We’d been traveling through this jungle for three days now. Honestly, it seemed almost neverending. At first, I’d found the idea of a trek through a jungle to be novel and exciting. The idea was something that I had only seen in media from back on Earth.

I didn’t think it was exciting anymore. Now I was just annoyed by the heat and the damned bugs.

I swear, the first thing I was going to do once I got back to Hinaga was ask Elder Jinshin if there were any spells for repelling blood-sucking insects.

Preferably violently.

Over those three days, we’d encountered several more packs of Wyrmkin. Some were larger than the first group of eleven that we stumbled on, some were smaller. As far as monsters went, they weren’t terribly strong one on one. I had encountered more dangerous beasts out in the wilds of Vereden than these pseudo-Revenants. However, this was the first time I had ever encountered any type of monster that worked in coordinated packs.

That was where the danger was with these things, I was finding. The first time that I saw the Devout Wyrmkin use their other Skill, not the poison-spitting one, I had been surprised by it. Plea To the Father, it turned out, was an enhancement ability, not unlike my own former Sylvan Vigor. With it, the bodies of the Wyrmkin were sheathed in a thin layer of crackling blue electricity, and their strength and speed more than doubled.

However, from what Venix had told me, it was a collaborative ability. The scaly little assholes needed a certain amount of their fellows present before they were able to use the Skill. It acted almost like a network of some kind between the monsters. There hadn’t been enough of them present on our first run-in with the Wyrmkin for it to activate.

The first time we’d encountered enough of the beasts for them to use it, I’d felt actually threatened in battle for the first time since Elderwyck. Not even the Oni on the hunt I’d tagged along on had pushed me as hard as those snakes had. It had been the first time I’d needed to activate Vis Maledicta Exactoris here on Goryuen, just to keep up. We’d pulled through, though, and those of us who were unfamiliar with the dangers of the isle were thoroughly educated.

Venix was unrepentant about not warning us fully. He merely said that we had grown from our trials, and that he had never intended to hold our hands through all the trials of ‘The Garden’.

In response, I’d called the Antium man an asshole.

However…those were the only monsters we actually ran into during our travels. I had yet to see any of the Oni that I had been expecting, and when I asked Venix about them after calming down, he told me why. According to him, most Oni didn’t bother sticking around in the outer jungles that we were tromping through. Only rejects and failures haunted these woods and even considering that, we were approaching from a direction the Oni didn’t favor. Far out back to sea, the only thing that stretched away from Goryuen was the open ocean. There were no Kawamaran islands or sub-continents for the Oni to march from, with the direction we were approaching the central mountain ranges. It was there that we would come face to face with the Oni.

Despite that, I still thought I’d heard some of the brutes in the distance. On the second day, crashing trees and thundering footsteps had sounded in the distance, halting our advance. We’d waited tensely for nearly thirty minutes, waiting to see if the distant creature was in our path. But it seemed to be moving away from us, and we never actually saw the Oni that must have been making the noise. After getting back underway, we didn’t even find the signs of its trail. The monster must have been one of the truly enormous ones, to have been making so much noise from so far away.

Not uncommon with Oni, from my experience.

Anyway, during our trip so far, I’d grown two levels to level one hundred and thirty-three. I hadn’t gotten anything exciting from those levels beyond more Virtue points, but the added potency was welcome nonetheless.

Over all those days, we had yet to settle down for a night of rest, and had been pushing the whole time. Day and night we had been working our way through the brush of the jungle. Honestly, it hadn’t been as dangerous as I had thought it would be. Unlike Awakened, the natural world and even the monsters that dwelled within it needed nightly rest. Sure, there were nocturnal hunters out there, but that didn’t include the Wyrmkin or the Oni.

What haunted the night wasn’t the most dangerous thing out here.

Funny enough, we did get more visitors curious about us overnight though.It felt like watchful eyes from the Children of Shurenga peered out of every nook and cranny of the dark brush. Some were large and wary, but others…others looked much smaller and much more curious to me. It had to be their young out on hunting trips with the elders.

That first night, I’d been intensely curious to see what a Shurengan cub looked like, so I’d stopped and tried to bait one out with a piece of jerky.

An extremely deep warning growl that seemed to sprout right out of thin air, right next to my ear warned me away from that course of action. I’d slowly backed away from the hollow with the small pair of curious eyes, leaving the jerky behind as an apology.

Lesson learned.

When I caught up to the group after that and told them about my near encounter, Bell had slugged me hard in the arm for my foolishness, while I had gotten the evil eye from Venix.

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I’d taken the rebuke in the spirit was taken, rubbing my now bruised arm the whole time. Days after and even with the mild healing factor of my Status, I still had that bruise.

But now, it was the afternon of the third day of our journey, and we had just stumbled upon something…different.

It wasn’t often that we happened upon large clearings in the jungles of Goryuen, but this was an exception. The actual space was large, nearly the size of a sports field from back on Earth. If there had ever been trees growing here, they had long since been uprooted in some manner. In their absence was left nothing but fallen leaves wide as a man was tall, equally tall grasses, and the detritus of unending growth. But it had been disturbed.

This looked like the aftermath of a battle. And not an old one.

This looked fresh.

Great rents in the soil of the isle had been scooped up from Vereden, leaving craters all about. Gaps in the underbrush and uprooted grass were flung every which way, and upon the remaining turf, dried blood was visible, baking in the light of Tarus above. Trees appeared to have been uprooted around the edges of the clearing, and now lay strewn about the pasture, oddly contorted and splintered. Occasionally, I saw glints of metal twinkling in the sunlight all across the field, the left-behind weapons of warriors who either forgot or were unable to retrieve their blades. But none of that gave me the vital clue as to tell me who had fought here.

No, it was the tall banner of tattered grey cloth, emblazoned with a flaming spear and shield that stood in the middle of the clearing.

The banner of the Order of Solstice’s Flame.

They had fought a battle here, and if they had won it, that victory had been pyrrhic.

There were no bodies on the field, of either the Order or their opponents.

Our group had stopped at the edge of the field to look out at it warily, reluctant to step foot inside. I think all of us were a bit surprised to see evidence of the Order, after seeing nothing of them after the confrontation on the beach. They must be ahead of us in some manner, which honestly suited me fine. That meant they were, in a way, clearing a path for us. Perhaps they were taking a more direct route through the jungle, instead of the slow, cautious one that we were. If that was true, then they had run smack dab into the true danger of Goryuen.

Because, to me, this type of damage looked like…

“Oni,” I whispered quietly, a frown growing on my face.

To my right, Venix nodded with eyes narrowed in concentration. “I have no doubt it is so,” He said. “It appears one of Shacklock’s expeditionary forces ran straight into a violence.”

Azarus was to the Antium samurai’s right, and I saw him cross his arms. “A…‘violence’?”

I spoke up before Venix could. I’d heard the term back during my Oni hunt, but I suppose it had never come up during his own. “What the Kawamaran’s refer to as a group of Oni.”

“There had to be at least four of them,” Liora spoke up, her eyes sharper than most. They scanned the clearly clinically before pointing. “Look, there in the center. I can see the evidence of at least four different gigantic footprints.”

I’d take her word for it. Even if I was no slouch at tracking, even I couldn’t make out the individual imprints of Oni feet in that muddy morass. Not from this distance.

Venix stepped forward into the clearing, breaking our spell. “They must have triumphed to take their dead with them. There are no Oni here.”

I joined him. “We should take a look around. Maybe they left some supplies behind.”

I was surprised at the frown Venix fixed me with. “I do not make a habit of scavenging battlefields, Hart.”

Bella came to my defense, stepping forward and crossing her arms. “It’s just bein’ smart. Anythin’ we find out here is somethin’ we don’t have to fight the damn cats over.”

The other day, Bella had been tasked with hunting up a meal for the group. She returned unexpectedly late, grumbling about her kill being stolen right from under her nose by a crimson-red blur. She’d carried a bit of a grudge against the Children of Shurengan ever since.

Venix cast his eyes over the rest of my companions and didn’t find any support. Liora was too pragmatic to refuse a bit of scrounging and Renauld was a bit…morally-flexible, I’d found.

Azarus, of course, always had my back.

The Antium sighed and nodded. “Very well,” He said reluctantly. “But no more than ten minutes. We make good time towards the ranges. At present, I’d estimate us to be only two days out from them. I do not wish to give Shacklock free reign of Tatsugan’s lair, and so we cannot dally.”

We agreed, and set out into the field.

Cautiously.

……………………………….

A few minutes of picking over the battlefield later, the most I’d found was a discarded shield that bore the crest of the Solstice’s Flame. There had been a few shattered glass bottles as well that, once upon a time, might have held potions. But now they were little better than shards sinking into the mud and blood. I figured I would keep the shield and get a bit of practice breaking items down with Aetherial Melding through it. I could always use an extra ingot of steel to play around with.

However, I was knocked out of my destructive daydreams by the sound of a female voice rising in a shout from across the field. Looking up, I saw that Liora was waving one hand in the air from near the tree line. Seeing that she had nearly everyone’s attention, she cupped her hands in front of her muzzle and shouted once more.

“Injured over here!” She yelled, sending a bolt of lightning down my spine. “Healers to me!”

….what?

The Order had left someone behind? An injured person?

I shook my shock off rapidly and sprinted her way, seeing that Renauld was doing the same. The Gnoll man had hiked his robes up to his furry knees and was scurrying as fast as he could towards his fellow fox.

I got to her first and followed her pointing finger towards the man that was injured. I received another shock, then, because I recognized the man.

It was the samurai that nearly squared up with Venix, back on the beach. The lone Kawamaran that had been in attendance among the Order of Solstice’s Flame.

Kazuma, I think his name was.

The man was lying in the roots of one of Goryuen’s twisting trees, covered in mud and blood. A great deal of it seemed to be from him, as he looked nearly broken. Kazuma’s right arm and left leg were both very obviously broken, with the splintered end of a femur poking through the skin of the afflicted limb. His chest rose and fell in hitched breaths, an indication to me that there must be internal damage. Counting scrapes, bruises, and cuts dotted his form, visible through the massive rents in his now tattered green and red robe.

He looked like he was barely clinging to life.

Unconscious.

Renauld didn’t waste a second on shock seeing the man and skidded to his knees by the samurai’s side, hands already glowing warm emerald. “Nathan!” He barked, as he laid his hands on the dying man. “Attend!”

I snapped out of it and joined Renauld in trying to save Kazuma’s life, rapidly pulling various potions and medical supplies as I did so.

I may not be a true Healer, but I was qualified enough at this point to count as an assistant.

We got to work.