Evening

10. Evening.

I suppress my heartbeat and the mana flow and walk calmly in the forest while dodging twigs and brushes.

The forest is quiet and calming to walk in and as I go deeper in, I start to relax. There are small critters and birds here and there, but I ignore them since eating them wouldn’t give much sustenance and it could scare away bigger pray.

I end up near a lake where the lake shines from the setting sun, the blue water makes the scenery look tranquil.

At the edge of the water there are creatures drinking it and laying down on the ground.

They have three horns on the back of their head and their fur is brown with green hue. If I remember correctly, they are called loperdeers, where I come from there are similar creatures, but they are different color and they have more horns. They would have also noticed me already since their perception and speed is the reason why they can survive other creatures.

I walk toward them and prepare to jump at one of them when they notice me. I look at them drink water and walk next to each other, some of them are licking themselves in this group of eight loperdeers as I walk closer.

Surprisingly I got next to them without any problems. I feel kind of bad seeing them from so close living their lives in a group. It makes me think about our group.

Still I must do this so they can eat. I chop down my hand on one of the loperdeers that were walking around, and it goes through its neck chopping its head completely off.

The other loperdeers react instantly and start running away from me. I take the corpse with me and heard toward the others.

I feel sleepy as I move through the trees, but I keep moving quickly to get back to them. There are a lot of different creatures in the forest which are dangerous, and the elf can’t protect them all if a large group attacks them.

When I reach the area where I left them, I see that there is a campfire burning and there are children around it. The elf is a bit further way doing something with a pile of herbs and other things.

The fox girl is even further away holding the sword looking around the forest like she is guarding the place. Sarah is laying on the ground near the campfire with a few others.

As I walk closer the fox girl turns her head toward me first and then relaxes as she sees me and turns back to looking around.

After a few more steps the children around the campfire start turn their heads toward me.

Most of them have red faces from crying a lot and fearful expression when they look at me. When they see the corpse, I am carrying they get even more frightened.  

“I went out to catch some food for us. Does anyone want to cook?”

After saying that they looked less fearful but no one answered back. I guess I must prepare the meat myself, I wonder if the elf would want to do it?

As I was thinking the black skinned kid walks next to me and takes the corpse from my hands. I let him take it and watch as it uses its fingernail to cut the skin from the loperdeer.

It is impressive how it can cut the skin from the loperdeer with just its fingernail, even though it is a creature specialized in running away and avoiding fighting its skin is still quite tough. Normal fully-grown lizard men can barely do it and they have a lot of hand strength and sharp fingernails.

I wonder what kind of a race can do this as a child with no problems. Well it is not important right now. I turn to look at the cat girls, the bat person and Sarah that are still laying on the ground unconscious.

I walk to Sarah and shake her head to try to wake her up. Her face turns into a displeased one and then she opens her eyes.

“Brother let me sleep longer, I can skip breakfast.”

She looks at me with surprise and for a moment she looks confused but then she opens her eyes fully in shock and then her look become angry and I can see deep hatred in it.

“Where are they?”

She asks in an angry voice. The children get scared from her voice and back away from her.

“What are you going to do if you know?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I am going to kill every one of them.”

“You are not strong enough to kill them all. You would just die for nothing if you try to do it now”

“I don’t care!”

She shouts it out and her eyes start to tear up.

“I care. I don’t want to see you waste your life for nothing.”

“You only care about getting my blood and nothing else, you have all these children here so why not just drink their blood instead?”

“You don’t have to give me your blood if you don’t want to, but I am not going to let your leave until you get stronger or give up on revenge.”

“You can’t stop me!”

She screams and she bursts into flames again while trying to punch me. I grab her hand and pull her into my embrace.

“There are children here so be careful. I can fight you anytime you want but before you get strong enough you are not going anywhere.”

Her flames disappear and the strength leaves from her body as she stops struggling.

She keeps weeping and we stand there until she stops crying. I let her go and she stands there wiping off tears from her face.

I glance around and the children are still wary of us, but they aren’t as scared as they were before.

“There is a lake near here where we can drink water and clean ourselves. We can go there after we eat.”

Hearing that the children look a bit happier. I suddenly get drowsy and I go lay on the ground near the campfire.

Things should be alright here for, now right? The elf can wake me up if anything important happens.

My eyes close rapidly and my consciousness fades away.

Chapter nine. Chapter eleven