The trail out

"Two for the city, one against. Gleidon, you are overruled by the majority."

"Damn! Fine. But we still have to rest before going anywhere."

"Let's go back to the river, guys. My waterskin is almost empty, and I don't want to look up that tree all night if we already decided to forget about the kobold."

And just like that, with not much enthusiasm, but with no more arguing, the adventurers walked away. I watched them until they disappeared behind the trees and only then finally straightened up from my crouched hiding pose.

Lines and lines of plans and calculations ran through my mind. If these adventurers went back to their city, then by tracking them I would find a way to the human civilisation. They would move much slower than I could do on my wings, but it will spare me potentially long search. Or I can track the adventurers until I learn a general direction they travel in, and then find their city on my own, from the sky. That would be the fastest option.

Civilisation… it beckoned me with the promise of many human pleasures, as well as knowledge. Pest had let it slip that humans had some way to exorcise him, and there I would be able to get rid of him. First, though, I would have to evolve into a human or something human-like enough to pass like one. That would require a noticeable amount of EXP… which I could easily get at human settlements, where cattle runs abundant, easy to hunt.

Most humans, from what I imagined, would be an easy prey as well. Not everyone was an adventurer, that I knew, but the thought of eating an adventurer filled my mind with saliva. They had all sorts of abilities to them, and I was sure that they would be much richer on EXP than normal humans. Just like the horned mouse—Berserker Mouse, the adventurers called it—was much richer on EXP than a creature of its size should've been.

For now, though, I simply flew several trees away and made myself a web hammock to sleep in. I had to give the humans a time to get away at a safe distance, and give myself time to heal the hole in my wing. I had no intentions of getting shot again.

⠀⠀

The adventurers didn't even try to hide their tracks. I thought I would need to spend EXP on evolving an enhanced sense of smell, but without a rain, it was easy to follow their progress just by the displaced leaves and broken branches they left in their wake. Not to mention, campfires. If I flew above the forest, I could see a thin wisp of smoke every evening.

I only had to follow the adventurers for a couple of days to realise that they were moving along the riverbank all that time. It made sense when I thought about it further. Water was necessary for all life, and cities had a lot of life—humans—in it, so they would need a lot of water. Building your cities next to rivers, lakes and other natural and big water sources was a next logical step.

And now that I knew all that, I didn't need to follow the adventurers anymore. I was free to do with them anything I wanted… So I left them alone and flew away.

Delicious as they were, I had little idea of what they could do, except that they could explode an entire kobold village with their magic. I could've used the cover of the night to slit their throats in their sleep, except that they always had someone on watch. It was a risk that simply wasn't worth it, not when I had a direction towards a place full of easy prey.

This was a life of a predator. Calculating one's risks. In Hell, even if I died, that just meant that I had to work from the ground up again. This time, I didn't have second chances. If I died, gods would definitely use this opportunity to imprison or torture my soul until there would be nothing left from me except for a shard of a soul thrown into the Wheel of Reincarnation. Exactly like it happens with those souls in Hell who aren't strong or fortunate enough to find an escape from its eternal sufferings.

My wings buzzed thunderously as I flew over the green sea of the forest. The blue ribbon of the river shone beneath me, like a guiding line pointing at my destination.

'Don't fucking go there! You are just going to get yourself killed, and where the fuck that will leave me? Voreeeeen!' Pest's howling was quieter than my wings, but to my great unhappiness, I still heard it perfectly well. 'The mountains. Fly to the fucking mountains and there will be all the food you'd want, I swear.'

He had been like that ever since I began to follow the adventurers, but now that I flew towards human civilisation on my own, Pest's attempts to turn me away became even more insistent and even more annoying. I growled.

'Shut up! I'm going to bash my skull on the rocks if that's the thing that will stop your whining! What idiot do you think I'm? These mountains probably called Dark Mountains of Death and Doom or something and filled with monsters to the brim.'

'The idiot here is you! These are just Blue Mountains! What kind of stupid fuck will call anything Dark Mountains of Doom? That's just so… Oh, dammit. You just don't give up.'

Pest went silent, and in the next moment I found the reason for a sudden change in attitude. For the first time I could see it. Just a thin line on the horizon, but it was unmistakable.

The end of the forest.