The others lay in a heap where they had all fallen from about two metres in the air, all of them unconscious as Nolan took a moment to take in his surroundings.

His mind blanked out for a few seconds as he struggled to recover his wits, his eyes on the lush brambles and sprawling plant life that covered the forest floor. With how thick the layer of leaves was that made up the verdant ceiling, there was no way that there could be such a heavy presence of undergrowth amidst such a stark lack of sunlight. The obvious answer was Origin Energy, a subconscious conclusion that made Nolan wonder over the mechanics behind this world’s ecosystems.

The others awoke within several seconds of one other, each in various states of disorientation. Nolan didn’t have the luxury to pay them any mind as he finally gained the awareness to expand his spiritual sense into their surroundings, which gave him a momentary heart attack. Stirring behind the thick trunk of a tree that stood just ten metres away was a yellow snake nearly twenty times as long as he was tall, with a cultivation at the eighth level of Profound Entry. The subtle rattling noise that he had heard and yet not registered up until that point evidently originated from its tail, as it slowly began to slither towards them with menacing movements.

Goddamn it, Nolan thought as he summoned the Bone Sword and fumbled with it for a second before taking a deep breath and stowing it away. I’m sure I can kill it, but no need to get any closer to the thing. He summoned a dozen of his largest needles and sent them whistling forward with a thought, a cluster of bushes up ahead shaking violently as a terrible hiss announced that his aim had held true and that all of his projectiles had dug a dozen centimetres deep into the slithering serpent’s skull. Closing his eyes and focusing intently, he forced the needles to rip themselves free of the reptilian flesh and then immediately had them stab downward for another barrage of gore. He repeated this process several times within the next twenty seconds until the great creature finally fell dead within the devastated bushes, unseen and yet heavily heard.

“What was that?” Esteban rubbed at his eyes as he looked over at the torn up landscape, confusion in his lightly freckled face as he sat still in the soft soil.

“Nothing you need to worry about, bud.” Nolan helped him up as the others began to stir.

Soon they were all back on their feet and following Ian forward with tepid steps, the shadowy sight of the dead serpent at the forefront of their minds.

“Any chance we can slow down?” Sean panted. Three hours of strong sprinting had left him and Esteban wet with a light coating of sweat, both wary after encountering several weaker animals that Ian had killed with quick slashes of his deadly broadsword.

“Me and Ian can sense just about everything in the area. You’re good, trust me.”

“Nolan…” Esteban said. “There’s nothing around us, right? You would tell us, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, there’s tons of shit out there. Still, as long as they don’t bother us then we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Even if they do,” Ian called over his shoulder, “I’ll just kill them.”

Travelling through sloping hillsides was quite troublesome so the group tended to stick to small trails that had been created by animals at the base of most valleys that they passed through. Towering mountain peaks loomed overhead on either side of them, their gargantuan bodies distant and daunting. The cries of strange birds filled their ears in tandem with the croaking of fist-sized crickets and the songs of unseen cicadas, a natural soundscape that left all of them wary, especially when the rural chorus would suddenly cease.

It wasn’t long before noon turned to night, at which point they decided to set up camp in the centre of a small field that separated two large hills. Esteban and Sean fell asleep almost immediately atop the bedrolls that Shain had gifted them at the onset of their journey, though only they enjoyed such luxury.

“Nolan,” said Ian a few hours into their first nightly watch, dark in the absence of unneeded fire. “Your sect, do you plan on building it up within the Three-River Valley?”

“You think they’ll let me?”

“Probably. Whenever the valley goes to war we let settlers in to sustain the population, and settlers who earn merit gain more status. I wasn’t alive the last time it happened, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t let you. I mean, you’re as strong as some of the elders of the five clans.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Sanae said I could do whatever I want with my land, even start my own village. I don’t see why we have to tell them anything about the sect, I can just say that I found some settlers to live on my land or whatever. Enough about all that though.” A heavy hooting filtered down from an unknown tree, far enough that he couldn’t sense the creature that created the pervasive noise. “Man, are you hundred percent sure you know where we are?”

“Sort of,” Ian laughed. “No matter where you are in the Dragon’s Tail, as long as you head north you’ll eventually come up on the Northern Wilderness.”

“I mean, I guess. I just can’t help but feel lost as hell.”

“We’ll start seeing some roads when we draw close to some populated valleys. Everything will work out.” The other boy reclined backwards and laid down in the darkness. “I’m going to rest for a bit. Keep an eye out, would you?”

“Kind of my only option here.”

Ian fell asleep after an hour or so of quiet, the peaceful snores of the others a heavy contrast to the trepidation that they had showed before settling down for the night.

After summoning a spirit stone from his spatial bag, Nolan admired the uniforms that Uncle Grey had helped him create and remembered the relative ease with which they were conjured. He couldn’t help but wonder how many more he might have to make in the future, and if the membership count of his ‘sect’ would increase by much.

If it means that I might be able to find my family…

He knew that the chances of reuniting with his parents and siblings were next to none, that they were probably dead, that even if they weren’t then the likelihood of crossing paths with them in this alien world was equally as low. He sighed. That couldn’t be his main focus, perhaps a passive objective at best. Still, he was human. He missed his loved ones and couldn’t bear to be the type of scum that could so easily write them off when he was finally in a position to seek them out. In the end, what drove him was the same desire that urged him to seek out Nyla.

He pictured the map of the continent that he had all but memorized, arranged the supposed landscapes in a mental image that helped him to plot out their future progress. He’d overestimated the rate that Sean and Esteban could travel through the mountainous landscape, though not by much. So long as they didn’t hit any snags—no, so long as they at most encountered minimal snags along the way then they should arrive at Frostport within eight or nine days.

I’ll see you soon Nyla. North Island, that other island… We’ll do all that and then get a hold of whatever your ancestor left behind for you. If I keep throwing spirit stones at people I’m sure it’ll happen. He stood up as he noticed a few life signals encroaching upon the perimeter of his spiritual sense, all in the early levels of Profound Entry. That he couldn’t hear them weaving through the flourishing plant life that filled the forest floor warned of a certain degree of stealth that brought back memories of the red foxes that had nearly killed him on his first day in this world.

While the beasts shouldn’t have been able to detect their group with their spiritual senses, they seemed to have noticed them by relying on another of their senses. Shrill howls pierced throughout the night, stirring the others as he quickly hushed them into indifference with a quick assurance. He sat there patiently as a small pack of wolves closed in upon their resting place with swift steps, though all of them were downed in a silent instant, large needles of dangerous metal embedded deep into the soft spots of skulls and necks as they died in the dirt over fifty metres away. Having not moved a centimetre, Nolan’s stealthy projectiles silently returned to their habitual circulation, though elevated a few metres above him and his friends.

Nah, Nyla. I’ll make it happen for sure.