Aiden spun on a third step, like a dancer on a particularly quick beat. The moment his second foot hit the ground, the mantis lost its third leg.

The creature dropped heavily to the ground in a thud. Still, it refused to stop putting up a fight. Around Aiden and the beast, the grassland was upturned at different spots not vastly too far from each other. They were evidence of the beast’s failed attempts to skewer him in one way or the other.

The creature struggled to reach for him, sharp fanged teeth snapping at the air from a head that reminded Aiden of a cockroach. Ignoring it, he swung his sword casually, severing its head from its body.

[Congratulations! You have slain Mantis Lvl 16!]

[You have Leveled up!]

[Level 35 --> 36]

[You are now level 36]

Aiden swung the blood of his sword. He had gotten one of the sturdy swords from the Naranoff armory. And by that, he meant Vanisi had gotten one for him before he’d come out here to the middle of nowhere to meet Otid and Taliner.

He turned to the others as he sheathed his sword only to find Otid staring at him, mouth agape. Today he wore simple brown pants, a milk cotton shirt, and simple boots. His soldier belts hung around his waist. All three of them.

Taliner walked up to Otid and made a show of closing his mouth. “You’ll catch a fly, Otid.”

Otid blinked as if just regaining himself. “What the fuck was that?”

“Shocking,” Taliner snorted. “I agree.”

Otid pointed a volatile finger at Aiden who was over twenty feet away from him. “Shocking does not even come close to it.”

Aiden stood in place. He was being talked about but had not been addressed so he was in no hurry to join the conversation.

“He didn’t even use a single enchantment!” Otid continued. His voice was sharp but not baleful, carrying with it the loudness of shock and confusion. “And did you see how he moved? I can count how many times I could predict his attacks.”

Taliner sighed as if she was dealing with a dramatic child. If it bothered Otid, he didn’t show it because he continued.

“Zero, Tal. Zero. And last time I could count almost every swing. And he just took down twelve of them by himself." He ran a hand down his face, paused, then frowned. “I’ve got mantis blood on my face, haven’t I?”

Taliner nodded. “Don’t worry, it’s not poisonous.”

Otid sighed, deflating further. His shoulders seemed to slump as he turned to Aiden. “How?”

Beside him, Taliner pulled out a small napkin from the single soldier belt around her waist. The belt hung low on one side, giving her that fantasy look of a video game character when the designer chose to use a belt to emphasize their hips.

Taliner dabbed at the green bloodstains on Otid’s face. She did it without care. Like a mother tired of how often a child stained themselves.

Otid scratched his head in frustration. “You’re not saying anything, Aiden.”

Finally pulling his attention from Taliner’s actions, Aiden sheathed his sword.

“Practice, I guess,” he said. “And I’m sure the swordsmanship skill helps.”

“I’m sure the swordsmanship skill helps,” Otid repeated in a childish tone.

Taliner smacked him painfully on the arm. “Don’t be a child.”

Otid frowned but obeyed. “So you just got better at the sword through practice? I almost want to ask what mastery you’re at.” Taliner shot him a look. “But I won’t, because that would be rude.”

Aiden was finding the whole exchange interesting. It was as if Taliner was the mother in their relationship. Or the girlfriend that keeps him on his best behavior.

In the past, Aiden was always the one keeping Zen on his best behavior. But Zen wasn’t rude, he was just… a little bit too much for strangers sometimes. Aiden had been the reins to pull him in.

Aiden turned around, took in their environment. “It’s actually not that high.”

They’d been investigating this portion of the forest for a few hours now. He’d met them a few hours after first light and the sun was almost at its highest point in the sky.

Trees spanned around them for as far as the eyes could see. The were interspersed unevenly as nature tended to have them. Their branches were full with leaves of the most luscious green, which made it easy to forget how close the winter season was.

Some of the trees sported boorish gashes, some of them had had their barks practically ripped off. One of them had a gash so deep Aiden wondered how it hadn’t fallen over yet.

“Eighteen mantises,” he muttered to himself. “Quite the number.”

Taliner stopped whatever she was doing with Otid. “Very high when you consider that these creatures don’t move in packs.”

“But they move in threes,” Otid pointed out.

“Three to eighteen is quite the leap, though.” Aiden walked up to one of the corpses and squatted next to it.

Sometimes those with the [Beast Tamer] class tended to use enchanted items to secure a link with their tamed beasts when they didn’t want a magical tracker tracking it back to them through their mana signature.

“What are you doing?” Otid asked.

Aiden shifted a large leg. Mantises had legs that were furry like a dog’s but long and bent like a spiders’ that ended as pincers. He pushed it aside at the joint where it met the torso. The leg shifted disturbingly since it was one he’d tried to server at the joint but hadn’t been very successful.

Green blood spilled from it, pooled to the green grass.

“For the record,” Otid called to him. “That’s gross.”

Taliner, however, walked up to join Aiden. She squatted beside him, studying the creature’s body. “What are you looking for?”

“I met a man not too long ago.” Aiden ignored the leg and ran a hand through the body’s black fur. Its entire fur was black. “He told me that sometimes, when a [Beast Tamer] wants to be safe, they use an enchantment instead of a skill.”

Taliner blinked at the piece of information. “I didn’t know that.”

“Me neither,” Aiden admitted. “Not until I met him.”

The man in question was an enchantment instructor at the Order. Aiden had learnt a few things about enchantments from the man. The same man had also been the one to teach him what was known as Order enchantments. Enchantments only the Order knew. Apparently, the Order had discovered them and hoarded them from the world.

How? Even now, Aiden had no idea.

Aiden dropped his hand from the creature, got up and moved to its head. Taliner followed after him.

When he bent and started attending to its furless head, she asked, “What?”

Aiden pointed at the leg he’d just abandoned. “When you want to take control of the beast’s body, you place the enchantment as close to its heart as possible. That’s the closest place to a mantis’ heart.”

Taliner looked at the leg and back. “And you saw nothing there.”

“I did not,” Aiden said, returning his attention to the head. It was as large as two water melons. Unhealthily large in his opinion.

“I’m guessing you place it close to its brain to take its mind,” Taliner offered.

Aiden nodded. He’d made a few enchantments for this reason in his past but hadn’t possessed the necessary skills or discipline to use them. To use a mind enchantment on a creature, you needed a significant level of mental strength. In this life he had [Willpower] to be his mental strength.

But could he enact this level of control over eighteen mantises at the same time? He doubted it. As nice as skills were with their mastery, a person’s level still affected them to some degree. With [Will power] at its current mastery he could shrug off a mental attack from even a mind mage at the same level as him, but twenty to thirty levels higher would be pushing it.

Nothing, he thought, abandoning the search on the creature’s head.

He got to his feet, hands placed a little low on his waist, just below his belt line. If there was no enchantment in use, then it meant that whatever was happening with the creatures wasn’t related to a taming class.

“I don’t think we’ll find any thing like what you mentioned,” Otid said, finally joining them. “It’s possible that we’re hunting the same thing that was responsible for the goblin situation. And the goblins didn’t have anything like that.”

“Goblins are communal monsters,” Aiden said, disagreeing with Otid’s reasoning. “They are also intelligent animals. Sapient, some people would argue. All you need is a way to communicate with them and you can easily raise an army. These,” he gestured at the corpse around them with a sweep of his arm, “are not.”

Taliner was still squatted in front of the head. “Eighteen of them means six groups of threes. What if they held only six of them? Tamed one in every group?”

Mantises didn’t work under a hive mind concept. They also didn’t have leaders of the group. It wouldn’t have worked.

Aiden shook his head. “Doubtful.”

“So our investigation continues,” Otid declared, stepping over a corpse and walking deeper into the forest.

Aiden watched him go.

Taliner finally got up. She pulled the same cloth she’d used on Otid’s face and wiped her bloodied hands. Aiden didn’t remember her touching any blood.

The cloth was brown, like parchment, and he caught a glimpse of an enchantment on it as Taliner tucked it away back into the pocket she’d picked it from.

That’s interesting, Aiden thought, moving his eyes away from it and back to Otid as he stopped at a tree.

Adventurers of their class couldn’t afford a cleaning enchantment on a piece of cloth. Cleaning enchantments were mostly placed on hard surfaces or the wooden handle of a broom. Placing it on things as soft as fabric was considered stressful, and unnecessarily so. So it was expensive—an enchanter’s punishment for stressing them unnecessarily.

“Found something!” Otid called out.

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Gauging the distance from the scene of the fight to where he was, there was a very rare chance that whatever he’d found was a result of the fight.

“Let’s go take a look,” Taliner said. “He won’t leave there until we do.”

Aiden walked with her, eyes still scanning their surrounding. He didn’t feel like they’d missed something, not at all. But there were times when you didn’t know what you’d missed until you accidentally saw it.

“You look skittish,” Taliner told him as they drew closer to Otid. “Like you expect something to jump you.”

Aiden’s eyes didn’t stop roaming. “We’re in the forest and just fought of a good number of mantises. I expect something to jump me.”

Taliner paused. “Good point.”

Her eyes panned the environment until they got to Otid.

“What did you get?” she asked when they got to him.

“New marks,” Otid said, pointing at a scratch on the tree bark.

Aiden looked at it. Three clean cuts on the tree bark. He moved between Otid and Taliner, creating a crescendo of height from tallest to shortest with Otid on the tallest side. The tree bark was a deep brown but the lines were stained white on the edges.

Too clean, he thought, placing a hand on the cuts.

Otid grabbed him by the wrist before he touched it. “Careful. You see the white lines at the edges? Tree’s brown, almost black, white lines would mean something else. I could say sap but I don’t think so. Whatever creature left these marks, it probably has some kind of poison coating its claws.”

But that was the thing. Aiden didn’t necessarily think it was poison. Otid was right to err on the side of caution, however. So he didn’t touch it. The cuts were at the head height of an average man so he leaned forward and sniffed.

The scent was familiar, and Aiden had to pause to scan through his memory for where the familiarity was coming from.

He leaned in for another sniff, this one a beat longer than the last. He frowned as he thought about it. My memory used to be better.

As if his self deprecation worked properly, it triggered the answer to what he was smelling.

Rotsbane. He paused, there was something else mixed with it. Leshri dung?

That was a strong brew designed for monsters. Powerful, too. But it wasn’t strong enough to put down a person. At least not for long.

He’d been right in his suspicions, not that he’d doubted himself.

Stepping away from the tree, he folded his arms with a frown. “Not claw marks.”

Taliner tapped a finger to the edge of her jaw. “Kind of makes sense.”

“Kind of makes sense?” Otid looked from Aiden to Taliner. “What am I missing?”

Taliner gestured at the lines. “Cuts are too clean. Too smooth. Claws don’t do that.”

“Talons?” Otid asked still confused. “So we’ve got… what?”

“Not talons.” Aiden was still frowning. “Handclaws.”

Otid looked back at the marks, then at Aiden. “You’re joking.”

Taliner frowned in thought. “It would make sense.” She gestured again, trailing the lines without touching them. “Handclaws have three claws. But aren’t they usually curved at the end. Lines are too smooth. Too clean.”

Otid was growing restless. “Handclaws? What are those?”

“Nothing complicated.” She patted him kindly on the arm. “You’re a sword freak so you wouldn’t know.”

Aiden knew why Taliner was doubtful. Most handclaws were curved but there were varieties that were not. The ones used for stabbing, like wolverine’s claws.

“Doesn’t really matter,” he said. “What matters is that they are not talons or claws.” He stepped away from the tree and turned eastward, in the direction they were supposed to be heading. “What matters is that we should be expecting to run into other people.”

“Other adventurers?” Otid asked.

Aiden wasn’t sure. He didn’t think so. But when adventurers entered a forest with monsters, it was usually to kill them. Coating your weapon in paralytic agents didn’t really say adventurer. It said poacher. And Aiden would know. He’d been so strapped for funds once upon a time that he’d taken up poaching.

“Let’s just keep our eyes open and our heads on a swivel,” he said, tracking forward.

Hopefully, he was wrong.

…

Aiden and the team walked for a while longer. The sun reached its peak and ruled the sky in all its radiance. But, like all things, its decline began. It tipped to the side and began its descent.

Its rays still peaked in through the canopy of trees. Leaves of luscious green undulated at the touch of the gentle breeze. Winter was coming.

“So what’s with the girl?” Otid asked as he led. He stepped through a ray of sunlight that cast his face in a soft glow.

He winced as the light touched his eye.

“Damned sunlight,” he muttered under his breath.

Beside him Taliner rolled her eyes. “You’d hate on it if it was moonlight, too.”

“Light shouldn’t get in the eye,” Otid grumbled.

“Then don’t place your eye in its line,” Aiden said. Otid turned and looked at him so he raised a finger, then slid it under the closest ray of sunlight, then pulled it out. “Stay out of its path and I’m sure it will stay out of yours.”

“I don’t think he’ll make a proper noble,” Otid said to Taliner. “Talks too much.”

“Nobles talk too much,” Taliner pointed out.

“They do, but not the way he talks. He’s not so… elegant.”

This time, Aiden was the one to roll his eyes, to his amazement. “Just lead.”

“So… the girl.”

“A friend I stumbled onto.” Aiden ducked under a particularly low branch. It was barren of leaves. “I ran into her…”

“At the cave,” Taliner interjected. “I remember her saying something about that.”

“That’s true.” Otid turned as if suddenly remembering something. “What’s the place like?”

Aiden’s brows furrowed. “The cave?”

Otid nodded. “We’ve been hearing about it since we got here. Even when we were making our way here, any question we ask always gets the cave attached to the answer somehow.”

“It’s like talking to someone who’s been to the Holy Kingdom,” Taliner added. “No matter what you ask them, they always want to add how amazing the library of Living Truth looks. Even when you didn’t ask them.”

“Any way,” Otid took over, “it turns out there’s a good reason adventurers are always talking about the place. Unique Quest, unique skill. It’s an adventurer’s dream.”

Curious, Aiden asked, “Then why haven’t you gone?”

Otid pouted. “Tal keeps holding us back.”

Aiden turned to the female adventurer and she waved a dismissive gesture. “I’m very much aware of the benefits but I’m not stupid. It has as much good as it has its bad. Missing adventurers. No one turning up with a unique skill for months and suddenly four people in the last few days. Too deadly to risk it.”

“I heard the cave is fine now,” Otid complained. “That’s a unique skill just sitting there, waiting to be taken.”

“No, it’s not. If the both of us went in, only one of us would get one. And that’s if we’re lucky. And you can’t get the quest twice from what I’ve heard. You either get it when you go in or never again.”

“Another one,” Aiden said, pointing.

At the end of his finger, three trees away was a rough work of slashes. It scattered the tree bark in a way that told them whoever it was had tried to kill something quite vehemently.

“That’s the third one so far,” Otid said, worried.

Taliner agreed. “And its following the trail.”

“You sure whoever they are aren’t hunting the same thing we’re tracking?”

Otid frowned. “That would be stupid. Why would they be hunting what we’re hunting?”

“They could’ve stumbled on it and decided to level up,” Taliner said. “Everyone’s trying to level up.”

“With level nineteen monsters?” Otid shook his head. “Seems like a stupid thing to do unless you’re in your twenties. It only sounds reasonable if you’re getting paid for it. I don’t see the point of a risky subjugation if the only reward is leveling up.”

Taliner paused and shot him a baleful look. “So its reasonable when it’s you but stupid when someone else does it.”

“It was just one time,” Otid groaned.

“Just one time? You almost cost me an arm.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“A lot of good that did.” Taliner sighed, suddenly seeming tired. “Anyway, I’d expect you of all people to understand the appeal of leveling up even in a risky situation with no reward but the levels.”

Otid paused, then shrugged. “Nope.”

Taliner clenched her jaw as if she had something to say but was stopping herself from saying it.

Aiden simply watched the exchange in silence.

Taliner pointed suddenly and started walking over to a tree. “Pincer mark.”

Aiden was about to follow when Otid called out from the side. “Found some mantis fur.”

He took a step towards Otid and paused. He’d had his eyes on the ground. The highest he’d raised it so far was to eye level. What was it he always taught new recruits back in the days?

Humans never think to look up.

So he did. And frowned.

“Found a body.”

Otid and Taliner turned to him, then looked up.

Aiden turned, eyes trailing backwards, and he corrected himself. “Found some bodies.”

Above them three bodies rested in tall branches. Aiden, Otid, and Taliner stood looking up at them. They were held aloft amongst the high branches, their weights bearing on them as far as the branches could bend without snapping.

Taliner looked down at the ground, eyes scanned the green grass and brown dirt. Aiden knew what she was looking for.

“No blood,” she said.

Aiden scratched the ground with the toe of his boots, scattered the dirt. She was right. Not that he hadn’t expected her to be. The ground and the grass around them was dry with no sign of blood.

“How long do you think they’ve been up there?” Otid asked, unsheathing his broadsword.

Aiden gave him a quizzical look. “Too long perhaps. I’d wager a day at the most.”

If you pierced a hole in the jugular of someone with a class and allowed them to bleed out without healing, it could take somewhere between sixteen to thirty-eight hours. Judging by the state of the bodies above them, he doubted there was anything small about the injuries they’d gained.

The knowledge of how long it took for a body less than level fifty to die from blood loss was not one of his favorites. Neither was how he’d gotten it.

“What are you doing?” Taliner asked suddenly, turning on Otid.

Otid had his head to the branches. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting one of them down so we can figure out what happened to them.”

Taliner looked from him to the sword in his hand. “By throwing a broadsword?”

“I’ve done it a thousand times. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” Otid paused. He finally looked at her. “Or would you like to climb up and get it?”

Taliner gestured at the branches dramatically. “I trust you.”

Otid snorted. “That’s what I thought.”

He aimed, then threw. Aiden watched the sword spin through the air, rising higher and higher. Otid’s strength stats had to be good because he doubted he could throw the broadsword Otid carried as if he was throwing a balled up piece of paper.

The sword sliced through a branch and Otid pumped a fist in the air in celebration. It cut a few more before reaching its highest point and coming back down. There were a handful of other casualties on its way back.

“Incoming!” Otid announced, backing away.

Taliner moved as well before the sword came down, embedding itself in the dirt. Otid stepped up to the sword and withdrew it from the dirt.

“You’ve got balls kid,” he said to Aiden. “You didn’t even flinch or take a step back.”

Aiden shrugged noncommittally. “It wasn’t anywhere near me.”

Taliner snorted. “How would you know? You only had your eyes in the trees.”

Aiden knew because his perception was high enough to be aware of things as simple as a sword fallen down from above him when he’d watched it get thrown up.

For now, it was his turn to make an announcement. “Incoming.”

Above them branches waned and teetered. One snapped, then two. Then a body came falling down, pulled by the powerful hands of gravity now that there were no branches opposing it.

Otid and Taliner hopped back and Aiden took a single step to the side. When the body hit the ground, it was with a thud. Oddly enough, it didn’t even bounce.

Aiden’s nose wrinkled at the stench that came with the body. Surprisingly, it wasn’t of death or decay. It was something else. Something worrying.

“What the hell is that smell?” Otid frowned. “It smells like a smithy.”

“Burnt hair, blisters, burnt skin, and…” Taliner sniffed the air. “Hot metal.”

Otid heard hot metal and stepped away. Like an overly curious child, he reached a booted leg out and hovered it over the body.

“I don’t think it’s hot,” he said.

It wasn’t. Aiden knew the smell. Not as specifically as Taliner had described it, but he knew it.

They were in for a treat, and not the good kind.

“What the hell killed this guy?” Taliner was squatted, studying the corpse but not touching it.

She was probably worried that touching it might affect her in someway.

“His clothes are a mess.” She finally reached forward and moved a tattered piece of clothing to the side, exposing more of his chest. His pants were an equal mess and she ignored his exposed crotch. “That’s one massive stab wound. But…”

She leaned a little close, not too close. “Is that…”

“Iron,” Aiden confirmed, squatting on the other side of the body.

Just beneath the massive stab wound as wide as Aiden’s hand was a metal glint. They were looking at one of the man’s ribs.

Taliner looked up at Aiden. “Have you seen something like this before?”

Otid leaned in, then joined them. “I’ve never heard of someone with metal bones before.”

Aiden had. Elites of the Mba-chukwu kingdom were one of the few humans to possess [Traits]. And their possession of it was artificially induced through alchemical processes, a bit of shamanic enchanting, a touch of necromancy, and the venom of a Dahnal. A large scorpion-like creature the size of a bus.

The creature had a stinger that filled the victim with a special kind of poison. If being stabbed by something the size of the stinger didn’t kill you, then the burning process of your bones being turned to metal from the inside would.

Otid reached a finger into the wound and tapped the rib. “It’s like knocking steel.”

The fighters of Mba-chukwu had found a way survive the process and come out with steel bones. It was one of the things that had succeeded in making them very formidable fighters.

There was a slight shift in the air. It was sudden. Too sudden. One moment there was a gentle breeze caressing his cheek, paid attention to as subconsciously as you pay attention to the feel of your clothes on your skin, then it was gone.

Otid knocked against the rib once more as Aiden frowned. He knew the feeling; he just couldn’t put a finger on it. His brows furrowed as his frown deepened, eyes still downturned to the corpse.

The feeling named itself suddenly and Aiden’s head snapped to the side.

Stealth.

His head turned just in time to watch three points from a descending handclaw shoot straight for his face. His hands came up on instinct. Honed from years of training, one grabbed the weapon by the wrist before it stabbed him. Aiden pushed himself off the ground, his second hand taking the man in the crook of the elbow.

Stepping into the man, he turned and threw. With his recent increase in strength from the cave, he put a little too much force into his throw and sent the man flying all the way into a tree in the distance.

Otid and Taliner scrambled to their feet immediately, weapons drawn.

“How the hell?” Taliner scowled, realizing that they were already surrounded.

Eight men stood around them. Not too close, but not too far.

Stealth. Aiden scowled.

He hated the skill just as much as he liked it. The way it worked was nothing grand. What it did was to eliminate sensations. Your quarry did not get that feeling of being watched. Footsteps were muted to the point that only your quarry’s level and perception stats could help them notice you. Even sounds suffered the same attention.

But while the skill had that effect on people, it had no effect on the world. You would still be seen in a mirror. You would still make a sound if you hit something and it fell on the ground—specifically, the thing would make the sound. You would still cast a shadow and obstruct light.

And while you wouldn’t leave a scent, you could still stand in the way of a gentle breeze. This was what had saved Aiden. A sharp sense and a gentle breeze.

One of the men leveled a spear at Otid, probably judging him to be the largest threat due to his size. He was the only one in the group not wearing a handclaw.

“What did you people do to Jazna?”