“Hold on,” Avery said, walking towards where the ape had fallen. She knelt and picked up the orange stone that had been left behind when the ape turned into energy.

“Does it do something?” Elijah asked, joining her and peering curiously at the shimmering rock in her hands.

“No clue,” Avery replied. “But if it stayed behind after the ape disappeared, it’s probably useful somehow - assuming we aren’t the only people here.”

“I’d hope we aren’t,” Elijah grumbled. “I might not be trying to kill you at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life with an old hag as company.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Avery replied, tucking the stone into a pocket in her bag. She hoisted her small crossbow and set off into the woods with Elijah at her side.

“I wonder how we’re actually supposed to use our abilities,” Elijah said after no more than a few minutes of walking. “I’ve always wanted to have magic.”

“You’re taking this pretty well,” Avery said. “When’s the last time we had to fear for our lives? We used to be the apex predators, and now I’m not convinced we’re much more than gerbils.”

“I’m not sure if you recall, but we were decaying bags of flesh,” Elijah said. “I’ve got a real working body again. I’ll take being a gerbil over being old anyday.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Avery sighed.

The two of them stuck to the shadows under the large trees as they walked. The only noise they made was their muted speaking.

“Shadow step!” Elijah whispered, dramatically thrusting a finger towards a nearby tree. He didn’t budge. Avery cocked an eyebrow.

“Wow,” she said dryly. “Impressive.”

“You’re just jealous that you can’t teleport.”

“Neither can you.”

Elijah crossed his arms and sent her an annoyed look. He squinted at a nearby shadow, picturing himself popping out from it. Avery stopped walking to watch him. After a few moments, she snickered.

“Did you lose control of your bowels?”

“I’d like to see you try your magic, grandma,” Elijah replied.

“I don’t know how much of this Mananite stuff we have or if we can get more of it,” Avery said. “It’s foolish to waste it early on.”

Elijah rolled his eyes. “There’s no point having magic if you don’t know how to use it.”

He stepped under the shadow of a large tree, envisioning himself slipping into it and emerging from another a short distance away from it.

Avery’s response never reached his ears. The world rushed past Elijah as his vision went dark for an instant. He blinked, turning around to find Avery several feet behind him, her mouth slightly agape.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

“Damn, I’m a badass,” Elijah said with a big grin. He slipped through another shadow, popping out directly behind Avery.

She flinched, then massaged her forehead.

“Could you stop that? And how do you do it?”

“I’m just imagining what I want,” Elijah said, shrugging. He focused for a few moments, then let out a defeated sigh. “I can’t make the shadows do anything else, so I guess I can only teleport right now.”

“I see. I’ll keep that in mind for when we find our next opponent,” Avery said. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to practice on you. I’m not sure if it’s permanent.”

“That might be for the best,” Elijah agreed. He went to slip through another shadow, but a small blinking dot at the bottom left corner of his vision caught his attention.

The moment he directed his attention towards it, a new window enlarged before him.

Mananite Level: 54/100

As Elijah watched it, it slowly changed to 55/100.

“Well, I found out how much I can use my magic,” Elijah said. “It looks like we’ve got a pool of energy that refills at a rate of one per ten seconds. From what I can tell, there’s no real limit to using our magic beyond that. I’m currently at about half of my energy.”

“That’s… reassuring, actually,” Avery said, her stern features relaxing slightly. “If it’s not a one-time use thing, we can get a lot more out of it.”

Their conversation was interrupted as another familiar roar split the forest. The two assassins glanced at each other.

“We did seem to get stronger after killing the last one,” Elijah observed. “Do you think this pair of gerbils could take out another monkey?”

“If they were sufficiently motivated,” Avery allowed, a small grin tugging at the side of her mouth. “And I’ll have to admit that I’m itching to try out my own abilities as well. You’re a bad influence. But… we do this my way.”

“Fine with me,” Elijah said. “It’ll be nice to be on the dealing end of one of your plans. I generally just wing things.”

The two of them crept towards the source of the sound, brushing aside low hanging branches and stepping over fallen logs and gnarled roots.

As they grew closer, the sounds of a fight started to reach their ears. Loud roars and crashes echoed through the still forest. They reached the edge of a clearing ringed by a thick wall of trees. At the far side of it, two of the alien monkey creatures were locked in a vicious battle. Behind them was a large cave with shimmering stones lining the entrance.

“What’s the plan?” Elijah whispered.

“Working on it,” Avery replied. “They seem larger than the first one. We only have one potion, so we’ll have to be careful. Hopefully one of them kills the other, and then we can clean up the victor.”

Elijah nodded. He squinted at them. Dull red nametags flickered above their heads, identifying them both as Desecrator apes. One of them was level six, while the bigger one was level seven.

“The big guy is level seven,” Elijah said, keeping his voice low. “We don’t know what the difference is between level five and seven. Do you think we can take it?”

Avery watched the fight for a few more moments. Then she gave a small nod.

“The big one is probably going to win, but not without difficulty, so I suspect there isn’t a huge difference in their strength. The level six ape has lost a lot of blood, and it’s been slowing down since we started talking.”

“Okay. I think it’s limping a little, although it’s hard to tell with their strange gait. I’m going to try to go at it from its weakened side, then get a good strike in its chest.”

Avery nodded. “I’ll take out its eyes while you do that. It worked the first time, so I don’t see why not to recycle it.”

No more than a few moments after she finished talking, the larger ape got a lucky strike on its opponent, ripping the smaller one’s throat out with a massive claw. It let out a victorious roar, pounding its hands against its chest and looking up into the sky.