We walked back the way we came from but this time we were at the bottom of the cliff. Shelly was still grumpy about the whole experience of climbing down but I knew its mood would improve as soon as we got our lunch.
The bottom of the cliff was not all that different compared to the top. There were still trees, shrubs and small animals running around. So far, no visible changes were apparent. We traveled like this till afternoon when I decided it was time for break and some food. I said to Shelly "Let's go deeper into the forest and get something to eat. I don't have much left in my bag and your bag is already empty". Shelly nodded its head and became a bit more cheerful.
Because we were following the cliff back to the place where we saw the fog, we didn't explore the forest yet. This was a good opportunity to check it out. We went into the forest and only 10 minutes later we encountered a group of animals. 'This is bad' I thought and said to Shelly "Do not make a sound, let's back away". The group of animals we encountered were bears but not just any bears, all of them were silver in colour. Moreover there were 16 of them in that group.
We backed away from that place and continued further north along the cliff for a while. We then entered the forest again in order to search for something to hunt. This time, after about 15 minutes, we encountered another group of animals. Boars and all of them vere variants. All of the boars were yellow except one. The one that other boars were gathered around was white and twice as big as the yellow boars. I thought 'What the hell did we get ourselves into?'.
No wonder there were no maps available for this region. First of all, it was hard to get here, maybe further down south or extremely north the cliff finished and there was a path down but these parts would be hard to map out, especially with those type of enemies popping out like common grass. I had a theory why those animals would thrive like this. Up there on the cliff, humans had their own settlements and so hunting was a common thing. The animals were not able to develop properly there. Although we could find variants and sometimes a group of them, it was not something that could compare with this place.
'There is no hunting here and therefore these animals are left alone without the need to hide, migrate or breed like crazy to fill in the spaces. These animals were allowed to developed and so I expect for this to be even worse if we were to continue further inside the forest' I thought.
We went further north to test my theory and when we entered deeper into the forest, we again saw a group of animals. This time they numbered less than previous times and the variants were black bears. This group was manageable and quite easy to hunt with our current skills.
We killed all 11 black bears. I quickly butchered them and as soon as I was done, we left that place. I didn't want to encounter a group of silver bears or worse. About an hour of travel away from the place we encountered the group of black bears, we set up a camp and finally had our dinner. While we were eating, I said to Shelly "I know it was supposed to be our holiday but I think it will have to stop". Shelly looked at me and I think it expected what my next words are going to be. I said "It is time to train hard. If we want to survive in this place, we have to get stronger and finding a way out with our current skills, could bring us even more danger".
Shelly seemed to agree with my words and nodded. I continued "I know I said we should travel and forget about the training but the time to play is over. If we had more strength, situations like the one that happened on top of that cliff would never occur". I then said "I have to perfect my skills and you have to get even stronger. Being able to kill one or two silver bears alone means nothing here. We have to be able to tackle a whole group of them by ourselves".
Shelly nodded seriously and from that point on we decided, it was time to stop playing around and return to our training. We had a good night rest and then started our training in the morning. I practiced both my body and skills, while Shelly would carry around loads of weight on its back together with the vision sealing mask attached on its face.
I started my day from the usual training. First doing the poses from 1st and 2nd modified diagrams and then strength training. The bag I was carrying, although heavy, was no longer a problem and I could practice my skills at the same time. In the afternoon, we tried to go and hunt something. It took us a while to find a suitable group we could hunt. It wasn't that there were no animals, the problem was the complete opposite. Not only were these parts of Great forest heavily populated with animals, the animals were very strong at that.
After over an hour of searching, we found a group of boars that were of the yellow variant. There was no other variant in that group so we decided to hunt it. Shelly attacked by ramming the group of boars and I finished off anything that tried to run or simply was left out. We took our game back to the camp and had our dinner. After dinner it was time for skill training. In the past, I was practicing the Stringed Hidden Weapons and my plans didn't change. Although I trained my body now as well. I would spend the rest of my time practicing the art before any other skill.
This went on till evening when we had another meal. I wondered 'I trained my body and skills today, what type of dream will I have? Will it be the one with the dark figure talking away or the other where the dark figure trains? Or perhaps combination of both?' I didn't know the answer but I knew the dream would appear.
I closed my eyes after a while and felt my consciousness starting to fade towards the land of dreams.