The group stood in a loose circle around the tree. Its trunk was irregular in shape and perhaps around two feet across at the widest point. Its branches stretched out to cover them with wide green leaves multiple feet above their heads. The canopy rustled gently in the wind as they studied it.

“You sure, Captain?” Leo asked, “Cause this doesn’t exactly look like a secret entrance.”

Octavius nodded, not taking his eyes off the tree. “It is,” he affirmed, “I used my shadow sense like radar to get a general idea of what’s underground. There’s a pillar of rock coming straight up to the base of the tree.”

The younger marine nodded and returned to studying the tree. “Alright,” he said slowly, “But then how do they get in and out?”

Octavius merely shrugged in response. After a long moment, Bill drew a hatchet from a loop on his belt. The older man looked inquiringly at Octavius, and the soldier hesitated for a moment before shaking his head.

“No,” he said slowly, “We can’t leave too much evidence that we were here.”

“What about our footprints, then?” Caster asked, gesturing at the mound of dirt around them, “We haven’t exactly been discrete.”

Octavius frowned slightly at that. He had considered that but hadn’t come up with a solution. Since the tutorial started, the humans had gotten good at melee fighting along and in small groups. However, they had focused on fighting beasts.

His group was probably one of the only ones to have actual team-based combat training, and even that was only half a dozen hours for most of them. Leo and Marcus had much more training than that, but learning how to coordinate sectors of fire and room clearing was hardly the best training for large-scale melee engagements. In the end, even if his team was probably the best within the Sanctuary, they weren’t trained in everything that might have been useful.

“We’ll cover it up as best we can,” he said slowly, “But then we’re just gonna have to hope that they don’t notice it before we can figure out what to do with the entrance.”

It irked the operator in him to leave something like that up to chance, but he knew that that was the way that some things were. When planning for a mission, there is always a luck factor. It is the job of those doing the planning to make it as inconsequential as possible.

“Raj, I need you to run back to the camp,” he ordered, “Tell the captains that we think we’ve found the entrance. It’s small, and it’ll take us a few minutes to get through when we get the go-ahead. We’re going to wait here and guard it. Tell them to start planning something before nightfall, and they try to come out for another raid.”

True to his character, the Indian man nodded and rushed off without a word. Octavius hoped that this was the only exit. The fact that there were only two pairs of footprints made him doubt that, however. Three thrall elites were a plausible number considering the number of human casualties, but it was always possible that more thralls had been part of the attack.

There wasn’t a change in the status of Jabir in the corner of his vision, and that set him more at ease. Even so, his hand gripped his spear tightly as he stood sentinel over the tree. The rest of the group spread out. Some faced outward, ready to deter any beasts that approached, while others sat with their backs against other trees or began to train.

Octavius felt a swell of pride grow in him. The tutorial had become a trial by fire for the warriors of humanity. Those that survived the grueling ordeal came out forged and sharp. It reminded him of his own Delta Force selection, if less physically demanding. Still, these people, students and hunters all, now had the natural instinct to always be improving themselves.

As he slowly patrolled around the tree in tight circles, he began to control a thin sliver of shadow. It was not enough to do anything, or even enough to require a noticeable amount of mana. What it did do was help him train his control, even while concentrating on something else. In this case, that something else was the tree.

Time passed quickly as nothing eventful happened whatsoever. Over the course of an hour, their vigilance had generally degraded to being alert and taking turns watching the tree. Octavius was engaged in a conversation with Caster about what he’d discovered of shadow magic when he was interrupted mid-sentence by Jean.

Her cold voice was tinged with uncertainty at that moment. “Hey guys!” she called out to them, “Can you hear that, or did I not get enough sleep?”

Octavius pushed himself off the tree he’d been leaning against and hurried over to her. As he approached, a faint buzzing sound reached him.

“Hear what?” Finn asked as he followed the soldier to the tree.

“It’s soft, but it sounds like scraping or something, I think,” Jean responded.

Octavius frowned deeply. He could see how the buzzing he heard could be interpreted like that. Closing his eyes, he listened intently.

“I hear it, too,” he said, “And whatever it is, it’s coming from the tree.”

The others eyed the tree in concern as the sound grew louder and louder. Octavius knew that Bill had the highest perception stat out of the eight of them, so he wasn’t surprised when he was the first to identify the sound. The old hunter crouched down and held his ear against a root of the tree before speaking.

“It almost sounds like footsteps,” he said, “Just very distorted.”

Octavius’s eyes widened. “What do you mean by distorted?” he asked, “Distorted like perhaps the echo of a thrall climbing a ladder in a thin stone tunnel?”

The older man’s tongue flashed out, and he licked his lips before he nodded. “That’d do it,” he concluded.

“Shit.”

Octavius wasn’t sure who said the word. He was far too focused on what to do. If a thrall elite came out during daylight, they were all but guaranteed to find evidence of his party’s presence. No matter how much they had tried to remove their footprints and the other evidence, it was far from able to hold up to intense scrutiny.

No, he decided, If a thrall comes up now, we’ll have to attack. We might not get another chance to take out the stone shapers and maybe even free the slaves. Damnit! This isn’t how this was supposed to go! Why are they coming out at midday?

“Toby!” he snapped, “Sprint back to the camp and tell them that thralls are coming up the tunnel. If they discover our presence, the best-case scenario is that they close it off, and we lose the chance to use it. Tell the captains to start whatever distraction they came up with now! Ok? We’ll wait as long as we can, but get them to hurry.”

He didn’t like sending one of his more capable fighters away, but he doubted that the massive young man would even fit down the tunnel. It was built for and by thralls, after all. As Toby broke into his long, loping stride toward the camp, Octavius began issuing orders to the others.

“Spread out!” he directed, “Stay close and hide as well as you can!”

They slit up and hid behind the nearby trees and bushes. Octavius himself crouched low in front of the tree and circled it slowly, ready for whatever would come out. His hands were steady on the shaft of his SoulSilver spear, and he debated creating a shadow grenade just in case. After a moment, he decided against it. The mana expenditure just wouldn’t be worth it.

The noise grew louder and louder until he was able to make it out clearly. It was definitely distorted, so he couldn’t be sure what it was. Even so, the sound could definitely have been made by a thrall climbing up the tunnel and the sound then reverberating in the confined space before being muffled by the tree.

As whatever was climbing the tunnel drew closer, the echo decreased, and Octavius was able to count the number of thralls. He couldn’t be sure, but he would guess either two or three of them were quickly approaching.

The sound grew closer and closer until it seemed that they were only a handful of feet away. Then, it stopped. Octavius found himself holding his breath as he waited for something to happen. A strange creaking sound reached his ears, and he realized that something, probably a wood shaper, was opening a path through the tree itself.

He made short circles around the base of the tree, looking for wherever they would come out. His eye caught the dirt shifting at the bottom of the tree between two roots. Slowly, it seemed to cave in slightly, and he realized how the thralls got out of the tunnel. They didn’t need the tree to be big enough to stand in; they just needed the base of the tree to be large enough to support a small hole to climb through.

He quickly positioned himself just to the side of where they would come out. If they were forced to crawl through a small opening, they wouldn’t even have their weapons in hand and wouldn’t be able to see him coming.

Lifting a hand, he waved Marcus over to him. The marine moved quickly and silently from behind a tree, spear in hand. He moved to crouch on the opposite side of the opening as Octavius and pointed his spear at the opening.

The thralls moved in silence as the hole opened just enough to crawl through. Octavius caught a flash of gray skin and a similar colored robe as the thrall crawled out of the tunnel on its stomach.

Wood shaper, he realized. The thrall moved until only its legs were inside of the tree. Octavius nodded to Marcus, and the man drew his spear back. The thrall rolled over and saw them. It didn’t even have the time to widen its eyes before the marine’s spear pierced its eye.

Octavius silently stepped forward and grabbed the thrall around the shoulders, and dragged it away from the tree. Blood dripped from the hole where its eye used to be, and Octavius dropped the body just out of sight.

He returned to the tree to find a thrall elite climbing from the tunnel. Octavius drew back his spear and waited until the thrall’s back was exposed. His spear flashed as it caught a ray of sunlight. It flew forward as he activated instant thrust.

The blade slammed into the back of the thrall’s neck just as it jerked its head to the side and hardened the skin. It’s point bit an inch into the flesh of the thrall’s neck before the now hard exoskeleton brought it to a sudden halt.

The thrall threw itself from the tunnel and came up in a roll. Before it had even gotten to its feet, Octavius and Marcus were on it. Their spears thrust forward in an alternating pattern, never giving the thrall a chance to counterattack. It drew the long blade on its belt and used it to parry Marcus’s thrust.

Octavius leapt forward and aimed a stab at its eye, only for it to turn its head slightly. The blade scraped harmlessly off the scalp of the thrall, and he quickly withdrew. The thrall moved to attack but stumbled when it was struck in the back.

Octavius took advantage of the moment to drop his spear and leap forward. His right hand closed around the thrall’s four-fingered hand that held its blade. Taking advantage of his weight, he forced the thrall to slam onto the ground.

As he fell on top of it, his left hand had already drawn the dagger at his own waist and stabbed it forward. Putting his weight into the attack, he forced the blade straight into the thrall’s eye socket. It went limp as a blue message flashed at the edge of his vision.

You have slain Kazlik- Thrall (F) (Lvl 31) and gained 5290 EXP (1/2)(31)(1)(3)(1.25)(100)(.91)

His eyes landed on a pair of boots in front of him, and he followed them upward to Finn’s grinning face. Jumping to his feet, he scooped up his spear and whirled around to find another thrall elite locked in combat with Marcus and Jean. Even with the reach offered by their weapons, they were on the backfoot. The only reason that they hadn’t been killed was the constant stream of blue orbs of mana that Caster fired at the thrall every couple of seconds.

Octavius grabbed the butt of his spear as he charged forward. He spun the polearm around him in a wide arc. It slammed into the side of the thrall like a baseball bat. A loud crack echoed from the clearing as the thrall stumbled away from the impact, the exoskeleton on his shoulder cracked and leaking blood.

Octavius grimaced and nearly dropped the spear as the reverberations of the strike were transferred straight down his arms. He shifted his now numb hands to a more standard grip and moved to attack the thrall, only to find it falling to the ground, its eye socket smoking from a mana bullet impact.

It let out a wail of pain and slashed wildly with its blade, and Octavius leapt on it, driving his spear into its ruined eye while it was still reeling from the mage’s attack.

You have slain Gulkri - Thrall (F) (Lvl 31) and gained 4244 EXP (1/2)(31)(1)(3)(1.25)(100)(.73)

The party all spun as a group to face any more enemies that might come crawling out of the tunnel but were greeted by silence. Octavius moved carefully forward to the tunnel in the base of the tree and peered inside.

The tunnel was thin and irregular, stretching down into the darkness below. A small glowing orb of light was hovering at the top, and a pinprick of light was visible far below. His posture relaxed slightly, and he let out the breath he’d been holding. If there was a fourth thrall that tried to go get reinforcements, he’d still be able to see it.

“Alright, we’re clear,” he called out, and the party relaxed slightly. They stood in a relieved silence for a long moment before Marcus spoke up.

“So, what do we do now?” he asked.

Octavius worried at his lower lip for a moment. “We’ll have to start the attack soon, or else risk being discovered. I bet we can wait maybe half an hour, any more than that and we’d be really pushing it,” he reasoned, “In the meantime, loot the dead thralls and prepare yourselves.”

The party found the same gear as the first elite that Octavius had killed on the two that they did, minus valerian extract. The small assassin’s blades weren’t coated in the valerian extract either. Instead, they showed a different message when identify was used on them.

Assassin’s Blade (Uncommon) - A short steel dagger crafted through magic and skill. It has been imbued with deadly Saihi poison. Uses Remaining (1/1) Poison will degrade in (27:51)

After he read that, Octavius handled the blades with care as he secreted two on his person and distributed the others around the party. The vials with the scorpions were placed in a pouch on his belt, and he replaced his small dagger with one of their long knives.

The group waited for fifteen minutes before Raj returned. The Indian man hurried over, eyeing the three thrall corpses before he spoke. The man had a soft voice, with a strange lilting quality to it.

“They had already started to plan a distraction when Toby arrived,” he said, “They’ll start as soon as they can. Less than half an hour from now.”

Octavius thanked the man and slowly exhaled. We would be cutting it close, he decided as he eyed the tutorial timer. It showed the time to be 1011. Raj prepared himself for sneaking in, and the group watched the clock count down to 10:30 in the morning. As soon as the timer reached the half-hour mark, Octavius led the way into the tunnel.

They would just have to trust Robert and the others to do their job so that they could deal with the stone shapers and possibly help to free the slaves. As his boots scraped against a rough stone indent in the wall of the tunnel, he knew that this was their best chance to buy time. Without stone shapers, they’d be able to trap the thralls much more effectively and give themselves time to level up. If the stone shapers remained in play, however, it was only a matter of time before they built a massive tunnel behind the human camp and forced a pitched battle on even footing.

Robert ground his teeth together as he hurried the men and women along and down the path. He knew that Octavius needed them to make a distraction, and a distraction he would make.

“Careful with that!” he snapped at a large man that was carrying a large clay vessel that was filled with the central component to the distraction. He’d hoped to save the mildly explosive substance until he could lay a trap and deal a real blow to the thralls, but they’d underestimated the stone shapers. If they weren’t dealt with, nothing was stopping the thralls from leaving in the night and just raiding the Sanctuary itself.

Toby, the young member of Octavius’s team, stood uneasily next to him. “You sure this will work?” the massive young man asked, his large club tapping against his thigh.

Robert merely shook his head and looked out on the plains below. “I hope so,” he said.

Suddenly, a loud crash sounded from the treeline. A single thrall in a gray robe stood there, its hands outstretched and a snarl on its face. Robert watched in fascinated horror as the wooden fortifications they’d construct over the previous day began to groan and creak.

“Stop him!” a voice rang out, and every nearby guard charged the wood shaper. As soon as the first group of three got close, a black shadow dropped from the tree above the thrall. A glint of silver caught the light of the late morning sun, and the three humans fell to the ground within half a dozen seconds.

Robert inhaled sharply and cursed. It was only then when he saw the two unmoving forms of the guards that had been stationed where the stone shaper now stood. Beside him, Toby broke out into a loping run. The massive young man looked grim as he easily passed the lower level guards around him.

The guard captain closed his hand around the knife on his belt and cursed internally. He was good at gunfighting, and that was what all of his points and skill went toward. Unfortunately, the Sanctuary was almost entirely out of ammunition, not that it would do much good, according to Octavius.

He watched Toby draw a long knife from his waist with his left hand and barrel toward the wood shaper. The massive man was intercepted by one of the two thrall elites, and they locked blades. Robert cheered for the man internally, then cursed when a sharp pain pricked his side.

He slapped his hand down at his exposed ankle, and it came up covered in green colored blood. What the hell?

His head began to swim as a message appeared in his vision.

You have killed Rare Cahimeshi Scorpion (E) (Lvl 8) and gained 300 EXP (1/4)(8)(1/2)(3)(100)

The name seemed familiar to him as he toppled forward onto his stomach; he just couldn’t seem to place it. The world seemed to fade in and out around him, and some part of him realized that he’d been poisoned. His hands reached for the health potion that he knew was on his belt, but he couldn’t find the strength to move his fingers.

Somewhere at the edges of his awareness, the loud groaning of wood was punctuated by cracking and splintering. His eyes looked upward, and he watched blurry patches of color clash against each other.

A large tan-colored blob slammed into a smaller black one, sending it flying. A dozen other hazy shapes laid still in pools of red on the ground, and some part of him felt an unbelievable sorrow. His eyes blinked heavily as the larger tan shape stumbled back as the three smaller ones disappeared into the trees. The tan shape seemed to be holding something sticking out of its shoulder before toppling over.

Robert felt tears pooling at the corners of his eyes as he watched the three dozen hazy shapes chasing the small black ones into the trees. His eyes closed heavily, and he couldn’t find the strength to open them again. He felt something grab him and roll his numb body over as the darkness claimed him.