"Yes, guild master! I'll find the knights guild master! Would you like me to shine your shoe guild master?"

A high pitched and sickly sweet falsetto rang through the forest.

Lorel turned her head and spat into a leafy frond to her right. The local Adventure's Guild master was a piece of shit, telling her to take the job while pressuring her team.

She shifted the quiver on her back, scowling at the surrounding oaks.

Most mid to high level [Hunters] were in the deep woods at the moment. Each out trying to track down and cull Bristle Boars with their teams.

The push to exterminate the boars was new, though they'd infested the forest's inner regions earlier that year. It was, if rumors were to be believed, a move prompted by the deaths of several lower leveled merchant wagons that had attempted to skirt the forest's outer region. Worsfal, the local town, had purportedly decided the boars to be the most likely culprits and posted a public bounty for their heads.

She'd have liked to join the other teams in the hunt, the bounty quite lucrative, but no. The Rose Knights had sent a half dozen of their number into the forest to "Hunt the beasts down" early that week, and they had yet to come back.

"Idiot tin-cans, getting lost out here."

Lorel spat to the side again. She was not the greatest fan of knights, either. They were -in her eyes- a group of specialized and over-reaching fools. It didn't help that the knightly orders had little to no interest in communicating with the local adventuring teams.

Things could become difficult when one traveled days for an extermination request, only to find on arrival that a group of knights had already tackled the matter, and you weren't going to be paid.

"Find the knights, get the money, appease the guild master, and finish the damn job."

She stomped her feet as she spoke and winced. Her passive Skill [Muffled steps] practically screeched at her for the action. Feeling like an idiot, she concentrated on treading more softly.

Caution is a virtue, she reminded herself.

But even while she didn't show it, Lorel seethed internally. She should've been out there working to track down monsters, earning her keep with the rest of the team. Instead, she was here, stuck searching the outer forest for a group of missing knights. Worse still, the couple of local monsters she did encounter provided few, if any, materials of use or value.

Twice now, Lorel had run into a lower monster of the area, both times being string creepers. They were fleshy extensions of the local stringer-vines, a largely immobile plant-like monster.

The string creepers were a painfully uninteresting foe. Practically mindless on their own, a bundle of reactive nerves, they hunted deer and other small to mid-sized prey to supplement their plant's growth. Pests really.

In both encounters, she'd maneuvered around the back of the plant and slashed against the meaty vines that connected it to its respective roots. With the connection broken, and without a controlling consciousness, the creepers would fall lifelessly to the forest floor.

Slow, largely reactionary beings, most suited to snaring injured creatures and the occasional lost village child. They were incredible only in how easily dispatched they were; Lorel hadn't even need to use a Skill.

Still, they could be dangerous to those unprepared and by their nature depleted the nearby wild game- So she received some small amount of satisfaction from their removal. It would be weeks before the connected stringer-vines could make a new hunting offshoot.

The large clump of vines and roots that were the stringer-vines themselves, however, Lorel was forced to leave alone. The issue of their razor-edged coverings and surrounding vine network was compounded by her lack of appropriate tools. An annoying fact, but the monster's complete removal was unfeasible.

"I just wish the little shits were worth something."

Lorel griped as she walked. Helping to cull the monsters nearest to the local villages was great and all, but it didn't exactly pay to repair her armor after a barbed vine's glancing blow, or replace a dagger when she chipped it on a slice that hit the ground.

"At least the job is paying. The knights have that going for them."

She threaded her way through the forest, eyes sharp for threats, but mind wandering. They were paying a decent bounty, to be honest, but the whole thing was ridiculous. Lost knights in the outer woods. Even they couldn't be that hopeless. As much as Lorel disliked the orders, they produced trained, experienced, and armored combatants. No matter these Rose Knights' levels, a trek through this area was hardly dangerous for them, boars or not.

She paused as she passed the burnt-out corpse of an Alnum-bush. Its red bulbs were strewn across the ground, leaking a browned yellow fluid into the flash-dried dirt that surrounded them.

"Ugh," Lorel scrunched up her nose in disgust, turning from the goopy spread.

She halted as she caught sight of a vision on the opposite rise, just a few dozen yards away.

There was a hunched figure, body covered in a flowing robe, moving around a strange shape carved across the ground. The figure walked around an outer circle, muttering to itself and occasionally throwing its hands into the air with sharp, vicious movements.

Lorel nocked her bow wearily.

In the center of the shape was a desiccated old stump, bits of metal driven into its surface. In the middle of that- a shimmering liquid, its surface shining brightly against the reflections of the metal in the morning sun. Around the stump's base were shattered shafts, red fletching strewn around them.

"The Rose Knights. Those are the Rose Knight's arrows."

Her eyes widened as she let out a muffled gasp, heart pounding in her chest.

The figure's head twitched and turned towards her at the sound. She tripped backward and the man -for she could see now that it was a man- scowled at her.

The bow's wood creaked as Lorel's grip tightened.

Slowly, the man’s figure rose from its hunched position, robe billowing outward. The top of his head, which had started level with her brow, took to its full height.

She could almost feel his presence, towering over her. Looking down.

The slaughtered merchants. The missing knights. Not Bristle Boars. A [Cultist].

She pulled the arrow back, keeping it aimed firmly towards the ground. She might still get out of this, so long as she didn't provoke him into action.

He hasn't attacked yet. Maybe I can run, distract him with a [Flash Arrow]. He's already taken out the knights, he might be -

The man’s hand raised, palm aimed towards her, a sneer across his face.

Lorel's sliver of hope shattered.

The [Cultist] opened his mouth to cast a spell.

“[Wh-”

Twang!

A panicked and desperate reaction. In a single, smooth motion, Lorel aimed and loosed the arrow from her bow. It sailed forwards, diving in toward the [Cultist]'s form, and she knew- she knew she was doomed.

Her fingers trembled, and she nearly dropped her bow, face white as a sheet as she stumbled back.

A cultist. She'd fired an arrow at a [Cultist], one who it seemed -if the scattered red fletchings were any indication- had already killed the missing Rose Knights. She was dead. Worse than dead. He'd take her soul, or harvest her corpse, or- a deep chill traveled down her back. She'd attacked a cultist by herself, without backup, without her team.

Lorel waited for the [Cultist]'s retaliation; she waited for him to knock her arrow from the sky and return the attack. For him to call down a rain of summons, or blast her with a [Death Bolt]. She continued to face forwards, ready to dodge the inevitable retaliation, even as she began her stumbling retreat.

And then the [Cultist] fell.

The arrow she'd sent had not been intercepted by a summon. It had not been brought down by an application of aura. Nor had it even been stopped by a personal barrier, enchantment, or ward. It had struck the man squarely in the chest, where she had aimed.

Lorel froze. Seconds ticked by, and the figure on the ground twitched, but there was still no retaliation.

Lorel tossed her bow to the side and pulled out a hunting knife from the belt on her waist. She edged forwards. As she approached -her hand white-knuckled but firm where it clasped the knife- the man's head twisted to where her footsteps crushed the fallen leaves. Veins bulged from the man's head, his eyes wide.

He opened his mouth, and she prepared to lunge- either to silence him or to dive from his spell. Her blood was roaring in her ears. Just a few feet and she'd be out of harm's way. One less [Cultist] in the world.

She leaped forwards.

"Please-"

And then the man shattered. His robe, his boots, even the previously unseen glasses on his head, all disappearing with him in a flash.

An illusion- he was fake?

Lorel's attack hit nothing but air, a mist of mana that she fell through before slamming into the ground. She rolled against the earth, a graceless tangle of limbs, her knife skittering across the grass. With a push, she leveraged herself to the left and came up kneeling. Her eyes roamed wildly for the spell that would come down to end her.

But there was nothing, and an attack never came.