Chapter 95

The mountains loomed in their vision, blocking much of the eastern and northern sky and forcing them to push farther and farther west in an attempt to circle around them. Since that was an expected complication to their journey, Luke hadn’t thought much about it initially.

That was before the squirrels started showing up. At first, it had just been some random level 12 squirrel, nothing impressive, that had leaped off of a tree branch in some sort of suicidal attempt to attack his face. Luke had batted it out of the air quite easily thanks to a combination of [Peripheral Awareness], [Twitch Reflexes], and [Counter].

Then twenty feet later, another one had jumped on him. And another soon after that. Luke quickly went from happy about the free XP to annoyed at the constant ambush attempts. Once the first one tried to attack Zea, annoyance turned to anger.

“Why in the hell are all of these squirrels doing kamikaze runs on us?” he asked.

“Maybe it’s a territorial thing,” Zea said. “We’re near the ancestral family tree or something. They’re not really that dangerous. Let’s just hurry through this area so they leave us alone.”

Two hours later, Luke brought his mace down on a squirrel tall enough that it came up past his knee.

[You have slain Branch Drop Squirrel (lvl 14). 201 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 387 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 129.]
[Highest level kill: 14.]

“So, what do we know so far?” Luke asked.

“They’re aggressive, and there are a lot of them, but they don’t seem to attack in groups. This would actually be a decent place to grind out XP for you.”

“Yeah, but not for you. I can kill them with one hit, but you can’t.”

Left unsaid was that she also wasn’t fast enough to reliably tag them even if she could have one-shotted them, or that if one of them managed to sink those oversized teeth into her, they didn’t have a good way to patch her back up. It was probably safe for Luke to farm the squirrels, but it didn’t help Zea and they were exactly the wrong sort of enemy for her to tag while Luke did the heavy lifting.

“Maybe we should turn back and circle wide around whatever the fuck it is these squirrels have going on here,” he said.

Zea shook her head. “We’re fine. Your perception is high enough that they won’t get the drop on you, and you’re fast enough to intercept them. As long as I stay close, I’m safe. Let’s just push through. How wide could a squirrel’s territory even be?”

Luke had his doubts. In theory, he agreed that squirrels couldn’t have a very big territory, though even that idea wasn’t solid to him. There had been more than enough examples of weird shit that didn’t conform to how he thought reality worked for him to just take it on faith that this particular time, everything would work out.

Even if that was the case, the real problem was that there were just so many damn squirrels. There was no end to them. Every few minutes, a new one would attack him, and he didn’t trust them to keep up that pattern. It was easy to picture them hunkering down for the night and hundreds of squirrels rushing them after building up their numbers for an hour or two.

By himself, Luke thought he had good odds of surviving even a hundred squirrels attacking him at once. It wouldn’t be easy, sure, but he had a full suite of combat skills, enough stamina to run for days without stopping, and the strength and agility to make every hit count.

Zea didn’t, and he didn’t think he could protect her from even four or five monsters at once. So far, that hadn’t been an issue. Most monsters didn’t operate in large groups. Hell, most of them didn’t even have partners. But the sheer number of squirrels was making him second-guess the idea that they’d keep coming at him one at a time.

“Hey, look at me,” Zea said, grabbing hold of Luke’s arm. “It will be fine. You’re strong, and I’m not as delicate as you seem to think. Even if we go around this place, we’re just going to be walking through some other monster’s territory. At least here, we know what we’re dealing with. Now, let’s go.”

“Okay. Stay close, I guess.”

They pushed forward, fending off attacks that got more and more frequent. Sometimes Zea managed to get a shot in at them, though she’d had to resort to her magic poking stick and she went easy on it to keep it from breaking, but Luke did the majority of the work and since no squirrel he touched ever lived to take a second hit, he got almost all the XP.

Night fell, and with it the attacks from the squirrels died down. They didn’t stop completely, but the frequency dropped enough that Luke finally started to relax. “Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll be long gone by the time the sun comes up.”

“That means staying up all night,” Zea said sourly. “You know how I feeeeeaaugh!”

Luke grabbed her and pulled her behind him just as a squirrel that was at least three feet tall dropped down from overhead. The size was bad enough, but what really worried Luke was that this was the first time he’d seen one with a tool. Somehow, its paws had opposable thumbs, and it had some sort of thick branch that had been shaped down into an approximation of a size-appropriate sword. The damn thing even had a point on it, as the monster had proven by driving it straight into the ground where Zea had been standing.

“Stay behind me, keep an eye out for others,” Luke said as he leapt forward.

The squirrel was fast. All of them had been quick, but not like this one. It was damn near faster than Luke, and it jabbed out with that sharpened stick it held in quick lunging attacks that it broke off and skittered backwards whenever Luke showed the slightest effort to block.

It was testing him, which meant it was smart. Smart and fast was a deadly combination he did not want to deal with. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to guess at anything. [Analyze] would tell him everything he needed to know.

[Name: Drop Squirrel Scout]
[Level: 18]
[Strength: 9]
[Agility: 32]
[Stamina: 6]
[Perception: 24]

If it had been stupid, he would have said it wasn’t a threat, but the fact that the system labeled it as a ‘scout’ had some disturbing implications. That implied not only intelligence, but organization. It was time to pick System’s brain, so to speak, about these damn squirrels and make sure he wasn’t walking into a whole army of them.

Before that though, he needed to take care of the furry little bastard doing its best to poke holes in him. Luke rushed forward, pushing it back and relying on his superior agility to close the gap. The squirrel leaped up, easily clinging to the tree bark with its feet and one hand somehow, but Luke just jumped into the air and slammed into the tree right beneath it.

And the only reason he missed was that it was climbing, but not fast enough. He got a hand around its leg and ripped it free, then swung it down to slam it against the tree once before dropping it twenty feet to the ground.

“Drop squirrel this, fucker,” he said.

Luke landed on it with both feet, driving it deep into the earth. Then he hopped back, took his mace in a golf swing, and ripped a huge chunk of dirt away as he decapitated the monster.

[You have slain Drop Squirrel Scout (lvl 18). 335 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 682 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 32.]
[Highest level kill: 18.]
[Congratulations! You have reached level 30. 30 AP awarded for use.]

“Oh, damn. I didn’t realize I was that close to leveling,” Luke said. “One step closer to rank 2 [Life Surge] now.”

Zea walked over and looked at the corpse. “That’s… different. System, what can you tell us about this thing?”

“Drop squirrels are semi-sapient creatures that form huge societies with thousands of members. Their society exists above ground-level, inside giant trees that grow hundreds of feet in the air. They have some biological differences from regular squirrels, primarily in that they’ve gained the ability to use tools.”

“So what I’m getting from that is that we’re heading in a bad direction and we need to go farther east towards the mountains,” Luke said.

“Maybe. Then again, they still haven’t been much of a threat. A detour could cost us time and XP that could be gained from cutting right through them.”

“Hey System,” Luke said without breaking eye contact with Zea, “Do these drop squirrels generally attack in groups or individually?”

“Both, though the closer one gets to their home trees, the more likely it is that they’ll be encountered in numbers.”

“Thanks System, thought so. We should have changed direction a few hours ago.”

“System,” Zea said, “Where is the closest home tree?”

“Approximately four miles northwest of here.”

“And would we encounter any other trees if we continue straight north?”

“You would not,” System said.

“What are the chances of us encountering a large group if we pass within a mile of the tree?”

“I do not have sufficient information to hazard a guess.”

Luke scratched at his chin and looked down at the dead scout. “Why are you so intent on going straight into danger?”

Zea shrugged. “Time, mostly. The magic on that bag with the amaril hide won’t last forever, and we don’t know how many detours we’re going to be forced to take. There are no roads this far north, and there could be level 40 or 50 monsters out here that we have no choice but to do wide circles around. This is a threat you can handle, and if things start getting hot, we can retreat.”

Luke didn’t love the logic, and he suspected a large part of was motivated by Zea’s greed. She was very excited about the expected profits from selling that hide, but they were still a week at best away from civilization, probably longer. At the same time, they needed that money to keep moving forward and losing the value of that piece of animal skin would seriously hurt them.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew there were risks, and she felt like Luke was strong enough to handle them. More than that, she trusted him to keep her safe too. If it really was just a few miles until they were past that home tree thing, and they weren’t going to run into any other trees like that, then they could be gone before daybreak.

“System, can you tell me the highest level drop squirrel in the area?” Luke asked.

“32,” System replied. “And the lowest is level 4, including the non-sapient cousin species you’ve already encountered.”

“32 is kind of high,” Luke said. “Are there a lot of them that are that strong?”

“I am only able to offer limited information on the subject. The average level is much lower, but there are always outliers.”

“I would assume the high level ones would be near their home trees,” Zea said. “Which is just another reason to go hard and fast and be out of here before it becomes a problem.”

“Alright, alright.” Luke put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve convinced me. We’ll rush through as fast as we can, I’ll collect a few thousand XP from whatever gets in our way, and we’ll be far, far away from this problem before the sun comes up and the rest of the squirrels wake up.”

“No time to waste then,” Zea said. “Actually, wait. System, do the drop squirrels have a currency system? Do they use any sort of precious metals or gemstones as money?”

“They do not,” System said.

“Damn, too much to hope for. I guess we don’t need to worry about looting them then.”

“Probably for the best,” Luke told her. “We’re in a hurry, remember?”

“Not so much that I wouldn’t stop to pick up a few extra copper or silver off them. There’s saving time, and then there’s just being plain wasteful.”