Hidden in the night

Lumen and Qu Quan had taken the first shift of the night watch. The night was quiet which was wonderful at first, until they realised that they were in the middle of a forest filled with beasts and who knows how many other humans. There were no howls, no screeches, no roars or even the hoots of any owls. All one could hear was the rustling of the leaves in the breeze.

The two watchmen's responsibility was simple and easy to understand. All they had to do was to keep an eye on their surroundings, using both their eyes and ears as the silent environment may have been quite unsettling; it provided a perfect opportunity for the two of them to hear any attackers easier in the silence.

Lumen was doing his routine walk around the camp, surveying the perimeter of the makeshift border they had marked. The location of their camp was rather suited to their situation, unless any suspecting enemies wanted to cause a commotion by going through the pond, they were locked to the other three directions of attack, making it easier to defend.

However there were trees and bushes all around them from every other direction, which in conjunction with the darkness of the night only made finding any anomalies or suspected attackers beforehand only made the job of being the night watchman even harder. Any number of enemies could have them surrounded from those directions right now and they wouldn't even know it until they attacked.

The group could only place their hopes on Qu Quan's 'Hawk eyes' talent that provided her better vision at night to spot any attackers.

But even she needed sleep so they couldn't rely solely on her.

The group could only sleep in the cold darkness as having a fire burning all night would only be the most obvious and cliché way to give their location away.

Their enemies included both humans and beasts and both of them knew the basic fact that, where there is fire, there is people.

With how boring it was to stare into the darkness for 4 hours straight, Lumen could only preoccupy his mind with other things.

One of these being the fact that the night is so silent.

Although it seems eerie being in such a scenario, Lumen looked at the bright side of it in that it probably meant that the beasts inhabiting this forest weren't nocturnal, meaning that they could get a moment of respite and actually rest after long days of surviving.

Even the big rat like rodent creatures they had battled earlier would normally be seen mostly at night if this were back on Earth, the fact that their behaviour was different and they were openly drinking from a pond mid day only made him believe his theory even more.

However this could only mean that the enemies to be worried about at night would be humans then, complicating his situation.

His vigilance remained high as his theory still remained just as that, a theory.

He had seen other floating platforms in the distance at the start of the tutorial and from how far away they were where the figures on them looked like specs he could tell that the distance between them and other humans would be measured in the dozens of kilometres, but he didn't throw away his thoughts of one of these groups spending the whole day travelling in their direction.

It had only been around half a day and it wouldn't be impossible for other people to have reached them by now.

The minutes soon turned into hours and his boredom caught up with him again. Sitting still and staring keeping an eye out while walking the perimeter every now and then may sound easy but keeping up his concentration and focus on his surroundings at all times was getting tiring for him.

Qu Quan seemed to be doing well herself in this regard but was still showing signs of tiredness and boredom.

Lumen was about to walk over to her side and start a chat with her over anything he could think of as he was simply too bored and his lack of sleep was getting to him.

But before he even made half the distance between them, he heard a sudden rustle from the bush he had just turned his back to.

His focus was wavering and so he was a little slow on the uptake at first, but it only took him half a second to register the sound and turn around with full focus in the direction of the sound. There was something distinct about this sound that instinctively gave him the feeling that it wasn't caused by the wind.

He kept his concentration entirely on the bushes in front of him as he slowly approached, making sure to keep his steps quiet. As he got closer he could now hear slight rustling that he couldn't hear when he was further away. It seemed only he had noticed this slight commotion in the bushes as Qu Quan still remained concentrated on her own area.

He drew his spear as he neared the bush, prepared for anything to suddenly jump out at him at a moment's notice.

With his high stats, naturally his bodily responses would be faster than an ordinary human and they showed at this moment.

He felt movement in the bush in front of him, however before whatever was in the bush could lunge at him, he reacted quicker and thrusted his spear into the bush, meeting resistance when he pushed it in and a fleshy sound of something being ripped.

It seemed his instincts had played out well for him as it seemed he had quickly dispatched of the unexpected attacker, as after the final loud rustle of the bush from his jab, no more sounds came from the bush.

Right as he was about to check his system messages to see what exactly he had just killed, a multitude of movements and sounds suddenly flushed him and Qu Quan from many different directions. Many shadowy and dark figures came out of bushes from every direction, totalling to 6 overall.

He couldn't properly tell what they were, but their humanoid figures were clear.