It was around a day later that Dave was fighting his way through thick underbrush. He was the farthest away from their clearing since they had set up camp around here.

He started walking in the direction in which they had chased the wave of goblins when they went out hunting for experience. Since they had found quite a concentrated mass of them, Bixby was confident that the spawner had to be somewhere right around here.

They had waited until just after they had cleared the recent wave, before splitting off to explore the forest.

Ryland, Sam and Mira had stayed back to protect the camp. Grace Period was already up again for a few hours, but they wanted to be safe regardless.

Max and Sarah were walking in roughly the same direction as Dave, but a little to his right. Only Dave and Bixby were walking by themselves. Bixby because he was quite quick and stealthy when navigating through the treetops, and Dave because he didn’t need protection.

There were still a few leftover monsters from the wave they had fought not so long ago. The things were like walking, bipedal hedgehogs. They were about a meter and a half tall, with sharp long spikes sticking out from their backs and a crazy wild look in their eyes, that killed off any resemblance they might’ve had with humans.

The werehedgehogs, as Dave called them, had been surprisingly easy to kill so far. While their backside was protected by rows of massive pikes, their front was not. Since the main combat tactic of these things so far had been to curl up into a ball, making Dave’s melee attacks relatively ineffective, he had to find new strategies.

But as it turns out, Dave was quite good at adapting.

While fighting off the wave, he had mainly relied on Spark. That together with the ranged firepower of his friends had been enough to keep most of the monster surge at bay. Dave’s Spark effect being able to slightly stun these monsters had been proven really useful.

Now that he was stalking around the forest alone, Dave had worked on a different approach, perfectly in theme with his Hidden Blades.

Dave saw a lone werehedgehog leaning against a tree, seemingly dozing off in the afternoon light.

A perfect target.

Dave slowly sneaked his way over to the hedgehog, closing the distance inch by inch. One on one these beasts didn’t present much of a challenge to Dave. Still he was surprised to feel his heart hammering loudly and feel the thrill in his body while he made his way over.

He tried to be as stealthy as possible, it would make the fight a lot easier and quicker for Dave, because while these things might not be much of a challenge, Dave knew better than to underestimate anything that had half a meter of spikes on its body.

Slowly creeping closer, Dave found himself behind the creature. He stood only a few inches behind his prey, the werehedgehog still hadn’t noticed him.

The problem was, there was still a wall of spikes in Dave’s way, and no way to attack through them. But Dave had developed a different tactic.

“Boo.” He screamed.

The werehedgehog spun around shocked.

Just as he made eye contact with Dave, presenting his unprotected front side to him, it was already over.

With a flick of his wrist and a quick step forward, Dave let his Hidden Blade enter the throat of the werehedgehog, ending its life instantly.

“It never looked so messy in the games,” Dave said as he looked down on his blood drenched forearm. He was used to getting bloody by now, so he wasn’t much bothered by it. Dave had been drenched in blood so many times over the last few months, he didn’t even smell it anymore.

Still, as the blood turned into translucent blue smoke together with the dead body of the were hedgehog, Dave felt a little relief. Hardened as he might be, he still found it preferable not to look like Jeffrey Dahmer preparing a meal.

Dave retracted his Hidden Blades and kept walking. All around their camp, almost every monster had been cleared by them already, it took around ten minutes of walking for Dave to find the first one, and now he had found this one only a few minutes later. He was on the right track, he could feel it.

As Dave made his way further into the forest, he encountered more and more of the monsters. At first he tried to stealth kill most of them, being successful more often than not. Which was surprising for Dave, since he had never been the stealthy nor the nature type of guy, but somehow his body just knew how to move along the forest floor.

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He knew where to step to avoid snapping tricks and how to walk over dried leaves without making them rustle.

Still there came a point where the werehedgehogs weren’t alone anymore, and Dave had to switch tactics, relying on his Spark. He had to make the fights quick, so as not to inform more monsters of his presence here.

While walking Dave tried to bandage his left arm. The last werehedgehog had managed to turn his protected backside towards Dave in the last second, giving him a few cuts on his arm.

Luckily, Dave had been quick enough to react, almost instantly pulling his arm away and returning the monster an electrical charge. Even though he reacted in time, his arm still held multiple long surface cuts. They were only shallow, but still bleeding quite profusely.

“I said I don’t want to look like Jeff.” Dave sighed as he continued on his way.

He wasn’t worried about the rising number of monsters he encountered. According to Bixby it was a good thing, since close to the spawner the monster concentration would be higher.

So Dave must be on the right path. Still he had a bad feeling in his stomach, he was worried about his friends. Max and Sarah were walking in roughly the same direction, what if they encountered even more monsters then him?

Dave was confident in dealing with multiple werehedgehogs at once, even when swarmed, but Max and Sarah would be doomed in a surprise attack close quarter fight.

Dave shock his head. Max and Sarah were clever enought to avoid any truly dangerous situations. He had to trust his friends and keep his head in the game.

Around an hour of sneaking, fighting, shocking and killing later, Dave finally found what he was looking for.

Dave stood on the edge of the forest, looking out onto the wide green plains that stretched out before him. Long blades of grass were swinging in the wind, standing in stark contrast to the wide blue horizon. Dave felt weird to see so much open sky at once. He wasn’t used to such open spaces anymore, it felt almost alien.

What drew his eye was the group of almost three dozen were hedgehogs that were roaming around the space right next to the forest edge.

In the middle of it all stood a shiny but lone cube. It looked like a plain old box of metal, maybe two by two meters, standing out between the mass of roaming werehedgehogs.

Not even on first glance was Dave fooled to believe it a normal box, he could practically feel the insane amounts of Mana floating not just around, but in the box. Even to his still crude Mana senses, the cube stood out like a beacon of light in the middle of the night.

That was definitely the spawner.

The number of monsters sprawling around it was worrying to say the least, yet Dave knew that he and his friends had faced worse odds and survived. That didn’t mean it would be easy or no dangerous though.

Dave stayed another two hours hidden in the treeline and surveilled the area. There were no changes or events of note happening though, so being satisfied with his discovery, he made his way back.

“It looks just like a cube?” Max asked.

Dave nodded. “Yeah I was disappointed too man.”

“Such a bummer, I really thought the thing that was driving us mad for months would at least look cool.” Max said. “Really no magical vortex, tendrils of light or other special effects?”

“Nope, just a plain old box with a bunch of monsters around it.”

“Fuck that.”

Dave and Max were sitting on Dave’s usual training ground. After Dave had come back to tell everyone about what he found, he hadn’t waited around long before he started training. With the sea of monsters that he saw, there was no doubt that he needed to get stronger. Besides, it had become such an obsessive habit of his by now, that he wasn’t really sure what else to do.

It was a nice day, still only early afternoon, and with the warm sunshine, it would’ve been the perfect day for a picnic. But Dave got anxious just sitting around with his friends. Not that he didn’t enjoy it, but he just couldn’t eat food and do nothing anymore.

It was something he had noticed quite a while ago and it was worrying him. He felt like he was wasting time when he didn’t train, as if he was doing shit. Dave knew that there was more to life, but he just couldn’t stop the urge.

Somewhere during his workout Max had showed up. They had done a few rounds of training together, Max shooting lasers, Dave working on his ranged evasiveness. It was fun. At least during training Dave was still able to enjoy a little excess bickering and friendly shittalk.

Now they were taking a small break and discussing strategies for their upcoming offensive on the spawner. It felt reminiscent to their strategy bootcamp when they had devised a way to protect themselves by exploiting a major loophole with the Grace Period buildings.

“Do you think we can lure them away?” Max asked while fiddling around with a small twig.

“Honestly that’s hard to say, somehow these hedgehog people never got too far away from the spawner. They roamed around the area and did their hedgehog things, but they never really wandered off. Could’ve been a coincidence, just the way those hedgehogs are, or something else. I don't know.”

Max nodded thoughtfully. “So maybe it could also be the that the spawner generates them as a kind of defense unit?”

“Wouldn’t be too far fetched.” Dave said.

“So if we can’t lure them away, we have to fight them,” Max said matter of factly.

“What about the…” Dave started

“No.”

“And if we..”

“Won’t work.”

“If you…”

“Too dangerous.”

“So we really have to fight them.” Dave said, finally agreeing.

Max simply nodded and both sat in silence for a moment. Equally lost in thought, contemplating plans to be made and actions to be taken.

Moments turned into minutes, and minutes soon into an hour, without none of them having spoken a word. There was no need for it, they both knew what the next few days would bring without having to label it.