Monster

Even after Gardos had shown her the border of the territory and answered all her questions, he had still continued to show her around and teach her a little. He had shown her many of the important places in their territory and especially taught her how to scale walls.

Since the terrain in the woods was much more irregular than the roofs, she only needed to learn how to see the paths. Learning how to scale the often very smooth walls, however, was much harder than climbing a tree. The reason why she was still faster than Gardos, was once again thanks to her ancient blood.

The combination of her legs that had almost the strength as an adults, combined with her comparably small body that barely weights 30kg, gave her a pretty ridiculous jumping power.

Originally Gardos actually had planned to see how well Alice would be able to climb walls and had even chosen a fairly easy one that was barely over 1,5 meters tall. Never before had he sported such a dumbfounded expression as when he saw what Alice did. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, she jumped up and didn't even need to use her hands to pull herself up.

He wasn't sure if he should be impressed or depressed. He had originally been rather proud of the fact that he could scale this kind of wall in under five seconds. As so often did he feel the unfairness of the power a mutation could give you, and it felt even worse as when he compared himself with the others in the group.

Actually, everyone in the group had a mutation of some kind, which was what gave their small group the necessary power to keep their own territory.

But of all of them, Gardos always thought that he had the most useless mutation. Yes, he had almost inexhaustible stamina, but what good did it do him beside tiring out those who tried to catch him?

In the end, he didn't dwell long on the thought. If he hadn't been good enough, he wouldn't have become part of the guardians in the first place. The only thing he could do was his best.

In the end, Gardos still taught Alice some tricks and techniques to climb walls. Although she didn't have any problems with the walls in their territory since it was on the border between the market and commoner district, thus having no buildings with more then one floor, who knew if she would stay with them. Although they were trying to recruit her, if it didn't work, it would be good if she at least thought of them as friends.

In the end, they only returned to the hideout about an hour before the sun would touch the horizon.

...

"Good, now that everyone is here, make your reports!", Alex said hoping for good news no matter how small.

"I saw that guy for a moment, but as soon as he saw me, he disappeared in a crowd and I lost him.", Jayden reported.

Forster only shook his head.

"I overheard some guards on the market, seems like they will conduct a raid within two weeks if nothing changes.", Eric added.

At last, Gardos said: "Nothing about that Dick. But I doubt that he will get away from Alice as long as he can't hide. She has one monstrous pair of legs."

"Care to explain?", Alex asked.

"Well, I asked her to get down and then back up. She jumped."

"You shouldn't do something so reckless! We can't have you twist your ankle now!", Gale scolded her.

"No no, she jumped, both ways, she didn't even need her hands! And I'm ashamed to say, but she managed to keep up with me for some time while I used my speed mantra.", Gardos explained.

"Hey, didn't you say you're an allrounder? Arent people like that supposed to be stronger in general but weaker than specialists?", Eric asked flabergasted.

"Hoo, that's impressive, if that's true I totally understand why the foxes couldn't catch you back then.", Alex said and added: "Our talk with the bears went fairly well. After hearing us out, they decided to strengthen the guards on the border to the foxes territory, so they can't help us much, but we get help from one of their adults, and that's the most important!"

"Adults? why would they help us?", Alice asked, confused.

"Right, you don't know. The bears work closely together with an orphanage. The bears help them if there isn't enough of pretty much anything, which by the way, is always the case. In turn, the people at the orphanage help them in any way possible as well. The good thing about having an adult on our side is that we can work together with the stall owners in the market.

Normally, if one of us were to come close to them, they would just chase us away. And that's the best case, the worst would be if they catch us. But if an adult comes to talk with them, there is a certain chance that they will work together with us. After all, its better for them if things go back to how they were instead of us getting driven away.", Alex explained to Alice.

"Because there would be no one that controls this territory if the guardians had to leave, right?"

"Right, as soon as the guards disappear, there would be several groups fighting each other over this territory. This would result in even more thefts and probably some corpses too, and nobody wants that. Normally, if there was one raid there will always be a second one. And the group that survives the second raid is the one that takes control over the territory. Most of the time anyway."

"Y-you mean they would kill each other?!", Alice asked, shocked.

After a moment, Alice remembered that Gardos had mentioned something similar, still, she just couldn't accept something like that, not after experiencing her own family getting killed.

When Alice thought about that, the hatred and anger that were rooted somewhere deep down in her mind suddenly boiled up again, even showing in her eyes for a moment.

Luckily Forster was the only one who seemed to have realized something, Alice thought when she saw the mysterious look that he gave her. She hoped that those boys would never see this side of her, which even she herself feared. Never in her life had she felt like this, no matter what happened or how annoying and unreasonable Michael had been, she had never been so angry. It had only appeared after that boy stole her fathers' staff, but ever since then could she feel it somewhere deep down, like a monster lurking in the shadows of her mind, only waiting to break free.

Never in her life had she been so afraid of something as she was right now of herself.