Chapter 87: Night Experiment

Three days passed after the outpost discovery and Eren didn’t sleep well for any of them.

Every night he lay next to Emily and stared at the ceiling while his brain tried to connect pieces that didn’t quite fit together.

The root map showing a massive underground network. The warning about the forest heart. Fury’s report that the totem’s scent covered everything within a two-hour walk. His grandfather who came back from Evon bloody and broken and spent the rest of his life looking out windows.

Emily shifted in her sleep and pressed closer to him. Her belly was barely showing but her body temperature ran higher now and she radiated heat like a small furnace.

He breathed in the floral scent of her hair and tried to think about literally anything other than the fact that his pregnant wife was pressed against him in a thin sleeping gown and he couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Focus Eren. Giant underground tree monster. Scary root maps. Stop thinking about her thighs.

He couldn’t sleep and had to got up around midnight and walked outside.

The village was dark except for the flashlight beams on the northern barricade. Both moons were up and the air was cool enough that he could see his breath.

He grabbed both scimitars and the Dungeon Heart Fragment and headed into the forest alone.

The clone skill had been sitting in his ability list for above a week now and he still didn’t know what to make of it.

He’d used it once near the fragment. The result had been… not what he expected. The skill description said something about cognitive awareness and the warning text had been unsettling enough that he hadn’t tried it again.

1000 mana. That’s the entire pool of the dungeon crystal. How convenient..

He walked deeper into the forest instead. Killed two regular trolls near the river in about four minutes total and kept moving. His body wanted the fight more than his brain wanted answers tonight.

But his brain wouldn’t shut up either.

The root map from the outpost kept overlapping with everything else in his head. The 1-stat thing with the clone still didn’t make sense. He got 9 stat points per level. That was againts the normal amount for this world based on what Emily told him. So why was he the only exception?

What if I’m not naturally stronger? What if something is giving me the extra stats?

He stopped walking and looked up through the canopy at the two moons.

And if something is giving them to me… what does it want back?

He didn’t have an answer. He stood there for a long time before heading home.

Emily was awake when he came back. She was sitting up in bed with her arms crossed and that look she got when she’d been waiting.

“Where were you?”

“Forest. Couldn’t sleep. Killed some trolls.” He put the scimitars down and sat on the edge of the bed.

Emily watched his face. “That’s not all.”

He thought about lying. Decided against it because Emily could smell lies better than Fury could smell kobolds. “I was thinking about the clone skill. Trying to figure some things out.”

“Did you use it?”

“No. Didn’t feel right tonight.” He pulled off his boots and avoided her eyes. “The skill is… weird. Not what I thought it would be. I need to understand it better before I do anything with it.”

Emily’s hand found his arm and squeezed once. “When you’re ready to talk about it, I’m here silly.”

“I know.”

She lay back down and pulled his arm around her waist. He felt the warmth of her back against his chest and tried to let it be enough for now.

..

Rosa hit Level 5 the next afternoon.

She’d been grinding slimes every morning like it was a job which made sense because she used to manage thirty kindergarteners on a schedule. She woke up at dawn, ate breakfast, grabbed the hunting knife, walked to the slime area and methodically killed everything green and wobbly until lunchtime.

Nimbo had started joining her because he couldn’t kill anything with his Resolute Fighter class but he could knock slimes around and tire them out for Rosa to finish.

“Is there a ninja class?” Rosa asked at dinner that evening. She was poking at the Evon stew Selena had made and trying to identify the meat.

“No.”

“Assassin?”

“Probably but you wouldn’t want it. They’re usually dark and edgy and you’re a kindergarten teacher.”

“What about a mage class? I could throw fireballs.”

“Your mana stat is probably 0 right now. A fireball needs at least hundred. My neckless has a powerful fireball skill and it demands 500 mana!”

“FIVE HUNDRED!!” She almost didn’t believe him and Eren took that personal.

He used it with the topic at hand and as soon as he wanted to shoot it, a big red burning ball shoot itself to the place he pointed. It was massive and surprisingly fast!

What the hell!

He tried to use this skill before but never got any chance after having enough mana to do it. He almost forgot about using it after not needing it for a long time.

This explosion was massive and he almost started a forest fire…

“Maybe I should care about artifacts or magical tools more than before..”

Rosa nodded and looked at his neckless with shocked face.

But even if it looked and burned cool, this skill also burned his mana pool too. It wasn’t practical to use 500-damn-mana to shoot it every time! Real fireball skill probably would cost 50 to 100 mana but a skill from an average item was different.

But this was the moment he felt like a magician and it felt really good.

Eren wondered if he could learn the real fireball skill if he used this neckless skill for enough time…

..

Emily shared something that evening while they were walking the perimeter.

“My mother mentioned nomad groups. Two small elf families living in the deeper forest. They move around and never stay in one place.” Emily was scanning the treeline out of habit while she talked. The moonlight caught her cheekbones and he had to physically look away.

“Did you ever see them?”

She smiled a bit. “No. Even she only saw them for a couple of times in her whole hunting journey in the forest. They live at the edges of the forest territories. Further than we can react even if we ran for days.

And they aren’t that many before you plan to find them. Maybe fifteen to twenty elves total between both groups. They knew the village was here but didn’t want to come. Mother said they were afraid of…” She stopped.

“What?”

Emily shook her head. “She didn’t say it. And I always thought they were afraid of us. Now I’m not so sure.”

They walked in silence for another minute before Fury appeared from the eastern tree line with his ears flat.

He was tense and Fury didn’t get tense easily. [Marks on the trees. Not claw marks. Not teeth. Something carved deliberately.]

Eren followed him to the edge of the clearing where three large oaks stood in a row. In the bark of each one at about head height someone had carved symbols. Not Elvish letters and not kobold scratches but something else entirely with sharp angles and deliberate curves that looked like whoever did it knew exactly what they were carving.

Emily studied them. “I don’t recognize these. They’re not old Elvish. Not any dialect I know.”

“Kobold?”

“Kobold marks are crude. These are skilled.” She traced one with her fingertip without touching the bark. “Whoever did this knows what they’re doing.”

They stared at the symbols for a long time. Someone else was in this forest and that someone used tools and knew how to write.

They didn’t know what to do and came back.

Eren was about to head home when Rosa grabbed his arm at the doorway of the front garden.

“Quick question.” She was holding scimitar. “At what level do I get a class?”

“Probably at level 15 like everyone else. Most people get a class at that level and I also got mine at 15.”

Rosa’s eyes were shining with that competitive fire he remembered from their relationship. She used to get the same look playing board games right before she destroyed everyone at the table.

“Good. Because this universe has terrible class design and no ninja option. I’m going to break their system from the strategy side instead.”

“That’s the spirit. But I joked about ninja class. I don’t know if there is one or not. Mel said something about it, maybe you can ask her this and practice your elvish at the same time.”

Rosa nodded and didn’t say anything about his joke. She went inside and Eren stayed on the porch and smiled with how excited she was about classes and skills and finding a bug or something.

The sky was clear and both moons were up and the village was quiet. He was about to go in when movement caught his eye.

A shadow passed across the moons. Not a cloud and not a bird but something enormous and winged that moved with a speed that made the trees below it sway from the displaced air alone.

Everyone felt it!

Selena stepped out of the restaurant and looked up. Thadric dropped the bucket he was carrying. Even Rosa came back to the doorway.

The dragon’s silhouette crossed the sky from north to south. It was closer than Eren had ever seen it, close enough that he could make out the shape of individual scales catching moonlight and the slow deliberate movement of its head as it scanned the ground below.

Emily appeared beside him. She watched the dragon pass with her hand resting on her katana and her jaw set.

“Every time it comes a bit closer.” she said. Her voice was calm but her eyes weren’t. “And every time it’s looking at the same area.”

The dragon’s massive head tilted downward as it passed over the village center and its gaze locked onto the totem for maybe three seconds before it kept moving south and disappeared behind the mountains.

“It’s not looking at us,” Eren said.

“No.” Emily’s hand dropped from her katana. “It’s looking at the totem.”

“Maybe thats the weakness it wants to use to destroy this area and make it it’s home. Or…I don’t know. There are many possibilities with a damn Dragon!” Eren muttered.

The village stayed quiet for a long time after the dragon passed.

Eren stood on the porch and tried to make sense of what he knew so far. A root system that stretched for hours in every direction. An ancient warning about a growing heart. Runic symbols from someone hiding in the forest. And a dragon that flew closer every week and only ever looked at one thing.

Too many questions. Not enough answers. And I’m getting the feeling that running out of time is part of the problem.

He went inside and lay down next to Emily but his eyes stayed open until the first moon went down.

I need to start hunting high level monsters and get stronger. And maybe grinding skill levels are also needed.

Dragon or not, if someone tries to interrupt my peaceful village, they are going down!!

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