With a flick of my wrist, I shook off the lingering blood and feathers stuck to my blade. Seven dead crystal crests floated on the surface of the water at my feet, staining the clear stream red. The rest of the flock took off as soon as they realized that they were losing. Sucks to lose all the EXP, but I was happy with what I got.

Unfortunately, with the EXP, I also got...

Ding! [You are poisoned. Regen (Limited) does not heal poisons. Please seek medical assistance.]

"From where? I'm in the middle of nowhere," I commented, and brushed my forehead. The fever was faint now, I could feel the heat rising. Damn. On a positive note, the fever would fade away naturally in five hours. But until then, I'd be prone to dizziness.

It was a cocky oversight for me, but while I was fighting the swarm, a couple bird monsters dive bombed and pecked between the gaps of my armor and right through my under armor. Exactly what I didn't want to have happened. It didn't hurt much, but I did get poisoned.

I reached down and touched the crystal crests, and they turned into drop item orbs. All the arrows I used in the scrimmage reappeared in my Items Bag.

Levi tasted the back of my neck with his tongue.

I flinched away. "What are you doing?"

He couldn't show human emotion, but I swear his little snake face scrunched in a scowl. My skin was too hot to be comfortable anymore. Disappointed, he dropped off my shoulders to the water raft. He looked up, wondering if I was sick again.

"No, just poisoned. It'll go away." I sat down on the raft and sent it down the stream again.

He tsked in his mind, flabbergasted at how delicate humans were, while he flooded me with all my embarrassing moments — like when I was crying last night, my inability to hold my breath underwater for long, and now this. In his mind, I was practically endangered species delicate. And that made him concerned, since our lives were tied together.

I couldn't help but laugh. Really, he has no idea how close his guess was. Humans were on their way to being an endangered species, what with our low birth and high death rate. Even though everyone knew about it, Hunters still killed other Hunters — case and point, since I was brought to the wilds just because someone wanted to steal my armor off my cold bones. So yeah, humans were on track to go endangered — and we even helped the situation along.

It's kinda sad to say that instead of looking to each other for hope and help by fixing the human-to-human killing rate, everyone turned to developing sciences. Particularly, the cloning sciences that were advancing by leaps and bounds. The end goal was to fix the infertility in the new generation of clones — especially since most Hunters were practically sterile — so that birthrates will go up.

Okay, everyone was excited to reintroduce Earth's natural animals to the wilds, too. I'd personally love to see cute little bunnies in the wilds that didn't spew acid or want to kill me. Then again, at the moment, the original animals wouldn't stand a chance against the monsters roaming the wilds — which is why they went extinct to begin with.

When humans realized animals were dying out decades ago, they collected as much DNA from the different species as they could. Every country had a DNA bank, and they were heavily guarded. My fuzzy thoughts paused. Oh, there was a rumor that someone stole the USA’s bank, but I never found out if it was fact before I got left in the wilds.

I sighed and pressed a hand to my forehead. It was hotter. Helpless, I picked up a scoop of water and pressed it against my forehead and left it there like a band-aid. It helped a little.

I'd be okay, I promised myself. Another nine miles and I could contact Uncle and let him know I was okay. Who knew, there might even be a rescue party waiting for me when I got out of the forest? You know, given that I didn't run into a high ranked monster. But I completed my daily task and cultivated already, so I didn't need to take any more stops along the way. That was a bonus.

The thought barely crossed my mind when a System message popped up. Ding! [Daily Task: Collect Ice.] With it, a map popped up showing a green destination line that led west, yet again. Taking me farther away from Mist Haven and home, yet again.

My mouth opened in a conflicted breath. "What? Are you kidding me?"

Levi noticed the screen and climbed up my body, to lean close. He flicked his tongue through the teal panel then looked at me, wanting to know what it said.

"It wants us to collect ice." I ran my finger along the path line until I reached the destination's location. "Eight miles west. And there's no rivers, so we'd have to walk the whole way." I paused, eyes narrowing on the details depicted in the image. "Most of it is going up a mountain."

I pressed a hand to my feverish forehead and moaned in frustration. I just wanted to go home. Wanted to let my family know I was okay. Wanted to sleep in my bed, where it was safe. Was that too much to ask for? Apparently so, for the System.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Why did it keep tormenting me?

At the same time, I remembered yesterday. The random pint of water it wanted me to collect was from a magic spot. What if this ice was the same? The pain I felt today could turn into something that strengthened my tomorrows. Did I really want to pass that up? No, not really.

Levi looked at me, his thoughts mirroring mine. He wanted that strength, too. Only he had the bonus of not worrying about a family waiting for him. From what I understood, he didn't have attachments to anything except me, and that's only because our lives were bound.

Frustrated, I scrubbed my hands over my face while Levi stared at me like I was insane. Just nine more miles. Uninterrupted, it would only take about an hour zooming on the stream, and I could finally talk to Uncle. But if I did that first, then backtracked here, I wasn't confident I'd make it to the cave before sundown. There were too many variables — monsters and terrain issues — that could happen, all of which could take time. I just naturally assumed the task alone was going to take me the whole day. And I was not going to climb a mountain in the dark. I didn't have that skill set — not even close.

Which meant I was going to leave my family hanging for another day.

"Even if I do make it home, Dad's going to kill me," I said and added the task's location to my GPS tracker. "Or lock me up for the rest of my life."

With one last look down the stream that would take me closer to home, I directed my water raft to the shore and jumped off. The simple action of going up and down, then landing sent my head spinning. I stumbled and barely stayed upright.

Levi hissed from the uncomfortable ride. Then he paused and tasted the sweat dripping down the back of my neck.

I cringed. "Please, don't do that."

He ignored my words and expressed that I was still injured. I needed to rest.

I couldn't help breathing out a slightly bitter laugh. "Yeah, no. It's not going to happen. I'll be fine." I always was. I always had to be, so my family didn't worry. Besides, the sun wasn't going to stop just because I had a fever. No, it was going to keep marching across the sky, ticking down the minutes till night fell. Maybe if I didn't have this task, I could chill on the water raft until my fever went away. But now, I need to keep moving.

*****

An hour later, I was dying. My head felt like a boulder perched on my shoulders, ready to tumble off any second. I'd love to say I walked in a straight line, but it'd be a lie. I was all over the place, staggering from one tree to the other. I swear, every bush and flower in the entire forest had it out for me, magically jumping right in front to trip me up. Okay, that was actually true to a degree — we did run into a couple plant monsters. Thankfully, the few monsters that we encountered were weak enough that Levi handled them himself — a fact that he was very proud of. But he was also sleep deprived, even though he refused to admit it.

I leaned against the white bark bark of an aspen tree and sighed, waiting for the world to stop spinning. The summer heat was climbing as the afternoon hours grew closer. That, coupled with my gear and the path's incline, didn't help my fever at all. With a tired hand, I changed the heated liquid on my forehead with some fresh, cold water.

Levi blinked at me from around my wrist. Since he found my neck too hot, he went from being a necklace to a bracelet. Thankfully, he didn't weigh enough to unbalance me. I just had to get used to seeing my wrist blinking — something my fuzzing mind loved to mess with.

"I'm good," I assured him, even though he knew I was lying.

I pushed up from the tree ... and froze.

It was hard to tell before because of the nature of the bark. It was white with random black stripes and knots of it, all of which were normal. Because of that, I didn't notice the marks on the bottom of the tree. A huge gash, coupled with several other deep cuts in the trunk, oozed sap that leaked down to the forest floor. A little E monster couldn’t do that damage.

Did I accidentally wander into a powerful monster's territory?

Levi noticed the cuts and fell off my wrist to get a better look. He tasted the air, but couldn't think of what monster could leave the marks. He was familiar with aquatic breeds, not land monsters.

Concerned, I pulled up the map. According to it, there wasn't a known monster lair close by. But the keep word was 'known.' There was a lot of gray area where I was.

"Damn," I breathed and looked around, searching for more monster markers. I didn't see any, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

Alarm sparked in my mind, smothering fever haze enough that I didn't feel so vulnerable anymore. Who knew how long it would last though.

I gripped my bow and cautiously walked forward, following the GPS. If I was lucky, I was on the rim of a monster's lair and I'd go around it without a problem. The problem was, I didn't know if the lair was on the left or right side. But knowing my luck, it was dead ahead and I was marching straight through the middle.

My luck held. The farther I went, the more monster signs I found. I could try to go around, but depending on the monster, the lair could be miles wide. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out what kind of monster it was. The signs were so inconsistent. There were deep cuts in trees, round paw prints in the moist soil, and scat remains, all indicating a mammal type. But there were also large bug bites in bush leaves, broken branches up high, and thin claw marks in the dirt, none of which looked animal-like. Everything contradicted itself.

I stepped around a tree and froze.

A very familiar giant nymph lay on its back just three feet away and lay on top of a bunch of bent long grass. It was two feet long, its long crooked legs pointing at the sky. The right casing over its transparent wing was broken in an awkward angle, and four huge holes punctured the exoskeleton on its abdomen. The blood had long since dried, leaving a very dead monster.

I didn't feel an ounce of relief. Hell, no. All I could do was remember seeing hundreds of gigaroaches fleeing the Science Initiative building, holding larvae and nymphs in their many arms, fleeing from the unknown dragon that destroyed the city. Did they ... end up here? Is this their new lair?