We bade our farewells and entered the dense forest. Though it was called a forest, it was more of a jungle with the abundant plant growth on the Floor. It was, thankfully, missing the typical humid environment of a jungle.

Though annoying, it was easy to make our way through the thick foliage of bushes and ferns. Not only were they no match to our strength, but my scythe easily parted the way. The irritating thing was how much it blocked our view.

"Gah, is the whole forest this way?" I asked while cutting down huge swathes of flora.

"No, just the first mile I believe, There's more access to sunlight in the outer edge. It'll pan out. Just keep an eye out for ambush predators, they favor this area."

However, it seems we were either lucky, or the creatures of the Floor sensed our strength as we were unbothered for the first part of our hike. After about an hour of relatively slow progress, the foliage finally began to thin out and we broke through the outer edge.

I whistled at the scene before us. The enormous trunks made it look rather cramped from where we were standing, but the spaces between most trees were hundreds of feet between them. Life was bustling on the Floor. Deer that were double the size of moose grazed on large bushes. Something the size of a school bus rested in a patch of sunlight. It looked like a six legged boar.

There were dozens of creatures in varying sizes, I was surprised to see plenty of creatures that were of a reasonable size. Asha laughed at my confusion, "You thought I meant there were only megafauna?"

"I mean, kinda? It made sense, giant trees, giant animals. Can you blame me?" I replied in a huff.

Eliara gaped, "This is amazing. It's beautiful."

In her usual dismissive and gruff tone pointed to a decent sized body of water, "Amazing and dangerous." She pointed to a doe of the enormous deer creatures. It was drinking from the large pond and Liara notice something in the water. Before the doe could react, a large reptile burst out of the water and snapped its towering jaws onto the poor herbivore.

It was too quick to get a good look at it, but it seemed to be a massive crocodile, it's scales were a murky green-blue to better blend into the water. Surprisingly, disregarding what normal deer would do and scatter, the largest antlered deer ran to the water and sparks appeared on its crystalline antlers.

It reared up and bellowed like an elk and a bolt of lightning shot to the behemoth. It did a guttural hiss and released its prey. The corpse of the deer tumbled into the water and the already massive croc beast inflated its throat like a frog. The pouch contracted and a thick green fog intercepted the lightning.

Unfortunately for the croc, it didn't block the entirety of the bolt, but it did take a good chunk of the sting from it. It also managed to drive the stag away as the noxious fog sizzled and ate away at the foliage. Not managing to save its herd-mate nor avenge it, the herd dashed to safety while the croc retreated to feed in peace.

It took a couple moments before the sounds of life returned to the forest. I whistled and said, "Damn nature, you're scary."

April looked at me side-eyed and replied, "You're a Vampire king who can rip the blood out of people's bodies and convert it into weapons."

I shrugged and conceded the point. "Liara, Asha, how tough are the beasts in here?"

Asha said, "Hard to say, this forest isn't too documented, so who really knows the dangers here. In Veru, it was extremely far from any civilization. The apex beasts may be the equivalent of Bastion stage cultivators or higher. Even the weaker ones will be extremely difficult to put down due to the durability and regeneration that stage provides. Most of the animals of this place should leave us alone, or at least not attack us so long as we don't provoke them."

Liara grunted out, "Just keep an eye out for monsters. They'll attack on sight."

April asked, "What's the difference between monsters and animals?"

"Monsters are made of mana and tend to be highly aggressive. They kill for pleasure as much for food. Monsters have no souls, instead they have a physical core within their bodies. They're a valuable resource," Asha explained.

Liara continued, "Though rare, there do tend to be more peaceful monsters, but they tend to be reclusive as some people disregard their civilized nature due to greed."

I gave Liara a flat look which annoyed her, "What?"

"Oh nothing, just seeing that double standards are present on any world."

She scoffed, "Any being born of necromancy is evil. We may be temporary allies, but I will not hesitate to cut you down the moment you show your true colors."

I raised a brow, "Wow, so the devout paladin is claiming her goddess is wrong?"

Her face went red with indignation, "The great Goddess Alara is never wrong!"

I grinned, finding it fun to tease her, "Yet despite Alara trusting me with you, you say I can't be trusted."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She sputtered for a moment before settling in a silent glare. I chuckled and Asha stifled a grin, "Alright, we should continue. Any ideas on where we should settle down?"

With infinite mercy I accepted the change in topic and thought a moment, "Working together, especially with Liara's strength, we should be able to manage a decently powerful creature. It should have a good size territory we can claim if we take it down. It should be close enough to water, though definitely seems we have to be careful in that regard. Question is, how do we find an Apex's lair?"

April grinned, "Oh, I can answer that, look for where wildlife don't want to go. I used to go hunting before I had Ashley and I had to keep an eye out for grizzlies."

I nodded, "Good to know. For now, let's head deeper into the forest. Won't be much hidden if we just stick to the forest's edge." Thus, we trekked onward. The fauna typically left us alone, though we did have our share of troubles. Some predators had thought we were easy prey, being smaller than most of the animals here.

To their unpleasant surprise, we bit much harder than we looked. Our first adversary, surprisingly, wasn't a monster, but a normal animal. It was a small pack of saber-toothed baboons. I didn't expect to find primates in a forest like this. Though they couldn't be classified as megafauna, they weren't the child sized baboons from Earth.

These baboons were as tall as I was, at least the females were. Their most prominent feature were the ten inch long canines protruding from their mouths. The males were smaller, though their canines where colored bright blue, likely for mating reasons. They hung back with the young. The largest female howled in the middle of the males and kiddos, either protecting them or deigning us too insignificant for it to bother. An interesting dynamic. Biology had always been an interest, but I was too bad at math to go down that career path. Also college was expensive... and a scam...

I almost took a bad swipe of claws to the face as I got distracted realizing I didn't have to worry about my debt. I shook my head and focused. I could study the local wildlife when everyone was relatively safe. It was a pack of twenty. Liara took it upon herself to train April, deciding they were in similar situation of being forced into Vampirism. As opposed to Liara's great sword style of combat, April seemed to prefer using two knives.

We funneled only one or two at a time to April so she could get some real combat experience, Asha was tasked with keeping her safe since she could fool the primates using her illusions. April got a few nasty gashes that would have been worrying had she been human. With her new Vampiric physique, they were just painful annoyances. Not being used to this level of pain, it still affected her more than it should have, not to mention her still having a human mindset.

I blinked at that and wondered if I was just good at adapting or if my previous lives assisted me in getting past that mental hurdle. Thoughts for later. Upon killing the twelfth baboon, the matriarch called a retreat. We decided not to chase them and the matriarch bared her teeth at us in final act of defiance before following the remains of her pack.

April was huffing and cradling her wounds. I nudged one of her kills to her and said, "It'll help speed up your healing." She grimaced and nodded before biting into corpse. Having drank her fill, she pulled back and picked fur from her mouth in disgust. I chuckled, "Here's hoping you don't get a hairball. I laughed more at her glare.

I stored the corpses away, they were weak enough that I didn't need to spend any blood on them, though I did absorb my kills. Our first battle won, we continued. Our trek was quiet after that, the nearby threats realizing we weren't easy pickings. Once we got far enough away from the baboon's territory, however we were ambushed by a monster.

This one was a large toad that pretended to be a boulder. Unfortunate for the big frog, we could sense it's lifeforce. I summoned a spear of blood and threw it at the big "boulder". It pierced deep into one eye and it screeched in pain. An acrid sent caused my nose to wrinkle, it's blood was likely poisonous. This guy was the size of a small car, and its remaining eye to glare at us and before it could do more than open its mouth to launch its sticky tongue, I snapped my fingers and the spear exploded, blowing a good sized hole in its head. It crumpled to the ground.

I thought it was dead and began to approach when its mouth opened and the tongue shot out in a flash. Taken off guard, the thick pink muscle adhered to my chest. "Ah, shit," was all I had time to say before it launched me towards its gaping maw.

Liara simply smirked at me while Asha shot ice bolts towards it. Unfortunately, April was not as skilled at magic as her daughter and had just barely finished her core. She could do some cantrips, but nothing that would help in this situation. The ice shards caused enough pain for it to flinch, thus giving me enough time to summon a blade of blood and sever the tongue.

I tumbled to the ground as the monster screeched in fury; and it was a monster. I could sense its nature, it was subtle, but you could tell this wasn't a natural creature. For one, though it technically bled, it wasn't "blood" it was mana, thus I couldn't absorb or control it. I stood and grimaced at the pink slug that clung to my chest, quivering as its nerves misfired. Yuck.

I summoned what I affectionately called a "blood grenade" and tossed it in its screaming mouth. A moment later it burst causing easily three times the damage as my spear. This grenade was highly compressed and took a moment to charge. It was worth the wait, however. An explosion of hardened blood shrapnel tore the toad's head open, splattering poisonous blood in a large radius. Thankfully, none of us had open wounds and I made a quick umbrella of blood.

"Gross. Nobody got that in their mouths, right?" I nodded after everyone gave their okay and walked to the corpse. I nudged it with my foot, "Hey Ash, was that things resilience from it being a monster or from its tier?"

"Both, most likely. Being a creature born from mana, it doesn't necessarily need to function like a normal organic creature, but the more natural it looks, the more its physique tends to behave like a normal creature, even more so for the weaker monsters. We're lucky this one seemed to focus more on ambush tactics. Monsters geared for a straight up fight can dish out just as much as they can take."

I hummed in acknowledgment and covered my arm in my Regalia. While I didn't think this poison was corrosive, I didn't want to touch it bare handed. I dug around its center, where Asha said most cores would be until I found a softball sized orb. I tore it out of the foul smelling flesh and observed the prize. It was more lumpy than I was expecting.

Liara explained, "Ah, so that explains why it was so easy to kill. That core, while decent sized, is chock full of impurities. It must have rushed its advancement in a desperate drive to survive, relying on its tier's resilience rather than consolidating its power. The weaker and duller of their ilk do so, content to feed on the weak and helpless while hiding from the strong. Pathetic."

I nodded my thanks for her explanation, which she ignored of course. We were nearly two hour's walk into the forest before we came to a halt. It was suddenly very quiet near us. Which meant one of two things: either we found an Apex's lair, or they found us.