The clearing was ominous. Everything was silent now.

  All three adventurers tensed up, expecting a fight, and indeed, the situation got worse as the five evil spirits who had been harassing them all appeared at the time, watching them from a distance behind trees.

  “Too…Late…”

  “Too…Far…Gone…”

  “You…Should…Have…Listened…To…The…Old…Man…”

  “Fools…”

  “Foolish…”

  They spoke words of mockery, laughing at the adventurers.

  “This is getting annoying”

  The mage clicked her tongue, a fireball manifesting above her palm, looking out for which of the spirits was the least likely to be able to dodge. As she was doing so, one of them stepped out from behind their cover, making sudden motions from left to right as though this was a game of dodgeball.

  It was the one with orange eyes, and she had a most infuriating smile on her face.

  “Come…On…Miss…Mage…Or…Can…You…Not…Aim…?”

  “You little- I am top of my class!”

  Flinging the spell at the spirit, it split into five small fireballs, each of them taking an arching path toward their target. The regular fireball spell was far too easy to dodge. It tended to travel so slowly that the average person could easily dodge it as long as the distance separating them from the caster wasn’t too short.

  Obviously, Clara wasn’t going to use a spell with such flaws against an enemy that had proven itself to be capable of moving all over the place.

  This particular spell had been calculated by the mage herself. Three of the fireballs went for the target, and while the other two took a long route to catch them if they attempted to evade either to the left or right.

  Clara had outdone herself with this one!

  The evil spirit ducked down and just moved forward, evading all the fireballs entirely. Clara had forgotten that people could do that when designing this spell… Probably due to spending her time casting magic at beasts and monsters instead of people.

  “You…Suck…”

  “Damnit…”

  “Clara, please don’t get mad, right now…”

  “Yes, it’s just petty provocations!”

  Hoolt and Alintel knew well that it was best not to make the mage too mad…

  “Do I look mad?! Do you think all fire mages have short fuses or something?!”

  As if to prove herself wrong, Clara was already launching another spell–If there was one good thing about their resident fire lady, it was that her spellcasting got faster when angered, but that was a double-edged sword.

  True to her status as merely a student of mana manipulation, she was making wide motions to accompany her spellcasting, swinging her flat palm through the air as though attempting to slap someone’s light out, which was a signal that she was launching a curtain of fire ahead.

  “Let’s see you dodge this!”

  The spirits all vanished out of thin air before the flames could reach their mark.

  With a frown, Clara dispelled her spell.

  “Are they gone?”

  “Let’s not drop our guard too quickly. They could show back up at any moment”

  All eyes turned to the small cabin in the middle of the clearing… The hanging corpses served as a grim reminder that something dangerous resided here, but Alintel remained confident that the creature they were after was something they could handle.

  “Clara, why don’t you burn this thing down from here?”

  He suggested, not stupid enough to venture into the confined space of a shack.

  “Sure thing”

  The mage focused, whilst Hoolt raised his shield, magic could be tricky at times, the properties of elements conjured via energy rarely lined up perfectly with their ‘real’ equivalent, fire crafted from mana would not naturally spread like true flames.

  It was easy enough to make something living catch on fire, as foreign mana was something very simple to mark as a ‘fuel’ for it to feed on. Ultimately, however, anything produced through energy manipulation was a spell, and a spell was subject to its caster’s skill and intentions. Burning down something inanimate, like a house, required more precision as it involved granting the mana-woven flames the qualities of their genuine counterpart.

  …At least to some extent.

  For a mage of Clara's level, it required time and concentration.

  Something she was deprived of as the forest boomed with sounds out of nowhere, or rather, it boomed with music.

  An old, sweet, yet unnerving melody rang out from several different directions. It was as though each individual tree was playing the music on its own, each having begun playing with slight delays, turning the melody into a messy patchwork of notes that overlapped one another.

  Her focus was broken as foreign confusion struck her, ruining the spell she had been busy building up.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “What the hell is this?!”

  “Is something here?!”

  “Calm the hell down, everyone!”

  Following the confusion came a wave of paranoia. It was obvious that it was abnormal, but it got to the adventurers too quickly, muddying their thoughts and actions as they felt more watched and exposed than ever.

  In the moment, they didn’t notice the music lessening as fewer and fewer sources of it made any sound. Eventually, only one was left, attracting their gazes completely to the right as the volume of this one increased.

  All music suddenly stopped as the trio remained frozen in place, momentarily left in shock as the paranoia suddenly wore off, and their pumping hearts began to slow–Something burst out of nearby ferns, grabbing Holt by the chest.

  Before either Alintel or Clara could react, his helm caved under the pressure of a tyrannical bite force, crushing his head within it.

  His corpse was thrown into the clearing like trash as the figure rose to its full height.

  It truly was a bizarre sight.

  Standing taller than either of the adventurers, it resembled some sort of mad shaman, dressed in animal pelts and wearing moose antlers upon its head. What was visible of its true appearance was much worse than this, however.

  Its maw was quite literally a bear trap, a huge bear trap at that. Alintel carried some of such traps with him all the time, and he had never seen any near that size.

  Apart from two small dots of light, this jaw–Which had just claimed the life of their companion–Was all that they could make out about the creature’s face. Apart from this, they could only see the extremities of its limbs, as well as its skeletal ribcage, proudly shown to the outside world through a gap in its feral attire.

  Alintel raised his blade with shaking arms as Clara frantically began weaving a spell.

  The monster tilted its head to the side at their display, beckoning them to come closer using one of its elongated fingers.

  “Why–y so scared? Co–Come… I will make–make it quick–long”

  It was actually speaking.

  “Step back, foul creature! We are registered adventurers! If you know what’s good for you, you won’t provoke the guild!”

  Spouted Alintel, although the guild certainly wouldn’t care about a few adventurers going missing, if too many perished or were maimed by taking the same exact quests, they would have to get involved somehow.

  After all, they wouldn’t want to lose out on too much of their cheap labourers.

  The monster just laughed, possessing a garbled, yet still oddly charming female voice.

  “Your guild won’t care–re about three low–lowly adventurers going missing”

  Alintel was feeling cold sweats dripping along his spine.

  “It will care! You’ve already killed one before us and maimed someone else! There were witnesses! A rare monster like you will be hunted down before long!”

  The adventurer wasn’t speaking complete nonsense, and yet, the monster still seemed to think what he was saying was absolutely hilarious.

  “Dear~ I am afraid–delighted to inform you that you three will be the first–first adventurers to die by my hand in this forest… The old man lied–lied to you!”

  Without further elaboration, the monster lunged forward, right as Clara finished weaving a particularly powerful spell, launching quick flames directly at the monster, engulfing it in flames in an instant.

  “Nice job, Clara!”

  Alintel, back away alongside the mage, but the monster didn’t stop at all, continued its charge, knocking away Alintel’s blade like that was a toy before grabbing hold of him, forcing him into a bear hug.

  The student of magic hurriedly cancelled her spell, but her fellow had already been badly burned. He was not dead yet, but unresponsive as the monster threw him into the clearing alongside Hoolt.

  Clara watched in horror as the monster emerged unharmed from the spell. Only its clothes had been scorched, but its metallic, skeletal body bore no signs of damage whatsoever.

  “You know–now… Louwoods is a danger–dangerous place, r–right?”

  Clara’s back met the trunk of a tree as the monster leaned forward and grabbed her shoulder.

  “I–I hear that you–young adventurers lose their lives he-here all the time… That they un–underestimate the danger because their mor–more experience–d brethren consider it sa–sa–safe”

  Clara grabbed the monster’s face, channelling fiery mana directly into its body, pouring everything she had into it.

  “It isn’t odd–strange for them to di–die here… Accidents can happen, after all”

  Clara used the mana injected within the monster to cast spells directly within, straining herself to the point of seeing double from expanding too much mana in a short period of time.

  “So–So, I str–struck a deal with some village elders. They furnish–ish sacrifices to me, and I don’t slaugher–massacre their entire villages… You wouldn’t be–believe how effective that is!”

  “The live–livelihood of all villagers depends on these vi–villages, they cannot leave, their whole legacy is HERE!”

  “They FEAR my powers, they FEAR my loyal spirits, they FEAR to be cursed if they disobey me, do you know what this MEANS?”

  Clara’s efforts amount to nothing. The monster remained unfazed, no matter what.

  “It means they do whatever I want… Even lure unsuspecting people to their death for me…”

  The monster whispered as its maw came awfully close to the mage’s face.

  It pointed to the corpses hanging from a branch.

  “Th–This adventurer and his party were led into groups of beasts by-by my adorable ghosts. They never encountered me, so at most, they’ll sen–send one of those exorc–ists, but more like–likely? Nothing”

  “~You’ll die alone, and nobody will ever know~”

  With a few sung words, the monster caught Clara’s head in between its teeth and, with a twist, tore it off the mage’s shoulders.

  ___

  Sweet. Adventurers are worth more experience than the random travellers, but it’s such a pain to get anything better than wanderers regularly!

  It has been working just fine until now, however

  Yes, you’re right. It’s just getting a bit monotonous after several months of doing this.

  My big plan following my near-death at Lintown was to settle down in a quiet place and turn myself into an urban legend to earn myself as much negative energy as possible, and although I wasn’t yet an urban legend in the least, the plan was yielding fruit.

  A little threatening here and here, and I had earned myself some accomplices who seriously believed I could curse them at the slightest occasion. Namely, the chiefs and elders of several villages whose entire economy was based upon Louwoods.

  They couldn’t easily leave, and with the threat of curses and retribution, it was basically guaranteed that they wouldn’t be able to betray me.

  On top of having them deliver meals at my doorstep, I was also forcing them to fashion some attire for me, as well as build some little cabins here and there.

  These shacks were going to serve as the groundwork for my glorious legend, and naturally, underground tunnels were going to link them all.

  The goal was to eventually murder all of my accomplices in a most gruesome manner, erasing all evidence, and using them to start up everything.

  For now, however, I hung the corpses of the three adventurers and walked over to a pit full of woods that I had dug out a distance away from the cabin.

  I opened my maw and spat my so-called ‘Machine Blood’ before scraping an old knife against my arm, eventually producing the sparks required to ignite it all.

  It was time for my daily fire bath…