A Monkey with a Hat

The now smaller group stood before de burning carriage. They didn't seem happy.

"This is a new one" The boss said.

"I still stand for the inside-kill hypothesis. There is no way anyone from the other groups has arrived here before us."

"Lara, they may be surprisingly tidy for demon-type monsters, and they wear clothes and use horses and whatever, but that doesn't explain how in the fuck the system failed. It clearly said what the mission was about, and that fat corpse over there is where the Locator points. He should've been alive."

The boss jumped into the wooden platform, washing up the fire with a stream of water.

"He is right Lara. Something is wrong." He kneeled before the body and turned him around.

Uli was comically hanging of a tree with his legs wrapped around its mossed covered trunk. He could clearly see the scene from there. He didn't like his pathetic posture (he had a good sense of theatrics), but he had tried climbing further, and the foliage of the tree obstructed his view. Sometimes, you gotta take value over beauty.

Suddenly, the boss started cursing like crazy

"Fuck! Fuck! Why am I always this unlucky! The fucker who killed the fatty broke the beast core. He fucking smashed it. Only a lunatic would be stupid enough" he went on cursing and yelling about how he wasted his precious time spawning in the middle of a fucking jungle, only to find his reward crushed.

He searched the body of the fat man anyway, and his face twisted in disgust when he discovered that he didn't wear any underclothes under his purple silk robe. He could only twist it further when he noticed how stupidly big his dick was.

"Wait! George, i got a new mission!" The girl was looking at her blue screen, and turned to his boss, her eyes carefully avoiding The Father's gruesome artifact "It says 'kill the Hidden Child' ."

Suddenly, the healing guy looked in Sui's direction. "Hey, is that a monkey? He is wearing a hat, and he is kind of hiding too."

"Thats him!! That is the Hidden Child. He is the new target!" The girl screamed.

Uli looked at them, frozen. Curiosity killed the cat. He released the trunk and fell to the scrub covered soil (with the prowess of a cat, too)- Fuck- he said, as he ran into the jungle while the adventurers gathered to chase him down.

Uli ran through the trees like a tapir running from a jaguar. He did have more grace than a tapir, though, but then again, he was fleeing, and jaguars don't flee, they hunt. The adventurers clearly weren't jaguars, either. They bumped into each other like drunken idiots in a running contest. They weren't used to the jungle. A few of them managed to run faster, but alas, they couldn't compete with Uli. The trees barely slowed his path, he even took the time to kill a big parrot-like creature on the way. Parrot meat was tasty, and he would probably be tired and lazy after the running away thingy.

Two hours later, he slowed down and climbed a tall meranti tree. When he arrived to a confy-looking branch, he took out the poor parrot along with a little portable oven. Then, he started plucking its feathers out. He had a nice bag under his tunic where he carried his life-saving items. He never separated from it. It had saved him from lots of nasty situations. He had been killing, grabbing, and torturing people for The Father since he was a teenager, and the hard parte about killing was, by far, the aftermath. It was the moment when he had to run, often in the wild. Being prepared for those moments was the key to surviving as an assassin.

Just when he was about to finish with the plucking, he heard noises below. Deeply surprised, he looked in their direction. "How in the world did they trace me", he asked himself. He was careful not to leave any clues, and ran in a chaotic manner, jumping from tree to tree to avoid leaving traces of his movements, but they had moved there like if they knew where to find him. It simply made no sense.

He decided to climb to the treetop to flee from above, but when he was about to reach it, a lightning blew part of the trunk he was leaning on. Now, he was truly confused. Okay, they were genius tracers that, somehow, managed to follow him in an environment they were clearly not familiar with, and maybe he made a mistake somewhere, but this..., he was a hundred meters above the ground, dressed in grey clothes, and surrounded by leaves, this took the cake. They are cheating the rules of the world, he thought. It was at this point, that the tapir decided to become the jaguar.

Uli looked around. Only three of the adventurers were exactly below him. Out of habit, he turned his hat around, covering his face with the silk veil.

This kind of fight was a first for him. He had fought in the jungle lots of times, but he always had the element of surprise. This guys could somehow detect him, which wasn't a nice feeling when you are used to fight in the most unfair and shady manner. It was almost funny, how he cursed them in his mind and called them cheaters, while being alive only because of him being a cheating son of a bitch.

He swiftly moved to a nearby tree, and started descending to ground level. When he was about 10 meters from them. He let go to fall on the nearest one as he threw two of his metal cilindres towards the rest. The one just below him surrounded himself with a barrage of fire, but surprisingly for him, it just opened, forming a hole big enough to let Uli through.

The other two tried to dodge the shiny metal things that flew towards them. Only to meet their deaths when the projectiles turned in mid air and pierced trough their skulls. By then, Uli had already stumped the head of the fire mage. All of them vanished, and Sui was almost surprised about how useless they were.

But he knew he couldn't relax. He could hear more approaching. He used his powers to create a hole in the ground, and sat in it, covering himself with leaves and dirt. He knew hiding below the ground would be a bit more confusing for his enemy, as they could apparently pinpoint his direction with their weird sixth-sense and see him if he hid among the trees. At least, this way, he may have a bit of an edge. As an underground enemy is, commonly, the least expected. The Father didn't see it coming, for one. He was annoyed, tho. He was good at hide and seek, but this guys were cheaters.

He left his metal toys where the corpses had vanished, and let the remaining two slip off his sleeve, and into the earth. Then, he closed his eyes and focused on his hearing. He took his hat off leaving it hanging on its back, and felt the earth with his horns. That way, not only could he hear their footsteps, but also feel the vibrations in the ground, which was the perfect way to guess where to launch his metal cilindres.

The seven adventurers left chasing him advanced slowly between the trees. At the front, walked the guy in the black suit with red stripe. He signaled the rest to stay at his back, as they approached the point were Uli was hiding. Uli didn't really know how accurate their "sixth-sense" was. Its wasn't just accurate, it literally marked his outline in flying colors, so they just saw him, siting underground, and smiled at his lame attempt of surprising them. But their smiles didn't last long. They, too, had underestimated Uli's senses.

This close, he could sense everything touching the ground with such intensity, he could even tell their hearts were beating at a slow pace. He knew how nervous people became when they ventured into a possible ambush. That could only mean that they knew exactly where he was. There was no other way of feeling that confident in themselves.

He was wrong, of course. It's not that they felt confident, it was just that, unlike him, their lives weren't on the line. It was only a game for them.

Either way, this didn't matter. As it resulted in him taking the right decision, which was attacking right away. The four metal cilindres crossed the air at the speed of sound. It was just imposible to react to something as quickly as that, and the last four in the line fell to the ground. Uli emerged like a monster, spraying dirt everywhere, and swung his sword to the nearest enemy. The guy in the black suit blocked it, but the sheer force of the blow sent him flying and hit a tree with so violently it cracked the wood, almost bringing it down. He fell on his knees unable to catch his breath. The black girl, next in line, dashed skillfully to his side, trying to cut him down, but she continued moving past him, pushed by the four metal cilindres that drove her to the ground, where they kept pushing until her armor crushed her. By then, the remaining enemy knew there was no point. He raised his hand and the blue screen appeared, but before he could give up, the hand, the blue screen, and the "give up option", all fell to the ground, followed by the sound of the sword sheathing itself. A bright burn instantly cauterized the wound. He screamed in pain. They could only suffer a reduced amount of pain, but it still hurt. Uli looked at the limb in the ground, and it levitated towards him. He raised his hand for the first time in the fight, and grabbed it.

"It seems these don't vanish if I keep you alive" He looked at the guy. He was probably a teenager. Close to twenty, though. He had a bow, arrows, and a big leather bag that looked pretty full and heavy. The guy walked backwards until he tripped on a root and fell clumsily to the ground. Naturally, the bag broke, and lots of crystal hearts spread through the mud. All shined in different sizes and colors. But to Uli, one stood up. It glowed in a familiar manner. He kneeled, not caring about the mud staining his clothes. He grabbed the crystal heart.

In that moment the guy in the black suit ran at him screaming, his hands at the sides full of fire that burned everything in their path. His head exploded and he fell to the ground. Very dead.

He had chosen the wrong moment to be annoying.

Uli stood up and cleaned the crystal with his sleeve. He put it in his bag, and looked at the remaining guy. But the guy wasn't paying attention to him. His eyes were fixed on his headless boss.