"Okay guys, we're officially outside. Let's move," said Finn. "We're gonna be running most of the time. Let's keep the same positioning, I'll be in the front and Goran will be last."
"It all starts now. Let's go team!" said Mia excitedly.
Straight after exiting the Village they ran in the same direction for six hours. Although they had run for around six hours, they hadn't covered as much distance as they would have liked.
This was due to the vast and thick forest. The forest was made up of very tall trees and not much space in between them, which made maneuvering that much more difficult and that much more time consuming.
As they ran though the forest, they still tried maintaining their noises to a minimum as well as their visibility. Aldren advised everyone to take advantage of the dense forest in order to not be seen by any animals roaming around, and it worked.
"Let's take a break here for now", said Finn as they stopped and sat down next to three tall and thick trees, which they planned on using for visual cover while they rested. "This is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Ever since we left the Village, it's been the same terrain the whole time and we've only been able to cover around thirty kilometers. Hopefully soon enough the environment will change to something more favorable. If we continue in this terrain we'll get tired too quickly and we won't be able to make good use of the sunlight.
"Yeah, let's rest for fifteen minutes, then keep going. Is that alright with you Aldren?", Goran asked as he saw Aldren considerably more tired than the rest of them. "Don't worry about me, I can keep up."
"Drink some water and eat this", said Finn as he grabbed a water pouch and a hard piece of bread from his bag and handed it over to Aldren.
After handing the water and bread to Aldren, Finn grabbed another thing from his back, the compass. He flicked the compass open to check if they were still headed the right direction. Thankfully, they hadn't deviated from the course, which meant that the six hours they had spent traveling weren't wasted.
After the fifteen minutes had passed Finn told everyone to gather their things. Aldren handed the water pouch back to him and then he stored it back in his bag, along with the compass. As they were about to leave, Mia asked suddenly, "Can you guys hear that?"
"No, what?" asked Goran suspiciously
"Listen closely", said Mia as everybody went quiet.
As they listened for around thirty seconds, the rest of the group finally heard it. It was a strange sniffing noise that grew louder by the second.
*Sniff* *Sniff*
Immediately after hearing this, everyone rushed to hide with their backs against the three huge trees they had previously decided to take a break near. "Shhh", said Finn as he placed his index finger over his lips signaling everyone to be quiet. Finn figured if they were silent enough, eventually the beast would lose interest and leave since it was pretty far away at the moment.
But regardless of the silence they made, the sniffing noise kept getting louder and louder, closer and closer. Finn, noticing that the beast was going to catch up with them soon tried thinking of something to do in a hurry.
"Are we gonna have to fight? What do we do?" asked Aldren as he looked towards Finn.
"No, not yet", Finn said as he tried to come up with a solution to their problem. Finn wasn't ready to give up so easily on finding a solution to avoid fighting, after all they had no clue how powerful the beast sniffing them out could be. "How the hell did he even find us from so far away, we were being so quiet", thought Finn in desperation.
As the sniffing sound got louder and louder, Finn suddenly started thinking up a theory. "Wait, why the hell did he even come here. He couldn't of heard us, so he had to have smelled something. Just what did he smell, can he smell humans?" Finn thought as he racked his brain trying to find a solution.
"Maybe one of us has a weird smell, there has to be something attracting his smell" thought Finn as he started leaning over Goran.
*Sniff* *Sniff*, but only this time it was Finn making the sound
"What the fuck are you doing? Have you gone insane?" whispered Goran as he felt Finn leaning over to smell him. But unfortunately for Finn's investigation, Goran didn't have any weird smells that would attract a beast.
After smelling Goran, Finn turned to his right to smell Aldren. Again, he smelled nothing out of the ordinary, so he tried leaning over Aldren to reach Mia. But as he reached over Aldren's pocket he got a slight whiff of something. "What the hell?", thought Finn as he got closer to Aldren's pocket.
But before he could take another move, another sniff was heard from the creature, and this time it really scared them. They could tell the beast was now only five to six meters away from them.
Hearing this, Mia let out a small squeal in horror of what they might face. As she looked over to Finn to see if he was also panicking, she was met with something completely unexpected. She could see Finn leaning over Aldren with a hand in Aldren's pocket.
As Finn felt what was inside Aldren's pocket he thought, "I found it!". Before giving it a second thought, he hurriedly removed his hand from Aldren's pocket with the item in hand. He was gonna notify the others about what he had found out, but then he heard it again.
*Sniff* *Sniff*, they heard again. But only this time they could tell it was much closer, it was directly behind the tree they were leaning on.
"Shit, then I guess we're gonna use the 'Attack Formation' already", thought Aldren. Mia and Goran had the same thought in their minds as they prepared to jump out and attack the beast. But before they knew it, Finn made a move, a silent and discrete throwing motion.
As the group looked to see what Finn could have possibly thrown, the only thing they could see was a piece of bread flying away from them, the same piece of bread that Finn had given Aldren to eat, and the same piece of bread that Finn had just taken out from Aldren's pocket.
The moment the bread landed, the beast immediately changed trajectories and chased after it. Although the rest of the group was still very confused with what had just happened, they didn't care. All they could think of was the same thing.
"Run!!" said Finn as the group started running eastward as fast as they could.
So focused on surviving, the group completely forgot to check if they were being chased. In fact, after Finn had thrown the bread the beast hadn't even bothered chasing after them and instead went to pick up his snack.
Scared out of their minds, the group kept running, while only stopping to take short breaks to catch their breath. They kept that up for around six hours until they decided it was safe enough to stop for the day.