(30) Fools

Geth woke up, soaked in a cold sweat. He looked around, his staff lay beside him and he was laying on the giant branch from before. After patting himself down quickly, he pressed his palms to the sides of his head, he had a terrible headache.

The dream he'd just had was already trying to escape from his mind. He grasped at it as best he could, but it soon faded away, leaving only whispers in his mind about what he had dreamt.

There was no sleeping with his head hurting the way it was. The dream had now completely slipped his mind, the most he could recall was the feeling of sorrow and the sight of a massive tree.

He shook his head and looked up at the stars through the canopy of the trees. This world was beautiful, with no city lights hindering the view. There was something different from before he fell asleep.

The Mana in the air was easier to see. It was beautiful. Soft blue mist-like tendrils slithered back and forth in the air. The Mana would occasionally take vague shapes of many odd-looking creatures. It reminded him of what clouds would sometimes look like when they took on odd shapes.

Albus shortly interrupted his observations.

:An unknown force has entered your mind. Mana Sense has been upgraded to Level 3:

'What...?' He didn't know what to think. Geth simply spent the rest of the time observing the different forms of the Mana, until the dawn broke and Til started to stir.

There were no incidents, and no patrols came near them during the night. Before they left the woodline, they shared one of the large fruits from the Dungeon.

Geth handed him one of the makeshift canteens so that they could drink while they walked. Til was pretty impressed by his creation and asked him for more details of what he could do.

"I can pretty much make anything 6 cubic inches in size or less, though it can't be complicated. It can be pretty difficult working in details at my current level." He'd told him.

"What about arrows?"

"Well, I could make arrowheads, the shaft would probably be too heavy if the entire thing was stone." Geth thought for a bit before continuing, "It might be possible with the crazy Strength one can obtain now, but you would have to have a bowstring strong enough not to snap as well."

'It's likely that there are creatures that can provide materials for that. If someone had some crazy 1000 pound draw bow they should easily be able to fire stone arrows. With enough practice, I could make the shafts hollow to make them lighter, but it would still require an unnaturally strong bow and draw strength.'

The land they were walking through was a large hilled area, it was barely possible to make out the next wooded area they had to cross far in the distance. As they were walking over the next small ridge, Geth noticed a body at the foot of the hill.

They had to head in that direction. As they approached, the smell of death assaulted them. Geth pushed the body over with his foot and found a Goblin corpse underneath. Both bodies had been stabbed multiple times.

He looked at the face of the man and felt that he looked familiar. He thought for a while and realized that the guy was a cop in his area. He didn't know the man, but he had a vague feeling he'd been pulled by him before.

He scratched his head for a minute and shrugged it off, picking up the daggers that both the man and creature had and storing them. 'The decay rate is unnaturally fast, it must be the Mana trying to maintain a clean environment.'

He could see the misty lines of the Mana eating away at the corpses, seemingly using them as sustenance. As the Mana slowly decomposed their bodies, the mist would grow slightly thicker.

Geth was interested in the process, but they had to keep going. The two of them walked to the top of the next small hill. A breeze drifted up just as they peeked the top and a vile smell assaulted their senses.

Once crossing over, they looked down at the backside of the hill into the small valley below. Corpses were piled in the middle and littered the sides of the surrounding hills. Most were mutilated beyond recognition.

There were men, women, children, and Goblins all scattered throughout. It looked like there had been some deaths by stabbing initially, but the bodies looked mangled as if some type of beast had interrupted the fight.

Blood dyed the light green of the hills and had run down to form a small pool in the valley. At this point, the pool was nothing but a massive clot, with bits and pieces of organs and flesh stuck inside.

It was a truly gruesome sight. Both men's faces paled, and they began to look around for an idea of what they had been facing. "Whatever it was, this must-have happened early on," Til called out to him. "All of these Goblins are either holding normal sticks or those small daggers. Likely, there were none above level 4 or 5. That should place this incident around four days ago.

It sounded likely and looking at the debris scattered around, it looked like these people had tried to build a shelter in the bottom of the valley.

"Fools," Geth said, looking at the broken bodies of the small children. "Even if building a settlement is natural, this is the second set of idiots I've seen try to do it out in the open. There's no cover or territorial advantage here.

Come on, whatever ended this fighting shouldn't be around anymore. The only reason it came was to destroy this settlement. It's either back at its Dungeon, or destroying someone else's hope."