The trees were perched atop root systems that formed cavernous chambers, roots as thick as roads seeming to twist out and downward to clutch at the water of the swamp, criss-crossing those of neighboring trees in to form a many-layered tangle. They were covered in glowing moss that hung down to the water below like curtains, and many smaller trees and ferns grew out of soil that padded their surfaces.

The water lay below it all, its murky surface streaked with luminous algae and tall, spiky grass that grew in jagged lines which had no discernible pattern. Great fungi grew from the water, too, huge mushrooms that added their own pale green light to the multicolored aurora that was reflected in the water’s surface, a play of light that rippled with the wind and the motions of creatures beneath.

I eyed the tangle of roots as I descended, wondering how each of them had acquired a layer of soil—brought down in the rains and caught by grasping roots, or brought up from beneath by some clever creature with an instinct for gardening?

Regardless, the roots were perfect: multiple levels of twisting surfaces that I could not only sense with my powers, but shoot through.

I stopped on a ledge just above the swamp water. My gaze couldn’t sense the water, but I could sense the earth beneath it. The swamp, oddly enough, was divided into large cells, with built-up earthen walls and archways dividing indeterminately deep sections of water, each a small pathway that lay beneath the surface, many of them formed of stones that had been fused together with a substance that functioned like plaster.

I fixed my gaze on a dark, gnarled shape emerging from the muck-ridden swamp below me, outside my gaze.

“Log?” I asked. “Or deadly predator?”

I drew back my bowstring, spending less than a single point of mana to create a translucent arrow before loosing it at my target.

The arrow struck, making a sound like it had buried itself in wood—and then the log thrashed once before dipping below the surface.

Then I leapt to the nearest twisting root, which was wide enough for me to lay across and led into the vibrant tangle. I checked the warp jewel at my hip, this time opening the pouch—the light was fading fast.

Not good. I needed to kill Palefang, and soon. If I was lucky, I could hit level 15 and boost all my attribute-increasing skills before I fought him.

At least I knew how I was going to go about it. I had enough plans, had set up enough tricks, that I could hopefully shift things in my favor. For now, it was time to well and truly begin.

He had asked me to prove my class was [Primeval Champion], after all.

My first arrow took a colorful bird through the breast, knocking it from the small tree it rested on and frightening off the rest of its flock.

+ 62 Essence

I kept moving up the root, using my [Wild Bond] both to guide my feet through the sparse undergrowth and to search for new targets.

A hound-sized spider, obscured beneath a curtain of moss and ivy and trying to hide from my senses with its own [Wild Bond], shot forward to grab me in its pincers and took an arrow in the eye immediately—then another as it lurched backward, and then a third before it fell to the water below with a splash.

+ 455 Essence

Two more spiders were pinned to the side of one of the great trees by two arrows each as they skittered down to meet me, followed by a smaller version of one of the tree crabs I’d met earlier whose shell wasn’t hard enough to save it.

I gained more essence, the numbers flitting through my mind, unnoticed. I only cared about limit, now, and my feet were moving faster across the soft earth.

I sensed a creature below the water, saw another camouflaged patch of gnarled skin, and launched an arrow into it. The beast stirred: an oily-furred, web-fingered creature with a long bill and patches of camouflage along its back. It seemed to leap free of the water with ease to land on the root before me and charge, reaching me in the short time it took me to plant five arrows around its head.

But I leapt again, kicking off the side of one root to grab some vines that hung from another and yank myself up and onto my feet again—moving upward more than twenty feet in a moment.

A few more arrows and I was using the sense granted by my [Life Magick] to take a good look at the location of the corpse’s heart and brain.

+ 1681 Essence, [Animal 1 / Surge 1 / Water 1]

“Perfect,” I said, grinning as my heart leapt. The waters below me were navigable—I could use the core to escape the cat if he realized what I was doing too soon.

What was more: it had offered a [Surge 1] key: very useful, if I could find three.

I killed two more birds, then another spider, then passed into the shadow of another one of the trees whose roots I was moving across—and sensed the largest spider I’d seen yet, a massive hulk of a creature whose body was as big as a horse. It came out of the shadowy chamber beneath one of the trees and came for me, its long legs stepping from root to root with ease.

But big creatures are slower, their [Strength] and [Agility] often needed just to move their bodies at all, and I danced backward across the roots, dodging the attacks of smaller spiders while I planted arrow after arrow in it, gleeful at my newfound strength as I watched my arrows broke through even the thickest parts of its armor.

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The spider fell still, but I had already moved past it, backing toward another great tree while I spun and launched an arrow into its smaller kin as they trailed after me before I sensed another one of the camouflaging mammals in the water below me and shot it, too.

Again I rose through the roots as it came for me, leaping from one to the next, this time more accurate with my arrows now that I had a sense of how the creatures moved. It died with four arrow-shafts sticking out of its head.

+ 1651 Essence, [Animal 1 / Surge 1 / Water 1]

Then I sensed that the spider must have finally died of its many wounds:

+ 2761 Essence, [Armor 1 / Body 1 / Insect 1]

+ Limit! (14)

- 2300 Essence: + 1 Level! (14/14)

+ 1 [Bestow 10] (1)

- 1 [Bestow 10]: + 10 [Agility] (82)

As I leapt from one root to the next, letting an arrow fly to kill another bird, I paused as I sensed something swelling up out of the water beneath me, nocking another arrow to see a creature burst out of the water twenty paces below me.

It was the size of a large boar, scaled like a fish and yet had two sets of wings lined with dark, iridescing feathers. In a beautiful display of natural skill, it used [Water Magick] to strip the moisture from its body as soon as it was airborne, throwing off a huge sheet of water that caught the multicolored lights around us in a dazzling display.

My arrow took it a moment later, but the smile never left my face as it fell back to the water, then took two more arrows before it could dive out of range; hopefully it would die—it might have an [Air] key.

I moved for the center of the forest, waiting all the while for the cat to decide that it wasn’t at all comfortable with my killing everything I could see. But I felt no offensive intent from Palefang, just the same cool presence on my mind that had been there since I arrived.

I killed more creatures: my arrows finding ambushing insects that were like larger versions of those I found on the cliff, a pair of birds that dove for me together from a nest in the upper roots, another of the camouflaged surface predators that granted me another [Animal 1 / Surge 1 / Water 1], another family of spiders and another one of their [Armor 1 / Body 1 / Insect 1] keys....

I was eyes and fingers, the thrum of the bowstring like a second heartbeat to me. If melee is a dance, archery is a balancing act: one everlasting moment where you drive your focus along a razor’s edge and there is nothing but the next target, nothing but loosing the arrow to fly to where they will be, not where they are.

As I fought, I composed. The curse I intended for Palefang was one that I had cast before, one to block his healing and stopper his mana replenishment. The curse was well-used among hunters: against powerful beasts, bleeding them dry and running them out of mana were some of the best available strategies.

I knew how the curse worked, but I would mana, a lot of it, and a sure way make it so that my spell reached and affected the cat. I’d also need to have a way to deal with interference as I built the ritual.

The last item I’d already laid the groundwork on, but I had to figure out my delivery mechanism….

Through the hazy forest air ahead of me, I saw what I’d been hoping for in the form of a landmass. As I grew closer, it resolved into a marshy mound of grass-covered mud that rose out of the water to form an island in the midst of the swamp.

I moved for the island, and soon saw a mana-dense hollow that had been made next to the root I was traveling. I slowed to halt for the first time since I’d begun, then stepped in front of the opening with my bow drawn.

It was the same creature as had attacked me on the cliffs: an ice elemental. Now, though, I was ready—I loosed an arrow that was knocked from the air by a quickly-launched block of ice, then leapt back as the creature sent a gale of freezing air out across the root.

With conjured arrows and my stronger attributes, my bow was too fast for it—it came out of the cave, assembled several javelins of ice, and tried to deflect my next arrow with one while it threw the rest my way.

But my arrow carried too much force, and all the elemental managed to do was make the arrow impact it at an angle, knocking it off balance long enough for my next arrow, following fast, to strike it dead-center, sending chinks of ice flying. Another arrow followed that one, shattering it to bits.

+ 1585 Essence [Elemental 1, Frost 1, Mana 1]

That would certainly be good to have in my back pocket, even if I could still use more [Mana] keys.

Elementals preferred to live near lots of mana. Hopefully, that thing’s presence meant I was getting closer—and its core would help me if I found any of the more likely water or earth elementals up ahead.

The constant sound of my bowstring rang in my ears like a drumbeat. Tirelessly, I moved on, never failing to find something to shoot full of arrows as the animals around me attacked or fled, exposing themselves in both cases.

I reached the mass of land, sticking to the roots that twisted above the grassy soil. One of the great trees had fallen, seemingly long ago: its roots were gone now, and its colossal trunk had rotted and caved in, forming what at first glance seemed more like a small, long hill than a felled tree.

A clearing lay in the space that had been left by the fallen tree, a mound of soil as big as a town square that was free of overlapping roots, which even looked to have been cut, torn, or burned away in the space at its edges. Many of the glowing mushrooms lay at the edges of the clearing, encircling it and filling it with their pale green light.

As I approached, more creatures began to appear as shadows peeking up over the edges of the many mushrooms before leaping down from their perches to charge me in packs. They were gray-furred creatures, and they looked and moved like a cross between a canine and a primate, each of them running on four thick, muscular limbs and snarling at me with flat, fanged faces.

“Incredible,” I said. I’d walked into a colony of highly social creatures—perhaps they’d even been the ones to clear back the roots.

I leapt onto a higher root, then made a running jump and landed atop the nearest mushroom’s caps. As I did, I noticed that none of the creatures were charging me directly—instead the growing mob of animals had split, some of them leaping up onto the roots while others fanned out on the ground below me, surrounding me.

Then one of the creatures came up over the side of the mushroom and I barely had time to conjure an arrow, pull back my bowstring, and shoot it from the air by instincts. The arrow struck with enough force to halt its momentum, and its body fell before me as and it clutched at the missile in its neck with clawed hands, froth coming from both sides of its mouth.

“Oh,” I said, somewhat worried as I realized that the creature had appeared on the side of the mushroom that faced the clearing—it had leapt almost thirty feet into the air.

I spun in time to meet the three more that followed it.