1% Lifesteal

This realm had a rather unique geographical layout. Stone dominated most of the terrain, and hardy wood and low brush were right about the only thing that could survive there. Through the rocky soil, numerous paths had been carved, each clearly marked, their beginnings adorned by a highly informative sign stating where the road headed, with a chunk of a larger map printed out beneath the signs detailing nest locations, entrances, hotspots, and more.

"Wow…" he breathed out. As someone who had spent so long working in caverns where such signs carried considerably less information, he couldn\'t help but appreciate the value of these markings.

He carefully observed the sign beside the road they were heading down. There were no red areas. Good. Only two nests, and both seemed to be of medium size.

The road they headed down was paved in flat stone, and its surface was so smooth that it glistened. The sheer number of shoe-bottoms that had graced this surface had polished it over the ages.

Eventually, the rocky terrain grew smoother, and the trees grew taller. Their walk was primarily silent, without much conversation between them, but the occasional, distant noise broke the quiet. It was vague, but it sounded like smashing or clanging or something, and in one direction, he could even spot a plume of smoke rising into the air.

Then they walked past another party. It was a five-man crew carrying tied-up bundles of gorel corpses, all wrapped in plastic bags, and they waved at them as they passed by, cheerfully carrying their bounty away.

Not long after, they approached the edge of the green zone, and the distant noises became clearer. It was the smashing of abilities going off, clanging of metal meeting claws, sounds of explosions, and shouting—so much shouting.

The calm walk there hadn\'t given him an illusion of safety, but it had been deceptively quiet. The sounds around him cleared it up—they weren\'t on a walk through the woods—they were entering a warzone.

The forest grew denser, the trees becoming tall and lush enough to plunge their path into darkness beneath the canopy.

Suddenly, the visor on his helmet felt stifling, and although most of his vision was intact, having even just the edges of his sight cut off made him feel blinder than he wanted to be.

An unexpected hand landed on his shoulder, and he jumped, facing the man who put it there.

Theodore, the brunet party leader, nodded at him and lightly patted his shoulder. "Are you nervous?" the man asked in a whisper.

He decided to be honest and nodded his head. Indeed. This was serious. He had thought he would be more prepared, that his time working in the caverns and the experience of fighting and killing a leviathan would allow him to be calmer, but he hadn\'t walked into those situations ready to fight.

And, if he was being honest, the memories of his battle against the sea monster and the patriarch made him, if anything, want to retire and never face another monster again. He had no delusions of greatness—the only reason he had lived through that situation was because he just happened to have had the right tools at the right time. It had mostly been luck.

Regular delving, actually fighting with his life on the line where he relied on nothing but his knowledge, skill, and capabilities, was something he was entirely new to.

"Don\'t worry," the man said, smiling at him. "All of us here started somewhere, too, and we\'re still alive." He laughed a bit, pulling on Freddy\'s jacket. "The first time I walked in here, I was wearing my grandpa\'s old jacket and three pairs of jeans stacked over one another."

Some among the others chuckled at that.

"And you had us—don\'t forget that," the man\'s wife, Beatrice, said.

"Sorry, you\'re right," he acknowledged. "I even managed to survive despite having them!"

"Hey!" the woman protested, and he chuckled mirthlessly.

"Relax," he said again, tapping him on the back. "You\'re strong, well-equipped, and, hopefully, won\'t be directly engaged in a fight. It\'ll be fine."

"Man, don\'t say that kind of stuff," Robert butted in. "You\'re gonna jinx us."

"Okay, enough chatting!" Petra interrupted. "We\'re already in a danger zone! Keep your eyes peeled and your mouths shut."

The man\'s mood visibly soured, and he shook his head. He bowed his head and whispered into his ear, "Don\'t get the wrong idea about her. She isn\'t a total… uh… you know… Just during delves. Her sister died during one, so…"

"Ah, okay," he said, but honestly, nothing the woman had done so far had irked him. All she had really done was follow safety protocols and rightfully tell them to stay silent. Gorels primarily relied on their hearing, after all.

"Movement," Theodore said, suddenly turning serious as he whirled to their right. "Two-thirty."

The group silenced. Everyone instantly took their bags off, cradling them in their left arms while holding a weapon out in their right, if they had one.

Theodore and Lance were the only two among them to, at least at first glance, appear unarmed. But the leader\'s white gloves were clearly not an ordinary clothing article, and Lance had metallic gloves that were more like gauntlets. Robert held his bow, Kyle held his sword, and Petra and Beatrice held small staves.

They hadn\'t told Freddy exactly what this meant, but he mimicked them and did the same thing, cradling his bag in his left arm. Nobody chastised him, so it at least wasn\'t a mistake.

Their group went deathly silent as they stepped off the paved path and into the forest. It became instantly apparent what Lance had been calling out. There was a small group of things scurrying around a freshly dug-out entrance, gathering dead branches, pulled-out bushes, and mushrooms into piles. The small tunnel they were moving through was coming out of the side of a large stone formation.

Once they got within maybe fifty meters of their targets, Theodore raised his right arm, pointed a finger into the air, and swirled it around.

He knew what that meant. This was where they would leave their bags. All of them, including himself, threw their baggage into a large pile. He took a length of rope out of his rucksack and tied all the bags together. He tied a small weight they had provided him with around the rope\'s end, threw it up and across a tall branch, and then pulled, raising their baggage above the ground.

Lance had moved to help him but stepped back when he realized that he had no trouble lifting this much by himself.

After tying the rest of the rope around the tree, he nodded, and the rest of them took off toward their targets, sneaking closer.

Robert climbed up into a tree, showcasing incredible agility with his air affinity, moving as if the air was dragging him along rather than providing resistance. Lance and Kyle split up, both men closely followed by one of the two casters, and Theodore stood right where he was, only tentatively hiding behind a tree.

Once they all got into position, the man raised an arm forward. He made a finger-gun gesture with his right hand and then, suddenly, fired a beam of light at one of the creatures.

The gorel was startled, but the attack did no harm. All it did was leave a white, glowing mark on the creature\'s fur. Then another ability triggered, marking another beast, this time with a red color. The gorels were warily eyeing the direction the attacks were coming from. Multiple such abilities triggered, marking each gorel with a different color.

Not long after, the monsters clearly had enough and rushed into the woods, searching for whoever was doing this.

"Lance!" the leader yelled out.

The brawler immediately grabbed a sizable nearby rock and threw it at immense speed toward the tunnel entrance. The projectile smashed above the hole, collapsing it and preventing reinforcements from arriving.

"Robert! Red, blue, cyan, shoot!" Theodore yelled, and then the archer shot at the monsters marked in red, blue, and cyan, respectively.

The first two were caught clean in the torso, and the third was hit in the leg, but although the arrows had quite the power behind them, it was still barely enough to slow them down.

"Petra, green, bubble! Beatrice, red and cyan, firewall!" the man commanded.

Over the next few moments, the one with the green mark was trapped in a floating bubble of water, and the monster group was split right between the cyan and red gorels by a blazing hot firewall.

Theodore kept calling out names, colors, abilities, and sometimes numbers, using a 360-degree system to communicate where something was coming from or where it had to go.

Kyle\'s sword slashed with such finesse and precision that it rarely, if ever, took more than a single swing to end a monster. Petra, who had the skill set of the other most common path water archs took, used her support abilities to debilitate opponents by trapping them in floating bubbles or turning the soil beneath their feet into mud puddles.

Lance showcased the true power of the earth affinity, pummeling the creatures with rock-hard punches and kicks, raising the soil and shifting it to break the monster\'s footing up and gain the upper hand. Beatrice, although she avoided using her abilities directly on the monsters, likely to spare their bodies from being destroyed, could easily control the flow of battle by segmenting areas with a Firewall.

There had been around a dozen gorels there, outnumbering the party two to one, but after only a few minutes and without any apparent hiccups, the creatures were dead, and their party was victorious.

The teamwork, the planning, the setup, the synergies—it painted the picture of an efficient and deadly group of experienced hunters. And Theodore, despite not even inflicting a single injury on any of the creatures, had easily contributed the most. His marking ability made it effortless to pinpoint the exact enemy he was talking about, allowing him to quickly and clearly communicate information in battle.

"You guys are amazing," Freddy couldn\'t stop himself from saying as they reached him.

Theodore laughed loudly. "First time seeing a pro party in action?"

It wasn\'t. Not really. He had seen a lot of combat footage while working as a cashier. But the memories of that—from a period where he knew little to nothing about the world of archs—were blurry and hazy. The footage wasn\'t filmed to be clear to mortals, and nobody invested effort into explaining what was happening. It also didn\'t help that most of the footage he saw was from the news; thus, it was chaotic and unfocused.

"Yeah," he said. "That was pretty epic."

"I appreciate the compliments," the leader said, "but you should probably keep an eye out for anything that might be coming and not watching us all the time."

"Don\'t worry," he said nervously. "Trust me, I was glancing around… a lot."

The man chuckled and asked him to put their gear down. Once the bags were back on the ground, they took out plastic bags and gloves. Then they gathered the corpses and some pieces that had fallen victim to Kyle\'s sword or a particularly nasty punch by Lance and placed them into the bags, trying to keep them to one body at a time.

The bags could be sealed by pulling on a small thread. Then, through the use of plastic hooks and racks, they could be tied into bundles.

"This is where your work really comes in," Theodore said, turning to face him. "You\'re gonna have to carry a lot of these. We\'re not done hunting until we take at least another party this size." Then, pointing at the rope the bags had been tied to, he added, "Just for the record, you\'re guarding the bags so that no pricks would try to snatch a bag or two while we\'re distracted."

He then pointed at the bags of monsters. "These are the goods that\'ll really be in danger. Gorels can smell the blood of their kin, and they tend to gather the corpses to drag them back down into the hive. There is a rather high likelihood that you\'ll have to defend the bodies from an attack."

He winced at that.

"So you\'ve seen them in action now. I\'ll give you a choice," the man said. "You can help us drag these corpses back to the hub to sell and return or guard them while we fight another group. If you choose the first option, as per our agreement, you must carry most of the burden so we can stay in shape for another fight. But if you pick the—"

"Let\'s take these back first," he answered unhesitantly. He was confident in fighting; he really was, but there was no need to take the risk. And if there was anything he excelled at, it was hauling heavy stuff around on his back.

Theodore shrugged. "I prefer that option, too."

Everyone agreed with that. Hauling two dozen monster corpses wouldn\'t be an easy task.

So, without hesitation, he lifted one of the bags. These things were quite heavy; judging from experience, he could tell that the bag weighed around 40 kg, a bit over half the weight of an average adult male. Grabbing the rack, he hooked together six bags.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Theodore said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy, pal. Those things aren\'t light, and we have a while of walking to get back to the passage. That\'s over five hundred pounds you\'re trying to haul. Are you trying to kill yourself?"

He was about to hook another two for a total of eight, which he assumed himself capable of doing but stopped upon the man\'s request. Indeed, he had lost a lot of muscle mass since the peak of his strength. Perhaps he was getting a bit ahead of himself.

"I\'ll keep it to six, then," he said, attaching the two bands that would wrap around his arms, allowing him to wear the rack like a backpack. He also tied his rucksack over it. It did add another fifty pounds to the weight, but he should still be able to do it. If not, he\'d take a bag off.

Before Theodore could stop him, he hauled the weight onto his back… and got up. It was pretty heavy, indeed, and he could tell seven would already be too much.

"This much is fine," he said.

Theodore raised an eyebrow at that. "Okay, Spartan." Then, with a cheeky smile, he added, "If you can carry that all the way to the passage, I\'ll add another 1% to your pay."

Freddy nodded at that. "Deal."

And thus, they began their journey. On their way back, Theodore remained hyper-vigilant and, a few times, redirected their path, stating that there was danger up ahead. With the man\'s guidance, the party always took the safest path.

As for the rest of the bags, all of them carried one each. It took them around an hour to make it back. Every few minutes, they threw inquiring glances his way and seemed more and more surprised that he was handling himself just fine.

Theodore was getting somewhat tired from hauling his weight, and even the girls showed signs of slight wear, albeit less than their leader. While that much wasn\'t particularly bad, they were all one-stars. Only Kyle had a dedicated talent to help him carry his share; everyone else had to rely on their bodies.

It was also unsurprising that Theodore was struggling. After all, the man was a light-affinity arch—and the light affinity had very few tempering techniques. Light-affinity archs were nearly guaranteed to get the holy affinity upon ascension, and that at least provided them with a few options. Until then, however… they had little to rely on.

By the end of their journey, Freddy was pretty exhausted, but not nearly as much as he should have been. At least not according to them. They praised his strength and endurance as they dropped the bodies off at the counter and returned to the passage.

After another hour of walking, rehydrating themselves, and eating some snacks, they all recovered their energy.

And so did he. But while some slight signs of fatigue were on them, he was perfectly fine. To him, this came as no surprise. He had used Adaptive Water Body much while hauling massive boulders on his back. To the others, however…

"What the fuck kind of juice are you on to be so damn tough!?" Robert asked, eyeing him with evident bemusement in his expression.

He chuckled at that. "Trust me, if you knew the type of training I\'ve gone through, you wouldn\'t be surprised."

If anything, that only made the others more curious, but Petra quickly cut their interrogation off as they again set foot into the forest, raising her even further in his eyes.

After not even ten minutes of searching, they came across another group of gorels. But this was different. The last group was only workers. This one wasn\'t.

"Three guards and six workers," Theodore said, using an ability to scout from afar. "What do you guys think?"

"Shouldn\'t be a problem," Petra said, surprisingly enough. "I can keep a guard contained in a bubble, and Beatrice can blow another one up. We lose a body, but that makes things minimal risk."

Theodore nodded. "My thoughts exactly. But instead of Fireball, I think we could get away with Robert\'s Negative Pressure. If we really need it, Beatrice can ease our load later if things get too hectic."

After a few seconds of thinking, they nodded in agreement.

"You heard it, chief," he said to the archer. "Aim for the head."

Robert nodded.

They approached the position again, starting the fight with Theodore marking all the opponents. Petra trapped one guard in a bubble, as promised, and another guard was struck by an arrow traveling impossibly fast, which resulted in half its head being blown wide open.

Freddy kept an eye on the fight, but this time he took his role of lookout more seriously, observing the forest surrounding them. Suddenly, the sound of something clawing its way down a nearby tree reached his ears, and he turned to face the noise.

A very angry-looking gorel stared at him from behind a tree beside him.

Judging by its large build and sharp claws, it was a guard. And judging by the green stripes running all across its body…

It was a deviant.