>Chapter 8<

Orange light slowly started to overtake the dark sky. The orange beams of light descended upon the earth and everything started to light up. The dark and misty forest turned into a beautiful forest made up of colorful leaves, which were occasionally falling down to the ground.

*Chirp* *Chirp*

Chirping sounds could be heard as the bird woke up from their slumber. The birds looked around them trying to see if the coast is clear. All of a sudden they heard a rustling sound. The birds got scared and quickly flapped their wings, flying away, leaving behind only some stray feathers.

Five silhouettes came out of a bush. Almost the entirety of their clothes was covered in blood and dirt. The holes in their clothes uncovered their now healing bruises they just got the night before. Only just now did they start to notice them, up until now, the adrenalin rush was so high they wouldn't ever notice them.

About an hour has passed since the group defeated their enemy. Since then, things only got harder and harder. They were exhausted both mentally and physically. Right now, they just wanted to lie down somewhere, anywhere and go to sleep. But they couldn't. The group had a silent agreement. They wanted to get out of this forest as soon as possible.

They noticed that the sun was slowly coming up and they just realized. They had had been running the whole night and didn't even get a wink of sleep. With black bags under their eyes, they continued limping forward, supporting each other.

After about another hour of walking, they heard the sound of water burbling in the distance. The shuffled over to there as fast as they could. Soon they came upon a clearing in the dense forest.

They could see a small waterfall. The water shimmering from the light that shines from the sky. A deer was at the other side of a rocky water stream, currently drinking. A random red leaf flew over and fell into the water which created small waves rippling across the surface of the water.

The deer noticed a sound from the other side of the river and looked over. When he saw five people standing there in a daze, he immediately turned around and hooped away.

The boys woke up from their daydream when they saw the deer run away.

„That was magical…" Timothy said, trying to engrave this moment into his mind along with the other boys.

„Sure was." Patrick replied before running a little bit and jumping into the water.

Soon after the others did the same. "Fuuah…" a sigh of satisfaction came as the boys drank like never before. After drinking their fill, they started washing away all the dirt and grime. Their clothes almost ripped from their hard scrubbing.

After they cleaned up a little bit, they got out of the water took off their shirts and placed them on some big rocks in the area so they could dry off.

"Now we have some time to talk again." Phillip said.

"Indeed." Tim replied.

"Why are you all so serious, let's just relax for now, not only did we not sleep but we ran like crazy for the whole night." Patrick said interrupting their conversation.

"But, we need to talk anyway, better now than never." David said.

"So, first of all, which direction should we go in?" Jacob asked. "We don't know the surroundings of this forest so we don't know if there's a village or a town nearby."

"I actually think we should go either upstream or downstream." Tim suggested.

"You want to see if someone is living near the water?" David guessed what Tim was talking about. "But, wouldn't they have canals and pipes."

"That's the thing I'm not really sure about." Tim replied. "From how the man was using a carriage I can deduce that this is probably somewhere with 'technology' in the Middle Ages, or the man just had a weird kink."

"I wonder where the man was going to sleep." Patrick said out of nowhere and continued. "He didn't even have a sleeping bag or a blanked outside with him."

"Well we actually don't know that because we just went away as soon as we possibly could." Phillip rejected Patrick's idea.

"So, I think we can say that we are somewhere where there are werewolves and they are using old technology." Timothy repeated. "So I think it's safe to say there is a small chance of large canals existing, which means we have a good chance of finding a settling of some sort."

"Right, but how do we search both the downstream and upstream?" Patrick questioned.

"I think we should split into two groups." Jacob suggested.

"Isn't that way too dangerous?" Phillip asked. "I don't think we can take care of another monster like that with even less of us and we don't really have a way to contact each other after we split up."

"Right we don't even have our knives now, one is broken in two and the other is chipped." Tim added.

"Wait, I remembered!" Patrick shouted." What about the mind-talking thing? Can we do that again?"

The other boys' eyes lit up as Patrick said this. They couldn't believe they almost forgot about such a crucial thing that helped them save their lives just a few hours ago.

"What do you think is the range of the telepathy?" Tim asked impatiently.

"Is it called telepathy?" Patrick asked.

"Well, at least that's what they call it in the novels. But that doesn't matter now. Let's try if it even works for the second time." As soon as Timothy finished his sentence, they could hear a voice inside their minds. (1, 2, 3...1, 2, 3...Can you guys hear me?)

The boys focused for a little bit before replying at the same time.

(Yes!)

"Great now let's try greater distances." Tim said in excitement like a little kid on Christmas, opening up his presents.

They continued to walk away from each other in a straight line so they could guess how many meters they were away from each other based on the length of their steps.

10 meters… 20 meters… 50 meters… 100… 200… 500…

It stopped working properly once they got about 550 meters away from each other. They then jogged to their original location and before long they could already see each other in their original starting position. They didn't even notice that they weren't even short of breath after running about 500 meters in a little bit more than 1 minute…

"So it's around 600 steps for Phillip, which I would guess is more or less somewhere from 500 to 600 meters." Timothy guessed.

"But" Phillip interrupted. "Do you think we can talk through a third person?"

"What exactly do you mean?" Patrick asked but he could already guess what he was thinking about.

"Well I was thinking if it worked like an invisible wire, connecting all of us at the same time." Phillip explained his idea further.

"That's actually not a bad idea." David commented. "Let's try it out."

So they each distanced themselves from the person 'next' to them about 500 steps away.

Jacob, who was at the end of the line, started speaking.

(Can you all hear me?)

He waited for a little bit before he got four answers to his question.

(Yes)

(Yep)

(Heck yea!)

(Aye sir)

(Great! It works!)

(Alright let's go back quickly and talk normally) Patrick suggested and the rest nodded their heads in their minds and soon, they found themselves their original spot again.

"So then, how are we doing this?" Patrick asked excitedly.

"I still don't think it's a good idea to split up since we don't know the dangers of this forest." Tim repeated his earlier statement in a grim tone, diminishing his excitement a little bit.

"I actually agree with Tim, we should stick together for now till we find a settlement." Phil said.

"Okay, well this thing is useful in cases such as if we get forcefully separated, and we're going to have to find food anyway, it'll be more effective this way." David shared his own opinion.

"Right, so what will we be eating?" Patrick asked while fidgeting.

"I think it's safer to find something now and then go find a village." Jacob said.

"Agreed" The rest of the boys nodded their heads and went away from the clearing to the dense forest once again. But this time, they were going to be the hunters… or were they?