Right, they'll definitely send out search parties for us."

At first, Loran didn't think too much of it, if anything having others show up to help while Yang was injured would be much better than trying to last with just the two of them. But the moment he remembered the Iron Ant he took in a quick breath.

"We need to get some kind of warning back to the camp," he said quickly, dropping his skewer.

"What," Yang was confused by his sudden change, "don't get me wrong I'd love to let sis know we're okay but what do you mean warning?"

"They don't know about the ants, they'll probably try to fight it as we did."

Yang's eyes widened as she realized the implications.

'That thing nearly broke my leg through the armor. If the others go looking for us, find more ants and try to tank its attacks...'

"Oh fuck."

"Yeah," Loran agreed. Needless to say, someone could easily lose a limb, and that's if they survive the encounter. Looking over everything they had, Loran picked up Yang's ax and walked over to a nearby Birch tree.

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"I have an idea, give me a minute." He began chopping the tree down but striking at a point about the same height as his chest. It took some time, but soon enough the tree came down, falling away from the camp. As soon as it fell, Loran changed the angle of his swings, now bringing the ax down on the tall stump. With a few more swings, Loran had carved off a long flat piece of wood. Running over to the river, Loran placed it in the water, watching as it began to float away.

"Alright, we have our messenger," he said, grabbing the plank before it floated too far.

Loran took out his knife and began carving a simple message into the plank, letting the reader know that the two of them were still alive, camping along the river bank and that there was a new monster with terrifying attack power. Once he was done tossed the plank back into the river.

"You think that'll work? What if it just floats past the village?"

Loran shrugged, "we can't know for sure, but the female players will start bathing once the sun goes down. That should be enough time for the plank to reach them. They might miss it, or the plank could get stuck before it reaches them but we don't have other options." Loran returned to his previous seat around the campfire. His nose scrunched in disgust as he realized that he had dropped his dinner in the dirt in his haste to get the message out. With a sigh, he tossed the ruined meat into the fire. "Can I get another-"

Yang tossed him a new skewer before he could finish his sentence.

"Thanks."

"Mh," she grunted.

~~~~~

The two continued eating in silence and by the time they were done the sun was beginning to set. Though they were tired neither was willing to go to sleep while there was still daylight and so they continued to sit in silence, a silence that was quickly beginning to make Yang uncomfortable. She could see that Loran was far more relaxed, simply lying back and staring up at the sky, occasionally twitching his head slightly in response to the occasional noise coming from the woods.

'Why can't there be anything to fucking do right now,' she thought anxiously. More than anything else, she just wanted to be back at the village, but as willing as she was to march nearly 10 miles with a broken leg she knew that was just a good way to get killed and never get back. Worse still was that there wasn't anything to do just to pass the time.

"Alright," she said, startling Loran as he wasn't expecting her to speak up so suddenly. "I'm going to lose my mind if we just sit in silence for the next few days."

"So? I think you know that I'm not all that interested in talking."

"Well, I'm too bored to give a shit, so unless you have a better idea let's talk."

"You really do curse a lot, no wonder your sister always tells you to watch it."

Yang was going to respond, probably with some variation of "fuck off" just to spite his comment, but the mention of her sister left the words stuck in her throat and she looked away. 'Fuck, I'm more anxious than I thought.' She hoped he hadn't noticed since he was still looking at the sky, but when she turned back Loran was staring at her analytically.

"....Now that I think about it, you weren't concerned about a search party earlier, you were just worried about forcing Yin to come out looking for you. You've always been extremely protective of her, why?"

"Better idea, you said you've played a lot of video games right, what's your favorite MMO?" She asked a little too quickly.

"Nope, sorry I'm not dropping this." A smug grin was slowly forming on Loran's face. "You wanna talk so bad, spill it. What's going on with you and Yin?"

'This was a mistake,' Yang thought almost instinctually, 'I should've just been happy with a few days of silence.' She was about to drop the idea of talking entirely, hoping Loran would accept that over pressing the issue, but she decided against it.

'Sis has been telling me to stop worrying about it, maybe getting it off my chest can help.'

Taking a deep breath to try to calm herself down, Yang said, "alright, I'll talk."

The smug look all but evaporated from Loran's face, bolting upright as his eyes widened in panic. "Wait what no, this is supposed to be the part where we go back to not talking or you threaten me to drop it, I don't want to hear your family drama!"

"Oh?" Now it was Yang's turn to look smug. "You're the one who said we're not dropping this, and since you've been so kind as to offer listening how could I refuse," she said coyly. Her smile was slowly turning bitter as she thought about what the coming conversation would include. "Besides, I've been dealing with this shit for almost a year now, I really need to vent about it."

Loran clearly wanted nothing to do with this situation, his eyes were darting around as if searching for an escape route. However, after a few seconds, his shoulders slumped, he let out a sigh of resignation, and lying back down in the grass he told Yang, "go ahead."