Adventuring (2)

Adventuring (2)

After we all packed up our camping supplies, we headed towards our second part of the mission; the bloody orcs. *Sigh* 'This is going to be hard' I thought to myself, remembering what happened yesterday.

'Don't ponder on this too much, we will know what will happen later on.' Aria assured.

"We are almost there, get your weapons ready. As I said before, be ready for anything; don't underestimate the orcs, even if they are weaker than you." Shane said, while keeping his head forward.

We arrived at the cave, from outside it looked like a normal cave but as you go closer, you can hear deep, rough, growling sounds. The smell of blood was very heavy, you could feel the mana coming from the orcs.

"Alright, we are here, be ready and sharpen your senses, I feel like there is something greater than just a few orcs in there." Oliver whispered, slowly creeping behind the bushes.

I peeked through the small holes in the bushes and tried to look into the cave.

Since Ari hatched my senses have been enchanted to an amazing degree. My senses are 7x better than a normal human being. I could use my mana and spread it out, and by doing that I could detect how much humans, beasts, or any source/amount of mana is around me.

I detected that there were about a dozen orcs and another beast that has a large amount of mana, far greater than the rest.

"I can detect about a dozen orcs in the cave with another beast that has a far greater amount of mana in there too. We must be careful or we could die." I reported to my party.

"How did you do that?" Shane's voice raised up from a whisper to a sharp inside voice.

'Ah shit, I keep exposing myslef, If I keep this up I'm dead. I have to make something up quickly.'

"Uh... my mother teached me this technique during one of our training sessions." I said, a bit nervous of his reply.

"Ah, I didn't know there was a technique for detecting beasts and monsters." His voice clearly had a hint of suspicion but he didn't push further.

"Alright then, if we know that there is a big threat in there we should be more careful this time. Everyone, follow my lead; if I say retreat we retreat. Our lives come before our pride and dignity." Oliver said as he slowly walked towards the cave.

We followed his lead and tiptoed to the cave, as we grew closer the shadows of the beasts grew bigger and bigger. The noises in the cave grew louder, the menacing smell grew stronger with each step we took.

"Shane, follow me. The others will stay behind us. Embry, stay alert of anything that will come up behind us." Oliver instructed in a hushed voice.

"Okay." Both Shane and Embry said.

As far as I observed Oliver, Shane, and Embry, they had very good teamwork skills. No one was the leader, each of them told their ideas and took turns as the role of the leader. Depending on what situation it is, one of them will take the lead. This time, it is Oliver.

We all got into formation, none of us recklessly charged in since we knew that if we did we would be running towards our deaths.

The seers started chanting their spells while we got ready for Oliver's signal to go in.

A thunderous *BOOM* ringed throughout the cave when the seers released their spells. After smoke died we all peaked to see if we did any damage.

As I looked around the stone wall, I could faintly see that at least 4 or 5 orcs died through the smoke that was clearing slowly.

Oliver signaled up to go forth and attack. Coming out of our hiding spots we charged forward, with Ari on my shoulder, I wielded my water and earth magic. Gathering the atoms and molecules around me; the water and earth swirled around me. It was like they were dancing around me gracefully.

I used charms that hung around my necklace where they only allowed me to use certain affinities. I held back affinities that I was already mastered at, some might ask why and that is because I wanted to practice the affinites/elements that I wasn't quite good at.

I "locked" up my fire, wind, and space magic. Now, I wasn't a master at space magic but I wanted to lock it up since if I used it people would start questioning. I explained last time that space and light/dark magic was difficult and almost impossible to learn, and even if they learned it they won't even be able to get to the stage where they can use shadow and void magic.

People who had a chance of using it usually gave and moved on to use another element. Besides the light/dark and space (including shadow and void) the third hardest to learn is plants and then there is sound as 4th and ice as 5th.

----

After we killed all the orcs we walked further into the cave to explore the "Big One." (That's what I named it, quite a good name isn't it?)

We stopped in our stepps when we heard a big "GROWL" ahead of us.

'This must be connected to the goblin situation from yesterday.' I kept thinking. It is most likely that it was that beast ahead of us that caused the tribes to be bundled up together in that cave.

'Ari, what do you think about this situation right now?" I wanted to be confirmed about this.

'It must, I can't sense other beasts with this much amount of mana.' She confirmed.

'Then if I'm correct, this will be difficult and so difficult that some of us might be injured greatly.' I sighed with regret of coming this far into the cave, I should've told them to retreat. But at the same time, a lot of people could have died later on if we don't do anything about this.

I was hesitant, pondering the idea for some time but surely enough I came to a conclusion that I didn't want innocent people to die just because we ignored this big threat and walked away.

----

The floor looked like it was changing from dirt to stone with each step we took going forward. The walls around us also changed, the lights turned more dim causing our eyes to try to adjust to the darkness.

As everything grew darker Shane lit a small light on his palm and we continued to walk.

It was like an endless hallway, it keeps going on and on forever. We rested a couple times, I've never thought that it would take us so long to walk to where the beast was.

The beast sounded so close when we were just in the cave a few hours before. It's been at least 5 hours since our arrival to the cave, some of us have been restless to where the beast is and others wanted to just turn back and leave here.

I admit that I wanted to keep going forward, I was quite curious about the beast ahead of us.

"I can hear the noises growing louder, I think we're almost there." Oliver warned us.

After a few more minutes of walking we reached the stone gate in which the beast was in. "Be careful for any surprise attacks, Shane, you and I will go in first. Then the rest of you will follow. If in any circumstances that I say retreat, we retreat. Got that?" Oliver said, it wasn't a question, it was an order.

"Yes sir." We all said in unison like a soldier, I noticed that the only one who didn't reply was Xavier and his buddies all the way in the back.

'How suspicious…' I thought to myself, Xavier was smirking all the time like this situation was only like killing a bug.

'Don't think about him too much papa, we have something bigger to deal with right now.' Ari said, trying to pry much attention aways from Xavier.

Oliver and Shane together pushed each side of the two doors which caused dust to fly everywhere. The dust was so big that we started to cough and sneeze.

Once the dust has scattered away on the floor we could see the big black figure ahead of us. Standing at 20 meters, it's dim purple eyes glowed in the dark, the upper body was like a human, there was a face, and a torso, but it was all covered up by plants, vines, and roots. The lower half was just thick roots as legs, like octopus legs.

'A Elder Wood Guardian...How can it be in these parts of the forest? How did it get here without people noticing it?' These questions circled through my mind as it's eye's pierced at us.

"H-How can it be here." One of the guys stammered. I turned my head back and I saw that Luke, one of the A ranked Adventurers, fell to his knees in surprise.

"It's alright, we have vertern A ranked adventurers and we are B or A ranks too, this is only one S ranked monster. We can do this!" One of Xavier's partners said in encouragement.

"He's right, we can do this! We can't just let this monster roam around the forest; it would be too dangerous to let it go. " Embry said, adding on.

"Alright then, if things get bad, we will retreat." Shane said looking at Oliver then us, we nodded in agreement and headed on.

In my mind I knew that this was going to be the worst mistakes we made in our lives...