Still aimlessly following the river towards the shadow in the distance, I glance up at the sky and see it dimming as night begins to set it. Focusing back on Sophie who is still leading the group forwards, albeit with a slightly more grim expression on her face, I think back to the last few hours of walking.

'Different once again.', I ponder to myself, remembering what happened.

'This time it was Dylan who got injured by the slimes.', I think as I glance at his left leg limping along, with a wrapping around his calf area.

'But at least we caught some rabbits along the way.', I reminisce, feeling satiated.

Just as I am bringing myself out of my thoughts, the group stops walking, and Sophie announces, "Let's stop for the day, it's getting pretty dark now. We should split up and look for a place to stay for the night. Oh yeah, just yell out if you need help, and we should regroup here-", she says pointing at a decently sized rock alongside the river, "-after maybe twenty minutes to share what we found."

A couple of murmurs of confirmation are heard from the rest of the group, and we all turn and head into the all encompassing shadow that looms throughout the dusk-lit forest. After walking a couple dozen feet into the forest, I just sit down at the base of a tree, knowing that nothing will be found and drift back into my own mind, while staring at the canopy sitting overhead.

After what seems to be ages of aimless staring above while seated, it finally seems to be time to head back to the group. Soon after around a minute of walking or so, I arrive back at the group as the last person back following Lee who is just sitting down when I arrive.

"So Ryan, did you find anything?", Sophie asks.

"No.", I say before sitting down next to the rest of the group.

"Well what are we going to do then for shelter?", she then asks, but the only responses are near-silent mutters by the others.

"What if we sleep in the trees? We could stay up there to prevent ourselves from being attacked by any slimes when we are sleeping.", I propose as I glance towards Dylan.

"That sounds great!", Sophie then exclaims and starts discussion with the rest of the group on how we should be grouped up, before eventually deciding that one tree per person, coupled with keeping the group together in a small cluster of trees is best.

While I am looking at Dylan who is discussing with the group, although rather sparingly, I wonder to myself, "I wonder why he didn't object this time? ...I guess it isn't that important."

As I refocus my attention to the group, I notice they are beginning to walk a bit into the depths of the air to get away from the cold breeze coming off of the river, and about 30 or so feet within the forest, Sophie finally stops leading the group deeper, and instructs us to pick out a tree for ourselves. I glance to my right and pick the closest tree to me, and start climbing. One branch at a time I pull myself up, with the occasional slip, but I soon arrive at the top, just below the canopy.

I then find myself a decent weave of branches to sleep in, and ease myself into the to avoid and breaking. After getting myself comfortable, I glance back towards the ground and see Dylan still struggling to even get onto the first branch. Letting out a small chuckle, I hear another from my left and see that I am next to Alice once again in this cluster of ours. Staring blankly at the smile I never see on her face, her expression quickly turns back to the familiar stoic one, and she then turns away from me rather abruptly. Still looking at her, now the back of her head, I refocus my attention towards the canopy above me and within a short time I nod off into deep sleep.

***

Feeling it is a bit bright, my eyes start squinting on instinct, but this quickly snaps me out of my morning drowsiness after I realize where I am again. With a slight yawn, I stretch out my arms and hear a couple cracks from my shoulders all the way down to my fingers, and I position myself to get ready to go back down to the ground.

'It's getting easier to deal with sleeping in trees now. ...Wait a minute, what about Dylan?', I think to myself as I look around with a slight worry, before quickly noticing him on the ground.

I climb down to the ground with a little less anxiousness then moments before and I soon jump off the final branch on the tree, and land with a soft sound. I look back towards him, and I see large bags under his eyes, and notice him occasionally nodding off, before quickly snapping his head back up after a few seconds with his eyes closed.

After seeing that Dylan is fine, I walk over to the river and kneel down onto the riverbank. I bent down and cup some water into my hand and begin washing my face to get rid of whatever dirt and grime is left over from the previous day, and after finishing my "business", I walk back to where the cluster of trees were, and start waiting for the others to come down. After around ten minutes, the other members of the party start climbing down, one by one, and we group together to discuss what we should do for today, but we quickly come to the consensus of continuing on where we left off last night, and soon after, once again, Sophie is leading the group forwards, down the river, sword in hand.

***

Now, well into midday, we finally encounter our first group of slimes for the day, a group of three. Sophie steps forward, unsheathing her sword, and announces an order to the group, "Ill take the one in the middle, Dylan you take the one on the left, and Ryan you take the one on the right. You can handle it, can't you?"

Both Dylan and I affirm our capabilities to Sophie, and step forward to stand beside her. Looking to my left I see Dylan pull his bow back, and an arrow materializes from thin air resting gently on top of his forefinger. Observing the arrow, it is a dimly shining two and a half foot long arrow with a variety of colors fading in and out along the entire body of the arrow. Placing my attention back on my target, I see that it is slowly rolling towards me, so I point my staff at it and start up my chant. Quickly a red light begins to shine and an arrow of fire flies out from the tip towards the slime, but coincidently Dylan's arrow fired at the same time, both arrows impacting their respective targets simultaneously. The slime on the right almost instantaneously evaporates leaving a couple of gold coins on the ground, and suddenly a window appears before me.

Congratulations, your skill Multiple Fire Arrows, has leveled up from level 3 -> 4.

'Nice.', I think to myself as I open up my personal profile and mutter "Identify" to see the new changes to my skill, and another window opens in front of me.

Multiple Fire Arrows Skill Rank: E Skill Level: 4 A fire magic skill that creates fire arrows based on the amount of mana used in the spell.

Creates fire arrows costing 20 mana each and dealing 18 damage. Maximum of three arrows are created for each chant.

Turning my gaze back to the slime on the left, it now has a hole drilled right through the center of its body, and it forms a puddle on the ground. The last slime in the center is still advancing forward steadily, but Sophie rushes out and slashes down quickly with her sword as soon as she arrives in front of the slime. She then quickly backs away after it has formed a puddle on the ground similar to Dylan's target, apparently learning to retreat from experience of Dylan getting injured the day before.

Looking back towards my left I see Dylan's bow is already pulled back with another arrow already there. There is a bead of sweat slowly rolling down the side of his face as he looses the bow, and hits the newly reforming slime he hit earlier. Upon impact the slime falls apart completely, and a couple of gold coins along with a tinged green orb lie on the ground where it has disappeared. Then I hear a deep impact on the earth, and glancing forward, I see Sophie has finished her target as well and a single gold coin sits next to the sword blade embedded in the ground.

We then walk forward to claim out rewards, and upon picking up the orb Dylan says, "What is this?"

"I don't know; why don't you try identifying it?", Sophie responds.

Then a small mutter is heard from Dylan as he begins reading off of an invisible screen to see what the slime core does, and he then exclaims, "This can heal my injury from yesterday... maybe."

"That's good, go ahead and try it.", Sophie says.

"Alright, well here goes.", Dylan says, before swallowing this slime core.

Within a few seconds a wide grin spreads across his face, and he bends down and removes the wrapping on his calf revealing an uninjured leg, and upon viewing it, he lets out a few laughs in excitement.

"Come on guys, we should get back to group and keep moving.", Sophie then says cutting Dylan's celebration short.

We then quickly begin walking back to the group, and within a few short minutes, we are once again traveling towards that shadow of the building in the distance.