"Despite all of these thick clothing, I can still feel the cold." Shirna complains as he positions his self closer to the fireplace.
Grand Ecstasy is spending their night on one of numerous log cabins built inside Layer 7. The cabins acts as checkpoints for adventurers that traveling in vast snow.
The only thing that protects the log cabins from dangerous monsters lurking outside are the magic seals repelling them. This method of protection ensures the safety of everyone inside not only from harsh environment but also from any beasts.
"Here's some soup Shirna." Sophie gives him a bowl of vegetable soup. After holding the bowl, Shirna smiles as he feels the warmth that helps him fight the frigid temperature.
"Thanks."
"I noticed that the Magic seals are starting to lose its power. We should ask the guild to sent some experts for a maintenance." Claustrine recommends then she sips on her hot soup.
"Noted. So far, that's the only thing notable in this Layer." Mateo replies as he gets another bowl of soup.
"I knew this mission is going to be a boring one." Beltrand complains.
"What do you mean by boring? How about the things we encountered?" Shirna asked as he's genuinely confused.
"For you it's a new experience, but for us. Besides the Flying Colony, it's pretty much like a routine. I wish we encounter something exciting." Beltrand says.
"Like something similar to Flying Fortress?" Shirna asked.
"Woah woah calm your horses there buddy." Beltrand is suprised.
"But that seems the only one that you didn't encountered yet."
"And we never want to meet one." Claustrine added to Shirna's words.
"Are those thing really that strong?" Shirna is even more intrigued.
"Well, they're truly strong but it still depends on what kind of Apex beast you going to encounter." Mateo explained.
"Apex beast? Is that their name?"
Mateo nods. Claustrine continues the explanation.
"Remember the Bristle Ape we encountered in Layer 6? Its Apex version is just larger and more ferocious with more red bristles instead of brown."
"Sounds simple enough."
"Ah also, The red bristles is poisonous that can cause agonozing pain. The poison is also the reason why Apex Bristle Ape is always agitated in the first place."
"What...the...fuck?" Shirna is in disbelief.
"And thats only one of unique traits Apex beasts have. What makes them difficult to fight is each type of Apex beast requires different planning and approach." Mateo finishes the explanation.
"I guess we should avoid an Apex at all cost." Shirna finaly realize the danger they facing.
Grand Ecstasy spends their night peacefully until morning where they quickly eat a breakfast of Bread and ham. Then they continue their journey in the harsh bloody-white environment.
Treading the vast snow with ice cold air really gives their body the chills but thanks to their winter gear, they can fight the extreme cold. Still, the danger lingers as they encounter one beast into another.
The years of experience of the Party really shows as they always manage to defeat every Jhulzihar beasts that tries to halt their advance.
But the most challenging ones are the predators. Grand Ecstasy encounters a pack of White Stalkers - A wolf like beasts that instead of fur, its body is covered by shiny white scales which is proven to be a durable and can withstand most physical attacks. White Stalkers are ambush predators thay buries themselves on snow in group and waits for the prey to walk on their range.
Grand Ecstasy almost fall on the ambush but thanks to Shirna they manages to avoid the danger when Shirna feels that there's something watching them.
"A group is going to attack now. Be prepared." Shirna whispers to his friends. Grand Ecstasy now expects the ambush.
10 White Stalkers pounces all at once which Grand Ecstasy manages to deflect and dodge all the attempts of biting and pinning down any of them. Now that the ambush fails, the White Stalkers decides to fight head on.
"White Stalkers?!" Claustrine is surprised to see the pack. Others except Shirna also gives a confused reaction.
But still Grand Ecstasy also prepares for combat.
Beltrand opens his small personal Bag fo Storage and swaps his sword into a mace.
"Oy Mateo, do you have a blunt weapon?" Beltrand ask.
"Of course."
Mateo opens his pocket dimension bag and search for a mace but...
"Fuck!"
"What's wrong?"
"I forgot my blunt weapons."
Beltrand gives a sigh as he always tell Mateo to bring replacement weapons for situations like they're facing now.
"Well. Sucks to be you."
"Can I ask. Is these things have some sort of Pack leader?" Shirna asked as he remembers tha moonlight wolves common on his hometown.
"No. It's pretty much a family unit." Mateo shortly answers.
"Damn. I thought defeating their leader makes thing easy." Shirna's dissapointed response.
The White Stalkers starts to surrounds Grand Ecstasy who responsed by protecting each others' back.
One of the White Stalkers runs toward Sophie, seeing him as an easier target. It jumps and ready to bite but Shirna fires an arrow who directly hit one of White Stalker's eye thus stopping its attack.
Beltrand quickly follows up by smashing the White Walker's head once it landed on the snow. Its hard scales can't handle the strong blunt force the mace have and its head gets smahed alongside its core, scattering blood and brain matter everywhere adding more red coloration to the already bloody like snow.
9 White Stalker remains.
Without wasting more time and seeing an opening where Beltrand and Shirna is distracted, three White Stalker attacks Beltrand.
Bertrand quicly gets back on his foot and blocks one of the White Stalkers using his shield, bashing it to throw the beast away. Bertrand swing his Mace and smash it to the second White Stalker, destroying its jaws.
But the third White Stalker is now open to attack Beltrand's exposed sides. Beltrand notices the beast but its too late for him to respond.
"Shit!"
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning hits the White Stalker, pushing and paralyzing it in front of Beltrand.
"Thanks!" Beltrand shouts and he quickly smash the White Stalker's head instantly killing it.
8 White Stalker remains.
One White Stalker tries to attack the now open Claustrine, it jumps and open its mouth targeting Claustrine's neck.
But Mateo tackles the side of the White Stalker mid air. Both of them falls to the snow and knowing the danger, Mateo quickly positions itself by avoiding the White Stalkers head who frantically tries to bite him. He grabs one of the leg of White Stalker and kicks and breaks it like a twig. The White Stalker release a pained howl but Mateo is not done yet.
Grabbing both White Stalker's foot, he use the White Stalker as a makeshift club and smash it to another White Stalker thats already in the air and ready to bite him. Both White Stalker are thrown far away and the two recovers quickly, but one of them is limping due to the damage dealt by Mateo.
Mateo notices that Claustrine is still open because she just helped Beltrand kill an enemy by paralyzing another White Stalker, who almost get Shirna after he miss his arrow. Now another White Stalker is running towards her but instead on jumping, its targeting Clautrine's leg.
Sophie raise her wand in the sky and starts praying.
"Ohhh our Lady of Perpetual Selfishness Vivvily. Please hear my prayers of protection."
Sophie's wand starts to glow bright yellow and then she aims it on Claustrine.
"Blessed barrier!"
A yellow transparent wall suddenly appears in front of Claustrine blocking the White Stalker's dash. The White Stalker is confused for a moment but then tries to pounce on Claustrine only to hit the same wall hard. Now it agressively scratches the wall to no avail.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then it notice that the side of the Barrier is open so it quickly runs to the side to attack Claustrine, but its too late as Mateo grabs the White Walkers hard and spiky tail and he smash the beast on the hard rock nearby, hitting its head and shattering the core along with its skull, killing it.
Mateo's hands is bleeding due to spikes that penetrates his hand. But they don't have time to heal so he indures the lingering sharp pain.
"Damn!"
Beltrand fails to notices that another White Stalker is rushing toward him when he kills another. He got bitten in his right arm that he used to protect his neck.
"Ahhhh!" Beltrand screams in pain as the White Walker is slowly crushing his arm.
"Shirna, Trinne, Sophia! Cover us!" Mateo commands.
The three quickly follows and surrounds both Mateo and Beltrand. Beltrand drops the White Stalker in the snow and Mateo positions his self. He place his hands in the White Stalker's mouth.
And then he proceeds to pry it open with brute force. The mouth slowly opens enough for Beltrand to release his hand to its powerful jaw.
"You piece of shit!" Beltrand shouts then he shoves his shield in the White Stalker's mouth.
Knowing that Beltrand can't use his right arm for a moment. Mateo grabs Beltrand's mace and with full downwars swing, he smash the White Stalker's head.
He then proceeds to assess Beltrand's injury.
"Bones?" Mateo asked.
"Its fine. It didn't manage to break it." Beltrand responds.
"Good. Sophia! Heal Bertrand's arm."
"Ok!"
Mateo goes into defensive as Sophia rush into Beltrand and starts her prayer.
5 White Stalkers remaining.
One of the White Stalkers gives a deep howl which the other gives their howl in response. The White Walkers regroup and Grand Ecstasy brace themselves for another coordinated attack.
But instead of Attacking, the remaining White Stalkers decides to retreat after experiencing that their chosen target would only kill them all. One of the White Walker is getting far behind as it was still limping.
Seeing that the surrounding is now safe. They find a safe spot and drop themselves there. Visibly exhausted on the recent battle.
"What are those thing?" Shirna asked as it was his first time to fight such beast.
"White Stalkers. They're primaly pack ambush predators. To think that we going to encounter a group of them." Mateo explains.
"Hey. Isn't White Stalkers only attacks humans in specific reasons like Humans entering their territory or showing agression?" Beltrand asked while still holding bitten arm, still feeling slight pain.
"Yes... But I didn't hear a report of White Stalkers directly hunting humans before. Let alone a coordinated assault. That's unproductive from them." Claustrine questions.
"What do you mean? Isn't they hunted us like a food?" Shirna asked. Wanting to join the conversation.
"Jhulzihar Beasts' primary source of food is the Cores inside them. So hunting humans is pretty much useless for them."
"I think that's not the only problem here. For some reason, every beasts becomes hyper agressive." Bertrand's opinion.
"Right. Even the other Beasts that mainly avoid humans tries to attack us for some reason." Sophia added.
"How about the Giant Icyatsh?" Shirna asked, remembering that the giant fish didn't attack them and instead choose the Decantler.
"Those Giant Icyatsh is the only outlier in Reverse Tower. Explaining it would be long and difficult, but to make things simple. Giant Icyatsh is not endemic in Reverse Tower."
"Meaning?" Shirna is still confused.
"For some reason, Small Icyatshs are introduced here and over time, they become giant monsters." Claustrine continues her explanation.
"Huh? So, they don't have cores?" Beltrand.
Claustrine nods.
"Why you only tell us that information now?" Beltrand asked as he raise one eye brow.
"Well, you didn't ask."
"Wow. Just wow. If we have that knowledge, we would not have food shortage on our past exploration in this tower." Beltrand's annoyed response.
"Sorry ok! I just recently learned about it."
"Ok back to the topic. We still need to explain the hyper-agressiveness of Jhulzihar beasts. As far as I know, they only attack humans when we provoke them or theres a pressence of... Apex Beast." Mateo says the name menecingly.
"True... But not only we tried to avoid uneccessary encounter, but it looks like that the Beasts are actively hunting us or do the first move on us, a group of humans... and an Elf. Characteristics different from two reasons Mateo said." Claustrine explains.
"And so far, we didn't encountered any Apex Beast... yet." Sophia added.
"I can't imagine how dangerous things would be if there's also an Apex Beasts added in the mix alongside this anomaly." Beltrand says. The party went silent.
"Claustrine? Do you have any theories?"
Claistrine gives a deep sigh.
"I-I don't know. I'm also getting confused. All of us are becoming confused." Claustrine's only answer
Mateo writes down the recent encounter in his book and then they decides to find a safer spot for them to rest as they not feeling safe staying in open area after everything that just happened.
~~~~~~°~~~~~~
After some time. They found another log cabin. Grand Ecstasy spends the lunch time inside while also healing themselves on the previous injuries. They're sitting in the floor surrounding the fire that gives them heat.
Mateo slowly feels uncomfortable on their mission. A supposedly easy monitoring and gathering quests turns into a continious fight where different beasts fights them everywhere. It should be an piece of cake for them just like how they did it in the past but they find themselves staying longer than anticipated.
And they don't want longer inside of the Reverse tower especially that the beasts seems more aggressive and dangerous than before.
"Somethings weird." Mateo starts the conversation. He holds a piece of bread and he just looking on it. His mind is filled with so many thoughts.
"Yeah..." Claustrine seriously agrees. She takes a sip on her cup of tea.
Grand Ecstasy already encountered numerous beasts in Layer 6 but all of them are started by the beasts attacking them when most of the time they tend to attack other beasts as source of food rather than humans. Unless they're Apex.
But the time they enter Layer 6, they instantly greeted by a beast attack. And that is followed by more encounters like the Bristle Ape and Flying Colony.
"I don't know why these beasts are so agressive now but we should warn the guild to close Layer 6 and below. Its better to be safe." Mateo recommends.
"But the fact the we got attacked constantly is really pushing us to our limits. Perhaps we should stop our exploration now?" Beltrand suggested. His wound is completly healed now but beside her is Sophia, leaning to Bertrand's shoulder as the healing process drained huge amount of her mana and energy.
"But we didn't even explored most of Layer 7. Also, how about Layer 8?" Claustrine asked.
"Oh c'mon. You also know how pathetic Layer 8 is. Do we really need explore a place where mostly nothing happen?"
"But thats the real concern. What if something brewing in Layer 8? especially when all of this weird phenomenon about Jhulzihar beasts happens." Claustrine defends itself.
"Like what? Apex floating cube?" Beltrand sarcastically answers.
Shirna doesn't have any idea on what the two is talking about but he decides to not ask questions as its a moment for his party to make a key decision. He just observe everyone debates on what to do next.
"Guys... I also think that we should return and report everything in the guild." Sophia finally enters the discussion.
"What is your reason Sophia?" Mateo asked calmly.
"I believe we already have enough important information. Like the seals and the sudden agressiveness of the beasts. Also, we already gathered enough materials that it already returns our investment in this mission." Sophia explains herself.
"I also agree with Sophia. But for the sake of everyone, I believe we should explore more of Layer 8 and ensure that there's no Apex Beasts roaming around?" Shirna joins the discussion.
"You really want to see a Apex Beast huh?" Beltrand teases Shirna.
"No! It's not like that! What if all of these constant agressive attack is caused by the pressence of an Apex Beast different from other recorded?" Shirna theorized.
His question makes the party fell silent for a moment. Then Claustrine furiously scratches her head.
"No no that's not it. It's even become weirder." Claustrine talks to herself.
"Whats wrong?" Shirna ask as he doesn't expect the reaction of his friends.
"You see... Your suggestion is the complete opposite of what Jhulzihar Beast supposed to do when theres an Apex Beast." Mateo explains.
"What do you mean?"
"Jhulzihar beasts tends to hide or run when theres an Apex on the loose nearby. As lower beasts becomes an easy source of food for it." Beltrand added.
Hearing the answer. Shirna also starts to think. Meanwhile, Mateo remembers what Graham told them in the Guild.
"There's a rumor spreading that somethings wrong in the Reverse Tower..."
"Few adventurers suddenly dissapears and never come back."
Viewing the implications on everything happened to them so far, Mateo finally decides.
"If you put it that way. I believe we should stop the exploration now." Mateo suggested.
Claustrine is doubtful at first but when she weights everything that they learned in the exploration, she slowly agrees on Mateo's decision.
"Fine. I agree on ending this mission early. This anomaly might be enough for the Guild to consider our mission as complete."
"I also agree. We have no more reason to explore further expecially if things becomes more dangerous." Shirna said.
"It seems that everyone agrees on ending this mission. Well then, let's return and report everything we discovered so far."
After agreeing on a decision. Grand Ecstasy decides to depart from the the cabin. Because of Sophia still not recovering her energy, Bertrand carries her which Sophia highly appreciates.
Grand Ecstasy is silent as they traverse the bloody snow. They're anxious that another Beast might appear.
They continue to walk back, on the way to the exit.
And walk, still observing the surrounding.
And walk on the vast bloody snow and tree landscape.
.
.
.
*Rumble*
Grand Ecstasy is alerted on the sudden rumbling of the ground and the sound starts getting louder and louder.
"W-what?! An avalanche?!" Shirna panics.
"Are you for real? There's no mountains here!" Claustrine's response.
"Then what is happening?!"
Mateo notices cloud of snow slowly approaching them.
"Guys... I think we need to hide."
Everyone now notices the cloud and after few seconds, everyone is shocked to see huge pack of White Stalkers running in their direction.
"Oh shit!!" Beltrand screams.
"What we should do?!" Shirna asked as he's getting scared.
"Prepare for combat!" Mateo commands.
"W-what?! But theres too many of them!" Claustrine questions Mateo's command.
"I know but we don't have a choice now. We need to put all of our best or we going to die!"
"Beltrand put me down now. I need to help." Sophia pleas.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm ok. I already recovered enough energy."
Beltrand slowly drops Sophia and she easily stands on her feet.
Grand Ecstasy draws their weapons and wait for the impending impact. Each one of them is tense and the thought of impending death lingers in their mind.
But Mateo notices something as she looks on the pack of White Stalker with estimate count of 100.
"Guys! I have a plan!"
"Just tell it! Hurry!" Claustrine screams.
"Let's hide behind trees!"
"What! And how is that gonna help us!?" Beltrand questions Mateo's suggestion.
"JUST DO IT!"
With no better choice. Grand Ecstasy hides behind the nearest tree and they shocked to see that every White Stalkers just run past them and completely ignore their obvious pressence. Few seconds later, the White Stalkers and other unseen Jhulzihar beasts hidden by the snow cloud are now far away and the rumbling sound gets quiet until it dissapears completely.
"Are we safe now?" Shirna asked. But he's scared to see the grim expression of his friends.
"We put ourselves in even worse situation." Claustrine said with solemn expression. Sweat falls on her cheeks.
Suddenly, a defeaning howl engulfs the surroundings. The howl is so loud and horrifying that Grand Ecstasy knows they're going to go into a dangerous fight.
Shirna saw his friends slowly reveals themselves to what monster is waiting on them. He swallowed and also follows them and what he saw puts him into intense fear.
In front of them, a White Stalker stares at them with savage and malicious intent. But this White stalker is completely different on what they encountered.
Its 12 meters long, and 2.5 meters tall. Several times larger than a regular White Stalker. The supposedly white scales is reformed to look like spiky pseudo-fur with grayish larger and longer pseudo-fur in the neck and face that makes the White Stalker looks intimidating and wolf-like with a face of a lizard. And the scariest part of it is the tail which now longer than its body and the scales uniquely reform on this part that it makes the tail look like a serrated whip blade.
"There's no denying it. That's an Apex." Beltrand says. He's trying his best to look calm.
"But it's the first time that a White Stalker's becomes an Apex. How magnificent it looks." Claustrine's opinion.
"I think this is not the time to admire its beauty Trinne." Mateo said.
"It's our first time fighting an Apex. And it looks like its not going to let us escape at all." Sophia says as she's visibly scared.
"Well. It's nice to meet all of you guys. Our journey is a very fun and amazing one." Bertrand says.
"HEY! ATLEAST FIGHT WITH ALL OF YOUR BEST! STOP SAYING THAT THIS IS THE END!" Sophia is annoyed.
"Fine fine hahaha. Ok then let's start this battle."
"Sophia. Give us all of the buffs." Mateo's command.
"Roger!"