A familiar sky greeted his eyes. He was standing on top of a particularly thick branch of a tree and looked up at the sky. Beautiful, larger, greater. Ryan rolled his shoulders and landed lightly on the ground. The clanking noise of all his gear set the birds within earshot fluttering away.

A wolf the size of a truck yelped in surprise and started sprinting from him. He chuckled and looked around.

“Gamielle?”

“Boo!”

The [Mage] appeared and yelled in his ears.

“You dick, you blew my [Dangersense].”

Gamielle grinned at him, she was in her normal half-elf self which he assumed was her real self. She put her hands on her hips.

“Little bit of payback,”

“For what?”

“For bullying Pinkie.”

“I bullied Pinkie?”

“She came back crying!”

Gamielle summoned an illusion of Pinkie in a very revealing ninja outfit. The Dragonslayer grabbed at Gamielle’s waist and looked up, tears in her pink eyes.

“Mister Artigan bullied me! H-he threatened me!”

The illusory Pinkie started sobbing and hiccuping into Gamielle’s breasts. Gamielle glared at Ryan.

“How could you! She was sent to check up on you, to make sure everything was going alright on Earth and you threatened her?!”

The worst part of all of this? Ryan could actually believe that Pinkie had done exactly that. The fake Pinkie was giving him the evil eye while rubbing her face in Gamielle’s chest. Ryan refused to rise to the bait.

“You know what, I don’t have time for this.”

He started jogging on the forest floor. Gear still clanking around him, he paused then eyed the crossbows. They were better than his throwing knives for longer distances but the noise was just a little too much. He dropped both crossbows and the quiver.

He took stock, ten throwing knives, soulsword, Zedart’s longsword at his side and Avale’s shield attached to his back. Oh, and a minor healing potion in his belt. That felt much better.

Gamielle swirled around him as he ignored her.

“You keep ignoring me, I’m sending that bullipede again.”

Ryan stopped and crossed his arms, unimpressed with her threat.

“Good, go ahead, I bet you won’t.”

Gamielle gave him an arch look. “Guess I need to make good on my threats sometimes.”

Ryan grinned at her, teeth bared.

Trees started crashing in the distance. A familiar screeching sound spread through the air as the path of broken trees came closer. Ryan kept up the game of chicken with her until he heard the rumble, then he took out his soulsword.

Gamielle frowned.

“Wait a second. You’re actually planning on killing it?”

“Pretty slow there, need some more mental threads?”

“You idiot, me luring it here would hurt your achievements.”

She waved her hands and the sound of crashing trees, and the rumbling of the ground vanished. Ryan narrowed his eyes.

“You never lured shit, all of that was just an illusion.”

“Pretty slow there, need some more mental threads?” Gamielle taunted back.

“Damnit.”

Ryan started jogging towards the bullipede’s clearing. He knew exactly where he needed to go. It was an odd feeling, Ryan had never done bushcraft before but each tree felt distinct to him, sometimes he’d even notice his own footprints from the way back. A [Rogue] buff.

Gamielle was still floating by him, except she had a distant look on her face.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

“I’m busy, there’s a lot to do, you know? I can’t dedicate all my threads to messing with you.”

“Huh, so you do have access to more threads and not just your… caster?”

Ryan was fishing for information. His guess was that Gamielle was the product of a particularly powerful Epic or the combination of Epic and the Legendary illusion skill.

“Call her my mommy, she hates that.”

“So…. you have more access to your mommy’s th-”

The air froze as Ryan’s [Dangersense] blew up again. The Witch Tyrant’s aura descended as her voice echoed in his ears.

“You will not call me that.”

Gamielle blinked.

“Holy Manager’s tits. Pinkie was right, you are crazy.”

“I don’t want to hear that from a split personality from an out of control Epic that probably -” Ryan stopped as he realized Gamielle had disappeared, “Gamielle?”

Ryan focused, it was showtime.

The clearing was in front. He slowed down to lower the noise coming from him. The tall lonesome tree stood in the middle, surrounded by the stumps of all the other trees that the bullipede had cleared out.

The clearing was empty of any bullipede around it. That was unfortunate. Centipedes normally hunted at night but bullipedes? They just hunted when they were hungry.

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Ryan looked at the lonesome proud tree in the middle of the clearing.

Then he looked at his enchanted soulsword with the [Minor Sharpness] enchantment.

He smiled as he walked to the tree, whistling as he did.

Some blademasters might value their weapons greatly, keeping it sharpened, oiled and polished. Even with enchanted weapons they would say that paying respect to your blade was a common ritual that any self respecting blademaster would do.

Ryan?

He was never taught that well, he was an adventurer, and to adventurers practicality was everything. His blade swung as it cut into the tree. He kept swinging at the tall ass tree with more than a little bit of spite. Bark flew as he put his full realm two strength into each blow. It was tougher than he expected. Perhaps there was a reason why the bullipede had chosen this particular tree.

It took two minutes before the tree started to make a creaking noise. He kept hacking away. Finally it started to tilt. Ryan went to the opposite side and tackled it, hard. The crackling, falling of the tree echoed out into the forest.

It wasn’t long before a screeching cry echoed back in response.

The bullipede crashed forward into the treeline as it froze, it looked at the apparent lack of its home, then turned its head to stare at Ryan, sitting on top of the corpse of its home, his sword held casually between his legs.

It trembled then spasmed.

“Oh sorry, was this your favorite tree?”

It screeched into the air, louder than Ryan had thought it could scream. Then it rushed forward.

Ryan clicked his tongue, he’d been hoping it would instantly do the coil attack. Instead it was so furious that it would rather tear him apart than pulverize him. He jumped off the dead tree and threw a knife at one of its compound eyes.

Surprisingly, the knife hit dead center of one of its eyes. The bullipede hadn’t tried to dodge or deflect in its single minded rage. It did screech in pain… and crashed head first into the carcass of its favorite tree.

Ryan had dodged to the side, he hadn’t expected that, but he also wasn’t someone to let an opportunity go.

[Instant Dodge]

Ryan fully activated his Epic and took out Zedart’s longsword, point first. He accelerated forward, point of the blade directed at the bullipede’s head.

The bullipede twitched, then contracted backwards, it moved at speeds far beyond Ryan’s capability as it used one of its tusks and parried his longsword.

Zedart’s blade shattered and Ryan looked on in surprise as he saw it twitch again.

His eyes grew wide as he twisted in midair, just in time, too, the bullipede’s other tusk smashed into the shield on his back. It didn’t matter that it was ‘blocked’. Ryan’s body went flying, bouncing across the clearing.

He curled into a ball, the momentum too fast to do anything else. On the fifth bounce he put out a hand and flipped in the air to make a nearly perfect recovery. Ryan looked up, preparing to dodge what should have been a chasing bullipede.

Instead the bullipede was watching him, head held high in the air. Wary. Its legs were undulating at him, warning him to back off.

Ryan grinned and threw away Zedart’s broken sword.

He’d made a mistake with his Epic. So far every time he had used the active it had made his opponents freeze in fear. What happened instead was that the bullipede had snapped out of its frenzy and went into a sudden state of life and death. That was how it had parried him.

Ryan would have had a greater chance if it had been in a rage. Still, this wasn’t a bad feeling.

“Finally see me as an enemy huh?”

One of his ribs felt bruised, it might have been a fracture. Ryan uncorked his healing potion and downed it. It was only a minor potion. If it really was a cracked rib he wouldn’t gain full mobility for a few hours at minimum.

Taking out Avale’s shield he slammed the pommel of his soulsword into it. Making as large of a sound as possible as he declared war.

“Come on you pile of dragonshit! I broke your little tree and I’ll destroy every home you make!”

Ryan wasn’t going to make the mistake of backing away this time, he was in control. That was the plan he made on Earth. Kill the damned bullipede even if it killed him.

It was a good plan.

The bullipede coiled. Ryan felt his [Dangersense] about to activate and gritted his teeth as he tamped it down.

Sit down, you’re my skill, you listen to me now.

The stupid simple insect launched itself, he dodged with a grin as he got ready with his sword… then saw it go flying – wide. It had missed him by a good five feet. Ryan blinked as both bullipede and adventurer watched each other fly by as the momentum pushed it forward past him.

He had destroyed one of its eyes, which apparently meant that despite having compound eyes, it had lost some depth perception.

“Well shit.”

The bullipede skidded across the ground, the clearing had meant that there were no trees around to stop its momentum. It slammed its legs into the ground ripping up the land and glaring hatefully up at him.

Ryan put his shield back on his back and swapped it with a throwing knife.

“Nothing ever does go according to plan. Here we go.”

–

This two legged creature kept screeching at it after destroying its favorite home. The bullipede had met adventurers before. The first adventurer that had scattered it from its nest was stronger than anything that had come after. Ever since then it had been chased and been forced to flee to this safer place.

Only the weaker two legged came here. Sometimes many adventurers arrived but none were as strong. It could kill most of them and if they injured it too much it could flee just as easily. It had finally found a place for itself. This two legs felt like the stronger two legs but it was not, it was as weak as the other normal two legs, but also different.

It destroyed its home and kept screeching at it, trying to take the forest for itself.

It understood that. Only one could remain in this forest.

–

Ryan pretended to throw a knife, then he threw a knife for real. It did nothing to trick the bullipede as it twitched back. It missed his knife, depth perception still messed up, the move however still meant that the knife missed the mark and just bounced off its thick carapace.

This fucking insect knew how to watch for feints.

It sounded insane but there it was. It twitched again to block another knife throw, this time its tusk hitting the knife in midair.

Good, he was counting on the bullipede adjusting to the depth perception.

It coiled at point blank. He skidded to a stop to get ready. His [Instant Dodge] had come off cooldown but this was far too close of a distance. Ryan pretended to dive as he saw the bullipede spring right at him.

Ryan twisted his body in a completely different direction as he saw the bullipede miss him again.

It was going for the kill now, and so was Ryan.

Exhilaration filled his lungs as he chased after it.

This… this was what it meant to be an adventurer. Fighting giant monsters with a bounty, one that was known to be terrorizing other teams. Ryan laughed as he watched the giant insect attempt to stop itself by skidding across the floor with all its legs, tearing up the ground and the stumps of trees being speed bumps.

Ryan threw a knife slightly high, arcing above its head. The bullipede raised its head to block.

The instinctive block had lifted a good portion of its front body above the ground. The loss of grip on the top half of its long body made the skidding bullipede lose its balance entirely. It started rolling on the ground, spinning out of control like a twisted cylinder.

“Hahahahah!”

This was the funniest thing he’d ever accomplished. The centipede’s body slammed into tree trunks, as it spun. Sometimes tearing them apart, sometimes bouncing off of them and bruising its carapace.

The giant bullipede finally managed to reassert some control as it stabbed desperately into the ground. It looked up at the laughing human, running at it.

Could you feel the momentum?

The apex creature of this forest turned away–looking to flee. It saw the treeline right where it had stopped. It turned around and felt it now. Ryan’s Epic was on full blast, and it was massive.

The bullipede felt cornered, trapped. Turning around would only expose itself to a mad grinning monster.

It coiled–and launched.

Ryan grinned.

Now.

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