Every time Velik went out on an expedition with Jensen, he inevitably spent the majority of his time walking in circles around the slow-moving caravan. Even with the storage box reducing their needs down to a few wagons—mostly for those who demanded something to sleep inside of—and horses for those who didn’t have classes that put points in physical, they just didn’t move that fast. Thirty miles a day on open roads was a decent run.

When it was just Velik and Torwin, they easily managed better than a hundred miles each night. That was with them sticking to the forests and hills at the feet of the mountains, and only traveling at night to avoid the local patrols. So far, the military didn’t seem to be aware of their existence, and if anyone had come after them due to the incident with the trio of powerful bounty hunters, they hadn’t been fast enough to keep up.

“Two more nights until we hit the mountain passes,” Torwin said, eyeing the landscape stretching before them. A week of traveling had gotten them close to their entry point, and they were now about a thousand feet up from the flatlands below them, perched on a windy ridge that held a hint of the chill the peaks promised if they dared to venture higher.

“Maybe one if we went between some of the closer peaks,” Velik said. “It’d get us out of Slokara faster.”

“I’d rather stick to the route we know,” Torwin told him. “Getting lost up there could get us killed, and it’s not like we’ve had any trouble down here.”

“Not yet.”

Torwin laughed. “Not yet. But even if we do run into the army or whatever, it’ll probably be easier to deal with them than another one of those ice elementals.”

There was some truth to that, so Velik didn’t argue. He was eager to get back, if only so they could get the dungeon seed to a tinkerer Torwin knew so that she could modify a mana compass. The trip hadn’t given Velik the results he wanted, but it was a step in the right direction. That quest still sat in his status, waiting for him to complete it.

[Current quest: Locate the source of the dungeon seed and destroy it before it can spread more chaos and destruction.]

Someone or something was still out there, making more of them. Velik had no idea how that was being done, but he’d keep destroying the dungeons where he could find them and hope it led back to the originator eventually. With any luck, the compass would point toward the source.

“Two more days until we’re in the mountains then,” Velik agreed. “Maybe a week until we get back to Ashala if we hurry.”

* * *

The scent had gone back and forth, but he’d tracked it easily. It was so unique that it was impossible to hide, and now that he’d left his little escort behind, he was moving at a good speed. No matter how far the prey ran, it wouldn’t escape him.

Currently, he stood on a frozen mountain peak, looking down at a relatively small ice elemental that had been killed a few weeks ago. Frozen yeti corpses surrounded it, but the battle didn’t tell the tale of elemental and yeti battling each other. No, a third party had come through here and overcome both sides.

“So, you’re not completely helpless,” he murmured, pleased with what he was seeing. Hunting rabbits had ceased to be enjoyable hundreds of years ago.

The cold made it harder to keep to the trail, but the prey still walked across the ground, and that meant it could still be stalked. No matter how far it ran, it would never get away from him. But he was tired of being in the Garden. Its rules were so restrictive, almost infuriating.

He saw a greater ice elemental, one far larger and stronger than the shattered corpse below him, and he wanted nothing more than to tear it apart. It would be fun. But on this side of the boundary, he’d be violating the system rules if he took essence from anything, man or monster. As much as he wanted to roar defiance at the gods, he wasn’t so powerful that he could get away with crossing them.

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Not yet, at least.

With a resigned sigh, he cast one last look at the ice elemental scraping across the mountain peak higher up, then he turned away and strode down the mountain’s southern slope.

* * *

“I told you!” Velik shouted as they ran.

“Is this really the time?” Torwin shouted back.

The pair of them sprinted across an open field, pursued by no less than thirty men and women in light armor who wielded spears and pikes. None of them were above level 30, which made it easy to outrun them, but they had some sort of coordination skill that extended past their group. Other squads of soldiers were already moving ahead of them to cut them off.

Arrows rained out of the trees in front of them, most of which wouldn’t have hit Velik even if he’d stood still and waited. He dodged the few that could have struck him, all except for one single arrow that came in at exactly the wrong time. That one struck his shoulder, slicing a small tear in his shirt, and then bounced off his skin.

“Push through the line,” Torwin yelled. “They’re not strong enough to stop us unless we stand still and give them time to build up their numbers.”

Velik wasn’t convinced any amount of soldiers would do the trick, not when they were all around level 25, but if they stopped to fight, they’d end up killing people. There was no good reason for that, so he heeded Torwin’s orders and bulled through the shield-bearers standing in front of the archers at the edge of the field.

The two he targeted both set their feet and presented their shields, empowered by a stability skill to hold against his attack. They had identical comical looks of surprise on their face when he burst through the line with brute strength, not even bothering to pull his spear from its spot coiled around his arm.

The archers started panicking, no doubt seeing their death charging at them. To their credit, most of them held their ground and even managed to get an arrow nocked in the half a second between him crashing through the shield wall and reaching the archers. That did nothing to stop him, of course, but other than the one who foolishly jumped in Velik’s way, he left them unharmed. That one man got slapped sideways and crashed into a tree, but he’d live.

Torwin hit the line fifty feet to Velik’s right, and though he probably could have overpowered the shield bearers there as well, he opted for a bit more finesse. When the closest one thrust his shield in Torwin’s direction, Torwin leaped straight up and landed, one foot balanced on the rim of the shield and the other on the man’s head.

Then he fired off an arrow, possibly enchanted since Velik had never seen him use the skill that caused the area to erupt into smoke and dust. However he did it, he easily darted through the confused mass of soldiers, and soon, both were running free.

“How do you think they knew we were coming?” Velik asked an hour later.

“Maybe some sort of scrying magic,” Torwin said, but he didn’t sound sure. “I don’t know. We should be past all of them now, either way. I think we’ve got about thirty miles to go and then a few miles up into the mountains where the soldiers won’t dare follow us. After that, we can take a break.”

They still had about three hours until sunset since they’d been forced to abandon their camp early when the soldiers started moving to surround them. It had taken them half an hour to shake off pursuit, but they were alone now and had slowed down to a reasonable pace, one that Velik could maintain all day without stopping.

“Unless there are even more of them between here and there,” Velik muttered.

“Always a valid concern,” Torwin agreed. “The sooner we’re up into the mountains, the better.”

They jogged through the forest while they talked, keeping within twenty feet of each other as they wound through trees and past bushes. The underbrush was thin here, making progress easy, but there were also plenty of shallow streams. Most of those were small enough to be leapt easily, only once forcing an [Air Walk] to reach the other side dry. Torwin had an enchantment on his boots he called [Water Walking] that let him do the same thing.

“I really thought there’d be more of them,” Velik said a few hours later.

“I guess we just got lucky.”

“Lucky would be not running into any soldiers in the first place.”

“Well, fair,” Torwin said. “But it’s behind us now, and I don’t hear anyone within miles of us.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” a new voice said from nearby.

Both of them started, neither having heard anything. Above them, sitting on an embankment about ten feet high, was a tall, well-muscled man with a mane of shaggy white hair. His eyes gleamed yellow in the fading light, and his nails were black and wickedly curved.

Even staring at the man, [Apex Hunter] gave no indication that he was even there. The only other time that had happened was with the golems at the sky bridge, the ones who hadn’t been alive. Even the undead triggered the skill, so whatever this man was, he wasn’t human.

Maybe some sort of mental projection?

The man hopped down to ground level, crunching grass under his feet as he landed. He was as real and solid as anyone else, and Velik didn’t have another theory. He glanced uneasily at Torwin, who was chewing his mustache while his eyes were locked on the stranger.

“You,” the man said, facing Velik. “I’ve been looking for you.”