Chapter 31: Giants in the Valley

A tree gave me cover as I stared down into the valley. Human figures walked between tiny wooden houses with rooftops that looked like they were made of leaves gathered from the forest.

Next to the river, the same one I’d drank from moments earlier, stood a man with a bucket in his hands, filling it up with water before walking back toward the village.

Others were tending to farms, taking care of animals, and I even spotted some kids playing around.

The humans looked... human. I had to check, since some creatures could actually look human without being human at all, like the vampires from that very first rift I’d visited.

But these looked genuinely human, and that scared me. How could this rift have humans inside it? Judging by their clothes, they didn’t look like they came from Earth at all. Or if they did, it was a long time ago.

Simple clothes made of cotton, most of them wearing leather coats to guard against the cold.

A few men stood off to the side, acting like guards or scouts. Swords on their waists. I figured they were there to keep beasts away from the village, especially with night coming.

But there was something else about them. They were weirdly tall. I was far away and couldn’t be totally sure, but the guards looked like they were 8 feet tall or something.

Not just the guards, everyone was taller than normal. Only the kids still had room to grow.

How had they survived that unknown energy that had almost killed me? Maybe their bodies weren’t built the same way as ours back on Earth.

Maybe they didn’t even have abilities in the first place.

The only way to find out more was to go down there and talk to them. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t speak the same language, but I needed somewhere safe to recover.

My body was burned, my arm was broken, and night was coming. I needed a safe place to recover, and to absorb the crystals I already had to bump up my attributes.

The dangers of this rift were still unknown, so I wanted to be in the best shape possible before exploring further.

So I headed down the valley, walking this time, since I didn’t want to freak anyone out.

The village was further down. Took me about 10 minutes to reach it.

When I did, the massive guards I’d spotted earlier came running at me with weapons drawn. One of them even aimed a bow.

They shouted something at me. No idea what language that was. Not a single word I recognized.

I used the only thing I had, a smile, a friendly expression, and gestures to show I was hurt.

I pointed at my broken arm, then pulled down my hood to show them the burns covering my torso. Then I did a pleading gesture, pressing both palms together.

"Please, help me," I said.

Worked, I think. They lowered their weapons, and the suspicion, or killing intent, drained out of their expressions. At least for the moment. I doubted they trusted me that easily, and I definitely didn’t trust them either.

One of the guards shouted, and a woman showed up. She took one look at my state, badly damaged, and came over, grabbing my left arm.

She pulled me along. I didn’t resist, following her to one of the houses in the village.

Inside, she pointed at a bed. I figured she wanted me to lie down, so I did.

The bed was crude, not comfortable at all, but I wasn’t about to complain. She came back with a piece of cloth and a bucket of water to clean my burns.

Not just water, though. She’d mixed something into it. Herbs, maybe. When the liquid touched my skin, a cooling sensation spread through my body. Refreshing. Took some of the sting out of the burns.

My arm was still in bad shape. Once she finished cleaning my burns, she used a piece of wood and a strip of cloth to wrap it up, keeping it from moving too much.

Not exactly the best treatment, but I wasn’t an ordinary human. With my current attributes, healing a broken arm wouldn’t take that long. Maybe a week or 2, as long as I didn’t have to keep fighting and moving around.

I really hoped the village would keep me safe while I healed. Would make my life a lot easier.

The woman said something I didn’t understand. She headed to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of soup. Really kind of her. I was starving, exhausted, and that was exactly what I needed.

Could it be poisoned? Maybe. Always a chance. But I decided to trust the person who’d just treated my wounds and given me shelter.

While eating the soup with a wooden spoon, I took in the rest of her house. Basically one big room, with a tiny fireplace and an iron pot.

A few scattered chairs, an improvised couch that didn’t look comfortable at all, and 2 beds. I also spotted some scrolls, a desk, and wolf heads mounted on the walls. Hunting trophies, probably.

The bed I was in was smaller. Made sense, the woman had a son, a young boy who came to check on me once his mother finished cleaning my wounds.

He kept staring at me like I was some other species. I mean, I was pretty different from them. They were all bigger, more tanned, more muscular too, probably from constantly fighting beasts and doing manual labor.

I finished the soup and stayed in bed, recovering. From inside the cabin, I heard noises outside. The guards were fighting something. Beasts roaming the forest.

The woman and even the little boy didn’t look alarmed, so this must’ve been a daily thing for them.

I still had at least 11 hours left before that unknown energy came looking to kill me, assuming it followed the same pattern as before.

Plenty of time to start absorbing monster crystals.

Bob was still asleep, but he’d already thrown up all the crystals, 300 total. That would give my attributes a decent boost, I was sure of it.

So I started absorbing them, pulling them out of the pocket dimension one by one and draining their energy.

The woman’s husband came into the cabin. He frowned watching what I was doing. They talked to each other about something, but I couldn’t understand a word.

Did they absorb crystals too, to get stronger, or did their power come from somewhere else? No idea.

Two hours passed, and by the end of it, I’d absorbed all the crystals, bumping my attributes up a bit.

[Name: Vincent Crane]

[STR: 61]

[AGI: 84]

[VIT: 52]

[WIL: 21]

Not a massive boost, since I’d only used 300 crystals, not that many in the grand scheme, but decent enough. The crystals had solid quality too. That dimensional rift with the mysterious eye might’ve been a higher grade than what Ethan told me.

I slept in the bed while the little boy slept on the couch. Honestly, I should’ve been the one on the couch, but there was no way to explain that to them.

Early the next morning, someone came looking for me with an axe in hand.