Sanguine Paradise

Chapter 10: [Day 3] – “Adventurers”

Day 3

Darshan

"C'mon, boss! Yer can't expect me to sleep n' the woods for two whole moons in a row now can ya?..." - ???

"Quit your yammering, Yrmel. You seemed to enjoy last night just fine." - Me

I gave her a cheeky wink, as I strolled smugly forward.

"Ai! Don't give me that. The woods are just so unpleasant to sleep in, and I've had it with taking em' night shifts too." - Yrmel

"Will you two keep it down? You'll make the monsters all the way from Elderwood come storming here." - ???

Looking back at the stocky elderly man carrying a massive two-hander on his back, who for some reason always gets really touchy about his age when asked, I grinned sheepishly. As being the oldest in the group, Hannard had always been the one to keep the group in check and serious when I was unable to.

(Sigh)

"Yeah, Hannard - my bad, my bad." - Me

"Besides, I already have it tough, having to deal with them small rabbit critters when you and Yrmel (Cough) 'swap' shifts." - Hannard says, while ending the sentence with a slight chuckle.

Suddenly feeling rather embarrassed I refocussed my attention on finding the road back to the village again, attempting my best to ignore Hannard's ruckus laughter. But before I manage to do that another voice speaks up.

"If just that fat alpha rabbit wouldn't have had run away, we would've already been done with this quest last night." - ???

Giving a glance at our group's 4th member I simply sighed.

"Yeah... Mother luck seems not to be on our side in this excursion. But Elias you are the fastest of the four of us, you should've probably have been paying attention the to alpha instead of playing with the smaller ones, and letting it just hop on away." - Me

Winching upon hearing my slightly off-handed remark Elias decided to wisely just shut up for now. But all of a sudden, I felt the pain of a strong hand slapping my ass, promptly followed by a Yrmel hastily running past me.

Turning around she called out.

"Oi, boss! The trail is over here." - Yrmel

Rubbing my left ass cheek, with a painfilled expression, I annoyingly looked at Yrmel, who just shot back a cheeky wink as a bit of payback from my previous comment.

When saying that Yrmel was physically strong, it could be a bit of an understatement. Due to her class being that of a close-range fighter she specialized in the strength attribute.

But I don't really mind that, rather due to her high strength and her daily routines of training, she had a fucking banger of a body. Toned abdomen, with long legs and firm thighs that could bend a nickel if you threw it in there.

Tight and round perky breasts and slender face to match. And down all the way to the small of her back runs a long braided tuft of almond hair. Not to also mention her being a complete wildcard during our 'nighttime activities'.

Clearing my thoughts about the woman in front of me before it arises anything else than appreciation in me, I waved to the other two members of our party to come with.

Walking towards Yrmel we all laid our eyes on the road at the same time, and collectively let out a series of sighs in pent up exhaustion. But before we all could step onto the road make our way back out of this rabbit infested forest, Elias suddenly perked up and gave us a hand sign that told us all of potential danger. It was essentially a command for 'Shut up, and keep quiet'.

Tensing up I stared at Elias's back as he silently scans the foliage. Elias was our scout, so he was in charge of information gathering and making sure we didn't stumble into any strong creatures beyond our capabilities. So when he notices something, it was vital we all followed his lead without question.

Adventurer groups that neglected their reconnaissance and more experienced members always ended up dead, sooner or later. A minute went by in muted silence while our hands were gripped tightly around the handles of our weapons.

Elias suddenly gave us a hand sign, signaling us to stay and that he would investigate. We all simply nodded in affirmation. Activating his stealth-based skills Elias became very hard to focus on as if he's blending into the very forest itself.

Walking into the foliage he disappeared from our sight, and only about five minutes later he came back with his stealth deactivated.

"Hmm, I heard some very weird buzzing, like that of an insect. At first, I ignored it, but then my danger sense kicked in, and it felt like something was watching me. But it would appear that it had already escaped when I went searching for it." - Elias

I didn't know of any insect creature strong enough in the area to warrant a danger sense activation, so I simply put it in the back of my mind.

"Huh, how weird... Let's keep a guard up, for now. We're only about a 1-2 hour walk back to the village." - Me

And as such, we went begun our track back to our place of rest.

Micheal

Holy fucking shit! That was seriously way too close!

My god, I thought I was really to die right then and there.

I was so nervous that I had frozen in place and wondered if my tiny mosquito heart was even still beating...

5 minutes before

Slowly moving from tree to tree, I stalked the humans. While the party of people, that looked like adventurers, talked in between each other in an unknown language, I started quickly inspecting them, gathering any information I could.

Firstly I paid attention to their weapons and clothes that looked to be made mostly of rough leather and cloth. Other than that, it seemed that only the big and elderly-looking man had a chainmail vest covering his large frame over a thick jet black tunic.

The one walking mostly in the front, a young man, was carrying a standard iron sword. While the big elderly man was carrying what looked to be a massive broad sword or a zweihander on his back.

For the athletic woman, she seemed to only have a single dagger on her hip. But due to her hands being wrapped in thick layers cloth with something looking like metal beneath it, I had ample reason to believe that the dagger is only for reserve. Looking at her weaponized hands, it reminded me of some of the poor rabbit corpses that looked like they had been blunted to death.

For the last one, it was a smaller and thinner young guy, who had a dagger on each side of his hips.

Done inspecting them, I began to use Appraisal on them.

-Appraisal!-

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[Appraisal: Darshan]

Name: "Darshan"

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Rank: G

Level: 15

Health: 110/110

Stamina: 56/62

Mana: 0/0

[Attributes]

STR - 18

VIT - 15

AGI - 19

DEX - 17

INT - ???

CHR - 13

WILL - ???

MAG - ???

[Trait, Titles, and Skills].

Skills - ???

Traits - ???

Titles - ???

[Resistances]

Phy. Resistance - ???

Mag. Resistance - ???

Men. Resistance - ???

[Class]

Main Class - Apprentice Swordsman / Tier - 1

Sub Class - None / Tier - None

[Appraisal: Yrmel]

Name: "Yrmel"

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Rank: G-

Level: 12

Health: 92/92

Stamina: 50/55

Mana: 0/0

[Attributes]

STR - 18

VIT - 12

AGI - 15

DEX - 15

INT - 12

CHR - 15

WILL - ???

MAG - ???

[Trait, Titles, and Skills].

Skills - ???

Traits - ???

Titles - ???

[Resistances]

Phy. Resistance - ???

Mag. Resistance - ???

Men. Resistance - ???

[Class]

Main Class - Apprentice Brawler / Tier - 1

Sub Class - None / Tier - None

[Appraisal has reached LVL: 4]

[Appraisal: Hennard]

Name: "Hennard"

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Rank: G+

Level: 15

Health: 145/150

Stamina: 55/80

Mana: 0/0

[Attributes]

STR - 20

VIT - 24

AGI - ???

DEX - ???

INT - ???

CHR - 10

WILL - ???

MAG - ???

[Trait, Titles, and Skills].

Skills - ???

Traits - ???

Titles - ???

[Resistances]

Phy. Resistance - ???

Mag. Resistance - ???

Men. Resistance - ???

[Class]

Main Class - Student Swordsman / Tier - 2

Sub Class - None / Tier - None

I was extremely delighted in the increase in skill level, plus all the useful information I was currently getting about humans. But before I got a chance to appraise and check the last one's status, they all suddenly moved over to a place, after the guy named Darshan called them over.

The problem was that they are now out of range of Appraisal. So I decided to move closer and land on a tree that gave a much more accessible spying vantage. Once in range again, I stared at the last guy. He was on the smaller side, and I guessed his age to be about 22 or something near it.

Focusing intently on him I use Appraisal.

-Appraisal!-

[Appraisal: Elias]

Name: "Elias"

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Rank: G-

Level: 12

Health: 79/79

Stamina: 42/50

Mana: 0/0

[Attributes]

STR - 13

VIT - ???

AGI - 20

DEX - 18

INT - ???

CHR - 11

WILL - ???

MAG - ???

[Trait, Titles, and Skills].

Skills - ???

Traits - ???

Titles - ???

[Resistances]

Phy. Resistance - ???

Mag. Resistance - ???

Men. Resistance - ???

[Class]

Main Class - Apprentice Scout / Tier - 1

Sub Class - None / Tier - None

After quickly inspecting and then dismissing the prompt, I noticed that something was off. The entire party of humans had suddenly tensed up, and put their hands around their weapons, clearly alerted by something.

-Or rather not the entire party; someone was missing!

Seeing that the one called Elias missing, who was the one I had just appraised, I feared the worst. While somewhat panicking, my mind went through numerous different options all at once.

Firstly knew it would be a bad idea to try and escape while flying away since that would definitely create a lot of noise and alert them to my presence. And especially after looking at the status of the guy named Elias, who was probably looking for me, had agility and dexterity so highly I doubted my ability to escape.

Plus, he could probably hurl one of those daggers at me and pierce me straight through and through if he'd wanted to. Not wasting any more time, I decided to simply hide in the tree that I'm currently in and pray to any god that might be listening to let me stay unseen.

As silently as possible, I climbed up higher into the tree. With a wisp of sudden inspiration, I hastily took some of the large tree leaves with each of my six spindly legs, making it so that they would cover me fully - or at least mostly...

A minute went by without anything happening. I had left a small opening in my makeshift camouflage, to be able to see what's going on, peeking around with nervous tension straining my body.

At first, I didn't notice anything. But suddenly, right beneath me, I spotted a blur in the vegetation of the forest. It wasn't a blur from something that would be produced whenever something was moving too fast, but a blur similar to the one the lizard from the swamps created around itself; a blurry distortion of sorts

Immediately realizing that it was most likely that Elias fellow, I tensed up, making sure not to stare at the blur so as if not to alert him to my gaze or presence.

The blur stood still a few bated seconds and then performed a movement that seemed to be him moving his head and its gaze directly upwards into the tree I'm in.

I felt as if I was about to shit a brick from the intense stress I felt at the moment. Hiding within the tree, while covered in leaves, I tried desperately to will all of my being to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Five very long and agonizing seconds went by before the blur retrained its gaze elsewhere and moved on, causing a mental exclamation of a tension-filled sigh to sound out in my head.

[Hiding has reached LVL: 5 and can now be advanced!]

Feeling like my tiny little mosquito heart was all up in my throat, I took a few minutes to calm my nerves before hearing the voice of Elias yet again. This time he had appeared back at the group of humans and was talking to them with somewhat of a confused expression plastered on his face.

Present

Holy fucking shit! That was seriously way too close!

My god, I thought I was really to die right then and there. I was so petrified in place that I wondered if my heart was even still beating...

Shaking the last vestiges of stress from my nerves I steeled myself for what I was going to do next. Equipped with the new information I continued to follow the party of humans. Though this time I at least doubled the distance between us and made damn sure not to keep my gaze on the scout; in case he would suddenly notice my presence again.

About an hour later, something came into my sight which filled me with awe. For the last three full days, I had been completely encompassed by a seemingly endless forest expanse. But now - just before me, were long and vast plains that opened up for into the horizon.

Something in the distance suddenly caught my attention. It was kinda blurry and looked like a brown smudge from the sheer distance. But I didn't take long before I came to a conclusion of what it is.

Is that a... village?