Nature Spirits

'It's already over..?' Foster thought to himself, seeing that everyone was trying to relax, with the dead bodies of giant wolves laying in front of their feet. Some of the adventurers were walking around and trying to see if there were any others around, while some of the Highland Company's employees started taking the beasts' corpses apart for the valuable materials that could be gathered from them.

"What are you doing out here? I told you to hide in the carriage." Lynol said, approaching Foster while cleaning his sword. Foster stood there and looked back, unsure what exactly he was supposed to say. It felt kind of awkward.

"I..."

"You were trying to help, right? Sorry, but right now, you are too weak." Lynol said in a blunt tone, as he picked up the wolf's head that had landed in front of Foster's feet. Without another word, Lynol turned around and brought the head to one of the employees that would pull the wolf's teeth from its jaws.

Meanwhile, Foster just stood there. Slowly, he turned around and climbed back into the carriage. He pulled the gauntlets off his hands and threw them to the side.

"The fuck am I doing..?" He quietly asked himself. Sure, he hadn't been planning on doing any sort of fighting or hunting in this world... He planned on stopping even when he was still on earth. But in the end, that was the only thing he was good at... Since all his knowledge of the stars was useless in a world where the stars were different, all that he had left was his fighting. And if Foster was 'weak'..? Then he had nothing. Nothing at all.

"...It would be great if you could talk in these situations," Foster whispered as he looked at the snake bracelet wrapped around his wrist. He sat there for a while, before Lynol returned to the carriage and sat down on his regular seat, as if nothing just happened. The two new friends sat in here in silence for a few minutes. Before the carriages started to move again.

"So you got all of them?" Foster asked, and Lynol slowly nodded his head in response, "We assume so. There might be more of their pack out there, but they let us be, it seemed. They must have noticed that they are no match against us."

"...Right." Foster replied, slowly looking up at the ceiling again, "That's good."

---

Foster hammered the thick nail into the ground like he did every night, finishing the construction of the large tent together with the other employees.

"Good work." One of the others said to Foster, who smiled lightly in response. He placed the mallet down onto the ground, as he noticed something in the corner of his eye. It was a small shadow that was moving around quickly.

Foster snapped his head to the side, and then saw the source of the shadow. It was a small... monkey-like figure. Its fur was completely black, and it seemed to be wearing a white mask on its face as it was hanging down from the side of that tree.

"What is..." Foster let out confused, when he suddenly noticed the surprise from the man next to him, "Ah! It's a nature spirit!" He exclaimed. The other employees turned toward the small pitch-black creature as well, and their faces all turned curious and excited immediately.

"I've never seen one of them in real life... They look really neat, huh?"

"It's kind of cute!"

"Haha, too bad that you can't keep them as pets."

More and more people started gathering around, curiously looking at that thing... It didn't seem to be dangerous, and Foster had no idea why it was supposed to be so special. Although, with the name 'Nature Spirit', he could just guess what kind of being it was supposed to be. Foster slowly turned around and left as more people gathered.

And to his surprise, more of those nature spirits appeared all around the camp.

"Wow, I heard they don't come too close to people..." Foster heard someone say as they tried to squat down in front of one of the nature spirits. But the moment they tried, the spirit simply disappeared. It was as if their bodies were made of smoke that dissipated the moment someone tried to make physical contact with them.

Foster was a bit confused as to how that was possible, but considering that he was in a world where magic existed and plenty of people seemed to have abilities that were at a superhuman level compared to what he knew of from earth, maybe that was something surprisingly normal. None of the others seemed weirded out by it, at least.

Foster even spotted Lynol looking at one of the Nature Spirits. It was actually a pretty funny sight, since they looked quite similar to one another, with Lynol wearing his cloak and mask. It was like the two of them were just staring at each other, like they were looking into the mirror.

After letting out a slight laugh, Foster noticed that one of the nature spirits was right next to him. Like, 'right' next to him, maybe just a meter away from his head. It was staring at him, or at least it seemed that way. Although, it was kind of different when compared to the others. Foster might be imagining it, but he could swear that he could see some small white dots hidden in the Nature Spirit's fur, although they disappeared just a moment after Foster noticed them, even before he could really fully acknowledge them.

Foster stretched his hand out toward it, but didn't touch it of course. He would be an idiot to try and touch a wild animal. He simply held his hand in front of it, and tried to see if it would do something itself. And just like Foster had hoped, this Nature Spirit slowly pushed its hand forward toward his own, its small paw that seemed like its hand could just barely be wrapped around his finger. It was really quite cute.

For just a moment, Foster's finger touched the spirit's hand, and it felt like a slight tingle traveled through him on top of his skin. But before the spirit did anything further than that, some big oaf absolutely ruined it.

"Yo, what're you doing there?" Octer asked as he approached Foster. The Nature Spirit flinched and pulled its hand back, immediately climbing higher up onto the tree that it was hanging from just now. With an annoyed, wry smile, he turned his head to the side to look at this probably 7 feet tall idiot that just ruined this cute moment for him.

"What do you want, Octer?" Foster asked, clearly bothered, when Octer scratched the back of his head, "Don't treat me that way, man... I just saw you were playin' with that Nature Spirit, so I wanted to..."

"You wanted to scare it away to suck all joy out of this trip for me?"

"...I wanted to play with it as well, aight?" Octer replied bluntly, and Foster rolled his eyes, "How can you go from a big fucking dickhead that does nothing but get drunk, over to someone that wants to cuddle a nature spirit in a matter of minutes? Did that Dwarven Spirit mess with your brain or something?"

"Hey hey, you're being a bit mean... Aren't we friends now or something?"

"...Something like that. I would compare our relationship more to... Meat shield and-"

"Right, right, I get it already..." Octer groaned with a wry smile, looking up the tree, "It's just been a while since I've seen a nature spirit. And even then, I've never seen this many at once. They're super cute, right?" He pointed out with a broad, borderline disgusting grin on his face, although Foster didn't know how he was supposed to reply.

"I mean, they do look pretty cool. I've never seen one of them before... What even are they?" Foster asked bluntly. Lately, he noticed that while people ended up looking at him somewhat weird depending on the exact question, but overall he could ask anyone anything about this world and they would diligently answer if they knew about it. That was the benefit of a medieval level of information accessibility, nobody judged him for not knowing anything.

Octer crossed his arms and thought for a moment, "Well... They're just nature spirits, y'know? The incarnation of... nature."

Well, that was the case at least when people knew what they were talking about.

"I'll just ask Lynol." Foster rolled his eyes.

"Oi..."