Velik found Torwin about eight miles away from the cellar he’d been shoved into. The old man was climbing out of a ravine, a deep scowl and some dried blood on his face. “Snakes,” he said shortly when he spotted Velik.

The ravine had hundreds of dead snakes scattered across it, some normal, albeit large, bodies, but most monsterized to gigantic proportions with armor plates and, in a few cases, wings. Every single body had at least one hole in it, though rarely was there an arrow to go with that wound. Huge strips of grass were scorched black or coated in a thin layer of ice, and no less than four trees were still burning.

“Is the blood yours?” Velik asked.

“Smacked my head against a rock when I was falling in. Stupid dungeon didn’t have the decency to transport me to ground level. I don’t suppose you managed to find the dungeon seed?”

“No sign of it.”

Torwin started muttering a litany of curses under his breath as he pulled out a rag and a canteen of water to wash the blood off his face. The scalp wound was already starting to scab over—the result of a high physical stat, not any sort of enhanced healing. “I suppose we’d best get looking then. Grab the mana compass and see if it gives us a direction?”

By this time, the sun had been up for a few hours. Velik’s strength had returned to a more reasonable level now that [Duskbound] was no longer fortifying him, and since he was only a few levels behind Torwin, they were a lot closer in speed. The old man might have him beat in terms of visual acuity, but if so, it was close. Either way, neither of them expected it to take too long to find the dungeon seed and claim it.

Of course, that’s assuming it even still exists, Velik thought to himself as they tinkered with the compass. The needle twitched back and forth, unable to point them in the right direction. Finding a full-fledged dungeon was a lot easier.

With the failure of the compass, they were left searching by hand. With any luck, the seed was within a few miles of the watchtower, which itself had collapsed into a heap of stone when the dungeon core broke. That still left days of searching, but Velik thought they had a good shot of finding it. [Mana Sight] was doing a lot better now that he was back out in the real world.

Monsters glowed like torches in the night to his eyes. His own gear was even brighter, especially his spear, [Full Regeneration]

Life Giver’s Ring, and his cloak. He’d never considered that he was giving his position away to anyone who had a well-developed mana sensing skill before, but when he mentioned it to Torwin, he learned that stealth skills helped counteract that, and that [Apex Hunter] was fulfilling that role for him.

The take-away there was not to rely on his new skill to spot every monster. Every gift the system bestowed had a counter somewhere, and plenty of enemies had well-developed stealth skills. Ambush predators were especially proficient in stalking prey unnoticed.

The relative low-level of the local monsters rendered that point moot, but Velik made a mental note to keep it in mind when they crossed the mountains again. That frost elemental should have lit up like a morning sun in a clear sky to a mana sense, but Torwin hadn’t known it was there until it was too late.

That meant there was a chance the dungeon seed was hiding its presence as well, in which case, they might never find the damn thing. Neither of them were willing to abandon the search without making an effort, though, so they quickly divided the area into sections and got to work.

Three days passed without finding a thing, leaving Velik feeling frustrated and disheartened. He’d thought [Mana Sight] would make the task easy. Torwin had certainly implied it would help, but he was starting to wonder if that was a lie the old [Ranger] had spun to keep Velik from going after the seed back in the dungeon.

That evening, he did find something. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what he was looking for. It was a single boot print, and not even the whole thing. A thin sliver of a depression—the outer edge of an adult man’s boot—at the edge of a carpet of moss near the edge of a narrow stream stood out to him. That hadn’t been there yesterday when he’d been refilling his waterskin.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A quick search around revealed no other signs, meaning that whoever had left that sole sign was someone experienced in woodcraft. We’ve got a visitor, one who doesn’t want us to know they’re here. Maybe more than one. Why now, though?

His best guess was that the collapse of the dungeon had somehow attracted attention, and that it had taken a few days for whatever passed for a Monster Hunters Guild around here to send out some people to investigate. Whoever it was, they were at least the equivalent of a gold-ranked specialized in woodland travel if they’d been lurking in the area for any length of time without being detected.

This is going to be trouble. It’ll take at least twice as much time to complete our search if we’re dancing around other hunters while we look, and we’ll need to start working together so one of us can keep an eye out for ambushes while the other searches.

Hunting the hunters would probably be easier, and a part of him stirred at the challenge, but when the locals didn’t check in, that would likely prompt further investigation. The Verdant Belt was too important as the source of food for a majority of the country to let unknown threats roam around it. If a whole army moved in, finding the dungeon seed would become impossible.

Could we buy them off? An extra hunter or two could speed this whole process up. Maybe this is a good thing.

He doubted things would be that easy, but it was an option to keep in mind if the local hunter forced a confrontation. Before he made a decision, though, he needed more information. If there was a sign here, there were more signs elsewhere, and unlike beating the bushes trying to shake out a marble, tracking down other living creatures was his specialty.

It wouldn’t be dark for a few more hours. If it was just some level 40 hunter class skulking around, that was no issue. If it was a whole team of five or more, that was a different story. A fight would by necessity be lethal if he wanted to survive those odds. He couldn’t just sit on his hands until evening, though, especially since Torwin probably didn’t realize they weren’t alone out there anymore.

They had another twelve hours of searching scheduled before their next rendezvous, and the simple fact of the matter was that Velik was betting he and Torwin were the better hunters. The most productive thing he could do now was to figure out where the new guy was and whether he was alone.

Decision made, he took to the trees and fell into [Apex Hunter], the skill helping hide his presence and draw his attention to the trail he was hunting for. For the next hour, he ghosted through the forest, noting sign after sign. The hunters were good, he’d give them that, but they were no match for him in this arena.

There were three, from what he could tell. One of them was practically a ghost, but the other two were middling talents reinforced by system skills. Every few hundred feet, he found a new clue to confirm the direction they were heading—a leaf shaken loose from a bush one of them brushed against or the slight depression highlighted by bent grass blades, usually.

After the first half an hour, he had a good idea of where they were going. They’d been in the area for at least twelve hours already and were searching for signs of anyone else in a tight sweeping pattern through the section Velik had checked two days ago. He’d be surprised if they found anything but their own sign when they swept back.

That likely meant Torwin hadn’t crossed their path yet. Whatever faults they might have, they were so quiet that he hadn’t heard a peep from them. They also had some sort of scent-erasing skill or maybe a piece of gear, though that actually betrayed their position once Velik got close enough. It wiped every scent from an area, and it took about half an hour for natural smells to come back.

It took six hours before he finally caught up with the hunters, though that was more due to his own caution than to their speed or woodlore. It was close to midnight when he spotted the flickering light of a fire through a stand of trees, one that had been placed in a shallow pit and sheltered with a ring of stones to help hide it.

There you are, he thought to himself, satisfied with his work. Now, let’s see what there is to know.

Only two of the hunters were in the camp. Velik watched them from a tree a quarter mile downwind just in case any of them were capable of scent tracking, occasionally ghosting from one branch to another to get another angle if the wind shifted too much. Neither gave any indication that they knew they were being watched, but the absence of their third companion kept him wary.

He wasn’t surprised when he spotted a man in a different tree a few hundred feet to the right. The hunter was creeping along, making good speed as he silently leaped from branch to branch. Each leap was so perfectly executed that the branches barely even rattled as his weight settled onto them. If Velik hadn’t seen it happen, he’d have dismissed the sound as just the wind, especially since the hunter was timing his jumps to coincide with the breeze.

He's good. Let’s start with him.

Silently, Velik chased after the unknown hunter.