Chapter 99

The tree wasn’t moving very fast, perhaps only a foot or two every second. Occasionally, a huge root would break itself free, slam down into the earth, and drag the whole thing forward in a ten-foot jump. The whole process was so ludicrously slow that there was no way it could ever catch up to them.

Luke figured that was why they were waking a whole bunch up at once. The trees wouldn’t even be able to move through the forest without being blocked by other trees, but if the squirrels woke up enough of them, they would effectively create a living wall that forced Luke and Zea to confront one or more in order to get by.

Every few seconds, he could hear another of the massive thumps echoing through the forest. “We’ve got to get past this line before they block us in completely,” he said. “Or, I don’t know… wake up the whole forest even. If they can even do that. System, there’s a skill for waking up trees and making them move, right?”

“There is,” System confirmed.

“How often can they do it? What does it cost them?”

“It is a ritual spell that takes twenty minutes to complete, though that time may be reduced by working with a partner or even in a group. It is a physically and mentally exhausting skill, not one to be used frivolously.”

“Unless there’s about a hundred druids working together,” Luke said. “Then they could use it a whole bunch of times.”

“This might work in our favor,” Zea pointed out. “If the druids are wiping themselves out with this magic, they aren’t going to be doing other things. As long as we can slip the noose on this trap, we’ll actually be better off with less pursuers.”

They weren’t going to get away just by standing there and talking about it. The two of them circled wide around the oak tree, not even cutting across the clearing just in case there were squirrel folk hidden in its branches. Fighting something like that while the squirrels shot at them or tripped them up with more grasping roots or vines would be a nightmare.

Just to be safe, he tossed an [Analyze] at the tree as they skirted around it. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting, but it wasn’t what he saw.

[Name: Enlightened Oak]
[Level: 1]
[Strength: 64]
[Agility: 9]
[Stamina: 140]
[Perception: 7]

It was a good thing they weren’t planning on fighting it. He couldn’t even figure out how exactly he was supposed to beat something with that kind of stamina. If his wound regeneration rate scaled to something with 140 in the same stat, he expected damage to repair itself right before his eyes. And since trees drank through their roots and converted sunlight to energy, he didn’t imagine it was going to run out of juice anytime soon.

They left the oak behind quickly, though not without another run in with a troop of nine squirrels that tried to herd them back into the clearing. Herding tactics only worked if the target wasn’t willing to go in for a direct confrontation though, so when the squirrels moved to block them, Luke just smashed right through.

If not for the system notifications, he wouldn’t even have known how many he’d killed. “I got four of them,” he said to Zea once they were through.

“Finished off two that you wounded before the rest broke and ran.”

“So three left alive. They’ll probably go running for reinforcements, but it’s not like they’ve been having trouble finding us so far anyway.”

“I’d say go faster,” Zea said, ducking under a low hanging branch that Luke simply snapped off on his way through a moment later, “but…”

They were already going twice as fast as before. Even with Zea’s leg injury, the forest opening up had enabled them to put on a burst of speed. “Do you want me to carry you?” Luke said. He knew he could outrun Zea by a considerable margin, and she didn’t weigh enough to slow him down. He’d avoided bringing up the subject out of respect, but things were getting kind of desperate now.

She scowled back at him and said, “It’s not like I’m helpless. Am I really slowing you down that much?”

“Not that much,” Luke lied. “But we could use any advantage we can get, right?”

He could see pride and practicality warring on her face. She knew he was right, and it irked her. He was probably also violating some sort of cultural taboo, like that thing with the rock throwing, but he was sure she’d forgive him for it.

“Fine,” she said, reluctantly. Luke shrugged off his pack and handed it to her, then turned in place so she could jump up onto his back.

“Not even going to carry me in a princess hold?” she demanded, pretending to be offended. At least, he hoped she was pretending.

“Need to keep my arms free in case something attacks us,” he said.

“Likely excuse.”

Zea took a moment to adjust the multiple packs, then leaped up and threw her arms around Luke’s neck. Her feet dangled down by his knees for a moment before her legs wrapped around his waist. “This was not the kind of ride on you I had in mind last night,” she whispered into his ear.

“And you called me a hornball,” he said back.

“You are.”

“So are you.”

Once Zea was securely holding onto him, Luke took off running. There was no more being gentle on the local flora, no more trying to wind around and find the best way through. He put his head down to protect his face and gave himself over to a primal urge to just move. Branches shattered and bushes that tried to snag him were torn out by the roots. Luke took great, bounding strides at full speed, weaving through trees with a reckless disregard for his own wellbeing.

They left a trail a blind squirrel could find behind them, but getting distance from those moving trees trumped being careful. They quickly left the oak tree behind, and within twenty minutes, System had confirmed for him that they were outside the farthest reaches of squirrel territory. It only remained to see if the squirrels would follow them out, and if not, what kind of monsters lived on their northern border.

The forest thinned back to normal after a few more miles and Luke let Zea down. “I think we need to take a food break,” he said. “And I need to use [Life Surge] to patch myself back up.”

He was covered in scrapes and cuts from tearing through the forest, and one of his knees was starting to swell up from being smacked against a tree when he stumbled on a hole, then continued running for a few more miles. Nothing was really that serious by itself, but there were an awful lot of small injuries.

“We’ll need to slow down to forage soon,” Zea told him. She held open the food bag for him to look, revealing it was close to empty. “That’s one good recovery meal there, or maybe three regular ones.”

It was actually worse than that. She hadn’t included herself in that calculation. If Luke popped [Life Surge], he’d go through all of the food in the next few minutes. Otherwise they had less than a day’s worth of food between the two of them. That wasn’t all that unusual a state of affairs, to be honest. Their diet consisted of a lot of meat harvested from monstrous animals, but without spending enough time in one place to preserve that meat in some way, most of it got left behind.

Considering that the wilds of Aros were rife with animals intent on eating him, Luke didn’t worry too much about finding his next meal normally. The only reason he cared now was that he still wanted to get as far away from the squirrels as possible.

“I’ll heal up, eat it now, and we can keep going until this evening. Once we’ve got forty or fifty miles between us and them, we can find a safe place to sleep and I’ll spend some time foraging before we get moving again.”

He triggered the skill and let out a relieved sigh as all the little injuries that covered him melted away. A surge of energy swept through him, and all the sudden the thought of laying a beat down on a tree did not seem so far-fetched. Luke was too used to the side effects of [Life Surge] to run off and do something stupid, especially since he only had about thirty seconds before it ran out.

He steadied his shaking hands, took the bag of food, and started eating it raw. That was fine for some of the stuff they’d found, but most of it really did not taste good if it wasn’t cooked. That was a price he was willing to pay though. After an all-night marathon run that had ended in a mad sprint while carrying about a hundred pounds of Zea and gear, he’d been hungry even before healing himself.

The one thing he felt bad about was that he completely emptied the bag and Zea didn’t get a single bite. He would find some way to make that up to her, and soon. It wouldn’t be by cooking dinner though, not unless he caved and spent the AP on the skill. Since he was still stubbornly refusing to do so, despite no evidence at all that he was anywhere close to learning it the hard way, he would have to find some other way to help.

They walked while he ate, though the pace he set was harsh enough that Zea more jogged than walked to keep up with him. Hours went by with no pursuit, and they finally started to relax just after noon. “I think it’s time to find a place we can fort up in,” Zea told him.

This wasn’t a new process for them. Ideally, they’d find some sort of unoccupied shallow cave to camp out in. More realistically, they often ended up sleeping inside a stand of trees grown close enough together to form a sort of wall. Rarely, they slept in the branches themselves if they were worried about monsters. Given that their primary concern for the last day was squirrel folk, neither of them felt like that last option offered much in the way of protection.

Luck was with them though. Or maybe it was just simple pattern recognition. They were still close enough to the mountains that finding random caves wasn’t that hard, and it only took them about an hour of travel to stumble across one that suited their needs perfectly. It was thirty feet deep before it made a sharp bend to the left and went another fifty feet in pitch-blackness, which was just fine by Luke.

Zea remained there to rest, and Luke went back out to forage firewood and food. If something furry with four legs and a lot of meat on its flank just happened to come across him, well, he wouldn’t complain about that. Otherwise he’d scour the area for berries, nuts, and roots.

His luck held, and Luke quickly filled half the pack with various forest edibles. He even found a bunch of mushrooms, but [Survivalist]couldn’t help him identify what they were. Wary of poisoning himself, he left them untouched. In all likelihood, even if they were poisonous, his stamina would have kept him safe, but it seemed like a pointless risk to take.

Luke dropped off the food and started his second loop to look for firewood. He’d gathered a decent amount of deadwood to use as starter and was eyeing up a fallen tree he’d stumbled across to hack up for good, thick logs, when he noticed the first squirrel.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” he told himself. It was sitting a few hundred feet back, halfway up a tree and watching him. That wasn’t that unusual. Squirrels were prey animals for a lot of things living in the forest. If they hadn’t just spent hours crossing an area of the forest that was controlled by sapient squirrel-human hybrids, he probably would have dismissed it without a second thought.

It was better to be safe than sorry, so he deposited his bundle of sticks by the fallen tree, drew his mace off his back, and started towards the squirrel. He quickly spotted three more of them on other trees, and then as he got close, he felt the XP coming off something much stronger, mid-20s at least.

“Crap,” he swore. It figured they weren’t getting away that easily.