Josephine Wong was prepared to the best of her abilities, but she could still taste the bitterness and saltiness of blood in her mouth and throat when she woke up from the ground. There were small body parts of monsters and strange creatures lying around her, reeking of a rotten smell. Also lying around her were pieces of broken rocks, patches of dirt with grass and moss, and even some very tiny grains of shiny crystals.
Josephine Wong cast a simple inspection spell on herself to make sure she did not have any serious internal wounds - turned out she didn't, but she noticed that after protecting herself from the energy shockwaves released by the explosions, she almost exhausted all of her powers.
"Fucking hell." Josephine Wong cursed, and she took out a sheathed dagger from her robe pocket, and she found a broken tree branch from the ground and fashioned it into a walking stick.
The ground was still shaking, it was unclear to Josephine Wong whether it was just what happened with the area here, or was it the aftershakes from the explosion and the earthquakes created by it.
She did take the chance to salvage some seemingly valuable materials from the ground, which included some monster body parts lying on the ground, and all the tiny grains of crystals she could find on the ground.
When she looked around, she saw that she was deep inside a mountain forest, and it was a different mountain forest through which they trod earlier. The trees were different - they were tall, straight, and grew very close to each other. The tree barks on those trees looked strange as well - and when Josephine Wong peeled some of it from the trees and examined what she had in her hand, she found that the tree barks were not only dense, they also seemed to have some energy and shock absorbing properties. So she peeled off more of it and chained them together using some threads she pulled from her robe. And combined with some tree branches tied together into a triangle, she made a very simple wooden shield.
While she was deep in the mountain forest, it was quite difficult for her to tell the directions and even where she was. So she decided that her first move was to move up to somewhere high so she could have a better view of the area.
The leaves and branches of the trees in this thick mountain forest blocked most of the view into the sky, and Josephine Wong had no clear vision of where the highest point in the area was. She could only find the direction up the slope and just head in that direction.
While she was slowly moving up the slope and trying to recover her powers while eating away the emergency food she brought with her- she also started sensing something strange in the area - the energy fields, the density of air, and even the pull of gravity seemed to be somewhat different.
A loud screech came from the above, and Josephine Wong dived to the side just purely out of instincts. A long spike with a metal shine shot from the sky and sunk into the ground, with only a small part of it left out in the air.
Josephine Wong looked up and saw what shot the spike at her - it was a wolf-sized wasp creature, with its wings broken and torn and its belly bleeding with thick brown blood. She could tell that this was one of the fighter minions from the giant wasp monster. If she was at her full strength, it would be a piece of cake for her to handle this wounded creature, alas she was not, and actually quite far from it.
Without so much as a warning, the wasp creature with broken wings lept from the tree branches on which it inhibited and lunged at Josephine Wong with its two front claws ready to strike down at her.
"Crack!" Josephine Wong used her make-shift shield to guard herself, and the razor-sharp front claws cut through the tree barks and tree branches almost without losing any momentum. Josephine Wong was able to see this coming and she let go of the shield in time and swung her walking stick right at the wasp creature's belly.
The wasp creature screamed in pain when Josephine Wong's walking stick hit it on its belly, where it was wounded and bleeding. But Josephine Wong was not able to get another hit in, as the wasp creature swung its right front claw again and sliced off a large chunk of the stick.
Josephine Wong had to back off and repositioned herself, while the wasp creature rolled on the ground with rage and frenzy. Within just a few seconds, the wasp creature regained its composure and lunged once again at Josephine Wong.
Josephine Wong threw what remained of her stick at the wasp creature like a short spear and jumped to the side. The wasp monster tilted its body in midair and swung its left front claw at the stick. The stick was again sliced into two parts, the part in the front flew off from above it, and the part in the back flipped in midair and scratched its broken wings.
Josephine Wong rolled on the ground and grabbed a rock from the ground, then with full force, she threw the rock at the wasp creature. The wasp creature was about to land on the ground and it was in no position to dodge, therefore it rolled its body in midair once again and tried to slice the rock with its front claws.
"Bang!" the rock was actually infused with what was left of Josephine Wong's magical energy and it blew up right in the wasp creature's face. The shockwave knocked its front claws away and the splinters penetrated the wasp creature's shell and slashed its eyes and tentacles.
The wasp creature was beyond saving at this point, and all it could do was roll on the ground, screaming and screeching in pain while its broken body slowly bled out.
Josephine Wong took a while to catch her breath, and when she was finally able to stand up and walk, the wasp creature almost stopped moving entirely.
"Hey, you." a male human voice resounded in Josephine Wong's head, which startled her and almost made her jump: "Come over here and hide. If you don't wanna get stung to death."
"Who is it? Where are you?" Josephine Wong turned around and asked loudly.
"So you speak English. So that saves the power for telepathy." a man wearing animals' fur and hide as his clothes with a stone sword on his back came out from a hole in the ground and waved his left hand at Josephine Wong: "Come in here. You killed one of them and you didn't clean up, the whole horde will come in no time."
"Who are you?" Josephine Wong asked, though it was nice to see a human here, she was still on alert.
"Background check later. You wanna live or not?!"
"Okay, fine!" Josephine Wong looked at the sky and she could see that a horde of flying creatures was indeed closing in like a piece of dark cloud, and she had no choice but to get into the hole in the ground with the man.