Chapter 241: Deeper

The Yuimon moved with terrifying speed, its massive body covering the distance in seconds.

It caught the first wolf, its jaws closing around its body, crushing it instantly. The second wolf tried to dodge, but the Yuimon was faster, its claws tearing through its side.

The third wolf made it further, but the Yuimon was relentless, its movements fluid and efficient.

The fourth wolf, the one that hadn’t run fast enough, was the last to fall. Its body crumpled under the weight of the Yuimon’s attack.

The whole thing took about twelve seconds.

When it was over, the Yuimon stood over the bodies, its green eyes glowing, its jaws dripping with blood.

The wolves were dead, their bodies broken and torn. The Yuimon went back into inventory, disappearing in a flash of green light.

The archers were quiet for a moment. They had seen the Bogoarts fall, had seen Pannett’s quick shot, but this was something else.

This was raw power, overwhelming and absolute. The wolves hadn’t stood a chance.

"Blood and Stone!," one of the archers said, his voice low. "That was really quick and brutal."

Darion looked at him. "Could be vice versa," he said. "If they had caught us off guard, if we hadn’t been ready, it would have been us on the ground. That’s the lesson i guess. Don’t underestimate what’s out here."

Seren looked at Darion. "You could have revived them," she said.

"I could have," Darion said.

"Why didn’t you?"

He looked at her. He could explain that his inventory was full, seventy animal slots, all occupied, nothing to spare without dismissing something more valuable than four lean forest wolves.

That would be the honest answer. But he didn’t want to explain the inventory system to eleven archers in the middle of a forest.

They didn’t need to know the details of his abilities. They just needed to trust that he knew what he was doing.

"Didn’t want to," he said.

Seren looked at him for a moment, her eyes searching his face. She seemed to be weighing his answer, deciding whether to press further. Then she said, "I see."

She turned back to the archers and told them to spread out and keep moving.

They obeyed, their steps quick, their eyes scanning the trees. The tension was still there, but it had eased slightly. They had survived two attacks, and they were still alive. That was something.

Darion walked at the back, his mind turning. He thought about the full inventory, about what he would actually dismiss to make room.

He concluded the answer was nothing currently in it.

The Yuimons were too valuable. The Horned Olfs were too useful. The Slitherer was too effective. The bats? Nah, they were good because they had venom.

They were useful for infiltration, for spreading poison, for sneaking into places where larger creatures couldn’t go. He couldn’t afford to lose them.

He would keep his inventory as it was. If something valuable came along, he would have to make a decision. But for now, the wolves would stay dead.

———

The trees were getting thinner ahead. The canopy opened slightly, allowing more light to filter through. The quality of the light changed, less filtered, more direct. The undergrowth was different here too, the plants that grew in deeper forest rather than the edge varieties. The air was cooler...

Darion recognized it. They had reached the deeper part.

He stopped walking.

The archers stopped behind him, their eyes scanning the trees. They could feel the change too, the shift in the atmosphere. The forest felt... more dangerous.

"This is where we actually train," Seren said.

Darion looked at her, then at the forest ahead.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s see what you all have got."

———

They pushed deeper into the forest.

The trees got bigger here, not the manageable forest near Percvale’s edge, but the real thing.

Trunks wider than two men standing arm to arm, their bark dark and rough.

The canopy was so thick above that the light arrived filtered and grey, like the sun had been reduced to a distant memory.

The air was cooler, damp, carrying the smell of earth and decay.

The undergrowth was denser too. Roots twisted across the path like hidden traps, and bushes grew thick and tangled, forcing the archers to step carefully.

The sounds were different here. The birds that had been singing near the edge were gone, replaced by a heavy silence that pressed in from all sides.

Things moved in the distance that didn’t show themselves, rustles in the leaves, snaps of twigs, the soft patter of something large shifting its weight.

Maybe nothing was actually moving. But the forest just gave that feel, the sense that they were being watched or something like that.

The archers felt it.

They had been trained well, had practiced for weeks, had learned to shoot with accuracy and speed.

But training in a courtyard and standing in this forest were two separate experiences, and their bodies knew the difference.

The earlier parts of the forest, they had been cautious too.

They had scanned the trees, listened to the sounds, and kept their hands near their weapons.

But there had been a difference in the way they moved back then, a looseness in their shoulder or a lightness in their steps.

They had felt safer there, closer to the edge, closer to Percvale. The forest had been dangerous, yes, but it had been a manageable danger. The kind you could see coming.

Here, that feeling was gone. The trees pressed in tighter, the shadows were deeper, and the silence felt creepy.

They moved differently here, more cautiously, their eyes scanning the shadows, their hands never straying far from their bows.

Seren stopped the group near a small clearing, her hand raised. The archers halted immediately, their eyes fixed on her. She turned to face them, her expression serious.

"Remember the objective," she said, her voice low but clear. "Wild birds. Not creatures. Not Bogoarts or wolves or anything with four legs and bad intentions. Birds. Specific wild varieties that move fast and fly between the canopy gaps and require a clean lead shot to hit properly. That’s what this trip is for, to give you something that tests your speed and accuracy without requiring the undead to kill it first."

The archers nodded. Birds. Right. They had been focusing so much on the dangers of the forest that they had almost forgotten why they were here.

They weren’t hunting monsters. They were hunting birds.

Birds!

Darion walked at the back, thinking.

He had been thinking about the creatures they had already passed through today, about the Bogoarts and the wolves and the strange things that lurked in the shadows.

A question formed in his mind, what exactly was that gorilla-like thing he had killed during the last hunt with Seren?

He had never gotten a name. He had killed it, revived it, added it to his inventory, and moved on. But he had never asked what it was called.

He asked the system silently (in his mind).

The system replied instantly:

[Uootstans.]

Darion blinked. Uootstans?

He almost stops walking.

He looked at the word sitting in his mind and tried to make it feel like a name for something dangerous, and failed completely.

The syllables were awkward, almost silly. Uootstans...

It sounded like a word a child would make up, not the name of a creature that could crush bone with its teeth.

He tried to imagine shouting it in battle, tried to picture it striking fear into the hearts of his enemies.

It didn’t work. It just made him want to laugh.

Two of the archers nearest him noticed the slight change in his expression and looked at each other. Their faces were confused, their eyebrows raised.

They didn’t know what had caught his attention, but they knew something had.

Uh...

They exchanged glances, then looked back at Darion, waiting for an explanation.

Darion kept his face normal now, trying to be as normal as possible.

He thought about the naming convention of this world.

Bogoart. Olf. Yuimon. Rops. And now Uootstans.

All of them were strange in ways that English words weren’t. They didn’t follow any pattern he could recognize, and didn’t sound like anything he had heard before.

Yet the world also had goats and chickens and cattle, the same animals his previous world had, with the same names.

The overlap made no sense, and he had stopped trying to make sense of it. Some things were just the way they were.

Uootstans...

He repeated the word in his mind again, letting it settle. It still didn’t feel right, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

The forest was watching them, waiting for them to make a mistake. And he had to focus now because his job here was to protect and not ’necessarily’ think.

The archers were fully alert now.

Every snapped twig registered in their minds. Every distant sound got a quick scan, their eyes darting to the source before returning to their path.

They were holding their bows down, but their hands knew where the arrows were, their fingers twitching with the instinct to draw. They were ready, even if they didn’t know it yet.

Seren watched them and said nothing. This alertness was exactly what she wanted the forest to produce in them.

She had brought them here to learn, to adapt and to become something more than they were. And they were learning. They were adapting.

Then footsteps started. Heavy, kinda rhythmic... getting louder. Coming from ahead and slightly left.

The sound was unmistakable now, the steady thud of something large moving toward them. The archers tensed, their hands moving to their bows.

Darion listened for a moment longer, his mind already identifying the creatures. He knew that...