Rae made a small fort at the top of a suitable tree, and Karl climbed up tot see what she had provided.
It was just an enclosed hammock, little more than a cocoon of the sort she would create for prey, but it was enclosed, and there was sticky Royal Rank silk all around it to catch the unwary intruders.
That would do the job.
Most of what Karl wanted out of the sleeping arrangement was just to not be detected by monsters, and this would work wonderfully for the task, as it would hide his scent, keeping the wind from revealing his location, and it would keep enemies away for long enough that Karl could prepare himself and Rae could come out.
It was going to be a long trip through the wilderness, Karl was certain. Even with the beasts watching for threats, there was no way to safely get a deep sleep, so he would be mostly meditating and resting, which was good for a while, but he might have a significant distance to cover, and eventually, he would have to find a better solution, or a safer area.
Not everywhere was going to be heavily populated with monsters, that just wouldn’t be feasible with the available food, but when Karl woke up in the morning he was already looking forward to it.
There were three small creatures on the web when Karl got up. They were common grade monsters, not a threat, and not worth keeping for snacks, so Karl simply freed them once he was out of bed and settled on a branch for a breakfast of hard travel biscuits and soup.
A light meal was all he needed, and Karl dunked his biscuit in the soup as he watched the squirrel that he freed last run away in terror, afraid that it would be on the menu if it remained.
This morning, the area felt more relaxed and natural than it had when he arrived, and Karl gently dropped to the ground to continue following the directions that were given to find the quest reward.
That meant a casual walk through the woods all morning, as moving faster just attracted inordinate amounts of attention. Wild beasts didn’t run without a good reason, so Karl didn’t run either.
At noon, he came to a large grassland area that extended as far as he could see.
That was a nice change, as he could actually see threats from a distance now, and make a bit better time without causing himself trouble.
Karl moved up to a jog as the open plains extended in front of him, keeping to a pace that [Eternal Lightning] could regenerate his stamina for. That wasn’t quite a run, but it was definitely a fast pace, which would cover over twenty kilometres an hour with his strength lengthening his strides.
[I want to stretch my wings.] Hawk complained.
[Go ahead, I don’t sense anything nearby, it should be safe to come outside.]
Everyone but Remi took that invitation, and then after a few seconds, Remi also came out, settling onto Thor’s back to bask in the sun.
Hawk soared high in the sky, looking for snacks, threats and signs of civilization.
By the time that it got dark, there was nothing. They saw a few herds of buffalo sized Commander Rank herbivores, and Rae claimed two of them, just in case they tasted good, but the day was deceptively calm.
When Karl decided to call it a night at midnight, Hawk and Rae had both been in bed for a few hours already, but there were no signs of life larger than mice visible to Karl’s borrowed version of Rae’s thermal vision.
This time, he didn’t wake her up, he just found a small stand of trees that didn’t have anything sleeping in it and slung his hammock before waking Rae to keep watch.
The next morning, Hawk took to the air again, scouting for any sign that they might be close to their target, but it was just grass, hundreds of kilometres of open plains.
Karl was jogging along late that evening when suddenly the arrow made a hard right.
[Recalibrating. Target lost.] The system reported.
“What in the world does that mean?” Karl muttered.
[Do you think that something ate our potential cute little sister?] Remi asked.
Karl frowned. That seemed far too likely.
Rae nodded. [You may have a point. The best possible option should have been a Monarch Rank infant. So it might have been eaten, or perhaps it advanced and became an Overlord before we could get there to claim it?
Then it wouldn’t be the best anymore because it was too strong to be safely bonded.]
[Oh, the new arrow is moving, I think that it is close.] Thor noted.
It wasn’t much, but the arrow had moved just a fraction of a centimetre, and then another.
Karl turned to face the new direction, and hoped that this time he would be able to reach his target before something happened to it.
[There is something in the distance. Big green people are attacking something black.] Hawk reported.
[Do you think it might be our target?] Karl asked as the bird raced away into the distance.
[I am pretty sure it is. I don’t know what it is yet, though. It’s surrounded in black.]
He sent a mental image of what he was seeing, and Karl couldn’t figure it out either. The Orcish children were just attacking a ball of black energy that Hawk was unable to see through.
It was slowly moving along, as if it was sluggish or unconcerned.
No matter what they did, it kept moving. Then they swapped out the Commander Rank adolescents with one of their high Royal Rank warriors.
Karl could see him coming, then Hawk got distracted by something moving in the grass.
It turned out to be no threat, but when he looked back, the warrior was simply gone, and there was black ash floating on the wind.
“Did it just one shot a Royal Rank Orcish warrior?” Karl asked himself.
[Possibly. Maybe it teleported him, though? He’s definitely gone.] Hawk reported.
Now that was interesting. If there was something that could one shot a Royal Rank Orc, it was definitely powerful. But whether or not it was going to be something that Karl could bond with was another matter.
They hadn’t tried to pull a living thing other than Dana into the space, and that hadn’t worked.
There wasn’t an extra space for her at the time, but Karl suspected that it was more that she wasn’t classified as a valid beast to be brought into the system’s link.
It took nearly an hour of fast jogging to get to the point where Hawk had tracked the black ball to after the Orcs gave up on it, or maybe the Orcs had chased it away, though it didn’t seem to have cared all that much about their efforts, as it never changed course.
It didn’t seem to care much about him, either.
Karl made his way a few hundred metres ahead of the small black half orb trundling along through the grass, and tried to see what was inside.
The arrow from the quest log was tracking it, pointing down at the top of its head, but Karl had no idea how to get it into the space.
He certainly wasn’t going to try to pick it up, at least not until he knew what it was and if that was safe. But for the moment, it wasn’t reacting to his presence at all.
[Should we just follow it?] Rae suggested.
[We might as well. But why don’t we try feeding it? Maybe it will drop the barrier if we give it something to eat.]
