Max stood quietly in a corner, making no sound at all. Even so, he knew that the feral fauns probably would have been able to find him by now without his magical advantages. In addition to his network of spirit informants, he’d used one of his few stealth beads, activating it and dropping it at his feet. They had limited utility, but should be enough to help hide his scent for another few minutes.

The real MVP of his continued success was definitely Lavinia’s spirits relaying information, though. He’d be incredibly impressed if not for the memories of his past life. Back on Albion, his strength had been so potent, he’d been able to send thousands of mana pings out like radar. It’d been like a second sight.

Fighting in close confines, engaging in guerilla warfare was tiring. He'd been doing well so far, but he definitely needed to either catch the fauns in a good ambush spot or manipulate them into giving him the upper hand before striking. Even with Max's superhuman levels of endurance, he was already starting to feel the strain.

At least with this new strategy and his new abilities, killing the damned shamans had been possible, and that's exactly what he'd been doing. He’d been whittling them down. Unfortunately, the monsters had caught on to his intentions and were not only hiding the shamans better now but also giving them guards and the rest of them were hunting him in earnest. If Max hadn't been a new Bead Sorcerer, he figured that he probably would have needed to retreat by now. There was no way he would have been able to clear out all these monsters in one go without his new abilities.

When his network of spiritual informants let him know that this newest group of fauns didn’t have any other groups close enough to quickly help them, he skulked out of the hallway and followed. There was one shaman in this group beating a drum and otherwise making it impossible for the group to move quietly. The shaman was flanked by two warriors that kept close. It wouldn’t be a problem for Max, not if he struck fast.

He waited until the group ahead rounded a corner before speeding up so he could launch a surprise attack the moment he caught up.

Max threw a bead far ahead to the front of the enemy column that burst into heavy gray smoke, bringing visibility to almost zero. However, he still remembered where all of the fauns were and managed to find the shaman within seconds. Blinded as he was, his attacks were not as clean as he would have liked. Still effective, though.

A quick cut followed by a heavy diagonal slash ended the squawking of the shaman. He used Lavinia's summons to help him get an idea of where the remaining monsters were. Their information was not perfect, but was powerful nonetheless. This ability was fairly new and Max was still not good at using it, but within ten or fifteen feet it helped a lot–especially in a situation like this one where his enemy couldn’t see.

Max methodically moved forward and managed to kill off the entire group before the smoke began to clear. Once it was over, he thought he could hear approaching monsters down the tunnels and a moment later the spirits confirmed it for him. Time to go.

He ran away towards the main cavern, ready to add some fuel to the fire of his new plan. So far, it seemed like it was working. He made sure his footsteps were plenty loud before bursting out of a tunnel into the largest cavern of the cave system.

This was the area he'd spotted when he first entered the caves before falling down the trap. And what he'd seen before had only been a small part of it. This cavern was actually where the majority of the fauns were living right now. The non-warriors shied away and meowed as Max ran through the area at a dead sprint. But he wasn't fooled. On one of his earlier dashed through this area, an ancient Fawn had suddenly cast a fireball at him and right afterwards two adolescents had rushed him with spears.

Sometimes, even with all the experience Max had, he forgot that monsters could not be judged by the same standards as other sentient beings. While dealing with certain types of monsters, it would always be a fight for survival. And if the roles were reversed, the monsters would have no problem at all killing every human man, woman, and child.

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Max dodged several arrows and a rock hurled from a sling, and completely avoided a group of thirty fighters that tried to intercept him. The groups of feral fauns could only move as fast as their shamans but it still wouldn't have mattered even if they weren't being held back. With his two star mana body, now Max was just too fast to be caught. On top of his natural speed, he also used hops of Slick's power to completely clear any obstacles in his way.

He entered a side tunnel and tossed a rock growth bead behind him. The moment the bead struck the ground, a three-foot wide column of solid stone erupted from the floor until it impacted the ceiling. His aim had been perfect. Now there was barely enough room to the side of the blockage for Max to squeeze back through if he needed to, but none of the full-grown fauns could follow. He’d been careful not to demonstrate this fact to any of them, though. In fact, he was fairly certain they’d bought his misdirection that the pillars stopped him as well.

His plan was to lure all of the creatures into the large cavern and bombard them with his explosion beads. After all, this strategy had worked extremely well with the kobolds back on earth. He just needed to keep staying ahead of the damn things.

And that's exactly what he did for the next hour. The fauns were never able to catch up with him. He was always a step ahead, and when he wasn’t, he faked it with his magically-enhanced hiding.

Finally, when he judged the time was right, instead of entering the cavern from the last remaining unobstructed tunnel, he ghosted to one of the tunnels he'd already been down and closed off with a pillar of stone. Then he peeked into the cavern and confirmed with his own eyes what the spirits had been telling him.

The vast majority of the monsters were arranged in a semicircle around the last tunnel's entrance. All their weapons were aimed directly at it as they waited for him. None of the shamans were drumming or singing. The battle had lasted long enough that they were exhausted and now each of the magic-casting fauns held a weapon of their own, standing with the warriors.

Max grinned. This is exactly what he'd been waiting for. Each of his explosion beads didn't do that much damage on its own, at least not when monsters this strong were considered. And unfortunately, there wasn't an easy way to actually increase the blast power. This meant that for higher level monsters, the explosion beads had limited utility and would eventually be useless. Max wasn’t even considering using the explosion beads against creatures like the giants.

But for a situation like this, and given the current situation where Max had several bracelets laden with explosion beads–over forty of them–they could be helpful indeed. Now he just needed a good angle.

Staying unnoticed, he quietly squeezed through the tunnel blockage, judged a good angle and let fly. Before the beads had even hit the ground, he was already retreating past the stone growth back into the relative safety of the blocked tunnel.

The explosions were glorious, sounding like multiple firecrackers on the Fourth of July…on steroids. Vibrations in the surrounding stone made small rocks on the tunnel floor jump. Max didn't bother to go back out and check for survivors. His spirits could do that. A moment later, he both heard and felt another of his traps go off.

He’d already gotten his spirits’ help to trap the last remaining tunnel. The spirits had silently carried his ice explosion beads there, and they’d been instructed to spring the trap when the tunnel had been full of enemies. Sure enough, a moment later, Max could hear the sounds of grieving, wailing, and pain increase in volume. His eyes narrowed and he began the long jog from his position back around to the trapped tunnel.

The fauns were beaten but they might not know it yet. Max wasn't relaxing, though, not taking any chances. They could still be dangerous.

Even individually, they were very strong and capable of killing Max if he let his guard down. However, now that there were fewer of them left alive, he was able to breathe a little asier. In fact, he finally could use his ectoplasm armor again.

The problem with being sneaky, using Lavinia's spirits for reconnaissance was that they were always away, not available to form glowing protection for his body. Now with a thought, his armor sprang back into place and Max grimly ran forward, preparing to end every last one of the fauns in this cave system. He thought it was poetic justice of sorts that he'd been dragged into all this by a trap. Now his own trap had begun the beginning of the end for his enemies.

Without giving away his presence until it was too late, Max dashed into the trapped tunnel and mercy killed several fauns with flash-frozen legs before the rest could even register his presence.

When they belated through the pain in surprise and alarm, Max watched for reinforcements. None came.

As plans went, this one had gone great.

He hadn’t known what to think about being a new Bead Sorcerer at first, but now he was a fan. And he also knew he was only scratching the surface of what he might be able to do in the future.

He went to each of the stricken feral fauns in turn, methodically slaughtering them all. This was ugly work, but it was better them than him.