Second Day in the Dead Woods

Jax left for the Dead Woods once again, this time with his axe instead of his knife and dagger. There was no food for him today. No potions to heal him. So, he decided to kill as many as he could in the few hours before lunch in the training center and then go back and train again.

He ran all the way to the Dead Woods, arriving early in the morning as the day got brighter. It was difficult to tell how long it had been since sunrise, so Jax hoped he wasn't late. It was hard to tell time with the overcast sky.

Once Jax entered the woods, he slowed down. Danger could be anywhere, so he kept his eyes open, looking all around him for any threats. He stepped on the moist ground, leaving behind a footprint. He looked for similar footprints around him as well.

The places that had no footprints were the places he liked to visit. After a few minutes of searching, Jax found the first monster, a lizard.

The axe with the scarlet head arrived soundlessly in his hand. He got lower, readjusting his center of gravity as he got closer.

Once he was close, he intentionally alerted the lizard. Afraid, the lizard got up from where it was cooped up on the ground, showing Jax where its head was and where its tail was.

He instantly closed its head with his threads and jumped toward it. The lizard couldn't realize in time that its mouth had been shut at all. It had tried to use its tongue to attack, but the suddenness of everything made it unable to.

It didn't even have time to turn around as Jax came down with the axe, his entire body flowing with Navi.

The axe landed on the lizard's back, crunching into its hard skin, cleaving through to the ground below. The lizard died instantly, the two stones in its back floating out slowly.

Jax was rather surprised.

'That's it?' he thought.

With the knife and dagger, he had to get on the lizard's back and stab it multiple times before he could kill it. This time around, it was just one strike.

Jax smiled. "Two down, sixteen more to go."

The axe was going to pay for itself in no time at all.

Happy with the result, Jax walked away.

"Wait, you're not going to take anything else? You're leaving perfectly good materials back there," Gemma said.

"I don't need it," Jax answered. "In fact, it's hurting me more than it's helping me at this moment, honestly. The time I spend on butchering it takes too long. I can find another beast instead and get two stones right away. I could butcher five of those lizards and barely get fifty coins. It's really not worth it."

Gemma didn't say anything else. Jax's words made sense to her.

Jax went along to kill another lizard with ease. He found a slime after that, which he skipped.

"There is no way in hell I am spending any of my time or Navi on that thing," Jax said.

Gemma didn't say anything else.

Jax skipped the next three slimes he encountered and only fought the two lizards and the snake.

With only four monsters fought, Jax was beginning to get tired. Having to constantly pull his Navi out into his body and push it back down made his entire body feel fatigued.

According to Gemma, it was because Navi overworked muscles to pull out the extra strength, which, when taken away, pushed them back to their original state, now without energy.

It was a feeling that would lessen as he used this technique more and more. And once he learned it as a skill, then this feeling would permanently vanish.

He still had a good chunk of Navi remaining, so he decided to continue for some more monsters. There was enough time to make it back to lunch, so Jax wasn't that worried.

Although, he did worry that it might rain soon.

As he walked through the forest, he heard soft footsteps on the wet earth from his right. He turned and saw a few people walking toward him.

Each one of the four wore a wooden mask on their face, hiding their identity, along with a long cloak that made it hard to tell their gender as well. Not that Jax would know them anyway. He barely knew anyone at all.

Usually, someone would just step aside when meeting someone else in the monster field, but these people seemed to be coming directly toward him.

Jax looked toward them with narrowed eyebrows. "Can I help you guys?"

"You can," one of them said. "Hand over your stones."

Jax didn't react all that much. "Why should I?"

"If you do not, we will break your legs. Is that reason enough?" someone else said. This voice sounded feminine.

"That's a decent reason, but I could do the same to you guys as well," Jax said. "Does that mean you should give me some stones as well?"

The four people snickered together, seemingly finding him funny. "Alright then, you might need a little more persuasion. That is fine. Everyone else does too."

Jax's face lost all emotion at that moment. The slightest possibility of them joking disappeared at the very moment one of the men pulled out a sword from his inventory and walked toward him.

Jax's muscles filled with Navi, feeling alive once again, ready for action.

The man suddenly dashed forward, his sword coming for Jax. Jax turned to the side, the sword nearly cutting at his chest. He quickly used his spell on the man's legs, making him stumble forward.

At this point, the axe came out from his inventory, which he quickly swung at the man's waist.

The axe sunk deep into the man's body. And while it didn't fully come out of the other side, there was no doubt that it was enough for him to kill the man.

He turned around, staring intently at the remaining three. He had killed this man, and he was ready to kill the rest as well.