From my vantage point, I continued to watch the Power guild members with curiosity.

I thought I had been quite sneaky, but clearly not. One of the members of the camp quickly vanished into the forest. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him, and it became clear his destination was me.

He made a roundabout path until he was directly to my left, about fifty feet away. From there, he suddenly vanished. Then he was directly behind me on the branch. If I hadn’t been able to ‘feel’ him it would have been impossible for me to know he was there. “I mean no harm,” I said while raising my hands.

This guy’s level of movement was on par with Lucas. I would gain nothing from being aggressive or showing any resistance.

“Who are you with?” came his voice.

“I was originally with the Valkyrie guild, we were forced apart due to certain circumstances and I’ve been looking for them ever since.”

There was silence from behind me for several moments. Probably, he was trying to determine if I was lying. “You don’t have their emblem,” he said at last.

“I’m not guilded, I was just assigned.” It was really impossible for me to prove my story. And perhaps it was disconcerting to him that I had somehow managed to realize he had snuck up on me.

“It’s bad etiquette to spy; don’t let it happen again.” I heard the branch creak, was he preparing to leave?

I was pushing my luck definitely, but I had to turn around and ask, “Is there any chance you’ll let me see a map?”

“Thirty seconds. We are here.” He was a rogue in leather armour, quite old for an Adventurer, with short grey hair and a wrinkled, cautious expression. I was expecting him to demand I leave right away but he actually gave me a map. It wasn’t anything special but it had basic landmarks. According to where he had tapped his finger, I was northwest of Arturii, about five days away.

My smartest decision would be to just head back to the safety of the city, but this was a good opportunity for me to level. As long as I didn’t do anything incredibly stupid I could manage out here in the forest on my own. The absolute biggest issue would be obtaining water.

I would also have no incoming information. Any change in circumstances could leave me lost. If that happened though, I could head south as well and return to Skuld’s Hand. There was guaranteed to still be a Valkyrie group waiting there.

I handed the map back to the rogue and prepared to leave, “Thank you.” I spoke earnestly, being able to re-orientate myself really meant a lot.

After I had climbed out of the tree, I heard his voice again, from somewhere behind me. “Hey, if you run into trouble we’ll be here.” I didn’t turn around but he must have known I had heard him. I continued heading north.

I resolved to be more careful on encountering groups of Adventurers. Even checking them out in the slightest seemed to set off alarm bells for those of higher levels: especially those skilled in stealth.

I didn’t know if that rogue’s awareness of me was a skill or simply came from years of caution and experience. Regardless, I swore to myself not to get caught like that again. My journey continued.

Over the course of a week the sense that I was a lone figure in a large area of monsters began to change. Originally, the expeditions out of Arturii had been controlled by the large guilds. That clearly changed. Perhaps news of the potential rewards had spread because more and more I found other Adventurers moving through the forest, mostly unguilded. Their parties were typically small, and occasionally I even ran into other people on their own. I was cautious and never attempted to approach them.

Even with increasing numbers of Adventurers, this was a good time for gaining experience, but it was also an extraordinary time for bandits and ambushes. Before two weeks had passed since my meeting the scout, I had witnessed two encounters that had led to one party being completely slain by the other. People were cruel and would fight over the smallest amount of wealth.

My feeling was that this greed and rivalry would only grow worse. As soon as the first batch of Adventurers returned with newfound wealth, the numbers of people looking to rob and steal would only increase. That was the sad reality of human nature. It wasn’t escapable on Earth and definitely not on Yetera either.

There was no sign of anyone from Valkyrie. I learned very quickly that they were much farther south and I would have to retrace my steps to even find them. At this point it didn’t matter. The entire situation had devolved into guerilla warfare between Adventurers and monsters in the forest.

Two weeks passed by in the blink of an eye. My decision to remain solo seemed to be the right one, yet it wasn’t free from risk. I had come across two camps that had been completely wiped out.

It was possible that the destruction was the work of bandits, but the fang and claw wounds on the bodies suggested otherwise. I thought back to that sudden ambush we had experienced and had the insight that perhaps the monsters were focusing their efforts on groups by locating campsites.

Not once had any creature gone out of its way to follow my trail to hunt me down. I had never been ambushed either, not even in the dark of night. My entire situation had been relatively peaceful and the rewards spoke for themselves.

Current EXP: 27800/109000 LEVEL: 35 Soul Harvester Eternal

HP: 2094/2094 MP: 783/907

STR: 30+2

AGI: 32+11

DEX: 35 +5

VIT: 30 +4

INT: 55 +21

Available: 0

Harvest Soul: 246 HP: 331 MP: 331

I leveled twice after killing close to 50 elites. This was only an average of around three per day, but the EXP per was amazing. I had already raised my MP to more than compensate for the initial penalty from becoming a Soul Harvester. My HPs were approaching that stage too. I chose to even out my STR at 30 and then added the remaining three points into AGI.

Based on my assumptions about the shifting landscape, I was now in the northern part of Maledith. The forest would end very soon and turn into something called the Frozen Wastelands. It was impossible to know what that entailed from seeing it on a map, but I could imagine.

Gliding from branch to branch, I browsed every soul signature in the area. My senses were improving rapidly and so was my range of detection. Every soul, especially those of elites, was an amazing tonic for me.

Suddenly, I noticed something peculiar: a group of five strong soul signatures adjacent to three more signatures, which were all incredibly weak. It was like they were on the border between life and death.

I approached carefully and then a voice I’d never forgotten entered my ears. “Do we just leave ‘em here?”

“Why not? It’ll never come back to us. These guildless types have no chance of getting any vengeance.”

Despite my vow of staying clear of groups, full of vengeful energy I rushed to climb to a place I could look at them from. My ears hadn’t deceived me. It was that Tyrant asshole from before. The archer who had killed my friends. There were bodies sprawled out in front of his group: four men and one woman.

The scene was peculiar though. Three of the men had been killed in an odd way. Their wounds were those of blades having been struck directly into their back between the shoulders, it was impossible that in a fair fight anyone could get so close as to do that. It looked like these disgusting fucks had betrayed people in their own group for a bit of profit.

Not only that, the face-down female was incredibly familiar, even looking at her from behind. My mind flashed for a moment to a scene back in the hidden jungle. The clothing was the same, the hair length nearly identical. Don’t tell me…

I moved without thinking and before long I was on the ground moving towards the Tyrant group without a care. “Who’s there?” Someone shouted, and I didn’t stop walking. I pushed through the thick underbrush and walked with bated breath towards the female corpse.

She shouldn’t be here… She was only level 29 when I had left her.

“Who the fuck is this?” I didn’t pay them any heed and kept walking. I made it to the corpse and rested my hand on her arm. She was still warm, but the fires of her life were gone. I turned her face to the side and my heart was in my throat. Thank God. It wasn’t Samantha.

“Hey are you retarded? We’re talking to you.” The prick who had slaughtered my old group didn’t recognize me at all. Hatred surged up in me like never before. He was a plague upon the world. Even in a war, with survival for everyone on the line, he had the temerity to kill Adventurers… for nothing.

“This is perfect,” one of the five men said. He had been standing in the back of them. It looked as if he was the leader of their group. He was definitely the strongest that was for sure. “Give us your stuff and maybe you’ll live.”

It seemed every Tyrant member was ingrained with this bullying sense of superiority. They believed they could take whatever they wanted from anyone with no repercussions. I stood up and looked at them with a hatred burning in my eyes.

“I recognize this guy…” the archer suddenly said. “That day with the rainbow vulture! You managed to survive? Hot damn.” He started to laugh.

What were my chances in a one versus five duel? I actually couldn’t be sure. I had told myself that night in the jungle, that if this man was ever in front of me I would kill him. Here he was now, and I was reliving that hatred completely.

It was surprisingly easy, cutting through a man’s flesh. He was too busy laughing to even notice I had moved. After all, I used Phase Step from the get go. Maybe I couldn’t take them all on, but I could definitely escape after gaining vengeance for my friends.

Moreover, if I cut and ran, this was my hunting ground, and it would be impossible for them to escape. I could ‘feel’ them at any time I wanted.

By the time the archer had realized something was wrong my scythe was already across his throat.

My blow wasn’t a wound a healer could save you from, that was for sure. There was nothing to murder at all; my thoughts even scared me at this moment. I didn’t think about how I was killing a person, but instead my mind shifted to Mana Scythe.

Cutting through the archer’s neck required only Mana Scythe at 20%. The spray of blood hadn’t even reached me before I took off into the forest like a mad man. I could only hear the shocked surprise and the gurgling from my enemy’s throat as I disappeared.

The wound was deep, deep enough to almost completely sever his neck. He had a few seconds to live, enough to regret his actions. By the time they could understand what happened I was already a hundred meters away in a tall tree.

I didn’t see him die personally, but I felt the fire of his soul burn out until it was extinguished. Why didn’t I feel bad about it? Maybe it was because I had already considered that person not human, but an animal, one of the deadliest animals against mankind.

Perhaps because they were desperately trying to help their archer, the other Tyrant members remained in place for a few minutes before coming towards me. Soon I could hear them as well as feel them.

“He couldn’t have gone far. Find him!” And they started to look for me. This was good news for me.

If they had simply left, my determination might have waivered. Maybe I would excuse their actions as being the fault of that one man and let them go. Now it was me or them. I had plenty of time to take care of them after all.

They passed directly under me without even the slightest clue I was just a hundred feet above them. I didn’t show myself for the entire day, long enough for them to think I was long gone.