The first Stoneback Ape let out a short grunt as the arrow punched cleanly into its shoulder. It spun toward the sound and walked directly into Ryan’s shield as he drove forward and slamd it across the creature’s jaw with the full weight of his body behind it.
The fight broke open imdiately after that.
The other seven turned and charged.
Ryan planted his feet and held the center, absorbing two of them at once, his mace swinging in short, brutal arcs that kept them from getting past him. Each hit landed with the kind of impact that ca from soone who had trained specifically to be immovable.
Ophelia was already moving.
She crossed the distance to the nearest ape in less than a second, her footwork almost too quick to follow, and drove her katana through its side in a clean precise strike.
Blue lightning crackled from the blade on impact and jumped across the creature’s body, locking its muscles for just a mont — long enough for her to pull back and finish it with a second strike across the throat.
She was already turning toward the next one before the first hit the ground.
Ken engaged two of the remaining apes with considerably less flash but no less effectiveness. His movents were controlled and economical.
No wasted energy, no unnecessary distance. He cut deep, stepped back, cut again, using his mana to sharpen each strike beyond what the blade alone could manage.
From the rear line, Marina raised her wand and sent a burst of compressed wind at the ape trying to flank Ophelia from the left. It hit the creature square in the chest and sent it stumbling backward into a boulder with enough force to crack the stone.
Before it could recover, she followed it up a lance made up of wood. Her other elent was wood. The lance covered with wind shot at torso on monster.
Noah kept moving along the rear, repositioning constantly to keep clean angles, sending arrows coated with mana into anything that tried to break past the front line or reach for Marina or Mary.
He wasn’t the fastest shooter, but he was accurate enough and kept his shots deliberate — targeting joints, eyes, and the softer areas below the arms where the fur was thinner.
Mary worked steadily at the back, laying buffers over Ryan as his shield arm began to strain under the repeated impacts, refreshing the enhancent on Ophelia’s speed when she sensed it fading, sending a quick sharp pulse of healing toward Ken when one of the apes caught him across the forearm with a raking swing.
It was clean and coordinated, not perfectly smooth but functional in the way that mattered — everyone doing exactly what they were supposed to do, covering the gaps that naturally appeared, adjusting without needing to be asked.
The last Stoneback Ape fell with one final arrow from Noah finding the side of its neck.
The clearing went quiet.
All eight creatures were down.
Ryan lowered his shield and exhaled heavily, rolling the shoulder that had taken the most punishnt. Ophelia shook a small spray of blood off her katana before sheathing it with practiced ease. Ken pressed one hand briefly against the shallow scratch on his forearm — already closed from Mary’s heal — and nodded his thanks in her direction.
Marina looked quietly satisfied, her wand lowering as she let the remaining mana in her hand dissipate.
Noah checked his bracelet.
360 points.
He looked up at the group.
"Good start," he said simply.
Ryan let out a short, low sound that might have been a laugh.
"That went smoother than I expected," Ophelia said, glancing around at the fallen apes with a calm and appraising look.
"Because everyone did what they were supposed to," Ken said, his first full sentence since the forest.
Noah was already scanning the trees ahead.
"yes. As long as there’s not D rank monster, we won’t have any problems. Good job everyone." He look at everyone. When his eyes fell on ophelia and t her eyes she turned her head to other side ignoring him.
Noah shook his head and said, "Let’s not stop here. There’s still most of the day left."
The group collected monster cores and then Noah started walking, and the rest of the group fell into step behind him without hesitation.
Unknowingly to him he had beco the leader of group.
---
Elsewhere in the forest, a flash of golden light cut through the air like a blade made of sunlight.
A humanoid creature thin limbed and pale, moving on two legs with an unsettling jerking motion, it took the hit directly and crumpled to the ground before it could make another sound. It lay still among the five others already sprawled across the forest floor around it.
Damien lowered his hand.
The golden light faded from his sword, leaving the forest dim and green again in its absence.
He turned and looked over his group; Arisha, Lyria, Leonard, Emma, and Zack — all of them standing in the aftermath. So catching their breath, others already checking themselves for damage out of habit.
"Good work," Damien said, his voice carrying a quiet but genuine weight to it. "Everyone perford well. Keep it up."
Leonard straightened imdiately at the acknowledgnt, crossing his arms with a satisfied expression like he had been waiting for exactly that. Emma brushed a strand of brown hair out of her face and exhaled, nodding to herself. Arisha rolled her shoulder once and said nothing.
Lyria checked on the group quietly, moving between them with a calm eye for anyone who might have taken a hit worth noting.
Everything looked good. Nobody was hurt. The six monsters were down cleanly and it hadn’t even taken long.
Damien was about to say sothing further when it hit him.
A feeling. Just a sudden and distinct awareness that settled over the back of his neck like a drop of cold water.
He turned around.
The trees stretched out behind them, layered and dense, shadows pooling between the trunks where the light couldn’t reach. His hazel eyes moved slowly across the distance, searching the spaces between the dark shapes of the trees.
Sothing shifted in the shadows far back between the trunks. A shape that didn’t belong to any tree, moving just at the edge of where sight beca unreliable. There for a fraction of a second and then simply gone, swallowed back into the dark.
Damien stared at the spot for a mont longer.
"Damien." Leonard’s voice ca from beside him. "What’s wrong? Did you see sothing?"
Damien kept his eyes on the trees for just another second. The shadows between the trunks stayed perfectly still. Nothing moved. The forest looked exactly as a forest should look. Empty and indifferent.
He let out a slow breath and shook his head.
"Nothing," he said. "I thought I saw sothing but it was probably just my imagination." He turned back to the group, his expression settling back into its usual composed steadiness. "Let’s keep moving. We still have a lot of ground to cover."
Leonard looked at the treeline once over his shoulder, then shrugged and followed.
The group moved on, pushing deeper into the forest.
But Damien did not fully shake the feeling.
It clung quietly to the back of his mind as he walked, refusing to dissolve the way a simple trick of the eyes should have. He said nothing more about it. There was no point in unsettling the group over sothing he couldn’t confirm.
Sothing had been there.
He was almost certain of it.
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