“Anything?” Merl asked the scout, Faust. Faust had a supportive thermal ability, able to enhance items. But he also had the ability to sense the heat around him. Since he could do that, he could also figure out if any potential monsters were nearby, so long as they were hot-blooded. Though, the down-side was that he couldn’t sense poikilotherms, cold-blooded creatures. That made for a bit of a problem.
Faust shook his head.
“Alright, let’s keep moving” he said. Merl was somewhat the team leader, not because he was the most-skilled, or even the strongest, but because he had the most experience as a patrol guard. He was one of the guards that stormed the rift, and so, he’d seen his fair share of battle. After seeing a slaughter like that, it changes you. Because of that, he was a good team leader. He wasn’t willing to risk too much, and he calculated every action he made.
Which might make it seem odd to allow Alexander and Rafe to go off a little and fight dreads on their own, but no, he didn’t just allow them to fight, he made sure the rest of the team were ready to step in. Of course, there was still some risk of death, but when wasn’t there in this place? Plus, as Alexander and Rafe continued to take on dreads with only their own strength, they obviously became stronger, and the guard needed that. After all, if another rift appeared, they would need some insanely strong guards to be able to kill a nightmare.
Merl sighed, thinking back to the battle of the rift. It was a land of death, where no bodies could be retrieved. Not even a drop of memorabilia could be retrieved since the dead’s items were destroyed upon their death.
Well…in a way. Armour remained on the dead, which was odd, because everything else shattered upon their last breath. Yet, the armour could never be removed, almost as though it had merged with the corpse. Perhaps it was the system being kind to the dead. Or perhaps, there was another reason for it. Only the system would know. Or perhaps it’s creator, if there was one.
Perhaps binding them to an item of this world is what keeps their soul here, causing their comatose body in the real world to die. Perhaps.
On that thought, Faust beckoned the group to stop, pointing his finger over to the trunk of a tree about fifty metres away from their current position.
“It seems to be human-size” he said, focusing more in the change of heat over there. Another problem with his ability was, if he hadn’t gotten used to differentiating them, he could mistake a fire for a monster. Of course, the difference in heat should he huge, but some of the warped creatures of this world would have incredibly hot blood, made of a different formulae with a higher boiling point. That’s why he couldn’t rule out any changes in heat.
And since there were also some on the other side of the spectrum, with colder yet still warm blood, they could end up mistaking a place being warmed up by the sun for the location of a creature. Basically, the ability was both useful and annoying.
‘Half-arsed’ according to Rafe.
Merl nodded, and the tanks that headed the group began to progress towards the location of the potential monster. They weren’t scared, even though they took the brunt of the danger, always going first with their job to tank the hits of the wild creatures. Wasn’t exactly a job for the weak. Even some of the strongest of warriors couldn’t put themselves in such a position where they could easily die. If an unknown creature attacked that could penetrate the tanks’ shields then they’d be as good as dead, becoming bait for the rest of the group to escape, on their sacrifice.
So yes, not for the weak.
As they approached the tree, they heard the sound of loud chewing. It seemed to be eating something wet, from the sounds that replicated the sound of squeezing a fruit, just louder. Like a cat eating wet tuna.
With that, the tanks pushed forward, soon getting a visual on the creature. Staring at the scene, they wore faces of pity, just as they moved forward, making a loud noise to attract it’s attention.
The bear like creature with one human-like arm and three human like legs. It was incredibly muscular. Blood dripped from down from it’s teeth, then slid down from it’s mouth as it stopped chewing it’s meal to look at the tanks.
Below it, a young boy laid dead, his neck the size of a piece of string after the monster had devoured most of it. The boy had likely arrived in the land recently, perhaps walking around for some sort of safety, but picking the wrong forest. If there was any forest around here you didn’t want to go through as a new stranded, it was this one.
After a little bit of staring, the huge creature ran at the tank, ready to pounce at them. Yet suddenly, it slowed down, now fighting against an incredible amount of force to stand up. It fell the the ground. At that, Alexander and Rafe appeared from the other side of the tree, sprinting at it, ready to slice off it’s head. Meanwhile, Merl appeared from behind the tanks, ready to place his longsword right through the creatures eye, in case the other two failed their task.
Rafe got the creature first, swinging his Dao with monstrous force, slicing into the creature’s thick neck, moving through like a knife through bread. Yet, suddenly the force backlashed and his wrist was hit with all the force he’d put into his strike; he failed to shatter the spine.
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Alexander went for it’s heart, thrusting his Scimtar right through the creatures body, into it’s heart. But that may not be enough to kill it quick enough, since there was a chance it also had another heart. In fact, perhaps its heart wasn’t even in the normal position, meaning he’d pierced a different organ, if one at all. And so, Merl thrusted his own blade right through the monster’s eye, straight through the brain. At least that thing’s position never changed.
A moment later, with wide eyes, the bear-like dread died. After killing the creature, the group skinned it, and retrieved it’s meat, passing that on to their bulky porter. They decided to rest for a bit, since the tank was tired from using his gravitational ability for so long, pinning down the foul dread.
“Can’t wait to eat. I’m starving” Kolos, the tank, said.
“I could eat” Rafe caught his breath. He was in a lot of pain after taking all that force to the wrist. Perhaps he’d broken it, but probably not. Even if he had, nothing could be done until they returned, since they weren’t blessed with a healer on their patrol team.
“We’ve still got a decent bit of time left for patrol” Merl said.
Indeed, they were only a couple hours into their ‘shift’. They had another couple hours. Of course, since there was no way to tell the time, it was all a guessing game. They could even return an hour early and probably get away with it. The whole job was just keeping the area under control around the path, so it doesn’t get overpopulated as well as making it safe for any stranded to get through to the fortress.
But, as they’d just seen, sometimes it wasn’t enough.
“Rest easy, kid. At least it’s over now” Merl knelt before the boy’s corpse with a dark expression. Rafe thought he might be thinking back to the battle of the rift. Perhaps he was sending them off with this boy, since the corpses were never retrieved. Well…only a few that were beyond recognition.
‘One dark world we live in’ Rafe looked away from the innocent corpse, ‘one dark world indeed’.
The rest of the patrol was dull and endless. In the end, no other creatures appeared, and so the group headed back. Since a fire would have attracted too many monsters, they simply left the boy laying against the tree. Burying him would take too long. Carrying him back would have been pointless. He was already dead, and he was a stranger. No point.
“See ya, Rafe” Alexander said, heading over to his room, in the other guard building.
“Later”
With that, Rafe walked over to his room, greeted by Jed. It seemed Jed had gotten back from patrol a little earlier, clearing out the North. Apparently it was much more lively than usual. But, spikes in activity wasn’t too rare. Still, the guards would likely send a large team to investigate in case it was something important. It could even be a sign of a rift, and so checking was important, even if it ended up being nothing.
“Oh, the fire’s gonna be later tonight. Scarlet is out doing something at the moment” Jed informed him.
‘Scarlet’s doing something again? What the hell is so important now?’ Rafe thought.
“What’s she doing?”
Jed laughed.
“You think anyone knows?”
Rafe sighed. Scarlet never told anyone anything unless they truly had to know. It seemed this was one of the cases where they didn’t.
“How much later?”
Rafe was hungry.
“No clue. But hopefully soon, I’m starving out here”
After a bit more catching up on what they had done on patrol today, they headed outside the room. On the way out, Twilight walked past them, heading into the room.
“Doing that again? When are you going to give up, Jed?” Twilight asked.
Jed shook his head.
“Never. I’m getting a lot better”
They left. After making their way out of the building, they went down a specific path, greeting different guards they knew along the way, until they finally reached their destination; it was the same place where Rafe and Scarlet had bumped into each other that one morning. It was nice and quiet where no one would interrupt them, so long as they didn’t make too much noise.
“Ready?” Rafe asked.
“Ready” Jed replied, focused.
With that, Rafe charged at him, tightly gripping his Dao with sharp eyes. Jed gripped his sword, ready to parry the attack. As Rafe slashed down, Jed blocked, yet seconds later Rafe moved to the side, hastily changing stance as he swung at the hilt of the sword, attempting to disarm his opponent, yet Jed had now grown used to this attack, blocking with the blunt of his sword meanwhile forming a slash of his own.
Rafe smiled and moved out of the way, rushing to block the incoming strike.
‘He’s improving quite fast’ Rafe thought.
As the giant force of the strike quaked down to his arm, Rafe squinted his eyes. Stronger; Jed had gotten a lot stronger recently. It seemed all that working out was working, and asking to borrow swords for lifting wasn’t just a quirky thing after all; his hard work was paying off.
‘He’ll be an asset to the guard. I can see it now, haha…crazy bastard is working hard as hell’ Rafe smirked as he directed his blade towards Jed’s neck.
As he thrusted the large blade forth, Jed went for a directional block. Swiftly, Rafe danced around as though his blade and body were one; he was fully in control, in his element. Scraping against Jed’s sword in order to restrain the deadly blade, Rafe prepared an attack on Jed’s neck.
Clash.
‘A block? Haha. Wow…you’re one damn fast learner’
They continued to slash their blades against each other’s until Rafe managed to hit Jed’s sword right above the centre of the blade, causing Jed to lose control whilst Rafe swung up at the top of the hilt, sending it flying out of Jed’s hand.
They both panted, then broke out into laughter. It was rather fun. And with Jed becoming so much better, Rafe began to find these mock battles rather fruitful as well.
‘If only we could get a dull blade’ he sighed, ‘then we could truly go all out’.