Frigid air crept into the cave along with the morning sun, slowly rousing Lloyd from his slumber. Getting up from the floor Lloyd stared around reacquainting himself with his surroundings. Lloyd stretched upward and pulled out a slab of meat from the giant lizard to cook, only to realise he wasn’t hungry.

  That was weird because based on the amount of energy he’d burnt the day prior, he should be starving. Maybe it was a side effect of one of his upgraded stats? Endurance perhaps? Whatever the case, it meant he didn’t have to cook yet. Maybe one day he wouldn’t need to eat at all.

  Shrugging off the strange side effects of tripling one’s stats Lloyd remembered he had to assign the free point he’d ignored last time. After some consideration Lloyd decided to split his points evenly between strength, agility and toughness to shore up the physical capabilities his class sorely lacked.

  Setting out from the cave, Lloyd peered out into the forest and looked for a destination to aim for. Despite how much diversity was hidden within the depths of the forest, there still weren’t any obvious landmarks, so Lloyd just decided to head further away from the ocean. Taking off at a brisk pace Lloyd strolled through the forest fast enough to give an Olympic sprinter a run for their money.

  Lloyd continued through the undergrowth in search of a target. for a while the, only creatures he could locate were the birds up in the canopy, but eventually his search bore fruit. Clambering around on the ground was a low level monkey like creature with giant ears and two sets of compound eyes like a bug. While there was no challenge for Lloyd when it came to fighting this thing, that didn’t make it useless. This thing would be perfect to test out his new armour.

  Lloyd burst into the clearing behind the creature waving his spear to aggravate it. The creature spun around hastily swinging its long, knife like claws, spreading its limbs wide trying to intimidate him. Undeterred by the aggressive stance the beast took, Lloyd infused his cloak with mana and stomped forward.

  Seeing that Lloyd was not a mindless beast, the creature ditched intimidation tactics and dove forward slashing for his chest. As cloth and claw collided the beast cried out in surprise as its razor sharp talons harmlessly bounced off of Lloyds arm. The only sign of the collision was a patch of small abrasions on the fabric of his cloak.

  Not wanting to give the creature a chance to back out early Lloyd summoned a mana blade forgoing his spear leaping on the offensive. As Lloyd wildly swung the blade through the air the creature continued accumulating cuts all over its body. Now on the backfoot the beast began showing less caution, slashing all over trying to find a weak spot in his defences.

  Unfortunately for the beast, the only spot on Lloyd that wasn’t protected with the lizard hide to some degree was his face, and that was the one place Lloyd wouldn’t let it get to. Strike after strike bounced off of his cloak, the creature becoming more and more frantic as its time began to run out. Eventually it lost its nerve and tried to run, and Lloyd let it. He had no vendetta against it, and no reason to kill it, as it was a lower level than he was, so he let it run.

  As the silhouette of the strange creature disappeared into the forest Lloyd stopped infusing his cloak satisfied with the results. The beast, while low level, was a great test subject as its claws were unnaturally sharp, despite this it had not managed to even scratch his skin, proving the efficacy of his upgraded cloak.

  Happy with his new layer of defence Lloyd was more confident in his ability to engage targets in melee brawls. With new confidence Lloyd once again began his advance inland. As the trees flitted past him Lloyd engaged a few more foes for experience including several more giant megalania. These encounters were very anticlimactic compared to his previous fight since he now had insights into the creature’s weaknesses.

  Leaning against the bottom of a tree, Lloyd caught his breath as he checked his status screen after slaying his fifth tree lizard. By now he’d reached level twelve making him around four times stronger than a few days ago, he also invested his free points into speed to decrease travel time between targets. An unfortunate downside to his newfound strength was that the energy requirements to level up had skyrocketed since hitting level ten.

  To get just two levels now required him to kill what would have gotten him to level ten, three times over per level. This incentivised him to go for higher levelled targets, he was just lucky that the megalania were thunderous bricks of experience for him to collect, and not intelligent like the alpha compy. In the end it shouldn’t matter too much, as long as the threshold didn’t increase so drastically every ten levels. But even now he was still beginning to struggle.

  At this point, his progression was stalling as the most powerful creatures in this region of the forest were the megalania, which were only reaching around level sixteen to nineteen. It seemed that if he wanted to find stronger adversaries, he’d have to go somewhere else. While he could just keep travelling until he reached a different apex predators’ territory, judging by the scale of the forest that could be days of travel away.

  Lloyd had thoroughly considered this option, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. Travelling for days without leveling, venturing into unknown environments with no idea what to expect? Sounded like a surefire way to get killed. With no good reason to keep going forward aimlessly, Lloyd decided to take his chances by trusting his gut.

  Over the course of the day, Lloyd had continuously run into more of the razor clawed monkey beasts called miscus, sometimes alone, sometimes in small, organised groups. Every time he encountered one of these parties, a few would always escape into the trees since they were to fast for him to follow. Every time they escaped, they always headed in the same direction, away from the coastal regions and deeper into the forest.

  Judging by the way that they worked together the miscus seemed to be social creatures, so Lloyd had a theory that they might have some sort of settlement somewhere, possibly with loot. With this in mind, Lloyd decided that he would follow the next group of miscus when they ran away from him.

  Lloyd stayed light on his feet, as he ran through the forest careful to remain unseen. he passed through the undergrowth for a few kilometres before he found a band of miscus, they were at the edge of a large pond pulling a giant, toothy fish from the water. The whole group was working together with ropes and spears to drag it ashore, the fish thrashed violently to resubmerge but couldn’t overcome the miscus’ teamwork.

  While Lloyd wasn’t planning on slaughtering the miscus living in the village, he wasn’t likely to leave without blood on his hands. Knowing this, Lloyd decided to scare the scouts away without killing anyone. After a couple minutes of struggle the group finally got the fish ashore and started stabbing it in earnest.

  Since all the miscus were busy trying to kill the oversized barracuda, they were none the wiser when Lloyd entered the fray. A bolt of pure plasma tore across the clearing, blasting off the fish’s head, leaving behind a smouldering dent in its skull. The miscus started screaming in disarray, some jumping on the offensive looking for the threat, others leaping away through the trees just as he’d hoped.

  Lloyd ignored the angry horde of miscus as he shot after the scouts, spears and spells flew after him, but he just hardened the back of his cloak and kept running. A few projectiles hit him in the back, but he shrugged them off as he ran down the scouts. He dug his hands into grooves in the tree bark, pushing mana into his legs to jump between the branches.

  While the miscus scouts certainly still had a stat advantage in agility and endurance, his ability to use mana for jumping between trees allowed him to keep up. After a few minutes of failing to shake him off their trail, the scouts began using skills to get away, suddenly outpacing him by a huge margin.

  At first, his chances of following them back to the possible settlement seemed hopeless since he possessed no movement skills of his own, but it seemed he wasn’t out of luck just yet. The smallest and seemingly lowest level member of the scouting party hadn’t reached level 15 yet and thus hadn’t gained a method of escape like the others.

  The poor beast was running like its life depended on it, giving Lloyd a run for his money even without a skill. Ultimately even if the miscus was very fast for its level, without a skill it wouldn’t be able to escape Lloyds ruthless pursuit for long.

  Pushing on into the forest Lloyd was sweating like a stuck pig as he chased after the miscus, like his life depended on it. The trees flittered by like grass blades as he slowly got into a rhythm, step after step he was catching up. Soon enough only a few metres remained between him and the miscus, just was about to finally overtake it the creature suddenly veered upward.

  Lloyd stopped dead in his tracks as his face slammed into the tree trunk at the speed of a moving car. His face bled and he was pretty sure his nose was broken, but he powered through and gripped onto the tree bark as he continued the chase. Up above the scout was clambering up the trunk with nimble deftness, and it was quickly outpacing him now that they had changed the trajectory of the hunt.

  Up amongst the maze of branches Lloyd was beginning to lose sight of his target and could only hope it didn’t move to another tree. Slowly but surely, Lloyd ascended the tree, clambering up the trunk as fast as he could go. Reaching half a kilometre up the titanic trunk, the branches started to spread out, and an odd sight came into view.

  When Lloyd thought of an animal settlement, he imagined a cluster of nests, or a tree with holes in the side. What he saw instead was a vast network of bridges connecting hundreds, if not thousands of cottages sitting on tree limbs to a building the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Surrounding the central building was a few other large constructions of varying complexity, all were either supported by branches or hung from vines as thick as sequoias.

  The combined spectacle of all these elements was truly a sight to behold, and despite all of the magical encounters he’d had so far, this was the first time Lloyds jaw had truly dropped. He wanted to stay and stare for a few minutes but a sudden reappearance of his friend the scout dragged him out of his stupor.

  The scrawny miscus he’d been following to reach the village was swinging across the branches and vines toward the centre of the village. If the scout conveyed the fact that there was an intruder to the other miscus, then his hopes of looting them unnoticed would be gone with the wind.

  Lloyd stayed low in the shadows of the branches as he ran after the scout. Without knowing it was actively being chased the miscus had lessened its pace giving Lloyd a chance to catch up. A few hundred metres from the central building, Lloyd managed to leap out from under a giant leaf and tackle the miscus. It tried to scream out for help, but Lloyd gripped its maw shut with his free hand while he rummaged through his satchel with the other.

  Finding something he could use, Lloyd pulled out a dense, flat chunk of bone and clubbed it in the head to try and knock it out. It took several hard hits to the skull, but the miscus did eventually stop wriggling. Lloyd stood up panting, he was very lucky that he had managed to stop the scout from reporting him to the other miscus.

  Just to make sure that no one discovered his captive, Lloyd dragged the unconscious scout across the branch to a large cavity in the branch and dropped it in. turning around Lloyd coughed and realised that the damage he did to his face in the collision had started to bleed profusely. He ran some mana across his face, and his nose let out a sickening crunch as it snapped back into place.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He felt like he had taken a brick to the face, but he had to push through as he knew it was working. No matter what he said to himself, Lloyd couldn’t keep a straight face as he healed himself and clutched his nose cursing like a madman. As he stumbled out from the cover of the leaves along the branch, he tried to rub the blood off of his face but only ended up smearing it across his brow.

  Lloyd pulled his cloak down from his head, feeling the sun on his face as he walked back into the open. He exhaled in relief now that he knew he didn’t have anything to worry about, and he could continue to pilfer the village in peace. Brandishing his spear, Lloyd gazed across the miscus community with a malicious gleam in his eyes.

  His foot landed firmly on the bark of the branch as he went to shoot off towards the village, but he stopped in his tracks when a familiar sound cut through the ambience of the forest. A high pitched squeal echoed out from a branch up above, it was another miscus jumping around a waving its arms at him. This was when Lloyd remembered an important flaw in his stealth mission, to remain unknown you had to remain unseen. And he’d just sent a whole party of scouts straight to the core of the village before he even arrived.

  Lloyd pushed a surge of mana into his legs, leaping straight for the miscus. This time Lloyd didn’t bother with using a tool and he just pounded the miscus in the side of the head until it shut up. With his fists cracked and his knuckles bleeding freely Lloyd panted while staring down at the scout.

  Just as he thought he was out of the woods Lloyd whipped his head towards a new source of sound. A small miscus was pointing at him and screaming, it ran away waving its arms trying to create as much of a spectacle as possible. His body ached but he powered through, pushing mana into his movement to chase the creature down.

  The miscus in question was a very low level, possibly not even at the first skill milestone, this made it exceedingly easy for him to catch as opposed to the extremely agile scouts. They ran across a net of branches as the miscus sprinted toward a massive tree. Lloyd leapt forward, tackling the miscus to the ground as it tried to dodge into a deep groove in the side of the tree trunk.

  They both thumped onto the wood on the inside of the groove, the miscus screeched and thrashed around trying to escape but was unable to do anything in the face of Lloyds superior attributes. A few slaps to the face were all it took to do the job, and the miscus was soon unconscious on the floor.

  Looking down at the creature below him Lloyd held his breath in hopes that he wouldn’t be found out again, but his hopes were soon dashed by a whimper from within the tree. Huddled against the back of the passage was a group of thirteen or so miscus staring at him with expressions of horror, fear and anger.

  Thinking about his current appearance, Lloyd could understand why they looked so terrified. He had suddenly appeared and knocked out what he now realised was probably a child, all while being half covered in blood. He raised his hands and backed away in a futile attempt to calm the situation, but when the group realised that he wasn’t hostile they burst into action.

  Five of the larger miscus ran forward stabbing at him with their massive claws, while their smaller brethren ran around him and out the door. He tried to stop them but could only grab one before he had to switch his attention back to the others. He grasped his spear, swinging it from side to side, slashing at the brutish miscus no longer holding back.

  Lloyd repeatedly struck forward aiming for vitals only to be parried by the surprisingly nimble attacks of the miscus. He started introducing skills to the equation, but plasma bolt would do more harm than good, while ambush was useless in his current position. This left him with electrify, one of the weakest tools in his arsenal.

  Thankfully, despite its relative weakness, Lloyd still found it helped since on occasion it would cause the enemies limbs to twitch uncontrollably. Being careful not to waste too much mana, Lloyd would randomly shock his enemies allowing him to keep a slight edge as the brutes tried to overwhelm him. Unfortunately, this balance couldn’t last forever as he wasn’t the only one with skills.

  One of the miscus’ claws glowed a sanguine red as its arm shot forward at a speed that caused the very air around them to contort inward towards the attack. When wood and claw collided Lloyd could only cringe away as he was spun sideways by the attack. Spinning back around, Lloyd quickly responded by launching a fistful of mana blades into the miscus’ face.

  The beast stumbled backward clutching its face as a stream of blood and pus ran from its punctured eye. Stepping forward to take their brothers place two more miscus swung toward him with a glowing red fist. With an attack coming from both directions, Lloyd made a risky play and dropped to his knees before he was struck. Over his head a razor sharp red blade passed right through where his neck had just been followed by another one of the same skills as the first miscus.

  The beasts reeled forward from their wasted momentum disorienting themselves and giving Lloyd a short window to turn the fight back in his favour. With a quick but forceful swing, Lloyd struck both opponents in the calves opening large gashes and toppling them over. Jumping back to his feet he faced the two remaining miscus, these two were significantly taller than any normal miscus –standing at an intimidating 7 feet tall– and towered over him.

  Lloyd was in trouble, he saw a ferocious look in their eyes, a look telling him they weren’t afraid to put their lives on the line to take him down. A burning sensation began to spread out from the bodies of the miscus, their eyes shone with a manic fervour as the bloodthirsty aura continued to spread.

  It appeared he’d underestimated his opponents…

  Both shot forward as fast as one of the scouts from earlier, this would normally imply that he was fighting an agility based opponent, but that notion was soon put to sleep when he blocked a punch carrying the force of a semi truck. Just one punch was enough to send Lloyd flying backward into the wall. His bones creaked and his lungs were emptied of air as he crashed into the wood.

  Lloyd looked over with fear, these two were way out of his league and didn’t look very merciful at the moment. Pushing himself of the wall, Lloyd ran for the exit. Jumping from the tree to a nearby branch, Lloyd started sprinting away, but his path was soon blocked. A new miscus warband had appeared on the same branch as him, leaded by a shaman who was slamming a mutilated skull into a strange acoustic instrument.

  He turned to run, only to be met with another group of miscus. His vision began to swim and the eerie clangs of skull on metal burrowed into his mind, the sounds toyed with him. A deafening cacophony echoed out from every direction at once as hundred more miscus poured in from all around him. They came from under the branch, down the colossal vines, and some even appeared to crawl out of the bark itself.

  Lloyd had no idea what was real and what was false as the world spun around him, all he knew was that he wasn’t safe staying here. He sprinted away in the least crowded direction he could find, trying to stay on track as he swung his spear wildly through the air. Suddenly it appeared as though thousands of miscus were barrelling toward him it a wave of violence, but Lloyd could only steel his nerves and push onward into the illusory swarm.

  Hundreds of imaginary miscus swarmed around him phasing out of reality when they got close. Lloyd rushed forward, still swinging his spear as he got farther away from the warbands. His spear slashed through the air, but this time it wasn’t just a precaution, a large area dispelled its mirage as a lone miscus was launched from the branch into the forest below.

  The miscus screamed all the down, its wail sobering Lloyd up so that he could see what was illusory and what wasn’t. this revealed another ten or so small miscus rushing toward him through the hazy apparitions, but his clarity was gone as quickly as it had come when the scream ended with a sickening crunch.

  Once more it seemed as though Lloyd was up to his shoulders in a violent tide of angry miscus. Knowing that more real enemies were coming, Lloyd tried to locate them by throwing out a wave of mana blades but the miscus must’ve pre-empted this move as none were hit. He launched a few more blades in random directions in hopes to catch them off guard but was still unsuccessful. Lloyd deliberated on what to do but had his hand was forced as two miscus leaped at him through the illusion.

  He dealt with both of them quickly, by flinging them like the first, their screams illuminating the way forward. In front of him more real miscus were gathering, pushing the total amount to around twenty, while behind him a real horde was pushing through the haze in an attempt to ambush him. Lloyd spun around, a crackling bolt of energy appearing in his hand, it shot forward like a bullet as he forcefully filled it with hostile mana.

  The bolt crashed into the front of the army, sending splinters and miscus tumbling into the forest below. With the miscus taking such a loss so suddenly, many failed to remain quiet further dispelling the illusion. Lloyd bolted away from the main group, slashing and dodging the foot soldiers standing ahead of him.

  Breaking through their disorganised lines, leapt into a clearing where he stared around in horror. He hadn’t realised it before, but the path he ran down was likely just where the miscus wanted him. The least crowded path was just a ploy to make him run straight into the central plaza.

  All throughout the platform of interconnected vines were hundreds of miscus with hostile looks on their faces. He acted quickly sending out a small barrage of mana blades infused with electrify, but had to stop as his mana supplies had dropped too low for comfort.

  Lloyd gripped his spear with heaving breaths, facing his enemies ready to make a desperate last stand. His gaze was even, though his heart was in turmoil, and his foes seemed to sense this as they charged forward with wild abandon.

  Body after body piled up around him as the waves of enemies kept pushing forward, he racked up kills by the minute, but his bleeding body told that it wasn’t without sacrifice. At first, he’d been able to remain safe by utilizing his extremely durable armour, but the mana drain had put him at risk of going out of control again.

  Lloyd ate hit after hit barely able to muster a defence as his mind swam from blood loss. Things were looking dire, his body was riddled with gashes, and he stood in a puddle containing more blood than any human possibly could. Another wave of enemies came running over the barrier from two angles, a pincer attack to wedge him against the wall. He tried to hold back but was overwhelmed by sheer numbers, he was running out of options and only saw one path forward.

  Mana was pushed into his veins at a dangerous pace, his supplies nearing zero as his vision went black. A cataclysmic roar shook Lloyd awake, the miscus who had been relentlessly charging him a second ago had turned tail and ran. He stopped the mana circulation before things turned south and climbed the small mound of corpses to investigate.

  On the other side of the hill was a chilling scene, a whole illusory army awaited him, thousands of miscus lined up in the square. Just a few meters away Lloyd could even see the two powerful miscus standing ready to charge, the attention to detail the illusions of the skill caused were truly sublime.

  If these two had reached him a second time, things would have panned out very differently to their first encounter. He couldn’t have done anything but accept his fate, even if he went all out the best outcome would have been mutual destruction. Yet even with their immense power the duo was stood gazing in awe and reverence.

  In front of Lloyd was a path through the crowd, a zone no miscus dared to enter, but this was not his focus. His focus was trained on the titan at the end. The average miscus was small and thin, only standing around five feet tall and being so thin they almost looked emaciated. the two he’d faced in the tree hollow had been major outliers, but they had nothing on the behemoth facing him.

  The beast across the square was still a miscus, yet distinctly different. This was a twelve foot tall monster of muscle and malice. It also had four arms instead of two, and no claws like its brethren -not that it would need them- and its horrifying look was only accentuated by its waist cloth coated in bones and skulls.

  The shaman who summoned this apparition must’ve done so at great personal expense and would likely have been over level twenty. Lloyd was certainly discouraged by this but he stood strong as he looked for the real danger in this trap. He quickly threw out a fistful of fragmented claws and weapons from the pile of fallen below him.

  Just as he’d expected the projectiles flew through the area unimpeded, as the collisions sounded out the illusion was dispelled. The whole clearing was empty, but the buildings were covered in miscus nervously glancing around. Another roar echoed out from the centre of the plaza, he was in big trouble. Lloyd hadn’t realised at first, but it wasn’t the whole clearing that was empty. There was still one miscus left.

  For the first time, the giant miscus he had thought an illusion moved. A tremor spread through the vines as it took a bumpy step forward, coming back to his senses Lloyd started sprinting away. He didn’t dare turn around but he could feel the beast running after him, with all the smaller miscus staring down at him it almost felt like he was in some kind of messed up sports arena.

  He tried to find an exit but no matter where he looked all the paths were blocked, the miscus even hung from the vines to stop him from trying to climb away. Desperate for an escape Lloyd slammed into a door, trying to break in before his pursuer caught up to him. A small creak sounded out but it wasn’t enough, he wouldn’t be able to break through in time. In a last ditch effort to get inside Lloyd infused all of his mana into a final gambit, energy surged into his fist as his vision went dark.

  His body soared forward, crashing into the shutters of the building sending wood flying as he broke through. Feeling left his body, and he lost his vision, just in time to feel a heavy hand grab onto his left leg. The last thing he heard was a sickening crunch as his shin splintered and his calf was torn from his leg.