Thursday September 14th, 2018

  Over the next few days, the group enjoyed traveling through the spatial layers. They were intrigued to discuss the peculiarity of this Dungeon. They learned that each layer up is a reflection of the lower one, only it is larger and has more mana.

  The main difference is that each higher layer has more monsters that resemble the animals in the area. That was a shock to them, they had to realize that these are dungeon monsters. Not animals like the jaguar Helo encountered.

  On that note Helo has done his best to take care of the cub. It has grown attached to him, but at the same time it is fond of Luna as well. At night Luna has been bothering Alli about getting the techniques to turn into your ancestral form. She wants to turn into a cat to play with the kitty.

  Nobody gained any levels, but this was never the expectation. These ‘field trips’ are set up by the school so all the young people can learn about other cultures and experience new things. But that doesn’t mean they are not pushing themselves.

  “Let’s go!” Alli says while grabbing Helo’s arm. This time the layers overlapped in the middle of the night. They had two days with the last one, then the layers were naturally separated. After that they trecked for a few more hours before finding another area.

  As Alli drags Helo the rest of their party steps through the spatial passage behind her. This is Carl, Gabi, Luna and Arisah. Once they enter, they set off in a random direction. Since they are just walking through the forest, they take time to collect and medicinal plants. But at the same time Helo has his aura out to its maximum of forty meters scanning for any signs of life.

  With everyone in the party being above level forty, they all feel comfortable as they travel through the teir 1 layer. The forest in dense around them and chock full of wildlife. Only these are not animals. But monsters.

  “Above.” Helo calls out casually. Over the last two days attacks like this have been almost commonplace.

  From above a flock of birds dive down on them. There are almost one-hundred within the flock. With four different species they are more of a challenge than one would expect. Each species has their own unique way to attack; this makes the flocks have strong variety in attack patterns.

  Back in the real world, these flocks are formed from small insect hunting birds. They travel in such large groups due to their social nature and for protection. But under that dungeons control. These are massive swarms of birds that attack anything at moves.

  “CAW!” “SCREEEEE” “HAWWWW” The entire party looks up just as the first birds break through the canopy.

  “How do they fly so quietly!” Alli yells in annoyance. “Arisah slow them down!”

  “Take this! Plant Commune.” Arisah yells in her sweet voice. She places her palm on the nearest tree, and its branches start to writhe and twist. Then in lurching motions the tree starts to whip its branches.

  The branches are hitting the birds as they try to fly down through the canopy. Using large amounts of mana she has infused the entire tree, making to more sturdy and able to attack.

  “Alright Luna!” Alli calls out.

  “Got it!” Luna calls out, then the entire world goes silent. This is something that she has been practicing. Using her ‘Sound Cancel’ skill. She doesn’t just dampen the sound; she absorbs it into her ‘Concussive Blast’ skill.

  The world goes silent. This creates an odd atmosphere where they are in the middle of a fight, up above them a tree is twisting and whipping around while breaking the wings and fragile bones of the attacking birds. But the entire world is silent.

  Then all at once it comes back. A moment later Lune looks up and shouts. “AHHHHH.”

  All that stored sound erupts out in a fast almost physical wave. All the birds in the air wobble in place. There is no doubt that each one has its ear drums blow the pieces.

  With a mix of hard branches and sound, birds start hitting the ground. They rain down around the party. Helo nimbly dodges the birds as they fall. But he is having a hard time keeping Inka from directly leaping from his arms and eating the birds.

  Holding her tight he rolls to the left and right beside him a bird crashes into the ground. Looking up it seems that almost half the flock was killed or fallen in just those first two attacks. With thirty birds left, this is a much more manageable fight.

  Avoiding the tree that came alive, the mass of birds veer up and around, they twist in the air and dive fast. Then they swoop low aiming directly for the party.

  As they get closer Helo uses ‘Detect Weakness’.

  Spear Tip Antbird.

  Weakness: Dex, End

  Wind Cloak Woodcreeper.

  Weakness: End

  Vocal Caciques.

  Weakness: Agl, End

  Metal Claw Flycatcher.

  Weakness: Int

  Of the four birds that he was able to scan, three of them had a weakness that was obvious. With Hallow Bones, endurance will almost always be an issue. But based on the names of the birds he can tell which is which.

  The Antbird is diving fast with its beak glistening in a metallic silver. The Flycatcher is the same, only its claws have a silver tint. The Caciques are staying back and launching sonic attack, while the Woodcreepers are doing something similar, but it is launching wind blades.

  Neither of the ranged birds have good range, they make swooping passing to launch their attacks. But with the other two birds trying to claw their bodies or spear them. It makes for a tricky fight.

  Unfortunately for Helo, he has been banned from fighting. He has another two or three weeks before he should be fully healed, until then he can only do his best. Laughing Helo spins left then ducks. The Antbird flashes past and it misses him. His movement caused the bird to veer to the side, and it barely nicked a tree.

  But that one hit was enough for Helo to know that these birds are tough. That is tier 1 wood, and the bird ripped it to shreds with its beak. When he ducked a concussive blast went over his head and it blew a hole in the same tree that the other bird had just hit.

  Laughing Helo continues to weave his way through the fight. His senses, aura and high agility make it easy for him to dip, duck, dive, and roll all around. The only issue he has is keeping the still tier 0 cub safe.

  But the cub seems to be enjoying the ride. At first it wanted to eat the fallen birds, but now it is looking around happily as Helo dodges through the fight. All around him, his team is doing their things. Alli used ‘Runic Construct’ to form a platform in front of the birds, then immediately blew it up.

  This turned the charge into scattered flight. It also caused the pandemonium that is happening now. She then immediately switched to holding her staff like a handle and created a hammer head with ‘Construct Hammer’.

  “Ahhhhhh!” Alli yells as she swings the hammer in a wild blow. The head strikes and then explodes a bird that was sailing past. A puff of feathers is created around the hammer head. Blood and guts fly away in a splatter, following the splatter a wave of fire is launched from the hammer.

  “Do you even need the fire effect?” Helo asks as he passes by her. The hammer blow was enough to explode the bird, the extra fire isn’t helping.

  Alli spins and looks at Helo with nearly feral eyes. “NO!” She shouts with a grin before jumping away.

  “Haha she really is a battle junkie.” Helo chuckles to himself.

  Arisah is doing well with Carl and Luna. Luna is using her own skills to negate the sound attacks. Arisah is using her control over plants to keep them safe, and Carl is dealing with any that get close. The group of three are also keeping an eye on Alli and making sure that she doesn’t get side blinded.

  It is only a few more minutes before the fighting is over. Letting Inka down, he looks around him and almost instantly wants to pick her back up. The entire area is littered with bird parts. Blood is everywhere and it is a terrifying sight. But in the end, this is their world.

  Letting Inka have fun, Helo keeps an eye on her and finishes off any of the still alive monsters. Inka found the closet dead bird and dug into its body with gusto.

  He is perfectly clean, using his impressive situational awareness to avoid any blood spray or damage. The same cannot be said for his party. They are all covered in the blood and guts of their enemies.

  “Ha! You all need a shower.” Helo laughs at them. Noramlly, he doesn’t show this much emotion, but he thoroughly enjoyed himself weaving between all the different birds.

  “Since you all are already dirty, I’ll leave gathering the cores to you.” Helo says with a smirk as he turns to go back to Inka. The cub has blood dripping down her chin and is walking with an awkward wobble due to her over inflated stomach. Smiling, he walks up to her and crouches in front of her.

  “Hey Inka, how was your meal?” He asks the baby cat.

  “Rrrrrowww.” Inca quietly growls and finally topples over to sleep. Smiling down at the cat Helo picks her up and starts cleaning all the blood from her. Looking around he finds Lelai also eating, but instead she is careful, so she doesn’t get her fur dirty, picking out the monster cores.

  Helo walks over but as soon as he gets close Inka’s little eyes open wide. She looks around from her place laying upside down in Helo’s arms. After taking a few sniffs of the air, she zeros in on the core that Lelai just pulled from the body.

  “Is this the first time you have seen a monster core?” Helo asks the cat. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the intelligence to know what he said. Not like it would have mattered, she is completely ignoring Helo and trying to get to the core.

  With a sigh Helo sends a small portion of his consciousness into his necklace and he starts to parse through his items. He has hundreds of cores, all sorts of monster parts and even multiple corpses. It takes him a few seconds, but he eventually finds a core with an alignment similar to the cub.

  Like when Lelai started getting stronger, Helo is wary of introducing too much energy at a time. Due to the weaker bloodline of beasts, they have been known to mutate if too much energy is introduced to soon.

  Even if he is level forty, he has no intention of rushing Inka’s growth. He would rather she grow slowly and build a strong foundation.

  It only took the party a few minutes to gather all the cores. Once they finished Alli immediately declared that they were heading to the nearest water source. She isn’t the kind of girl that needs to always be clean, she isn’t like Lelai. Sometime Alli thinks that Lelai’s desire to be clean was so strong she believed herself into being a Mist Fox. Her magic is just too perfect for cleaning.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  So, setting off the end up backtracking. About ten minutes back they passed one of the large flowing rivers that are common within the Amazon. Reaching the river the girls give Helo and Carl a look.

  “You want us to leave right?” Helo asks, displaying a level of intelligence that Alli is surprised to see.

  “Yes…” Alli says with less force than the look she gave them showed. She started thinking about how she wouldn’t mind if Helo watched her rinse off. But only if it wasn’t obvious. Like if he just couldn’t resist taking a peek. Blushing, she turns away so Luna has to pick up the slack.

  “Shoo!” She waves her hand. “Go wait up stream and around the bend.”

  Helo rolls his eyes, but before going around the bend he walks downstream. Using his aura he checks for any lifeforms within the water. They have been repeatedly warned that some of the most powerful monsters are the creatures in the water. Like crocodiles, snakes and hippopotami.

  Once he is sure nothing is lurking nearby, he turns around and makes his way back up the river. Giving the girls a nod he disappears around the bend with Carl. “Just give a shout when you’re done.”

  Around the bend Helo finds a nice rock to sit on. It sits a few feet above water level and gives him a nice vantage to look out over the river. Beside him Carl stands on the river’s edge. He takes his role as a knight seriously. Standing still and upright he is constantly sweeping the river and jungle.

  Helo is far less serious. Looking back, he wipes off the rock behind him and lies back. Closing his eyes he quests out with his aura. With all his focus on the sensations he gets from his aura, Helo starts trying to pick out and identify plants and animals.

  He only had his eyes closed for a minute, maybe two. At the moment he is trying to pick out all the different fish swimming in the river. But just as he is about to switch his focus to the forest behind him, he feels something new.

  This is much larger than the fish. Its presence is mostly concealed, but it isn’t enough to hide from Helo. He can feel its life force wobbling back and forth. Sitting up quickly, Carl turns to face him and asks. “Sir Helo, did you happen to find something concerning?”

  “Yeah…” Helo mumbles. He is scanning the river from his spot above it. Squinting his eyes all he has is the false moonlight to see with, thankfully his dark affinity helps him see in the night. “Right there.” Helo points into the water. Swimming down the far side of the river is a large creature.

  It’s body is almost forty feet long based on the ripples in the water, and it is moving extremely quickly. “It is a snake.” Helo says as he watches for another second. Then he sighs. “Dammit. Hopefully they decided to take a quick rinse and not a full bath.”

  Jumping from his spot he dashes into the forest. He loses sight of the snake and a then second later the feeling of the snake in his aura. Running to where he left the girls, Helo rounds the corner to find all four of them in their underwear and toweling off.

  Gabi just happens to be facing his way. “HELO!!! You…”

  “DUCK!” Helo yells out.

  They might be upset with him watching them change, but they have been working together for months. When your teammate calls for you to duck, you trust them. All four girls drop into a crouch.

  Just as they start to lower themselves a massive head erupts from the water. The snake’s body created massive rippling waves from where it propelled itself. Its head is launched from the water faster than a sports car and thankfully Arisah dropped quickly.

  All four girls watch with wide eyes as the large jaws and massive fangs close just over Arisah’s body. A moment later the snake’s head disappears back underwater, then with a dexterous twist the snake’s body creates more ripples in the water. With a final splash disappears again.

  Arisah looks up with wide eyes. “Thanks Helo.” She smiles at him.

  Helo quickly looks away. The big teary eyes, smile, and mostly naked wet body, she is just too distracting. “Ha!” Gabi laughs. She never has been able to keep her mouth closed. “Looks like you’re just a little too much for poor Helo.” She claps Arisah on the shoulder.

  She might have yelled at Helo for peeking at them. But the truth is, she has absolutely no shame. Turning on her heel she struts toward her bag and starts grabbing some fresh clothes.

  Helo can’t help but watch. Gabi is the smallest of the girls on his team, but she also was blessed with a very fit body and thick thighs. “Ahem!” Alli coughs in a not very cough like manner, while she glares at Helo for staring at Gabi’s ass.

  For this entire interaction Luna is looking between all of them and the water. “Are… Are we not worried about the massive snake?”

  “Huh?” Helo looks at her, he has to think for a minute about what she asked. “Oh, no it fled.”

  “But it’s a monster? Shouldn’t it fight to the death?” She asks. She has studied dungeons a lot. She prides herself on her smarts.

  “True. But the stronger a monster is, the more likely it is also more intelligent. For these monsters that are modeled after beasts, it means that they can stick more to the beastly instincts. Anacondas and large ambush snakes usually will retreat into water after missing an attack.” Helo points into the water.

  “Oh.” Luna relaxes. She had stepped further into the forest and left her bag behind. But now she walks back up.

  “Don’t relax too much, it might come back.” Helo says while studying the water.

  The next morning finds everyone just returning, it is Friday and the day they are returning home. The previous day they entered the spatial layer as the sun was setting. After hours of walking through the jungle and fighting, they are meeting back up.

  Alli’s group is the last to arrive. As they all enter into the clearing Isabella smiles. “Perfect. Now that you are all here, we can leave.” Waving her hand, she uses her aura to pull the ritual stakes from the ground and through the spatial fold just before it closes.

  Helo and the rest of his group look at her in confusion. That was their exit, how do they leave now. “Don’t worry, we are going to travel the next portion through the tier 1 layer. We have something special planned, a trip into a tier 2 layer. We are going to go meet up with a larger group.”

  Isabella smiles at them. The three parties all look excited about the idea; this is a great opportunity to gain a level. Fighting tier 2 monsters will grant them extra experience. Isabella hands out maps to the three leaders; Alli, Hinata and Maria. “These are your route to reach the meeting place. You have about six hours.”

  Everyone is too excited to worry about their lack of sleep; they are all awakened and almost peak tier 1. They can go for a day without sleep. Plus, it is almost time to leave so they have the weekend to catch up on sleep.

  “Alright!” Alli grabs Helo’s arm. “Let’s go!” She starts matching off in a random direction. Helo caught a glimpse of her map and she isnt even going the right way.

  He wants to worrect her but before he can they hear a “Ahem!” Stopping Alli turns and looks at Hinata. “It is time to switch.” She is looking at Alli with a stern look.

  Alli wants to argue, but she sighs. She and Hinata already agreed not to complain about the Helo and Bibbin switching. The truth is especially right now, Bibbin is the much better scout. He might not have aura, but he isnt injured. Plus, they don’t want to hurt Bibbin’s feelings.

  “Yeah. Your right.” Interanlly she is grumbling, but outside she smiles at Bibbin. “Come on! Its nice to not have a lazy scout.”

  Leaving with Hinata, Helo sticks to the center of the group. This way his aura can get a good feeling around everyone. Plus, with Inca now in his care. He doesn’t want to take too many risks. Lelai also likes to spend some of their walks around his shoulder.

  After a few hours of walking their groups of fought off multiple different attacks from the creatures of the forest. Frogs that tried to poison them. Birds that swooped in from the sky. Piranha that were somehow able to fly. Even a group of plants called Monkey Jaw Cups. The plants were long with an open top that had sharp wooden teeth.

  But the situation that they are in now might be the most danger they have faced. All around them there are Chimpanzees hooting and hollering. They are in the trees, on the ground and even swinging on vines above them.

  “Well Damn, there ain’t no chance this ends with them leaving right?” Rurgrim says in a rough voice.

  “No… I don’t think so.” Rocco says. His voice is calm, but his hand keeps flinching toward his sheathed sword.

  Frenzied Chimpanzee

  Weakness: Wis

  Helo looks at the response the skill gave him. Wisdom. I have never seen that before. What does that mean? Do they lack mana reserves or something? He isn’t sure what to make of it but he tells everyone.

  Cody is standing in the center of the group and there is already a cold wind starting to pick up around him. This is his ‘Cold Enhancement’ skill. It doesn’t start off very strong. Especially in the warm climate of Brazil. But the colder he makes the air around him, the more powerful his arrows become.

  Hinata lets out a sigh. Right now, the apes are postering as they hype themselves up. But she sees no way that this doesn’t end in a fight. “Everyone hold. Wait for them to attack, once you sense mana or see some kind of skill, attack.”

  Helo agrees with Hinata’s decision. The longer they wait, the more powerful Cody will become. His ability to quickly take out any monkeys that are in the trees will go a long way to ending the fight.

  “Helo, defend Cody. Rurgrim wait to see how they attack, then make a wall. Either around Cody, or a large one on one side. Rocco with me, we charge in. Aiko, stay with Helo. Lelai go wild.” Hinata says the last part with a small smirk. They all know how the little fox loves to toss around mist bombs. Hinata said all that without turning. She is keeping her eyes on the apes in front of her.

  Everyone is facing a different direction. But Helo is the one that senses the first whisp of mana. “Now.” He says calmy. Turning he points up and directly behind him. “Lelai send an orb that way.”

  “YIP!” Lelai says happily. She uses her crown to quickly condense her mana into a stable orb. Then with a flick of her will, the small orb launches up into the tree. “BOOOMISSSSSSS!”

  Lelai has been working on her explosions. Lately she has learned how to mix the orbs with her ‘Temperature Control’ skill. Now she can make the little orbs of volatile energy explode with blistering cold or hot mist.

  As the water bomb explodes outward in a wave a sizzling steam the rest of the team jumps into action. The only ones actually moving are Cody, Hinata and Rocco. Rurgrim is still waiting to see if they have any skills to be wary off. For Aiko and Helo, they really have nothing to do.

  As the team starts to act the ape’s hollering turns into constant screams and they all start jumping around the branches or diving forward to fight. Hinata and Rocco are quickly surrounded by the Ape like monsters.

  Rocco’s sword is moving in a blur around his body. It is followed by flickering blue flames. Every ape that is struck by his sword cries out in pain as the spiritual damage hurts in a way they have never experienced before.

  Behind him Hinata’s blade is moving in its own dizzying array. Her sword isn’t as fast as Rocco. But it is far more confusing. With her new combined skill ‘Illusion of Reality’, it is much easier for her to create illusions of not just her sword, but her body and even other things.

  Sometimes her sword is in front of where it appears, other times it is behind. With the creative freedom that comes from the skill, she isn’t making as many physical illusions as she used to. Instead, she is mostly relying on her own blade, which is almost always hidden and hits its mark.

  She is now able to easily make an illusion of herself. Because of this sometimes when she appears to step right, she steps left while hiding within an illusion.

  All the confusion and falsehoods work well against the monsters. The ape’s high intelligence for monsters means that they are having a harder time following Hinata’s moves. The one physical illusion that she does use constantly is ‘Illusional Parry’.

  The skill is one that she has had for a while. Its semi-autonomous actions means that she doesn’t need to focus on defending her sides. She fully trusts Rocco to keep her back safe.

  Infront of her an ape ducks low to avoid a slash to its neck. Instead, as it is ducking it spears its head directly on the tip of Hinata’s katana. The illusion fades away and Hinata crouching with her blade up and blood dripping down to the handle.

  Slipping her blade free, she smoothly brings it up into a high guard just in time to catch an ape that tried to jump down onto her from a tree. Just before the ape is going to land on her blade, an ice blue arrow sprouts from its throat. The hands that were over its head and about to slam down on Hinata, are now clutching at the arrow.

  “Ehhhmmm.” Hinata grunts as she catches the weight of the ape. Before she must try and lift it away, it starts to fall back due to another arrow. This one struck it on the forehead with blunt force.

  The arrow hits with a “CRACK!” and bounces off into a shrub. Thanks Cody. Hinata thinks before blocking a wild slash from another monster.

  Back where they started Rurgrim made a large wall behind them and is spending most of his energy maintaining the wall. “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” Explosions are striking the wall of earth one after another. If Rurgrim left the wall and tried to enter the fight it would be blasted apart in short order.

  “What are they throwing!?!” Rurgrim yells.

  Helo winces and looks away from the angry dwarf. “HELO! WHAT?”

  “Hahhhh. Poop.” He says before turning to the left and pointing into a shrub. A second later a bluish grey orb is lobbed into the area, then with a “BOOM!” The ape that was about to throw another poop bomb is sent into the air with a scream.

  “WHAT?” Rugrim looks at Helo with a disgusted face, “You’re telling me that these overgrown monkeys are throwing poop at us?”

  Helo looks back with a sigh. “Yeah, they are…” He doesn’t want to talk about it. At least the others don’t have to feel it. Using his aura Helo can feel as the apes use their limited mana to somehow prime their poop. Every time it happens it makes him shiver. Something inside him dies just a little.

  Most people might think that killing monsters, beast, and other people, might eat away at his soul. Nope, he is fine. But this, this is killing him. He never realized how high perception and multiple sensing abilities might be a curse. But in this moment his ability to sense aura, mana, and vitality truly is a curse.

  “Maybe this was what I was cursed with as a child. Too many senses.” Helo says to himself while looking off into the distance. Without turning he shivers and points in a random direction. A moment later there is a loud explosion, and another ape is sent flying by a small explosive orb. This is horrible, I want to stop, but I can’t.

  Aiko is looking at him with a concerned look as Helo talks to himself and stares somewhere else. She wants to say something, but he is still doing his job of directing Lelai. Even if Lelai is starting to pant. She has used almost all her mana to create so many orbs.

  It isn’t much longer until the final ape is killed. These Frenzied Apes fought to the last one. Each one attacked with a glee and ferocity that truly showed just how much the dungeon core can twist its creations.

  After collecting the cores, the team heads out. At this point they are only an hour or two from the meeting place. They are a mixture of tired and excited. On one hand, they have been fighting for almost twelve hours straight. Lelai is already sleeping on Helo’s shoulder while he walks in the middle of the group.

  Thirty minutes later and Helo starts to look around. The rest of the party perks up. But before they can draw and or raise their weapons, a figure steps from the trees.

  “Damn, your sense really are as good as they say.” Cirila Garcia says as she struts up to the group. She studies Helo closely. Her eyes lock onto the cat in his arms and the fox on his shoulder. “You’re a popular boy.” She says while studying him.

  Alli is glaring at her. Not being one to stay quiet, she is about to say something. Cirila turns and says, “Follow me.” After that she leads the group into the jungle. Ten minutes later they step into a large clearing. It appears to be a small town.