79 Variants of The Great Forest

We treaded through the forest for a few days, before encountering a large sleuth of bears. Fortunately, no silver bears were present. The nine bears didn't stand a chance against me and Shelly, especially not after a whole winter worth of training. Such groups of animals were pretty common in the deeper parts of the forest, but two groups, one after another was rather rare occurrence.

"I'd understand the first group, but another one?", I questioned myself before taking out my map. Just like the tavern bartender pointed out while selling the map to me, there were a few 'points of interest' marked on it. One such point was about two days away from our location, and it was called The Bears' Retreat. I could only assume a lot of bears gathered there. The encounter with two sleuths at one proved that assumption even further.

"Shelly, we'll take a detour in a while. This place sounds like trouble", I said before hiding my map. The detour would add another few days on top of our journey, but that was a small price to pay. Moreover, we weren't in a rush. As planned, we moved more in the western direction to circle the Bears' Retreat before heading north once again.

The plan seemed solid, until we encounter something really worrying. Even though we were far away from the Bears' Retreat, we found carcasses of bears, and wolves littering the forest's ground. The further west we went, the more uneasy I felt. 'Something doesn't add up here... Maybe we should turn around?', I questioned myself.

Before we got a chance to turn around and change our direction, I picked up some noises further ahead. Growls, roars and whimpers of animals. Focusing my sights at the area, I finally noticed something. A large pack of wolves were being attacked, or perhaps attacked a sleuth of bears. While staring at some animals killing each other, a rare sights considering the amount of them, I noticed something else. 'These are... Silver bears...', my thoughts stopped there. Not only Silver bears were present, the wolves weren't the usual ones either. Mixed in were the black and silver wolves as well.

The amount of variants present was astounding. There were at least eight of them, including two silver bears that entered my line of sight. Without further thought, I grabbed Shelly, and moved south. That was the only safe direction we could go. We couldn't go west or north, that would be a death wish. East was pointless, because we just came from that direction, and I wasn't about to take chances with encountering more bears.

'No wonder this place was marked... Albeit, whoever drew this map, wasn't aware how big the territorial area of Bears' Retreat was. We probably walked into to the fringes of their territory', the thought alone gave me goosebumps. That area would probably be peaceful, if not for a large pack of wolves attacking the bears. A sight to behold for sure, but at a price of one's life. I wasn't that curious just to see two groups of animals fighting.

We escaped towards the south for over a day, before trying the western direction once more. 'This time, we should be in the clear... So far so good, no carcasses and no large groups of animals', I thought. We were much further away from the Bears' Retreat, therefore any bears or wolves encountered meant a lone pack or sleuth.

Though fully prepared for such occasion, we didn't encounter any large groups of wolves nor bears. What we stumbled upon was Humans. Moreover, a lot of them looked like the guards from that Leaper Town. Besides the armour plated guards, there seemed to be a few warriors too. Draped in leather, with sword and bows as their choice of weapon. They had a large camp set up, and numbered at least twenty.

Of course they spotted us as well, and seemed really surprised at our sight. We tried to simply move around them, but a few of the guards came rushing with some questions. "Hey, wait a minute... Are you here all alone?", one of them asked. "If you consider this guy, there's two of us. I don't need trouble, so I'll just be on my way", I replied, but they stopped me again. "We aren't some sort of bandits, you know?... You came from that direction, maybe you'll be able to help us. We only have a few questions", another guy assured me.

They asked me about the Bears' Retreat, and the areas around. I told them about the large scale battle between wolves and bears, that happened further up north-east. With that many people heading in the northern direction, their motives became pretty clear. They were sent out to deal with the bears a bit. "Come with me. I'd like you to tell everything to our leader. You will be rewarded, it's really important information to us", one of the guards said.

They meant us no harm, because if they did, we'd be chased by about twenty odd men already. Their leader looked imposing, and really strong. I could tell he had the same vibes as Nick, a dangerous guy for sure. "You must've been lucky to come out of that alive. Though thanks to you, we now know the situation out there", the leader of that group said after my explanation.

"Olaf, reward this man with some gold", he added to one of his men. The guy named Olaf handed me exactly five gold coins, and thanked me. "Are you going in there?", I asked out of curiosity. "Hehe, someone has to. If we leave these bears alone for a long time, they'd attack a village or a town. We don't want that, right? Don't worry though, we'll wait out their little war, and strike once they're weakened", Olaf replied.

I nodded, wished them the best, and left. 'I'd love to see that leader guy fight, but with all the variants present, my lacking close combat skills wouldn't be enough. I can't reveal my techniques to others, especially people like that leader guy'. A bit of a shame, strong people like that leader could tech me something. Even if all I did was watch them. Nonetheless, we carried on towards west for another two days before heading up north once more.