12 >Chapter 11<

Looking at the smoke and dust obstructing their vision, the boys had many questions on their mind. Their minds were buzzing from the information overload.

Never in their mind had they imagined that they would ever see something like this. They though that they had gotten enough of a remainder by fighting with the wolf-like man. But this one fight was a whole another level of a reality check.

The fire slowly subsided and what appeared in front of them was… a charred ground, which was once full of green grass. On the ground were ashes from the nearby trees, grass and… the monsters that had fought here not long ago. If you looked more carefully, you could see even water from the nearby lake was evaporated as well.

The boys slowly got up from their position with trembling legs. They had never seen anything like this before. Coming from a relatively peaceful world, at least in their years of being alive, they had never seen anything close to a fight to the death. Now, however, seeing something like this, they couldn't help but compare it to the wars of their world. This fight just seemed… way out of this world. They wondered how a fight between a beast like this lion and an army of their world would go.

They came out of their hiding place and carefully looked around, searching for any other enemies that could potentially be hiding nearby. After a few minutes passed and they saw that nothing appeared, they moved forward and went to look at the charred crater that was left after the flame explosion. They couldn't see anything other than literal kilograms of just pure ash. When they got closer, the wind started picking up and all the black and grey powder was swept up with it. The boys panicked a bit when they couldn't see anything but covered their eyes right after and waited for the dust to settle.

The dust settled and the boys, once again, looked in front of them. But instead of seeing just a big crater, they saw a silhouette of the lion made out of the ashes. The lion looked at the boys for a brief moment, but the boys almost fainted from that hatred-filled gaze. The chill in their spine got even more intense. The beast however didn't care about the group and looked toward the lake and in the next moment, only the memory of the lion being there was left behind as the silhouette disappeared.

The boys quickly shook their heads and summed it up to their mind playing tricks on them and ignored it at first. They were way too tired to even think properly. But, when the boys saw each other's gaze, they knew that they weren't imagining things.

The boys were really lost right now. They forgot their original purpose of finding food and were only replaying the scenes of the fight that happened here just a few minutes ago. They didn't actually see the whole fight, only just birds getting ripped to a giant explosion of fire.

Wondering whether they could also get as strong as that, the boys got out of the crater and saw the island surrounded by a half vaporized lake. But what caught their attention was neither the lake nor the island. It was the cave that was previously covered by water. Their instincts were telling them to head over there but the boys were hesitant. In the end, the boy's curiosity won over them and after an intense internal debate, they decided to go and check it out.

The thing was they didn't want to get their only clothes wet, so they got completely naked except for their underwear and jumped right into the water.

"Woah, that's surprisingly cold." Timothy exclaimed.

"You'd think the water was going to be a bit warmer after half of it was vaporized." Patrick said in amazement.

"Well, we better get this over with fast. After all, a potential temporary home may have appeared." Phillip replied.

Swimming through the cold and clear water made the boys a little calmer and woke them up a little bit. It helped them wash away the exhaustion that had been building up from the time they found themselves here.

The cave was now in front of them. The problem was it was at least 3 meters higher than the current level of water. Seeing the sharp rocks that, in some parts, stuck out of the wall, their enthusiasm diminished somewhat. Still, they didn't give up and started searching for safer routes. It took almost no time to find it with their superhuman perception.

They climbed up the wall one by one quite easily, not that they were surprised about that.

Once they were in the cave they properly looked around. The cave wasn't very big, about 4 meters in with and 3 meters in height. They found it weird that the cave wasn't as dark as they thought it would be, but their doubts were soon cleared when they saw some moss on the wall shining.

"Since when did moss glow?" One of the boys asked and with that question, the doubts returned as well.

But the boys just summed it up to this weird environment and added it to their list of 'mysterious things that keep happening with no explanation whatsoever'.

So, with that thought in mind, the boys continued their journey through the cave.