One down

The next day at the crack of dawn, everyone in the team was already awake but the mood of the makeshift camp was heavy.

Today was going to be the day they finally put an end to the Mantis beast hive.

Brute's once excited and jovial self had turned into a serious and rage filled husk as his gaze just wandered off to some place in the distance.

Everyone was affected by the heavy mood, including Alex.

"We should set off as soon as we can. Beasts like Mantises also need to rest at night so the chances are they are still somewhere near the marks Joanne found last night." Raymond however seemed less affected than everyone else as his expressions or usual emotions didn't change. He only spoke a little less.

"Gather all your belongings, we leave in 5 minutes-" It seemed Raymond had developed a habit of being cut off while he was in the middle of saying something, as Alex spoke up this time.

"Wait, where's Rotnam?"

Silence encompassed the now group of eight as everyone looked around them, only to see no sign whatsoever of Rotnam.

"That's not right, we all saw him last night right before we went to sleep. If he decided to leave or something happened to him during the night, then shouldn't we have heard something and woken up?" A member of the team Alex had forgotten the name of spoke this time with genuine confusion in his voice.

The eight of them stood motionless, looking at each other in uneasy silence. Many suspicious glares were thrown around and an ominous feeling settled in their chests — if the worst case scenario were true and something could get close enough to the group to snatch one of their own away without any of them noticing, even the E- rank adventurer Raymond, then they were well and truly in all sense of the word, fucked.

At the same time as everyone was digesting the fact Rotnam had just disappeared, nervous laughter filled the void created by the silence.

"Haha, well on the bright side at least he still left his supplies here." Raymond felt his nerves crawl when he noticed how Rotnam's gear was still with the group.

'If even Raymond is this nervous then this mission just keeps getting even more dangerous and ominous.'

This could only mean one thing — the worst case scenario.

"We should get moving, if there is something out there targeting us then we don't want to stay here any longer." Joanne said and started moving towards the direction of the Mantises before she even finished speaking.

***

After hours of travelling, the group reached a crevasse and deep inside one could see faint marks in the ground where it looked like a group had passed through.

With the lack of any vegetation in the crevasse, it was easy to pick out these marks. Nobody needed Joanne to point them out for them as everyone had already noticed them the moment they reached the cliff edge.

"That's the marks left behind by the Mantis beasts, they have to be hiding in a cave deeper in this ravine somewhere."

A glint could be seen in everyone's eyes as Joanne confirmed their thoughts.

They were finally going to complete their mission today!

The incident involving Rotnam's disappearance weighed heavily on everyone's mind and this new source of good news provided a ray of hope for them.

By now, everyone but Raymond and Joanne were just desperate to complete the mission and earn their share of beast cores before they could get out of this godforsaken and creepy forest! 

It took a few minutes but Raymond found a place for the group to descend down into the crack in the earth, where the group were required to jump from a 10 metre height down to the floor below.

For unawakened people, a fall like this was almost certain death or severe leg damage at least, but for awakened F and F+ rank adventurers like Alex and the others it was just a few bumps and scratches. For Raymond he didn't even break a sweat falling from such a height.

The wilderness was not a place for normal humans to venture into.

Several dozen minutes passed and the eight adventurers had slowly ventured deeper into the crack, so deep in fact that there was no longer any sunlight above their heads. Wherever the path Joanne took, the others including Raymond followed.

The group's only source of light was some sort of magic flashlight Raymond had fished out of his backpack. Normal technology from the Federation didn't work inside the Primordial Expanse so they had to use a rather expensive alternative with Magical artifacts that harnessed the energy of the Primordial Expanse.

Then, at some point a few hundred metres in, a yellowish light could be seen far ahead of them. It was like a lighthouse in a vast and endless dark ocean, and it drew the group of eight straight into it as soon as they noticed it.

"This light looks different from ours… It looks like it's coming from some sort of fire." Alex voiced his thoughts aloud for the rest of the group to hear.

Alex had spent his whole life in deep and dark caves lit up by all different means of lighting, so he was the most experienced out of all of them in this sort of environment.

He was 100% sure the light ahead was coming from some sort of fire, and judging by the distance between the group and the light, it was a pretty decent sized fire too.

Raymond and Joanne glanced at Alex for a few seconds when he revealed the source of the light, and they looked at each other with a few odd looks before they shifted their gaze away from each other.

No one but the two of them knew what they were thinking at that moment.

"The Mantises are probably over there. The village was destroyed by a fire too."