Chapter 12: New Dangers

After his little celebration, Samuel dematerialized his right arm. For now, he wanted to keep his armor on, considering he was in the middle of the fires he created.

At this point, there was little point to trying to put out the fire. It had already spread too much. He could only hope that the rest of the Awakened had made it out safely. Other than Rick of course. But now that he'd taken out the strongest of the deer, it wasn't likely that anything could threaten Rick with Mr. Bo at his side.

He stared at the alpha's corpse. According to his knowledge, many parts of a monster could be sold for large amounts of money. That was how even a small guild like the Stoneburg Defenders could maintain operations and construct advanced facilities.

Samuel thought about his inventory but that was much too small to fit the entire alpha. Unfortunately, he didn't even have a knife with him, otherwise he might be able to forcefully dismember the corpse and take some parts to sell.

He sauntered over to the corpse and inspected it closely, hoping to see if there were any potential souvenirs. Observing the head of the alpha, he saw that it was completely smashed up. There were shattered bones jutting out of the skin. The blood tarnished the beautiful blue tuft of hair on its forehead.

"Hm? What's this?" Samuel noticed that something smooth was slightly poking out of the blue hair. The object was nearly the same shade of blue, which was why he didn't notice at first. He took his clawed fingers and carefully dug the object out.

In his hand was a smooth light blue orb. It was nearly perfectly round and had a very faint light shining from within. If Samuel didn't have his armor on, he would have noticed that it was slightly cool to the touch. Inside of the orb was a blurred mass of dark blue and when he inspected it carefully, he could just barely tell that it was in the shape of a deer.

"This has to be a monster essence! I can't believe this." Samuel was pleasantly surprised. He'd heard about monster essences. They were rare commodities that were coveted by many Awakened. Similar to other monster parts, they were used in a variety of fashions including equipment manufacturing, magic research, medicines, or rarely as a catalyst to speed up mana cultivation. The reason that monster essences were so in demand was because making an item out of one would massively boost the capabilities of that item, and rarely it could even be naturally imbued with magic.

After admiring the orb for a moment, he put it in his inventory. When he brought up the inventory management screen, he simply put his hand with the orb through it and let go.

[Inventory]

[-Monster Quintessence (Gale Deer Alpha)]

The item popped up in the inventory screen and when he withdrew his hand, it was no longer there.

"Alright, now I need to find the others." He looked around him, recalling which direction he had chased the deer from. It was quite easy, as the ground was pockmarked with indents from the wind missiles. He simply followed the path and arrived back where he first started the fire.

The fire had long moved past this point, and he couldn't tell exactly which direction the rest of his group retreated in. But, once he observed carefully he saw signs of the kindling setup he'd done before, which gave him a general direction to follow in. He quickly ran that way. ——

From the start, Angela felt frustrated that she couldn't do much. The deer horde had backed them into a corner and all she could do was run. Ever since she became an Awakened, she'd never felt like this before.

Later, when Samuel explained his plan to her, she was in admiration of his coolheaded thinking and planning. She had lit the fuse, watching as the fire diverted the deer away from them. But the relief was short-lived. When the big deer blew away the fire, she'd audibly sighed in frustration. Samuel's setup was perfect, it was just that her fire wasn't good enough.

Right now, she was running. The other members of the group were with her and they were all retreating. The new fire, she knew that Samuel had started it. It was everywhere, devouring the forest and hungry for more.

Several deer had managed to follow them through the fire, their rage fixed on the humans who killed their companions. Wind missiles continued to bombard them occasionally until they finally saw the exit.

"Almost there!" Anastasia was the first one out, even though she carried a person on her shoulders.

They jumped through the trees into a clearing. In front of them was a still lake. Crystal clear water without even a hint of ripples entered their vision. A few large stones were scattered around the edges, with small monuments atop them. It was a picturesque scene compared to the fire they just escaped from.

Angela looked back at the burning forest. Leaping out of the forest in hot pursuit were a few of the Gale Deer, including a female. But before the Awakened could even prepare for battle, the deer all skidded to a stop and immediately turned around in a frenzy. They ran straight back into the forest, skirting around the edges to avoid the fire but staying out of the clearing.

As strange of a scene as it was, the group didn't think deeply about it. They were just glad to have a breather. Ethan and Preethi plopped onto the ground, out of breath and sweating like crazy. Anastasia put the civilian down and rolled her shoulders.

Looking around, Angela realized that out of the original group, some of the members were missing. The first one she noticed was Samuel. Even though he started the fire, he had disappeared. Rick and his bodyguard were also gone, which increased her worries. She sighed, knowing that there wasn't anything she could do right now, and sat down in the grass.

Meanwhile, Anastasia asked the civilian some questions.

"What's your name? How many people got sucked into here?"

"Ms. Anastasia, my name is Bobby. Thank you for saving my life. As for other people, there was only one other person near me when I blacked out. It was horrible, I threw up all over the place when I arrived and then there were so many scary deer, and—" The civilian named Bobby began his words calmly but it quickly devolved into hysterics.

"Alright, Bobby. Calm down. We're going to get you and the other person out of here." Anastasia reassured him and let him calm down.

Although she was an experienced leader as well as someone who'd explored a Gate before, she was feeling exasperated at the situation. All around them was a burning forest with monster deer roaming around. They were stuck in this clearing with a strange lake in the middle. Her guild was exhausted from the battling and running but there was still a civilian somewhere in this dimension that needed to be saved.

As she was thinking of how to get out of this conundrum, some of the guild members were approaching the lake. One of them dipped their finger in and realizing it was nice and cool, they immediately scooped up a handful to splash on their face. Others began to join in, rinsing themselves off of the sweat and cooling their bodies down.

Underneath the water, in the middle of the lake, a translucent, baseball-sized gemstone began to stir. As the ripples from the splashing disturbed the lake, it crept closer to the surface.

Angela, seeing her companions' impromptu bathing, was about to dip her hands into the water when she heard the sound of violently flowing water. In fact, all of them heard this sound as they stopped their splashing and looked towards the source.

The water in the middle of the lake shot up into the sky, reaching up more than ten meters. It began to morph and changed into the shape of a humanoid. A long, flowing board of hair extended from a round face. The liquid contorted into a slender female frame. Her legs were connected to the lake, forming a dress-like layer that reached her hips. As the water woman fully formed, two bright turquoise lights shone from where her eyes would be and she turned her head to look at the group.

A loud shrill pierced the air. ——

In another place, at the same time, Samuel had just run into both his target and enemy. The path he followed was close enough, but as he had to weave through a forest of blazing trees, he deviated from his original direction. Eventually, he reached a clearing in the forest. But once he exited the forest, expecting to see all the group members, he only saw two. There they were, the snake known as Rick Quan and his lackey, Mr. Bo.

The second that Samuel spotted them, they had also turned to see a devilish figure leap out from the fires of Hell. Black and red armor, horns as sharp as knives, and an eerie set of glowing eyes. Rick's first thought was that this was a demon who clawed its way out of Hell.

But, when Rick saw that this "demon" was missing a right arm, he immediately made a connection.

"Samuel." Rick glanced at his Uncle Bo before grinning.