Elsewhere

Duke continued to move in the same direction. He wasn’t remotely sure where he was headed but as long as it was away from that tentacle creature, he was happy with the direction. As he travelled, he randomly triggered TELEPORTs over and over again to get a better feel for how the Ability operated and what he could do with it.

Through practice and experimentation, he found that shortening the distance reduced the mana cost. There seemed to be a 1 meter minimum on the TELEPORTATION distance which cost him only one mana. Increasing the distance to two meters still kept the cost at a single mana.

He also discovered that he regenerated mana at about one point every four seconds or 15 mana per minute. It would take some experimentation to figure out how that would change as he leveled up but right now, he was satisfied with the number.

Duke continued to travel through the light forest, following game trails as he found them. He kept his senses sharp, not wanting to run into any predators out here since all he had was his emergency backup knife he kept in his boot. Sure, it was about 15 centimeters long and sharp enough to cut his parachute cords if needed. But it wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good if he encountered this world’s equivalent to a bear.

He travelled through the forest spotting signs of wildlife and even seeing some things analogous to squirrels chattering in the trees, but no signs of larger game. This disturbed him a bit as he knew he had travelled several kilometers and expected to have seen something. It was also night and there were tons of night predators, well, on Earth, at least there were.

When he did encounter something, it wasn’t at all what he expected. His first sign of life was the glow of a campfire in the distance. When he first spotted it, he had been getting sleepy, but the spike of adrenaline instantly roused him to wakefulness. He immediately stopped moving and listened.

The crackling campfire continued in the night providing some light. Duke was still about 100 meters away so he could not make much out through the trees. Reversing his SEER training, he stealthily moved towards the camp at an angle, intent on circling around the whole place to assess the situation before taking any action.

He moved slowly and deliberately closer, being as quiet as possible. He was about five meters away from the camp, completing his circle when he stepped on a dry branch, audibly cracking it with a loud snap. He was immediately greeted by the sound of one of the two sentries he had noticed in the camp whirling in his direction.

The sentry wore what looked like chainmail armor which jingled and clinked as he moved. The sentry stood nearly a meter tall and had dark hair. Duke had not gotten a look at its face as it wore a hood that obscured its face. The only way he was able to determine the hair color was because the scraggly mess stuck out of several holes in the hood.

Duke froze for a moment as the sentry turned towards him, starting to walk in his general direction. It seemed to be jerking its head upwards repeatedly as if sniffing the air. Can it smell me? Shit. Time to move but I can’t run like this – it will spot me in a second. He desperately looked around himself for an option to quickly and quietly hide but none came to him immediately. The forest had thickened throughout the night, but there was still too much visibility through the trees. The only cover being the treetops. The treetops! That’s my ticket!

Duke focused his attention on the treetops above himself and he spotted a good hiding spot in the tree in front of him, about 15 meters up. He readied himself and TELEPORTED. Immediately, he hugged the tree trunk as he gently placed his feet on the branch he had identified. He slowed his breathing and stilled his movement. The sentry passed below him.

Duke could hear the sentry grumbling quietly. He was surprised how good his ears worked, but that must be that 15 Intuition helping him out. “Smells like human. Better find it. Meat for cookpot. Smells that way. Follow for a bit. Garto watch camp. Yes, you watch camp while I get meat. Yes.”

Duke watched as the sentry continued into the woods carefully sniffing along the trail he had followed. Thankfully, the sentry followed the path further away rather than the circle around the camp. After waiting thirty seconds, he TELEPORTED back to the ground and moved closer to the camp at yet another angle.

As he got closer, he could see the other sentry leaning against a tree, with its head bowed forward. Sleeping? I hope so. The rest of the camp was filled with half a dozen other figures on bedrolls. All equally short as the sentry had been. Each seemed to have weapons within ready reach if they were awoken. Can’t let them wake up and grab their weapons. Maybe I can grab them first.

While Duke had been travelling, he had read up on his abilities. He only had two but was hoping that he could at least grow TELEPORTATION into something bigger. REGENERATION was pretty much what it was. He could get it stronger but had no idea if he could make it more. TELEPORTATION had said that I could bring things to him as well as moving him to other places.

Duke settled down in a spot about ten meters from the camp but still within sight of the sleeping forms. Here goes nothing. He reached out and TELEPORTED a sword away from a sleeping figure. Five mana later, he had a sword in his hand. Oh, sweet. Let’s do this!

Duke proceeded to TELEPORT all of the sleeper’s weapons away and had made a nice pile of them when he heard a figure coming towards the camp from the woods. Luckily, the returning sentry was coming in from a different angle and did not spot Duke this time. Now he had some choices to make. He had disarmed most of the camp, but the sentry was still armed and there were eight of them. There’s no way I can take on eight of these fuckers at once. How the hell do I handle this?

The returning sentry kicked a sleeper awake, ”You take watch now. I go sleep before sun.” He didn’t wait for a response as he threw a wicked glance at the other sentry fast asleep.

The sentry finally revealed his face to the campfire, it was not a great sight. Its skin was mostly green with some black patches thrown in for good measure. Its nose was distended, and everything looked oily. Duke suppressed a shudder. Yeah, definitely not human.

The roused sleeper cast about himself looking for his missing weapon. As the seconds ticked by, his frantic ire rose. “Where. Is. My. Sword!” He shouted, rousing the entire camp. In moments, he was joined by the rest of the sleepers missing weapons. As one, they turned on the sentry who had not had time to get to sleep yet. In moments, they had him surrounded.

He tried to explain things, “Was noise. I go find. I just got-“

“You left camp unguarded? Now my bow is gone!” He pushed the sentry backwards. The ring of campers pushed the sentry back. This continued for a few seconds before things escalated. A hidden knife was drawn, and the sentry was slashed. He retaliated with his sword and the brawl was on.

By the time the brawl was over, five were laying unmoving and the remaining three were clearly injured. Now or never, Duke. Now or never. Duke readied one of the swords he had stolen in a two-handed batter’s grip. He drew back and TELEPORTED behind one of the remaining creatures, swinging for the fences.

He swung completely over the thing’s head, missing entirely.

The creatures were slow enough to react that Duke was able to get a back swing in, aiming lower this time. His blow did not have enough leverage behind it to cut through the chainmail the creature was wearing, but it did knock it off its feet. The other creatures, still reeling from the brawl reacted slowly and Duke was able to stab downward, finally penetrating the chainmail. The creature stilled.

The final two creatures still standing finally noticed Duke and charged him, claws bared. Duke awkwardly swung the sword in front of him, hoping to at least hit one of them. He got lucky as one tried to dodge around his swing but slipped in the blood on the ground. Duke’s strike still glanced off its head helping it fall to the ground but not really doing any significant damage.

Then the other one was upon him. This one was larger than the rest, standing several centimeters taller than the rest. It also seemed to be stronger and heavier because it ran into Duke. Hard. It planted its feet in Duke’s stomach, nearly knocking the wind out of him. But it was the claws across the face that really hurt. Duke lost sight in his left eye and bellowed in pain as he tumbled to the ground with the creature on top of him.

The creature followed up its attack by biting Duke’s hand that held the sword. Duke dropped it instinctively. The creature picked it up off the ground and stood over him, ready to strike the killing blow. Duke kicked his left leg upward as hard as he could, banging off of its inner thigh and slamming his shin into its crotch. There was no chainmail or other armor there to cushion the blow. It dropped the sword as it curled over in pain.

Duke followed up by grabbing his boot knife and stabbing the creature in the face. It went down with Duke’s knife in its eye socket. He rose to his feet just in time to be run through by the dropped sword. The stunned creature had recovered and came to finish things!

Screaming in pain, Duke grabbed the wrist holding the sword and punched the creature in the face with his other fist. It was so shocked that it didn’t try to block the strike. It crumpled to the ground, unconscious, tearing its arm out of Duke’s grip and the sword from his stomach.

Duke was bleeding from his gut, losing blood quickly. But his eye had healed, and he could feel himself stitching back together. In a matter of seconds, the blood stopped flowing and he could tell that his REGENERATION had kicked-in strong.

Grunting as moving still hurt, he grabbed the once-again fallen sword and proceeded to make sure that every single one of the creatures was dead. He stabbed each repeatedly just to be sure. A few even stirred momentarily when stabbed but none were moving by the time he was done.

Duke was exhausted. He could barely stay awake as the adrenaline fled his system and his regeneration sucked up all of his remaining energy. He stumbled to the edge of the camp and slumped down against a tree, closing his eyes momentarily. Or so he thought.