Running Through the Hunting Grounds

I sighed and thought to myself for a while, taking my time to take in all that had happened to me. In the end I decided to accept it as it was, and I slept feeling a strong sense of tiredness.

In the morning I walked out in the hallway seeing no signs or evidence of the events that took place last night. I looked down at what I was wearing, and to my surprise I saw my hands had the gauntlets on and my body that had the flexible armor equipped. I took a step outside and started sprinting towards the hunting grounds.

Although the hunting grounds sounded like there were many different hunting grounds in different places, it was all really just the same. Since there was only one hunting ground, and the tiers just were how deep you went. For example the lowest tier was closest to the walls that keep us safe from the monsters at night, and the highest tier would be at the opposite end of the sky island from the wall. At the end there was a mountain that stood tall, even above the behemoth trees. Another way of telling which tiered hunting ground you were in was how tall and thick the trees were, because bigger and stronger monsters lived in places where the trees were big enough and tall enough to block out the sun. Monsters liked to be in the dark so much, because if they went out in sunlight it was said that they would be weakened severely.

I looked up to the sky to see what time it was, and found that I had woken up 4 hours later than I usually did,- which was at 6.- I woke up earlier than I had to since sometimes I could sneak to higher tiered realms before they would see me in the dark and force me back. I only did this some times however since I didn't want to get jumped in the dark by people that were hired to harass me.

When I arrived the hunting grounds was packed with people as always. There were people shouting to party up and or selling/buying stuff. I walked passed them and walked through the open gate.

On the outside one would have to walk about 2 hours to reach each new tier, and about 30 minutes if they ran with all their might. I walked through the small trees as high as about 4 feet or 1.23 meters. As I walked through the small trees some monsters ran up to me, to which I casually smacked away and didn't bother to pick up their remains. I found a good place to stretch and started cracking my legs from a long nights rest, and I once again sprinted towards the higher tiered hunting grounds.

***

"Hey look at that guy, His equipment looks pretty good, we should try to recruit him!"

"He'll probably be tired out by the time he reaches the second tiered hunting ground, and just be a free meal for the monsters, if he doesn't tire out before reaching it."

"Oh come on don't be so pessimistic! What if he's actually really strong and that's just as easy as jogging for him?"

Sigh "You're way too optimistic, it's just truth, you'll see."

These two were a sister and brother duo looking for people to team up with. The optimistic one was 3,0,124 and the pessimistic one was 3,0,123. Names in this world were only possessed by the strong, and there wasn't a single name in this world that people didn't know.

These two had seen our main character running towards the second tiered hunting ground at a speed equal to Usain Bolt, but on the contrary he was running at a constant speed rather than burst running. While this may have been impressive in our world, if Usain Bolt were in this World and he still trained to burst run, he'd be tens if not hundreds of times faster. This is due to many factors that exist in this world that don't exist in our world.

*

After about 20 minutes I made it into the second tiered hunting grounds, the trees here were 20 meters high and about 33 feet tall. This was a drastic shift from the normally 4 feet or 1.23 meter tall trees that existed in the first tier hunting grounds. I had only been here for a while in the past before I would be forced back by people hired to personally harass and push me back to lower tiered hunting grounds. There used to be guards that did work similar to that, where they would basically push back people that they saw were biting off more than they could chew. However the monsters destroyed their camps and guard towers and forced them back to the wall. Before offending some people that I shouldn't have, I regularly hunted in the third tier hunting grounds where the trees were 3 times taller than the trees here.

I kept sprinting as I encountered to the side a group of people talking to each other looking towards the first tier hunting grounds. I immediately realized they were the group that were hired to harass me and force me back to lower tiered hunting grounds. As I passed them by one looked my way, when I saw his face he seemed to be in a jovial mood.

"Hey kid slow down, you're gonna be tired by the time you reach your destination. Here take this so you can pay for the teleportation fees next time."

Surprised by his strange act of kindness I slowed down a bit and thanked him before quickly sprinting again. As I sprinted away I could hear someone yelling at me, but I couldn't bother to pay attention to it as the wind rushed past and in my ears.

***

"AT LEAST SLOW DOWN A BIT!"

"Boss, why did you give that kid your week's pay?"

"Cause I'm in a good mood."

"I mean yeah, but it's still a golden coin sir."

"Who cares about a golden coin, as long as we kill a 5th tier boss monster we can easily make that back."

"But we're stuck here everyday bullying that poor kid... wait you don't mean?.."

"Yep, poor kid got 12 assassins sent to him yesterday, he probably didn't survive this one, as I've heard the assassins are from a group called the Blue Rose or something."

Although a gold coin for each of them for harassing a kid sounded good at first, as time went on they soon were left behind by their rivals and people that they once could easily beat since they spent most of their time bullying a poor kid. So the news of them being able to be free from their contract and once again hunt was very welcomed by them.

*

After another 20 minutes of sprint I finally arrived at the third tier hunting ground. Through the duration of my sprint, multiple monsters had tried to ambush me to which I responded by slapping or punching them dead. It resulted with me being dyed red, blue and green with their blood. I started walking around in the woods. The monsters should have picked up on my scent by now if not already, being impatient I started to run deeper into the gigantic woods and cut my hand to release blood to lure in monsters.

Within minutes I had twelve pairs of eyes looking at me within the shadows. One by one they circled around me as the earth shook with every step they took. 5 of them had been giant type monsters in the category of feline, and the rest were dinosaurs and or giant lizards.