Chapter 93

"So, what are these mud-rhinos?" asked Ash as he and Rebecca walked through the forest.

The trees in these forests were much thicker and taller just as the Amazons were, which made Ash think there might be something in the soil or water of this place that had such effect on the living beings around them. The sacred waters must be effecting things around the surroundings over the years too.

"They are just rhinos with brown and even thicker skin then normal rhinos, they move around very slowly but can charge at you with their horns at considerable speed suddenly which might surprise you, so don't put your guard down.

Ash was reminded of the fat necked goblins he had faced earlier.

"But that's not what we are here for, " said Rebecca.

"Yeah, so you have no idea what this other thing might be, " he asked.

"No, the only predators or monsters that come in these forests, are the rhinos or wolfs or some of our enemies, " said Rebecca.

"Enemies? What enemies? I thought there wasn't any other race leaving close to here, only the small human village but that's on the other side and still pretty far," said Ash.

"There are some, but I don't think it's them, " said Rebecca.

They had walked deeper into the forest by now, and the sounds had grown quieter. Ash's senses woke up because of the eerie silence, before now he had been feeling the high intensity of mana around the amazons even more then the elves, but dipping in the sacred waters had made his senses wanting more mana all the time. So when they walked into this part of the forest and the mana intensity suddenly dropped, he was very quick to notice.

"What is it?" Rebecca asked looking at him as he stopped suddenly.

"You don't feel that?" He asked.

"What?" she asked back.

"The mana in the air, it suddenly dropped very low, " he replied.

Rebecca looked up and tried to feel what he was talking about.

"You are right, I do feel it's not like usual, " she said finally.

"It's a big difference, how can you not tell?" he asked.

"It must be because you are still in the developing stage, your mana reserves and mana holding capacity are still increasing, I on the other hand has long reached the threshold of development in that area, once that happens you stop thinking about mana that much, and so does your body," she answered.

"It's like something has sucked it all out, " he said looking around.

"No, it's like there is something here which is complete opposite of mana," Ash tried to put in words what he was feeling.

"Yeah, something's off, there are no insects or animals around, they could have ran away because of the predators, but not all of them, if something had indeed sucked all the mana away then this could happen, all living things like staying in places with mana, but then the trees and vegetaions would have suffered too, but they seem all right, " she observed.

"And I bet Yuva wouldn't have been able to notice all these things, " she added at the end.

"I think we should wait for the others, " said Rebecca.

"I think I can locate it's source, " said Ash slowly.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Ash walked ahead in one direction a few steps and the turned and walked in another until he stopped when he was facing east.

"The rotten feeling is worse here, " he said.

Rebecca understood what he was doing and nodded for him to lead the way. Ash used the void feeling in his stomach as an indicator to move through the forest. After a few minutes the feeling had gotten so bad that he was feeling the mana forcefully leave his body.

But at the next moment he also felt something enter his body, it was weird, he closed his eyes and tries to visualize it, it was as if a new type of energy had entered the universe a kind of anti-mana which negated the mana present around it.

Ash stopped clutching his stomach.

"I don't think I can walk any far from here, " he said apologizing.

"You wouldn't have to, " said Rebecca, Ash looked up at her confused, but she was looking straight ahead pointing her hand in front of her. Ash looked ahead and saw, that the black aura he had visualized as anti-mana, could actually be seen in front of them.

Like black smoke coming out of a fire, the black aura was slowly coming out from between the closely grown trees. The aura was also very weird, Ash was sure they were only able to see it, because they had been looking for it, it was actually like trying to see mana from a person's body, Ash wasn't very good at it, and he had no affinity of pure mana like Amyra, but even he could see it sometimes in different colored shades around the sacred waters. This black aura was just like that, it wasn't natural, and for sure didn't belong to their world. It wreaked of the smell of death.

It was like walking against a very wild storm. Rebecca walked forward first, Ash tried to follow her, he didn't know what she was feeling but his body just wanted to run away.

Ash had an idea and let his mana flow out of his body in great amounts, it acted as a shield which prevented the black aura to touch his skin, but in order to match the force he had to spend a lot of mana. If it went like this for too long then he would soon reach his limit just by walking towards the enemy.

But they didn't have to wait for too long for the source, because just beyond the row of trees, there was a clearing a little bit downhill from them, what they saw was a black skinned creature bent over the dead body of what must have been a very large mud-rhino. There were the sounds of flesh and bones ripping and the whole corpse was moving violently as the black creature ate through its stomach.

The black creature sat on two of it's legs which told them it wasn't a four legged animal. It's size was comaprable to the griffins, the biggest of the griffins were about half the size of a hobgoblin, but unlike hobgoblins, griffins had powerful talons and spoed, and this creature too was all muscles and looked like it could move very fast. It had two very long arms, and the bones of it's elbows had grown out of it's skin, sticking out like two spears.

Ash's eyes itched as he looked at its form like he was looking straight at the sun. Only one thought came to his mind.

"Demon, " he spoke slowly, the word held so much terror in his heart, if the demons had returned now, then he was sure there was going to be a lot of bloodshed no matter who survived.

"No, that's not a demon, " said Rebecca beside him.

Ash looked up at her.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Demons don't eat their prey like this, they have no taste for anything that is not from their world," said Rebecca.

Ash didn't know whether to feel relieved or even more worried. But just then the creature stopped eating and stood up. It stood straight up like a monkey, looked at the sky, and stayed still.

The mud-rhinos stomach was split open, it's organs spilling out, but there was still a lot of it left to eat, and the black creature could definitely eat the whole rhino easily with its size.

"Maybe it is a demon, look it didn't eat all of it, maybe it was just trying out the new food, " said Ash.

"No, it isn't a demon, trust me, but something else equally terrible, " said Rebecca.

"You stay here, let me deal with it, " said Rebecca, taking out her sword. Ash wouldn't have let her go first if she hadn't been an Amazon.

He moved aside to have a clear view of what was about to happen, if something went wrong, he would use all of his mana left, to get both of them out of there with lightning step.

The creature sensed Rebecca approaching and turned around and showed them it's front for the first time. The creature was humanoid as they had suspected, it had two eyes and a mouth. It's muscles were very similar to a human. It had an advantage in size, as it was a head taller then Rebecca but Ash had taken down opponents bigger then himself before too. With the size there usually came a hadicao too, either his opponent was too slow or too dumb. But that wasn't the case for this thing. It had very long and sharp claws and it's eyes though yellow and very ugly, had the definate signs of intelligence in them.