25 Forest Duels: The End of the Duels

After knocking the poor Vulpis out she felt around his pockets and found his token in a pouch on the back of his waist, just above his tail. Grabbing the token, she climbed the tree to retrieve her thrown spear before she took off at a jog to the west to get to the finish line.

After half a day of jogging she finally encountered another opponent. This time there were three of them, fanned out to prevent anyone from passing. Standing at a distance, Yun just looked at them. Each of the three Canis had their arms crossed over their chests with a large-bladed short axe in one hand. They looked like bandits might, preparing to rob their prey.

After a few moments of staring, they uncrossed their arms and began to walk towards her, the two on the sides staying far enough out to flank her, when they started shouting jeering taunts at her.

"C'mon little fox, give us your token."

"We'll make sure not to hurt you."

"We just need two more tokens and all of us will go ahead on our way, leaving your pretty little head intact."

Ignoring the jeers from the Canis trio, Yun pulled her spear out from her artifact and took a low stance, with the blade near to the ground and turned horizontally. As the lead Canis saw her prepare herself to fight he growled low and barked out to his partners.

"Lets get her brothers, she can't possibly resist all three of us!"

With that they all charged in with their axes. Yun acted quickly, stepping in towards the leading Canis she swept out with the back of the blade on her spear directly into his knee, sweeping his legs out from under him and nearly breaking his knee in the process. Reversing her motion after the collision, she slid her hands down on the spear shaft and whipped the butt around to hit the second one in the head before whipping the head back to smack the third as well. All three were collapsed on each other, forming a triangle around her.

"What foolish dogs... Thinking they could outsmart a fox? Dream on..."

Yun propped her spear up on her shoulder and sneered down at the still-conscious leader, "You three still have a chance to pass this round, but only because I'm already in possession of my second token and am on my way to the finish. Count your blessings this fox did not harm you further."

With that she slapped the final Canis in the side of the head and knocked him out cold as well. Stepping on his face to get over the pile, she continued walking west towards the finish.

Two more times Yun encountered weaker cultivators grouping up to try and pass together, and two more times she laid them flat and walked on past. Soon she could see the edge of the dense River Wood and knew that she was exceedingly close to finishing this task.

As she neared the finish she once again felt something was off and stopped. Looking around her she couldn't see anything amiss, but she knew there was something not right. Since she had encountered the three Canis earlier she had yet to put her spear back in her artifact space, and a moment later she was glad of this fact. An arrow whistled out from somewhere to her right and barely missed piercing entirely through her upright ears due to a slight brush against the haft of her spear. The whistling going past her ears frightened her, putting her on full alert. As she twisted towards the source of the arrow another one came at her from a significantly different angle. This time she placed the blade of her spear in the way and deflected the arrow, but before she could respond an arrow came at her from yet another direction.

This was infuriating. Not only could she not track the enemy's movements, she couldn't do anything about them even if she could. She had yet to train any battle-skills since she began using the spear, but she knew that the spear she was using was capable of performing some of the saber moves as well as all the typical spear moves. The advantage for this was obvious. Spear moves were typically focused on rapid stabs or wide sweeps, but sabers were focused on singular destruction. Their purpose was to simply slice something in two, and many of their moves were incredibly domineering. Realizing her weakness, Yun began to curse herself as she focused on deflecting arrows.

"How could i be so stupid? I've gone out battling so much and never even thought of learning battle-skills? Too naive!"

Vowing inside to learn them as soon as she could, Yun began moving towards the finish again rapidly, weaving in and out of trees and sweeping her spear back to deflect arrows periodically.

After a few minutes of weaving through trees she finally got far enough away that the arrows were only occasionally coming towards her, giving her much more quarter to move on. Knowing that the likelihood of being attacked again was fairly high, she pushed on without slowing down in the least. As she sprinted on at full tilt she started to see more and more signs of traffic ahead, but also began to see more signs of traps and those who had been trapped before.

Finally she saw a large group of competitors gathered together and knew that this must be the group of finishers, because otherwise they'd be fighting over tokens.

Nearing the finish line she started to feel like something was a little strange, like she was missing something. Slowing down, she started to really examine things before it hit her. Just as she crossed the official finishing line and was approached by an Elder to check her tokens she discerned a familiar silhouette. She looked to the Elder first, bowing with respect, and presented her tokens to him, "Elder, here is my proof of completion."

"Good. You may join the others." The Elder released her after a few moments of looking over her to verify she didn't have any extra tokens.

Walking towards that familiar Vulpis backside with a broad smile, she tapped their shoulder gently and waited for a response. Moments later, with surprise in his eyes, her brother Fenglong turned around and nearly tackled her with a hug.

"Yun'er! You're here!"

After a moment of hugging her, once again, his eyes grew even wider as he realized something, "Yun'er... Your cultivation... You've... Reached Neidan Forging!?"