Chapter 50: Chapter 50

Sveck was in a bad mood as he packed up his camp. He had thought this assignment would take him about a week, but now he had been out here for more than a whole month and nothing had changed!

He watched the tend folding itself together neatly before he put it into his bag of holding with a sigh. If he had known he would be out here this long he would have packed more food and tea. The latter was especially a problem, because after another two dungeon outbreaks food was available in abundance.

Sveck made sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and turned northwards. He made sure to take his sweet time though, not wanting to be discovered by whatever was able to keep fighting with the Xanai before he discovered it.

Earlier, just before he had packed camp, he had gotten orders to finally scout out what was going on instead of simply watching from a distance. Now, he definitely didn’t fancy having to do this after he had retired as an adventurer early, because stuff like this was why had stopped in the first place, but otherwise he wouldn’t get that sweet retirement money from the guild so he could only bite his lips and get the job done.

Sveck was somewhat of an odd case of an adventurer. He had taken to adventuring mainly because his parents had been adventurers too, but contrary to most he took things slowly. Where others had rushed ahead to become stronger and get enough money to buy themselves passage into the endless planes, he had made sure that he had his stat potential filled out and was ready for the level up before advancing to lower floors. Doing it like this though, was slow and not very profitable or at least not enough to leave this planet, which wasn’t his goal in the first place.

He made his way through the region of hills until he found the river that would bend westwards around the hills in the north only to go south again and chose to travel along the right side of the watercourse. He might have to travel further north than the river reached, even if he hoped that was not the case.

Sveck continued along the river for quite some time without noticing anything too alarming. There didn’t seem to be anything out of order with the plants and animals, though the forest was rather dry as if it hadn’t rained in months. This would make sneaking around more difficult, but he should be able to deal with it.

He kept observing the wildlife on his trip and got more careful the further inside the barrier forest he went. There was a quite simple reason for this too. Whatever had chosen to make its home here could be out to kill everything and overhunting an area always led to the creation of monsters, animals or plants that went past their stat limit.

They turned mad with hunger for mana and started attacking everything else, making it possible for monster hordes to form if they were left unattended. He wasn’t sure why monsters didn’t attack each other, but beyond the fact that they were even more of a menace than the Xanai he didn’t care too much either.

It took Sveck nearly the entire day to get close to where the river curved away from his goal and he had traveled a good 60 kilometers or so before something changed. It wasn’t a problem with the wildlife or the plants, but a problem with the smell of the region.

There was the faint scent of rotting flesh in the air and he instantly became wary, crouching down before he made his way into the bushes a few meters away from the river.

He contemplated for a minute if he should take out his sword, but decided against it. The weapon would be a hindrance to this stealth mission and if the need arose he still had his two trusty daggers.

Now ready for a fight, Sveck continued to carefully sneak his way further away from the river and into the forest. It didn’t take long until he found some strange animal tracks and there were a lot of them, though most of them were older than a day.

Unable to tell what had left the tracks here, he followed them further north. They could very well belong to the mystery that was the reason he was out here in no man's land and he tensed up everytime he heard something. He never found anything out of the ordinary though so he continued.

Sveck’s progress was painfully slow now, barely a crawl compared to his earlier speed and he always took time to check his surroundings when he had to leave his cover for a second to reach another field of bushes.

20 minutes or so later he nearly snapped when he laid his eyes on the owner of one of the tracks for the first time and nearly threw his dagger at the thing. The only thing that made him stop was the oddity of what he was seeing.

The thing, the animal, that was scampering past him about 5 meters away from his cover looked a bit like an ant that was the size of a dog and had brown fur instead of chitin armor. The muscles of the body made the usually discernable parts of an ant less so and he didn’t know if that was a good thing.

Sveck checked the ant’s mana signature and nearly let out a sigh of relief. Insect species were always bad news, especially the larger ones, because they tended to be very aggressive and stronger than most other animals, but at least this one had a low level without much in the way of stats.

The ant scurried away into a few bushes and Sveck let out a silent breath. He waited for a minute longer before he tried to make his way towards where the insect had come from, but he stopped when he noticed movement at the edge of his vision.

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Sveck turned around slowly and his heartbeat accelerated drastically. The head of the ant was poking out of the very bush it had disappeared into a minute ago and it was staring directly at him with two large black eyes. Its pincer-like mandibles were half opened, giving him a front few to two smaller pairs of mandibles, one above and one underneath the large pincers, that were busily grasping at the air in front of its mouth.

Sveck had both of his hands on his daggers, ready to spring into action, but he didn’t move and neither did the ant. For a few long moments they just stared at each other.

He wasn’t sure what he should do right now. The ant was only staring at him without making a sound so he was certain that the two of them were alone. Sveck had his mission to complete, but he didn’t want to stay here any longer, he wasn’t a rogue, he was a swordsman and sure as hell not the most suited for a scouting mission. He knew his way around, sure, but any stealth type adventurer worth their salt was better than him.

This left him with a decision to make, whether to retreat or kill the thing and continue his mission, at least that was how he wanted this situation to be, but the rustling of leaves behind him disrupted those thoughts.

Sveck took a glance behind him and spotted a second ant only a few meters away from him inside his field of bushes. This one again just stared at him without making any further moves.

Before he could do anything however, two more ants appeared and then even more and Sveck found himself surrounded by large ants that didn’t come closer to him than 5 meters, simply staring at him.

He nervously unsheathed his daggers and raised them defensively before he began to edge out of the bushes into the clearing. If it came down to a fight he wanted to be able to move around freely and deny the ants the advantage of the bushes.

Sveck positioned himself in the center of the clearing, some of the ants retreating to keep the distance of 5 meters while those in the bushes followed him and then he waited for the fight to start. If he couldn’t handle the threat he would try to make a run for it through one of the small paths that wound their way through the bushes.

His prediction was again proven wrong and instead of the ants rushing him there was some more rustling before six humanoid figures dressed in silk clothes entered the clearing through one of the paths. They were all around 1.4 meters tall, had appendages or rather tails similar to an ant queen's abdomen above their rump and he wasn’t able to spot any notable different features between them.

What he did note however, was the similarities their faces bore to the ants. They had the same weird antenna and the same large black eyes, only missing the pincers. Hopefully the new arrivals wouldn’t make things worse for him.

All six of the small humanoids carried their own pole with a large mandible of a Xanai fastened to it to function as a blade with them. Sveck had to take a second look when he spotted the mandibles and instinctively shrinked back from the six.

Xanai mandibles were known to be notoriously sharp, though they tended to become dull rather fast and couldn’t be sharpened again. Sveck didn’t think he was looking at a dull blade here though, which was why kept more distance to them.

The six figure didn’t seem to mind and, similar to the ants, just kept staring at him after they had spread out in a protective circle around the path they had arrived from.

Sveck found out a minute later when another of the small ones arrived, accompanied by a figure that rivaled his height at 1.8 meters. The first thought he had was that the smaller humanoids were the children of the large one.

The larger figure had a mixture of natural chitin cover and white fur. It, she, was dressed in a crude silk dress that had pelts attached to it in an attempt to create some protection. The woman was by far the strongest except for himself and was staring at him curiously, while moving what looked like a growing second pair of arms up and down through the air.

Sveck noted the intelligence in her gaze as well as the way the others seemed to protect her and decided to go with adventurer standard protocol when encountering unknown sapient species. He slowly lowered his arms and racked his brain for the right ancient words. “Greetings Miss and a good day to you. I come in peace.”

All 8 of the humanoids cocked their heads at the same time with puzzled expressions.

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