Chapter 68: A Quick Hunt to End the Day
It was a change in the air.
Nathan felt it first. Soul Sense reacted with the signature of a major threat emerging nearby. He turned toward the river.
The water’s surface was deforming at the center of the ford.
A colossal shadow rose from below.
*Shit.*
"Get out of the water!" Nathan shouted.
Sella and Liaraen were still in the water.
Liaraen turned first. She started swimming toward the shore with the awkwardness of a beginner. Sella also started swimming toward the shore with significantly greater speed.
Neither made it in time.
The creature emerged.
And for the first time that day, Nathan felt discomfort.
It was large—roughly the size of a small cart. An elongated slug-like body, with skin of a specifically moist, pulsating pinkish color. Four yellow eyes distributed irregularly across the top. No visible mouth. And instead of arms or legs, eight long, thin appendages extending from the body’s sides, each ending in a kind of translucent sucker that dripped a clear fluid.
*Not a common animal.*
*Not exactly corrupted either.*
*Something in between.*
*And apparently it lives in the Arren River and chooses human tourists as food.*
The eight appendages moved simultaneously.
Four toward Sella. Four toward Liaraen.
Nathan reacted.
He extended his right hand.
*Soul Reap.*
The skill activated but didn’t complete. The creature didn’t collapse. It staggered.
*Not purely living.*
*Soul Reap doesn’t work against intermediate entities.*
*Good.*
*Change strategy.*
The appendages arrived. Four grabbed Sella by the legs and torso. Sella let out a cry of surprise before being lifted out of the water approximately one meter above the surface. The other four grabbed Liaraen by the arms and waist. Liaraen was lifted as well.
The eight appendages held both girls above the water, close to the creature’s pulsating body.
Nathan felt the dungeon reflex activate.
*Again.*
*Liaraen again.*
*Good.*
He checked his internal stats with the specific speed of a mental query.
```
Nathan Voss.
Level: 5.
HP: 1,250/1,420.
Mana: 1,850/2,100.
Status: Recovery at 88%.
Motor function: 100%.
```
*Enough.*
*Apparently this isn’t C-Rank. It’s approximately high D-Rank. And I have all the resources to eliminate it.*
He extended both hands.
And instead of Soul Pulse or Soul Reap, he applied a skill he hadn’t used since then.
*Tactile Entropy.*
With both hands aimed specifically at the eight appendages.
The skill activated.
And the eight appendages, simultaneously, began to age.
Not natural aging. Collapse. The skin dried. The internal tissues desiccated. The muscular structure contracted. In approximately three seconds, the eight appendages turned into dry filaments that broke under their own weight.
Sella fell into the water.
Liaraen fell into the water.
Nathan ran to the shore. Sella emerged first. She swam to shore with restored speed. Liaraen emerged as well. She started swimming with the recovered awkwardness from the morning’s practice. Nathan waded into the water up to his waist to receive her.
The creature, without appendages, floated in the river’s center. Confused. Unable to move. Its four yellow eyes blinked in irregular synchrony.
Nathan looked at it.
*Good.*
He extended his hand.
*Soul Pulse.*
At full intensity.
The dark wave shot out. It struck the creature. The creature staggered, split approximately in half, and collapsed into the water without resistance.
```
NOTIFICATION
Eliminated: Ford Slug (Semi-Corrupted).
Level: 15.
Total EXP: +800.
Status: soul partially harvested
(intermediate entity).
HP recovered: +200.
```
Nathan lowered his hands.
He looked at Liaraen.
Liaraen stood in the water up to her thighs, her hand on her waist where the appendage had held her. No wounds. Just confused.
Sella, beside her, stood as well. With her specific always-broad smile, now slightly wider.
Nathan looked at both of them.
He turned to Kalen, who was standing on the shore with a specifically neutral expression.
"Kalen," Nathan said. "Did you know that creature was here?"
Kalen inclined his head.
"I saw possible paths where it appeared. Approximately sixty percent probability."
"And you didn’t say anything?"
"All paths ended with Nathan eliminating it in less than thirty seconds. It wasn’t useful information to share."
Nathan looked at him.
Then he laughed.
With the laugh of someone who’d spent the day between revelations, competitions, and surprise attacks, and had decided that apparently none of the three were going to interfere with his original intention of enjoying the river.
Sella laughed too.
Liaraen sighed with her usual resignation.
And then, with her careful voice:
"Nathan."
"Yes?"
"Apparently, even when we try to rest, something’s going to happen."
"Apparently."
They both looked at each other with a smile and responded at the same time.
"Acceptable."
"Acceptable."
---
At sunset, everyone sat around a campfire on the riverbank.
Kalen had cut several pieces from the slug’s body after Nathan verified with Soul Sense that the meat wasn’t toxic, and Sella visually confirmed that the part they were going to cook was pure muscle tissue without semi-corrupted residue.
Sella had helped clean the cuts with the small knife she’d brought.
And Kalen, with his usual calm, had prepared the fire, skewered the meat on wooden sticks, and begun the cooking process with the mechanical efficiency of someone who’d done this many times before.
Nathan watched him for the first few minutes.
"Kalen."
"Yes?"
"You cook well."
"I hope so."
"You’re specifically blind."
"Yes."
"How did you learn to cook without seeing?"
Kalen inclined his head. And with his different voice, with an apparently self-ironic tone:
"Apparently, for cooking, sight isn’t the primary sense. Smell matters more. Hearing matters a lot. Touch too. Vera taught me when I was ten. And apparently I turned out to be better than her in about three years."
"Understood."
"Besides, taste doesn’t require vision. I taste. Adjust. Taste again."
"Acceptable."
"Nathan."
"Yes?"
"I’m going to tell a joke about my condition. I hope it doesn’t offend you."
"I won’t be offended."
"The advantage of being blind is that I don’t have to watch the food a woman prepares for me burn. I just have to smell it."
Nathan laughed.
The joke was light, yes, but also intelligent in its execution.
"I’m laughing because I’m sure you can’t see how bad your joke was."
Kalen smiled slightly.
Sella, beside him, laughed too.
"Kalen always makes jokes about that," Sella said. "It’s his way of coping."
"Apparently it works," Nathan replied.
"I can already see that he does it," Kalen responded.
They ate for about an hour.
The slug meat was better than Nathan had expected. Kalen had used fresh herbs he’d gathered from the nearby forest. The texture was firm. The flavor was neutral with slightly salty notes.
Liaraen ate more than Nathan had seen her eat at any point during the journey.
"Sprout."
"Yes?"
"I thought you only ate plants and dry bread."
"The day’s physical exercise opened my appetite—and that’s a crude thing to say about a lady."
"The little lady is carnivorous."
Sella moved beside Nathan on the blanket she’d spread on the sand. She sat close. Not pressed against him like in the morning. Just close. With the specific naturalness of someone who’d established friendship and was no longer testing.
"Nathan."
"Yes, Sella?"
"Are we going to come back here in the future?"
"I don’t know."
"We should do this forever."
"Apparently."
"Next time you bring your own cart. And I’ll bring a bigger cart of food. And we’ll do this for a whole week."
"Acceptable as a proposal."
"Yes?"
"Yes. When life stabilizes. When I have my stats where they should be. When Liaraen is in Aelthoren living as a second daughter should. And when you and Kalen are where you want to be. Then yes. We come back here."
"Okay."
Sella lay back on the blanket. Looked at the sky.
Nathan watched her for a moment.
Then he looked at Kalen, who was eating his portion with calm.
Then he looked at Liaraen, who was sitting beside him with her aristocratic posture relaxed to the minimum level Nathan had seen from her during the entire journey.
And with a specifically small voice, to himself:
*Apparently. A good full day.*
*The best I’ve probably had in years.*
*Noted.*
The sun finished setting behind the western trees.
The campfire continued crackling.
The four ate the rest of the slug that had tried to eat them hours earlier.
And in the comfortable silence of a river afternoon shared between two humans and two divine hybrids and one aristocratic elf and a blind seer brother who apparently cooked better than most of Vera’s settlement grandmothers, Nathan Voss’s life—F-Rank Hunter, bearer of the seventeenth’s Seal, apparently destined for exponential growth levels in the next two years—settled completely.
And he enjoyed it.
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