“We need to be careful,” Ada said. “The camp isn’t too far away, but there are some strong monsters in between us and them. Alone, I was able to avoid them, but together we might not be able to.”

“Okay,” Karolina said, carefully checking on the healing potions in her pockets. They were each taking two healing potions, and leaving the rest in camp with Thomas. Four potions between them should hopefully be enough to let them survive anything unpleasant. She also made sure that she still had the communication crystal.

They were both standing at the west edge of the camp. They had gotten up fairly early in the morning, so that they had time to get to the other camp, speak with whoever was in charge and drop off the communication crystal, and then get back before dark. Establishing a friendly line of communication between the two camps was the first step.

“You ready to go?” Ada asked, looking restless.

“Sure, just give me a second,” Karolina said. She wanted to check her status before they left the camp. She hadn’t been in any serious fights for a few days, but that might change today so she should probably make sure everything’s in order.

Status:

Name: Karolina Grant

Level: 17

Race: [Human (F)]

Class: [Monk]

Health: 430/430

Stamina: 420/420

Mana: 440/440

Stats:

Str: 59

End: 42

Dex: 61

Con: 43

Int: 44

Wis: 44

Free Points: 2

Everything seemed correct. Honestly, she was proud of her level. She was the highest leveled person in the camp, with Ada being the second highest at level 15. Her high level was one of the main reasons she was so confident the other camp would want to work with her.

Anyway, they needed to get going. She quickly assigned her free points to wisdom, then closed the screen.

“Yup, I’m ready. Let’s go,” Karolina said.

“Great. Follow me,” Ada said, immediately setting off into the forest. Karolina hurried after her, catching up after a few seconds, and then settled into a comfortable pace. They had a long walk ahead of them.

Karolina tried to just observe the scenery and enjoy the outdoors. She hadn’t spent much time out in nature back in her old life, so it was an interesting change of pace at least. After a while, though, she got tired of walking in silence.

“Ada, I wanted to ask: how did you find another camp so fast? I expected results eventually, but I never thought it would take you less than a day,” Karolina said.

“Did you think I was just messing around out here? I’ve scouted the whole area around the camp. All I needed to do was go a bit further,” Ada said.

“Still, it’s impressive. Good job,” Karolina said. She could see the hint of a smile on Ada’s face from the praise. ”So how much of the other camp did you see?”

“Not a lot, I didn’t get close to it. Once I saw a lot of cabins and some people milling around I marked the location and headed back. Figured you’d want to make the introductions,” she answered.

“Yeah, I think that’s best. You’re not the most… diplomatic person out there,” Karolina said, laughing a little as she imagined how terribly that would go. She wouldn’t be surprised if Ada somehow offended the whole camp.

She turned to her side, expecting Thomas to make some stupid joke, but he wasn’t there. He was still back at camp. She still couldn’t believe that he wasn’t there with them. Her smile went away.

“No, I’ll let you handle that stuff,” Ada said, turning to face her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Thomas,” Karolina said.

Ada let out a huge sigh. “Yeah, that sucks. He needs to come to his senses, and soon,” Ada said.

“It’s not like he’s wrong to want to stay safe,” Karolina said.

“Safe? Nothing’s safe anymore. The attack on the camp should have proven that,” Ada said with a snort. “The only way to stay alive is to find people you trust, and stick with them no matter what. He’s an idiot for not realizing that.”

“You know, Thomas is actually pretty smart,” Karolina commented mildly. She wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Well, he’s certainly not—look out!” Ada shouted.

Karolina leapt forward instantly, feeling something pass right above her head. She scrambled to her feet and turned around, raising her fists into a guard position as she backed away. There were three monsters, but her eyes were immediately caught by the monster in the center. She had never seen one like it before.

The monster was taller than her, maybe around seven feet tall, with green skin and tusks sticking out of its mouth. It almost looked human, but the face was wrong, too wide and brutish. It was wearing armor that looked rusty but serviceable, and it was holding a huge mace. That was probably what had almost killed her. She quickly inspected the monster, wondering what it was.

[Orc] - Level 21

Level 21? That wasn’t good. By comparison, the other two monsters were pushovers. Far behind the orc were two goblins, one level 12 and one level 13, both grabbing their bows.

She continued backing away, keeping the monsters within her sight. They were at least twenty feet away now. “Ada? Can you take the archers?” she asked.

“Guess I don’t have much of a choice,” Ada said, pulling out her dagger.

“Hey, I’m taking the big one,” she said jokingly. As she was talking, she activated her Mana Armor and used Combat Perception on the mace.

“Good point. Guess I shouldn’t complain,” Ada said, eyeing the orc apprehensively. “Well, good luck, not that you need it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Karolina said. She took a deep breath, and carefully stepped back into range of the orc.

Almost immediately, she had to dodge to the side to avoid a wide sweep from the orc’s mace, Combat Perception proving its usefulness yet again. She ducked under the next attack and took another step towards the orc, trying to be as careful as possible. One hit from that thing might be enough to break her armor.

After dodging the next two attacks from the increasingly frustrated orc, she got in close and snapped a stamina-infused punch right at its head. Unfortunately, she hit the monster directly in the helmet instead. It felt like hitting a brick wall.

She heard a terrible crack from her hand, and then felt a white-hot pain. She screamed, and stumbled backwards, staring at the mutilated remains of her hand. It was bleeding and swelling, and there was something white sticking out of it. She couldn't move her fingers.

Could this even be fixed? Was a healing potion enough? Would she ever be able to use her—she felt the orc’s mace crash into her chest. She flew backwards, the impact instantly shattering her armor.

She landed in a heap, and instantly tried to push herself up with her damaged right hand. The pain was all-consuming, agonizing. For a second, she thought she was going to black out. She removed her hand from the ground as fast as she could, and the pain dialed back down after a few seconds.

She gingerly got up without using her right hand, cursing the orc’s armor. Her hand was ruined because of it. She considered using a healing potion to fix her hand, but she wasn’t sure if she could open the flask with one hand and now wasn’t the time to figure it out.

So, she couldn’t hit the orc directly because of its armor. That meant that the armor was the orc’s greatest strength. Then, a flash of insight struck her. What if she could turn it into its greatest weakness instead?

Just as the orc reached her, she stepped into its guard and grabbed the haft of its mace with her left hand. They struggled over the weapon for a second, but she was definitely losing. She wasn’t strong enough to overpower the orc, especially only using one hand.

Just as the orc was about to force her to let go, she slammed a Strong Blow powered shoulder into its chest. The monster staggered backwards, loosening its grip, and she managed to wrench the mace away.

She hurled the weapon as far away as she could. She watched as the mace disappeared into the trees until it was lost from sight. Now she didn’t have to use her Combat Perception on it.

She turned back to face the unarmed orc, and used Combat Perception on its armor. Now she would know and be able to react to every move it made, so the fight should hopefully be almost over.

She turned to the orc, feeling confident for the first time since the fight had begun. Her smile disappeared when the monster let out an enraged bellow. What little of its face she could see through its helmet twisted into a rictus of hate, and she saw it get a few inches taller and bulkier. That wasn’t good.

She dodged backwards immediately, barely avoiding the orc’s lunge. She continued dodging around the orc’s increasingly frenzied strikes, unable to find a single opportunity to counterattack. Whatever skill it was using made it stronger and faster, and she couldn’t risk hitting it directly in the armor again. Without Combat Perception, she would already be dead.

Using her skill, she could barely stay ahead of the orc’s attacks, but after ten seconds or so she started to worry about her mana. Combat Perception was a mana hungry skill, and the orc was showing no signs of slowing down. If its skill didn’t run out before her mana did, she would die. She was incredibly glad she had been funneling her free points into wisdom.

Finally, after at least a minute, the orc stopped moving suddenly. It shrunk back down to its normal size, and swayed back and forth a little bit. Karolina pounced on the opportunity, tackling the orc while it was still disoriented. It felt like tackling a brick wall, but the orc was exhausted enough that it crashed to the ground.

She was able to get up quickly, but the orc was still laying flat on its back. Its skill must have taken a lot out of it. She stepped carefully around it, and gave the monster a quick once-over. Its armor covered basically everywhere, except its throat.

She put her boot on its throat and made sure that her foot was firmly planted. After a second, she pushed down as hard as she could. She immediately felt its throat crunch under her foot. It was dead.

She looked up, still breathing heavily, and saw that Ada was still fighting the second goblin. The goblin raised its bow to aim at Ada, but just before it could shoot an arrow at her, a knife sprouted from its eye. The goblin collapsed, dead instantly.

You have slain [Orc] - Level 21, [Goblin] - Level 13, and [Goblin] - Level 12. Experience has been awarded.

You have leveled up. You are now a level 18 [Human (F) / Monk].

Karolina found herself strangely disappointed. She had leveled up for the first time in a while, but she was still two levels away from getting another skill. Well, there was always tomorrow. She dismissed the screen and turned to face Ada.

“Throwing knives?” Karolina asked once she’d caught her breath.

“Yeah, I thought I should invest in more ways to kill monsters,” Ada said. “Holy shit! Your hand!”

“I noticed,” Karolina grunted, slowly sinking to the ground. Now that the adrenaline was leaving her, the pain from her hand was starting to get worse.

“I’ll get you a healing potion,” Ada said, before sprinting over to her. “Don’t worry, you’re gonna be fine. Drink this.”

The obvious concern in Ada’s voice warmed her heart a little. Karolina fumbled a little with the offered healing potion, but eventually she got a good grip on it with her left hand. After staring at the red liquid for a second, she chugged the whole thing, desperately hoping that it would be able to fix her hand.

She wasn't sure what she expected the potion to taste like, but it just tasted like water. For a second, she worried that it wasn’t actually a potion somehow, before she noticed her pain starting to go away. She watched her right hand, fascinated, as the bone pushed back into the skin and the swelling went down until her hand looked healthy again.

“That looked painful,” Ada said.

“It was,” Karolina said, glad that the potion had worked. She forced a smile. “Just once, I’d like to get into a difficult fight with higher-level enemies without getting badly injured.”

“I’ll let the monsters know,” Ada smiled. “In all seriousness, do you want to turn back? We’re more than halfway there, but I’d get it if you don’t want to meet a bunch of new people after that.”

“We should keep going. I don’t want all that to be for nothing,” Karolina said.

“Ok,” Ada shrugged. It was pretty obvious that the woman didn’t care either way.

Karolina put the empty glass bottle in one of her pockets, and then followed after Ada. She walked in silence the rest of the way. Even though she was the one that said they should continue, she was still stressed and annoyed. Breaking her hand had been extremely unpleasant.

After what felt like a very long time, they finally spotted the other camp. It looked similar to their camp, a large group of haphazardly placed cabins, but there was a wooden wall all the way around the periphery.

The area around the camp was mostly cleared, with nothing but tree stumps and rocks surrounding the camp for a hundred feet in any direction. Anyone on the wall would have a clear line of sight to any approaching monsters. The fortifications made her respect whoever was in charge of the camp. It was clear that whoever they were, they took the safety of their camp very seriously.

Karolina examined the wall as they approached the camp. It was around eight feet tall and looked very sturdy. She had no doubt that it would be able to keep monsters out, at least for a while.

“That’s actually a pretty good idea,” Karolina commented. “We should get Robert to build a wall. Should definitely help keep the monsters out.”

Ada grunted noncommittally. She seemed to be focused on one particular section of the wall. Karolina followed her gaze, trying to figure out what Ada was looking at, and after a second she saw a woman’s head pop above the wall.

The woman scrambled over the wall and fell to the ground in a heap. Karolina couldn’t pick out too many details at this distance, but she could tell that the woman had red hair and was wearing a white robe. Once she got to her feet, the woman started sprinting away from the camp as fast as she could.

“Why’s she running?” Karolina asked, and a second later got her answer. A heavyset man holding a metal club came over the wall right behind her, and started sprinting after her.

It was like watching a pro athlete chase down a child. Even though the woman was obviously running as fast as she could, the man rapidly gained on her. Within a few seconds, he caught up and slammed his club into her back.

The woman’s cry of pain as she tumbled to the ground chilled Karolina’s blood. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Karolina started sprinting towards the fight, determined to stop it and protect the woman.

She couldn’t kill the man, obviously, but she could knock him out. She quickly made a plan of attack. She would tackle him to the ground first, stop him from hurting the woman again, and then put him in a chokehold until he passed out. Then she and Ada could figure out what the hell was going on.

As she got closer, she could hear the woman begging. “Please, don’t hurt me. Please. Please, I’ll come back with you. Please.”

“No, you don’t get any mercy this time. This is the third time you’ve tried to run away from camp. Weber’s tired of it. Maybe if I break your legs first and then drag you back you’ll learn to stay where you belong,” the man said.

He raised his club up in the air, but Karolina tackled him before he had a chance to bring it crashing down. She didn’t see the rock until they were already falling to the ground, and by then it was far too late.

She watched his brains splatter across the ground, his skull dashed open on a rock. She stared down at him, not moving, not breathing, as his soul disappeared. He was dead. She had killed him.

You have slain [Human (F) / Warrior] - Level 14.

Experience has been awarded.

She tried to look away from the blue screen, but no matter where she looked the proof of her guilt was still glaring at her. It didn’t even say his name. She dismissed the screen.

As Ada hustled her and the woman to their feet, saying something about how they needed to go, she did nothing but stare at the body of the man she had murdered.