<~> CHAPTER 51

This floor was relaxing. Another word for it though would be boring. This floor has almost entirely been one large road the entire way with almost nothing interesting on it. We've come across a few groups of those murderous bloody rabbits and every now and then a hawk swooped out of the sky to dive-bomb me, but for the most part, it's been pretty dull.

Some three or four hours into our walk we came across a sign in the road.

I tapped Luna gently on the arm and pointed to it. ("What does that say?")

She shrugged. ("No one actually knows, if it's a real language it's not one from this world. I would have believed it to be meaningless before meeting you but now I'm not sure.")

("Does the sign lead anywhere?") I looked off in the direction that the fork in the road led to. It looked like more endless plains that way as well. It didn't look that much different than the direction we were already headed.

("You should ask Maxwell,") Luna told me. ("We've never gone that way before, we usually pass this floor pretty quickly since there's not much on it.")

"Maxwell, where does that lead?" I asked, pointing at the sign.

He looked off in that direction before answering. ".... monsters. Not worth our time though."

I looked at Luna who correctly guessed the word I needed help with. ("Variant monsters. Kind of like the giant bat we fought on the fifteenth floor. Probably just a larger bloody rabbit or one of those bull-like monsters I told you about.")

("I never got to eat one of those yet.")

("I know, but we'll cross a herd of them before we make it to the next floor. We almost always do. No need to look for fights when these monsters aren't worth anything and we're already carrying back a huge load of stuff,") Luna replied.

I nodded as we continued past the sign. At least the entire dungeon floor isn't just one big road but I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see more of it. This floor is a bit of a disappointment but at least it isn't making me wanna die like the previous one. It was a little funny to think that dangerous was quickly becoming preferable to me over boring and peaceful though. What does that say about my mental state?

I was taking long careful steps, still getting used to my altered legs. They were quickly becoming second nature to walk on but they still felt a bit weird at this point. It was strange that this change was so different from the previous ones.

Another three or four hours passed as we continued walking down the long boring road past every boring sign that we didn't follow. It was hard to tell time when the sun literally wasn't moving in the sky. It was just permanently sundown here. It kind of reminded me of a story my mom once told me about driving through Alaska in the summer. She was just going to drive till sundown but she didn't realize that the sun never fully set that time of year. The best they had was twilight. She kept going for hours before she finally looked at a clock.

We've only been going for somewhere between six and eight hours so we were planning on going a bit further until we stopped to make camp. Luckily before that happened something interesting finally happened. I spotted a herd of those... bison monsters? off in the distance. Luna had called them bull-like and I could see why she said that but they looked more like bison to me.

("How many of them do you see?") Luna asked.

"I can not tell," I replied out loud. "Many," I added.

Luna frowned. ("The problem with these monsters is sometimes they attack in such large herds that they can be quite challenging to fight. And once their herd starts attacking you, like most monsters they continue fighting until one of your groups are dead.")

"Is there a better way of... deciding how many there are?" I struggled to say.

Piper cut in, "Send a scout. We should send you or Aria to see how many of them are there. We might need to continue past them if there are too many." I knew Piper was trying to restrict her vocabulary to words I knew but I was pleased that I understood that entire string of words. I was getting better at their language.

I rose up as far as possible and sniffed the air. We were upwind of them, probably not close enough to spook them but it meant that scouting may take a while. I couldn't catch their scent from here.

"They are still far from us," I said. "It would take... time."

"I can go," Aria volunteered. ".... a scout ...."

Aria unlike the rest of the group hasn't been trying to compensate for me the same way the others have. Sometimes her words were hard to follow. They often sounded mumbled or smooshed together so it was harder for me to understand her. It was probably good practice to try to piece things together without help but it also made things a little frustrating when we were talking about important stuff. I understood the gist though.

"What if Aria needs help?" I asked.

"Do you think the two of you could go together?" Piper asked.

I looked at her and shrugged. She looked at me hesitantly but nodded. Maxwell reached up to rub the ring on his finger for a moment but it looks like he decided not to hand it over to her. It seems we would be going on our duo scout mission without the ability to fully communicate. For this though, we should be able to get by on hand signals. I've watched them do them enough that I could mostly understand those too. Let's hope Aria doesn't make it too hard on me though.

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Weighing the axe in my hand I decided I didn't want to take it with me for this. It was heavy and my claws should be sufficient. "Maxwell, can you take my axe please?"

"Sure." He accepted the axe from me with a little bit of difficulty but he didn't have any trouble carrying it. I don't know if he would be able to actually use it in a fight the way I did but at least I could leave it with him without the man tipping over. "What about the shield?" He asked.

I adjusted it on my back and shook my head. "No, it doesn't... get in the way." I wanted to say it didn't disrupt my movements but that was the best I could do with the words I knew. I tightened the cord so it wouldn't shift around as much and started heading off with Aria. I moved to all fours so that I could better take in the scents on the wind. The wind direction didn't change much either so at least it was predictable. My gait on all fours felt a little bit different but not as bad as when I walk on two legs. Not enough for it to be distracting.

"You look .... like that," Aria commented.

I glanced at her. "I can not help it. I need to be low to the ground to take in the smells better."

"Why did you .... up earlier then?"

I wonder what she said, stretch up maybe?

"I wanted to see if their smell was on the wind."

She nodded in understanding. "I .... carry something to hide my .... from monsters. That way I only have to worry about being seen. I .... have any though."

I repeated one of the words I didn't understand. "Does that mean smells?"

"Oh, yes. Scent. Sorry, I forget sometimes that you .... know all the words I use. .... learning so quickly that I usually think you just have a .... .... Er, have trouble speaking."

Well, most of what I understood of that was complimentary so that's nice. She's not making things easy on me though.

"Hold on," she said raising a hand. She pointed to some grass in front of us. "Those .... .... too much if you step on them. Make sure you avoid walking there."

I nodded and followed her around the patch of dry-looking foliage. We'd been moving perpendicular to the monsters for a while to make sure they don't smell us on the wind too easily as we approached but now we're probably good to move in closer and find out how many of them there are. The two of us crept closer through the tall grass toward them.

"I .... see well here," she said. I looked around and saw a few trees off in the distance. I tapped her shoulder and pointed. "Good ...." she replied. I hoped she said something like good idea and not something like good doggy.

After a little bit of time, we were able to approach the trees but they didn't look very good. Now that we were closer they looked dry and dead, I doubt they would support my weight if I tried to climb one of them. But without a word of warning Aria scrabbled up the tree, her little striped tail flicking back and forth behind her. I winced at every subtle crack and creak of the tree I heard as she climbed up to get a better look.

She paused on one of the branches and looked over the crowd of bison a short distance away. Then the groaning sounds I was hearing in the tree started turning to cracking and tearing sounds. The branch she was on was going to break.

"Aria, get down! Quickly!" I hissed at her. I couldn't be too loud because we were trying to hide from the bison but I needed her to listen to me before—

CRACK

The entire tree started to split down the middle all the way from the roots to the branch she was standing on. Half of the tree started splitting off and further cracks and crunches started exploding down the trunk. I had been worried at first for Aria but she gracefully rode the tree down before jumping off and landing perfectly on her feet. I would have even applauded if it wasn't for the herd of bison that was already running our way.

"Run!" Aria yelled. "There's too many! More than twenty!" Her words were intermixed with a bunch of other words that I couldn't understand but I could understand that bit.

I started to run but when I turned to see if Aria was keeping up with me... she wasn't. Her awkwardly fitting gear was getting in her way and slowing her down. She was huffing and puffing but she wasn't going to make it on her own, she was too slow. I cursed to myself and spun around to go back for her. I sprung forward on my new legs and made it back to her in a flash. Her eyes widened on my approach and she almost looked like she was going to piss herself right before I scooped her up and held her against my chest like a child. She was kind of child-sized relative to me.

The bison monsters were close now though, the time it took to come back for Aria had given them a lot of time to catch up. There was a cloud of dust in the air where they trampled everything in their path to get to us.

I bounded forward away from the herd of bison. I was able to quickly put distance between us with my new legs and maintain it. After a few seconds of running Aria started slapping me on the back though. "We .... go this way! Lead the monsters away from our group!" she yelled in my ear. She didn't have to yell, my ear was right next to her but it was good advice so I'll let it slide.

I started to curve away from where my friends were at. Because of the momentum I had built up, it wasn't as sharp of a turn as I would have liked but it was hard to complain about my legs when they were probably the only reason I was outrunning the herd of bison behind me right now. I glanced back and saw that they were still chasing me, they had started curving away from their old path to continue to follow me.

"It is good that we are not going to run into our friends but now what?" I asked the catgirl I was pinning to my chest.

Just as I finished saying that a giant fireball exploded behind us. I glanced back to see the crowd of monsters thin out considerably and scatter into a few different directions. I skidded to a stop and started heading back toward the group of bison.

"Hey! Hey! Where are we going!" Aria screamed in my ear.

Luna had used a large spell on the herd that was following me and I could tell from here that many of them were instantly killed in the blast. Aria said that around twenty or more were following us but between the explosion and the groups that were headed off in other directions, I suddenly didn't hate the odds as much as I had before. I gripped onto Aria's armor and threw myself back at the group of bison.

The smell of cooked meat wasn't bad.