I crouched on a tree branch, far above my target. I’d been stalking this particular one for nearly thirty minutes by now. The tracks that they’d made were obvious enough to even my neophyte tracker’s eyes. I’d only acquired the General Talent for it in the last few days, after all.

You would think taking a spear with you into the treetops would be awkward, but I was comfortable enough with the weapon by now that it wasn’t an issue. Slowly, careful not to make too much noise, I maneuvered myself into the perfect position above them. Once there, I violently jumped off of the tree branch and into the open air. Midair, I pointed the blade of my spear downwards over my target and let gravity do most of the work.

I wouldn’t even need Scintillant Blade for this one.

My spear pierced all the way through the flesh of the boar easily, pinning it to the forest floor. Blood sprayed me from the violent skewering as the wild boar let out an ear-piercing squeal. Wildly, it tried to escape by thrashing about, only succeeding in losing blood faster. Its struggles began to gradually slow, before the beast stilled.

I stood up from my crouching position over the hog leaving my spear embedded in it for now. With a groan, I twisted my hips back and forth, cracking my back. I may not be tired, but crouching for as long as I had been tracking this boar still made you stiff. Fruitlessly, I tried to wipe some of the blood off of my new clothes before clicking my tongue.

I’d just made these, dammit. I’d never wanted to see another set of white tunic and brown pants again so I’d decided to fix that on my own. I hadn’t wanted to use any of our limited supplies in order to do so, so I’d just used what I could find in the wild. With Aetherial Melding, I’d made myself a tough boar leather vest from a beast not unlike the one I’d just hunted, while I’d made some softer deer-skin leather pants from a kill about a week ago. I’d wanted a cloak too, so I’d used some wild flax to fashion one for myself. We didn’t have any dyes in our supplies, and I hadn’t found anything out here that I could use for that either. For now, it was just a light greyish-brown in color. I liked the look, actually. I looked like some kind of wild-man hunter. Well, other than the blood that I’d just gotten on my new outfit.

Speaking of blood.

The boar I’d just killed was leaving a large puddle under its rapidly cooling body. I stared at the pool of blood absentmindedly for a moment, lost in thought. It…reminded me of something.

The guard I hadn’t given a thought to murdering back in Addersfield.

He’d been fighting Azarus, and I’d just come up from behind him and lopped off his head. I wanted to be bothered by that…. but I couldn’t.

I think I was getting used to death. That bothered me more.

I…I’d have to get the boar back to camp quickly, if I didn’t want the scent of fresh blood to draw in any monsters. We may have been far from Addersfield at this point, but we were still feeling the effects of the Breakage Effect. Monsters were thick even this far from the now-destroyed town. Hell, in the week since we’d escaped that hellhole, I’d gotten six levels alone just from having to fight off monsters during my self-assigned hunting. At least that put me up to a nice, even level thirty.

When I’d gotten my next class ability, I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it was in our current circumstances. It was something called Leafwhisper Step. It was a Class Talent this time, instead of an activated skill like Sylvan Vigor had been. It made me much stealthier in forests, and it had come in handy ever since I'd gotten it. Most of the time, I didn’t even need to activate Thorn Cloak to sneak up on game, unless I literally didn’t want anything to see me even if I was standing right in front of them. I could definitely say that the new talent was coming in use.

Still, that was enough lollygagging around. I needed to get this beast back to camp and thrown into our stew pot. I could feel my stomach rumble at the thought of a nice, hot meal. There were some surprisingly good cooks among the former slaves of our camp.

Yanking my spear out of the boar, I wiped the remaining blood on it on the nearby grass. Bending down, I picked up the entire boar with ease and laid it across my left shoulder. Making sure to keep my left hand on the carcass to keep it steady, I picked up my spear with my right and set off.

Thank God for Sylvan Vigor. I’d been playing around with it and discovered that I could dial the skill down until I was getting a prolonged boost to my strength, instead of one massive surge. It wasn’t hard to maintain at that low level, either. I could keep it going for at least an hour. I wasn’t sure I would be able to pick up this massive pig if I didn’t have the skill.

Ah, whatever. I put thoughts of skills and hunting out of my head and focused on getting back to camp.

………………………………………

It didn’t take me long to get back to camp, even as bogged down as I was with a fresh kill. I hadn’t gone too far from camp on this particular trip. Game was thick in this forest.

The caravan was trying to avoid attention, so we were taking lesser-known roads that Gren knew about on our trip to Herztal. We’d actually been pushing too hard over the last few days, and now we needed to take a moment to rest from our flight. We’d pulled off of the narrow road we’d been on and into a nearby forest clearing this morning. There, we’d set up a wagon circle camp with our eight wagons and had been taking the chance to decompress. We were only intending to stay here for another day, before leaving tomorrow.

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Exiting the tree line, I beheld our camp. It was busier than I expected, and I could see why.

There was a new wagon that had entered the clearing.

Larger than any of ours, even Gren’s beast of a personal wagon, it was fairly intimidating. Where our wagons were mostly civilian use, this did not look like a civilian vehicle. Clad from the bottom up with metal plating, it wasn’t even pulled by a team of horses. Rather, it was being pulled by what seemed to be a team of four enormous oxen.

But the camp wasn’t panicking. Rather, there was an air of excitement to the movement in the camp.

I slung the dead boar off of my shoulder and let it hit the ground. I’d come back for it later. Keeping a firm grip on my spear, I entered the camp proper to see what was going on. In front of the large metal-clad wagon, there seemed to be a crowd gathering. I couldn’t see what was going on through the crowd of bodies, though.

“Excuse me,” I called out to the wall of bodies in front of me. They didn’t hear me, so I tried again. “Excuse me! Could I get through?”

The man directly in front of me finally turned around. He did a double take when he saw me and swiftly moved the side. His movement must have caught the attention of the other people before me, because they followed suit.

I hid a wince at their awed expressions. Since our escape, word had spread around camp that I was the one who had not only built the device that had broken their Slave Bonds, but also destroyed the Control Slate and killed Magnus. There were only a few people in our caravan that didn’t nearly bow and scrape at the sight of me, as if they had exchanged one master for another. There was no malice or fear involved, but it made me uncomfortable nonetheless.

There was a reason I tried to spend most of my time outside camp, either hunting or scouting. Thank God Grey had woken up just fine a day after our escape to help take attention off of me.

I didn’t let any of this reflect on my face as I moved through the crowd to see what was going on. Off to the side, I saw Azarus watching something with an extremely surprised expression on his face. He caught sight of me at the same time I did him. In a wordless gesture, I tried to ask him what was going on. He just raised his palms, baffled.

Okay then.

As I exited the mass of former slaves, I felt my breath hitch at the sight of who had found us.

It was Sylvia.

Not just her though. It seemed like she had brought nearly a whole platoon. Over a dozen other people were either lingering around the massive wagon, or were poking their heads out of it to watch what was happening in front of it. My eyes lingered on a few of them, considering how strange they were to my Terran sensibilities. Among them were two people that I could only surmise were a Gnoll and…maybe an Antium?

The Gnoll was much how they’d been described to me. Around the height of an average human male, they stood upright on digitigrade legs. Covered in tawny fur, they looked like a massive fox that had learned to walk like a man. They were also clad in full plate mail with a massive greatsword slung across their back.

The Antium (?) was more mysterious, though. I could only tell they weren’t human based on the fact they had four arms. The rest of their massive, nearly seven-foot-tall frame was covered in a white, nearly Eastern looking robe with images of pink cranes in flight printed on it. Their four arms were clasped in front of them, voluminous sleeves hiding their hands. I couldn’t see their face, as it was hidden by a large conical hat. Not an inch of skin, or chitin I guess, was visible to my eyes. What were visible were the four familiarly curved swords he was carrying. They had one on either hip, and two crossed over their back, hilts visible over their massive shoulders.

Not far from my position, Sylvia and Grey were having a reunion. Sylvia was on her knees before Grey in his wheelchair, face buried in his stomach and arms wrapped around his back. Grey himself was hunched over as far as he could, with his face buried in her unconcealed golden hair. Both my distance and the murmur of the crowd around me prevented me from hearing what they were saying to each other. But they were both shaking in the telltale sign of sobs.

I don’t think they cared about the crowd at all.

I felt a smile spread across my face at the sight.

I was interrupted by someone else shoving their way through the crowd to stand next to me. Turning to face them, I quirked an eyebrow in question their way.

It looked like Walter had found me.

It had taken him a few more days after Grey for him to wake up and recover from his wounds. Luckily, I think his recovery had been sped up by Bleddyn breaking his bond and letting him have access to his Status again. Ever since he had woken up and discovered that he was free, the teenager had been in much higher spirits than I had ever seen him. He was much more confident, too.

“When…when did you get back, Mr. Hart?” Walter said breathlessly, winded from shoving through the crowd.

“Just now,” I said to him, only loud enough for him to hear. “Left my kill near the tree line.”

That caused Walter to perk up. “I-I’ll get it for you!” He told me eagerly. “I’ll take it to Ms. Rachel!”

Before I could say anything in response, he started jostling his way through the crowd again. I lowered the hand I had raised to stop and tell him it was probably too big for him alone. I shook my head, bemused. Whatever, he could probably manage something.

Teenagers.

I turned my attention back to Grey and Sylvia, only to find that my conversation with Walter had grabbed their attention. Grey was staring at me with an amused, watery smile on his face. Sylvia on the other hand had stood up from her kneeling position and was staring at me with an intense expression on her silvered face.

I was taken aback when she swiftly marched over to stand in front of me. Before I could say anything to her, she wrapped me in a fierce hug. I was frozen for a moment, before tentatively returning the embrace.

“Thank you,” Sylvia whispered in my ear, voice nearly breaking. “Thank you so much for saving him.”

I shivered at the feeling of her voice so near my ear. I let out a breath. “Yeah,” I breathed over her shoulder. My eyes met Greys. “Yeah...”