James woke up in the tent. He had gotten out of the dungeon a bit earlier today. He stepped out of the tent, and started preparing some basic breakfast.
When the other two woke up, they decided to go hiking. After they finished breakfast, they walked over to the amphitheater to pick a hike. Because each hike was supervised by adults, they only had a two options. After all, there were only 30 kids in the camp.
"Are we going for the strenuous hike, or the easier one?" asked Mo.
"How about the easier one? I don't want to have to wait for James."
James was actually much stronger than he looked now. Due to the orbs, he had the strength of a strong teenager - more than you'd expect from that skinny body of his. However, his physical endurance was still rather poor. So, he didn't try and protest.
"Yeah, that's fine. I mean, it's a vacation anyways."
Thus, they made their way to the group that would leave on the easy hike for one hour. James, Jack, and Mo had already packed the necessary things like water, snacks, sunscreen, and hats, so they simply talked with each other and waited.
While they were waiting, James caught sight of the siblings again. James was rather nervous about going on the hike with them. To his dismay, they also joined the easy hiking group. Nothing happened when they joined the group, but that didn't make James any less uneasy. He still couldn't figure out whether or not they were explorers. Beck said that he hadn't seen them before, but there were at least 100 explorers, if not even more, in the dungeon currently. One face out of 100 was rather hard to remember; it was definitely possible that Beck simply forgot.
James actually hadn't seen all that many explorers in the dungeon. A lot of them were satisfied with the amount of money they could make, and many spoke different languages. It turned out that Beck, Mike, and Leah had been the only explorers he'd actually talked to.
However, James was now going on a hiking trip with those two siblings. Hopefully, nothing bad would happen.
The group set off. Their destination was a small falls about 3 miles away. Although it was only a 6 mile round trip, the elevation difference was somewhat high for a short hike like this. The trip towards went smoothly. They arrived faster than they'd expected and thus.
"Hopefully nobody strained themselves on the way here. If they collapsed on the way back, we'd have a problem," said James.
"You're probably the weakest one here out of all of us," replied Jack.
"…"
Mo cut in. "Well, the return trip is downwards anyways. Nobody should have much trouble, and even if we did, we could just throw them downwards. We'd get back even faster that way, since we wouldn't have to wait for them."
Mo, the calculating sadist.
====================
The hiking group had finished lunch at the falls and prepared to head back. On the return trip, their speed was faster than before, since it was downhill. It was easier to go downhill, so long as you didn't break your knees.
As the group was taking a break, James wiped a little bit of sweat off his brow and raised his bottle of water to his lips. So far, nothing had happened. He'd kept a close eye on the blond siblings, but had noticed no mana or unusual behavior from them.
However, at this moment, the entire group heard scuffling sounds. All the hikers turned their head over to the direction the sound came from. Then, they heard a loud snap, and a small tree fell to the ground.
The entire group sat there, stunned. Then, the supervisor urged them to move away, while moving in front of the kids and reaching for the can of pepper spray hooked on his belt. Seeing this, the kids immediately knew what was going on: there was a bear.
James, Jack, and Mo, quickly moved away as well, grouping with the rest of hikers.
"Why the hell is there a bear here?"
"A bear? Is it over there?"
"We'll be fine, right?"
"Why did it knock down a tree?"
The voices of the other hikers murmured.
"The fuck's going on? The bear wouldn't just fuck up a tree for no reason." asked Mo.
James said, "It might be a fight between two bears. Or other animals."
The hikers continued walking. The supervisor yelled to the campers.
"DO NOT RUN. EVERYBODY GROUP TOGETHER AND MAKE NOISE. MAKE YOURSELF SEEM BIGGER. THE BEAR SHOULDN'T ATTACK SUCH A LARGE GROUP."
This was true, thought James. The hikers were a group of 7, not including the supervisor. Yet, out of everyone here, he was probably the one who could deal with the bear the best, after the ranger with the pepper spray. So, he moved himself to the back of the group.
The hikers walked slowly along the trail, away from the fight. The noises continued. If they continued like this, then eventually, they would be able to get away without incident. All of a sudden, another tree fell and fell in front of their path
The hikers simply climbed over it – the tree was small. But, after this tree was knocked down, they were able to see the situation more clearly.
There were three bears. Two grown bears in combat, and a small cub, which was running away from the action.
"That's probably a mother defending her cub from a male," thought James. However, this knowledge wasn't of much help to him at the moment.
Eventually, the bears got closer and closer to the ranger, who was holding his can of pepper spray, ready to fire at any time.
James got a bad feeling, and started preparing himself to act.
The largest of the bears, who James assumed was the male aggressor, had a few wounds on its body. It was in better shape than the other grown bear, which was bleeding profusely. The larger bear turned and charged at the ranger, who used his pepper spray and made a cloud in front of him. The bear charged into the cloud of spray, and stopped. However, it doubled back made a big loop, and ran directly towards the group of hikers.
This wasn't the ranger's fault. There was no reason for a bear to attack a large group of people, especially when it had already been affected by pepper spray. The bear, under normal circumstances, would have decided this venture wasn't worth it and moved away.
The rest of the hikers screamed and started moving backwards. It was hard not to panic when a fully grown bear was running at you. James, however, was ready for this to happen, and decided it was time for him to act. It would be hard for him to explain later, but he had to do something.
He concentrated, and felt a weird sensation of tiredness fall across his body, as if he had lost some of a type of energy he never even knew. James had never experienced this feeling before, but he knew what it was: his mana was being depleted.
The moment the bear was about to reach the hikers, spikes formed from the ground and shot upwards, stabbing into the bear.