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Chapter 8 by simmaster simmaster

How to go about this?

Just pick a direction and hope for the best.

You decide to trust your instincts and choose to travel west, away from sunrise.

You run for a long time, impressed with how much faster you can run and how much slower you get tired. You encounter nothing but empty fields, making you feel uncomfortably exposed, but you remind yourself that it's dark and you're significantly harder to see. Your new improved night vision makes that easy to forget.

Then, finally, you see a variation in the terrain. Trees. You decide to head for them and soon arrive at the outskirts of a forest. It would probably make for a good hunting ground given your adaptation for such environments, but there's no indicator of what level of monsters and heroes are to be found within.

It couldn't hurt checking, so you walk into the forest, attempting to remain quiet so you can observe the forest's inhabitants without revealing your presence.

Not yet having encountered anything living, you do start to appreciate the layout of the forest more and more. The vegetation and the trees are just dense enough for you to be able to easily hide, but still navigate just as easily. It would be ideal if the heroes are of suitable level. That is, if heroes regularly come here at all. Well, you COULD probably get some XP out of monsters, but then there's still the question of level...

Then you sense something. A smell that you immediately recognize as that of a hero. You can tell that no hero is close, but their scent lingers in the air. You remember your new ability... You can track enemies as long as the trail is fresh enough. And 30 seconds multiplied with your current level would mean that the hero could have passed through here up to four minutes ago.

You follow the trail, making sure to remain quiet but still move quickly in order to catch up with the hero. Your nose quickly picks up more scents as you move, telling you that there were a total of three heroes that spread out and then regrouped, moving in the direction you're currently walking. You doubt you could take out three heroes unless they were REALLY low level, but at least you could get an idea of what kind of heroes come through here.

After a few minutes you hear voices and put drastically more focus on moving quietly, sneaking carefully and peeking between the trees until you finally get a look at your targets.

There's one healer, one mage and one tank. Good, two easily killed ones and one meant to keep them from getting killed. And currently they all have their backs turned at you as they walk.

The healer is a male elf, although male is a strong word. Based on his build, hair and tone of voice he's following the elf stereotype of being excessively feminine, which is evident even in his clothing. He wears a white, almost translucent robe and lots of jewelry that you assume boost his powers, most notably a silver tiara.

The mage is another male elf, and this one you can't see much of due to the blue robe with the pulled up hood that covers everything else as long as you're viewing him from behind. He doesn't say anything either. You can only tell it's a male elf because of his scent, which you can recognize as these things by sensing the similarities between his scent and the healer's.

Finally there's the tank, a female elf. Due to the entire party consisting of elves you wonder if perhaps you've entered a part of the world strictly inhabited by elves, or maybe it's just a coincidence, or whatever. It really doesn't matter. Killing them is what matters.

And while the other two look like easy prey, at least in terms of getting through their physical defence, the tank is less so. She's heavily armored, as a tank should be, and wields a shortsword and a shield. However her armor is somewhat rusty and her sword chipped. That doesn't occur naturally in the game as far as you know, so you're ready to assume that these heroes aren't very high level.

Question is, how best to deal with them?

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