So promised chapter is here. Please feel free to leave some comments.

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Over next three days, we managed to hunt another pack of blood-wolves. They were currently overpopulated, and sometimes, packs fought each other. Unlike ordinary wolves, blood-wolves would normally share their territory with other packs, because they did not require much food, but during this part of year, they had cubs who needed to eat way more then adults, so they were now fighting over territories like ordinary wolves.

That was why they were at these border areas of forest, where ordinary animals were still living in high numbers. Most of time they would be safe here, but during this time of year, population of deers, boars and other ordinary animal would be hunted by many blood-wolves. In order to prevent their extinction, it was necessary to hunt them down. And since monsters had spirit stones inside of them, and their blood was used in some potions, it was one way to make some money.

Practitioner families would manage their areas of forest, hunting all beasts that would come to try hunting wild animals there. It could be said to be large scale of fishing, where wild animals were bait and monsters were fish. In all territories of practitioner families, there would be magic spells to repel more powerful monsters, in order for them not to enter border areas and not to threat villages. Weaker monsters, however, would not be repelled and would be hunted by practitioners.

Today, we decided to instead look for some rare alchemical plant. While we managed to find few during previous three days, we were not specifically looking for them. This day we decided to relax instead of hunting wolves, so we chose different activity to gain some money. Landon was already fine, so he could go with us this time.

We did not go as deep into forest as we would go during our blood-wolf hunts. Best place to find medical plants was not that deep like this, or much deeper where we were not allowed to go and where it would be probably too dangerous to go.

“Guys, do you see that?” asked Cail suddenly.

He pointed his finger to glade, where many flowers were growing. Among them, there were few rare herbs and mushrooms, that Ryan immediately recognized.

“We really are lucky this time guys. This is all is worth ten silver coins at least. We should take it all before someone else comes.” he said.

So we started collecting everything. It took us half an hour before we finished our little harvest.

As we finished, we lied into the grass and enjoyed sounds of nature.

“It is beautiful here, don't you think?” asked Ryan.

Everyone agreed. It was peaceful. After short while, two-tailed fox appeared, looked at us, and then ran away. We did not bother to chase it, as peaceful atmosphere of this place made us relax.

“We should split the money from that black wolf fairly. After all, Landon got bitten because we needed him to distract wolf and if it was not for Aiken finishing other wolf quickly, killing that black wolf would have taken much more time.” stated Cail his thoughts.

“I agree. Surprisingly, this little shrimp has more backbone than I thought. Am I right, Aiken?” said Ryan.

I did not answer because I was reminded of those two blood-wolves and their actions of self sacrifice. I felt extremely guilty.

Suddenly, in a distance, we heard boy's scream. In few seconds, two more screams followed. We all stood up quickly. All of us were confused.

“Could there be pack of wolves who entered this area?” asked Landon.

“Maybe. Landon, you go and bring some teacher here. Rest of us should go and help.” said Ryan and then we all rushed towards the place where we could hear scream.

“Everyone, evacuate forest! I repeat, evacuate forest!” said one of our teacher's voice amplified by magic. He must have been pretty far, because we barely heard it.

“What should we do, Ryan?” asked Cail.

“We should keep on and help them, of course.” responded Ryan. While there was some danger, even if it were black blood-wolves like one we met before, we should be able to at least stall for some time before teachers arrive, he thought.

“Help!” screamed young boy. He was probably ten or eleven years old and was rushing towards us. Following him was black blood-wolf, however this one was even bigger than one we met before.

“Teulor, you take the boy and bring him out of forest.” ordered Ryan, as he and Cail started casting their spells while still running. Enormous fireball and bolt of lightning hit the wolf at the same time.

Black blood-wolf howled in anger, and after few seconds, three other howls sounded in response.

“Why is there another demonic beast? They should be damn rare!” cursed Ryan.

“Aiken, you also retreat with Teulor and that kid, we will try to slowly follow you.” he said. He knew I was only seven years old, so he understood that I was scared.

I nodded. I wanted to run away. This was just too scary! But before we could retreat, all our paths were blocked by three other blood wolves.

“To the hell with this! This must be bad dream! This can't be happening!” cursed Ryan, who just noticed situation. Cail turned around, and when he spotted other three wolves, curses he used were much more obscene.

Our group stuck together tightly, trying to cover all four wolves. Crying boy who was just barely younger suddenly spoke up.

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“It killed them. It killed them. It killed them all.” he whispered, completely out of his mind. “And it will kill us as well.”

“What do we do?” asked Cail.

“We have to hold on until teacher arrives.” answered Ryan. “As long as we do that, we will be alright.” he said, pretending confidence. He was scared as well, but wanted us to keep calm. And most importantly, he needed to stay calm himself, so he said it to convince himself that everything is good. “We just have to defend until teacher arrives.” he repeated. He could feel he pissed bit in his pants, and was on the verge of losing it.

But wolves did not look like they wanted to attack. They had power to easily do so, if they attacked, we would be dead meat, but they were just circling around us, as if trying to find weakness. But what they were actually doing was keeping us in place, until 'it' arrived.

Suddenly, Cail started shivering. “What the hell is that thing?” he asked, as between the trees, three meters tall monster approached. But he already knew the answer. Monster looked like it was made out of completely black velvet, fragile shadow that would break with single slice of sword. Of course, it was just appearance, in reality, it would probably laugh such attempt to harm it off. It's shape was slightly similar to human, but it's two legs were bending backwards in knees as well and its four long arms were moving as if they had no bones and were purely composed of joints instead.

“This must be nightmare. Terrifying nightmare we will wake up from. There is no way demon would be here. No way.“ said Ryan, who realized that his pants were now completely wet. I had same realization about my own pants.

Suddenly, everyone started running in all directions. Only I and boy we previously found stayed where we were. Boy has already lost consciousness and I was frozen with terror.

Cail got caught by one blood-wolf, who bit him in leg, making him fall and then, it's fangs sunk into his throat, causing blood to spurt from it in geyser.

Ryan got jumped by two wolves at same time, and was screaming for while, before he was finally silenced by death, as two blood-wolves were already feasting on him while he could scream.

Teulor managed to escape out of my sight, but from scream that resounded after short while, he also did not manage to make it and fourth wolf found him.

Meanwhile, monster stopped right in front of me. I wanted to run, but fear froze me, and after seeing what happened to Ryan and Cail, I knew what fate would await me if I ran.

Monster used one of its four arms to lift passed out boy, and then it moved it next to it's head. There was no face, since whole monster was as dark as night itself. It held the boy for few seconds, and then it consumed him. I could not see any mouth, it's skin was too dark to recognize shape of its face until it closed and boy was no longer seen.

Demons reflect no light. That is why their eyes, shape of their faces, their terrible teeth are impossible to see. You cannot see them, what you see is absence of light coming from them, showing you merely silhouette of their body and nothing more.

Next, monster moved its arm to me. I finally overcame fear and started to run, but it's arm moved fast and caught me easily. It lifted me, moving me closely to its face. Then it opened it's mouth and released angry scream.

It was terrible sound. Scream of the bear mixed with extremely loud sound of nails scratching the blackboard. I shivered, as I expected to be eaten next.

Instead of that, monster moved other arm, caught my leg between two fingers, breaking the bone in my calf and then threw me to the ground, with anger and disappointment, causing insane pain in my chest that I thought to be broken ribs. I could feel pain while breathing, and I could not stand up.

Monster looked like it wanted to smash me with it's fist, but then it noticed two wolves were bringing Ryan's corpse to it. It lifted the corpse, and consumed it in single bite. Right after that, it consumed dead Cail, who was brought by another wolf.

Then, it screamed, this time, it sounded more like howl of some wolf-bear hybrid, only much louder, and after few seconds, howl of last wolf could be heard. Monster, followed by three black blood-wolves slowly walked in that direction, leaving me alone. As I was watching it leaving, I could feel my sight darkening, as I was losing my consciousness.

I woke up. It was dark night. First, I thought it was just a nightmare, but when I tried to move, I could feel pain in my right leg, but I could breathe, even though it was painful. That meant that luckily, no rib was broken, which was certainly weird, since it threw me with quite bit of force. But instead of thinking about that, I was thinking about something different.

Where was the monster? Why am I alive? Why did teachers not arrive. Did they arrive and beat monster and left me here because they did not find me? Or is it still somewhere out there? I started crying.

Horrors I have seen were something that would make many adults crazy and mind of seven years old child was not ready to see. I stood up, suppressing pain, taking nearby stick from the ground and then I started walking. Luckily, I was going in correct direction, and after I don't have clue how much time, but I can say it felt like many years for me, I finally left the forest.

In the night, I could see light of nearby village. There were lights caused by fire used to guard village from wild animals and weak monsters. It was about six kilometers away from me, since I was not walking straight to village while I was in forest and ended three kilometers away from camp. I slowly walked towards the village but after some time, while it was still quite far, I collapsed and passed out again.