PoV Valis
Folarin woke me up by throwing a bucket of cold water at me.
That almost drowned me, I think. I wanted to tell her off, but then I saw her almost naked, quickly looking through our closet in search of something to put on.
"Quickly, put on something; we don't have much time left here." She said this while she was dressing up. She put on a pink track suit with really tight pants.
"Are you sure you want to go with that?" I asked while pointing at her pants.
"We need to make the bond as quickly as possible. Have you made up your mind on whom you're going to put the bond on? Someone with as much mana as you should make it as soon as possible." She said this while fixing her hair into a ponytail.
"Absolutely not; it's something that requires time. We shouldn't rush it, or we might end up regretting our choice later on." I replied as I slowly removed my pajamas, barely capable of keeping my eyes open.
"Well, it's still better to try to make some progress than not make any at all." She said this while putting on some earrings she found in the closet.
"Anyway, why the hurry?" I asked while throwing my soaked shirt into a corner.
"Some people are starting to get sick, and since we don't know anything about this new disease that's spreading, we decided it would be best if we got out now." She said it in a hurry while checking the wardrobe.
"I've already sneaked into the kitchen with Forren and the wolves to get some food. You'll be carrying our food, and I'll carry most of our dresses... What are you staring at? Get dressed!" She said this while throwing at me some random outfits.
I quickly grabbed another tracksuit, a blue one to be precise, and paired it with some running shoes.
I barely had any time to wash my face when Folarin grabbed my left arm and started dragging me out of my room.
"You take too much time preparing yourself; we need to get out now!"
While I was being dragged outside, we happened to see, by chance, some other species walking down the hallways.
"Don't make eye contact, and make sure you cover yourself with this." She said this while passing me a face mask.
'A bit late, don't you think?'
We ignored the elevator and did four floors' worth of stairs, running down as fast as we could.
We met everyone else at the main gate; everyone was carrying a massive backpack except for Diego, who was sleeping on Forren's back while he was carrying two backpacks on his chest.
"Why is he still sleeping?" I asked.
"Shhh, waking him up is a risky move. He usually is just grumpy, but whenever he has bad dreams, he tends to kill or try to kill whoever woke him up or pisses him off in the first 30 minutes of being awake." Whispered Forren.
We then silently followed him till we reached the "cannon."
'It sure doesn't look like one'
The thing was hidden behind a small, southern forest close to the edge of the island. The thing was massive and was mostly composed of various floating rocks with many engravings carved on them.
Those were not simple rocks either; they were made of extremely tiny cubes that were attached together to form some weird circle fragments or other-shaped fragments.
On the ground, there was an altar with a blue sphere in the middle.
"We did a little experiment yesterday with one guy we found here, and we managed to figure out how to use it." Forren began explaining as he adjusted the bags hanging from his chest.
'Wait, what?'
"The cannon is fairly easy to use, but the unfortunate drawback is that it has a maximum number of people it can shoot. The good news is that the number is still over 500, so it's nothing for us to worry about." He kept explaining.
He said this as he put his hands on the orb.
Suddenly, the cubes started moving around him, forming various circles around his arm and touching the orb. They were forming circles and then disengaging, forming words around him and then covering his head, creating some sort of mask full of signs.
"You don't have to worry; this is completely normal; it's just showing me the terrain under us. It seems that there's a huge lake under us. I'll set the cannon at a certain angle. Don't rotate the orb. Just gently put your hand on it and wait till this thing covers your face, then simply let go." He said it gently while making sure Diego was still asleep.
As he let go, he disappeared with Diego, and a number of people appeared on the platform. The number was 697.
"You all heard him. Don't rotate the orb, and let's get out of here as fast as possible." Said Folarin.
I was the last one to go. I simply closed my eyes and prayed that everything would turn out fine, and it did.
I suddenly found myself over 16000 feet in the air (around 5 km) dropping in towards the ground.
It doesn't matter what anyone says about the experience; falling off from that distance, relying on some ancient magic or whatever it was, is terrifying.
I expected the wind to force my eyes shut, but I could barely feel any resistance from the air.
As I was watching the island get thinner as time passed, I noticed that Diego had woken up and was choking Forren.
The white wolf was clearly not enjoying his experience, as he would scream in pure terror while the other one was laughing at him.
The lake was massive, and the center was an extremely dark blue. It had a massive river connected to it that seemed never-ending.
As we were passing the numerous clouds, I felt nothing. It was weird. It was probably a side effect of the cannon.
When I was younger, I always thought the clouds were as fluffy as my pillow, but when I got older, I always wondered how they really felt.
I noticed that as we were getting closer to the ground, we were also getting slower.
Around 600 feet (around 180 meters), Forren and Diego's spell came undone, and they fell into the lake, while ours lasted until we safely got to the ground.
'Ouch! I bet that hurt like hell.'
We instead managed to safely land on the northern side of the lake. The whole lake was surrounded by a massive forest, and to top it all off, most trees that were not in its immediate proximity were at the very least over 400 feet tall.
Contrary to what I thought, when Diego managed to reach land, he was relatively calm—as calm as a man could be after dropping like a sack of tomatoes from over 600 feet or higher.
He was carrying both bags and proceeded to throw the one containing his and Forren's clothes at us.
"Put them somewhere to dry; I don't care how." He said this while gently getting rid of the excess water in his hair.
Forren took much more time to reach the land, and when he did, he was extremely tired, so much so that he managed to fall asleep on the rocky land that surrounded the lake.
"Why does everything have to be so damn tiring? This has been the worst week of my goddamn life. And last time I checked, I had done at least a week's worth of overtime in the past month." Diego said this while getting rid of his clothes.
"I wasn't even paid for it." He later added,
"Brace yourself then, because it's going to get worse for sure." I responded, annoyed.
"I always wondered what a fantasy adventure would feel like. I never knew it would start in a shitty lake near a shitty forest after dropping from a shitty floating island. Actually, that last part sounds pretty cool." He responded.
"Hey, want to eat something?" Said the white wolf, offering Diego a smashed snack.
'Wait, didn't he...'
"Nah, I'm fine. I just want to go back to my bed. I regret ever deciding to leave the island." Diego said as he began to use a strange ability to make the water fall off his body.
"Too late for that. Anyway, me and my brother will start exploring soon, so before we go, do you have any questions?" The white wolf spoke.
"What's your name?" Diego asked him.
"Satsui and Tsuitame, we come from Argatzia. Don't forget that," said the white wolf, smiling.
"Such a cool name." Diego responded.
"I know, right? I chose those myself, both mine and my country." Said the white wolf hybrid while getting some more snacks for the others.
"I hope we'll get along then." Diego seemed to want to say more, but in the end, he shut his mouth.
"I'm sure we'll do it. Anyway, now we really have to go. See you later."
"See you later, guys!" His brother spoke for the first time.
He sounded much younger than Satsui and seemed extremely friendly, but maybe that was just the fact that his face looked like a wolf's.
They then disappeared into the forest.
"We should try to make our first fire camp then." Said Folarin while distending Diego's clothes on the ground.
"Ok, what about them?" I said this while pointing at the two sleeping on a pile of rocks.
"They'll eventually get up, but for now, we should secure a fire and find a way to get clean water."
For some unknown reason, I started imagining a scenario where I would drink some yellowish water from a weird bucket and immediately felt shivers running down my spine.
'Yikes.'
It didn't take more than an hour or so until Diego and Forren were up again. They helped us gather tree branches for our small campfire.
"Fury!" Shouted Diego.
As he shouted, a weird energy started coming out of his right hand. As it was coming out, it started to form the shape of a massive double-axe.
The axe was made of a dark metal. It had a golden lion on the side and small golden serpents all along the pole.
"Weird, yesterday it had a different shape." Diego mumbled while observing his weapon.
"Forren time to-" Diego was interrupted by a weird-looking spike that pierced his shoulder.
It was a red spike coming out of the lake that quickly started pulling Diego in. It immediately created many other spikes that kept coming out of his skin.
He was quick to react and buried his feet in the ground while trying to lift the spike off the water to see what it was attached to.
"What are you doing there? help-" Suddenly, a violent stream of water pierced his left knee. Thankfully, Diego used his ability in time, since I didn't see him shed any blood.
Forren quickly went to help him, and together they pulled what looked to be a giant lobster out of the lake.
As soon as it was out of the water, Diego proceeded to cut its head off with his massive axe and kept smashing the head of the creature with his massive weapon.
"This... fucks all of this." He said this while breaking the spike that was between his shoulder and the creature's mouth.
"Forren, I need you to quickly pull this shit out of my body." He said this while pointing at the part still stuck in his body.
As soon as Forren pulled the spike out, we noticed that the part inside Diego's body had built many ramifications, probably in order to not let him escape.
It reminded me of those old ant-nest molds.
This ripped out a lot of skin from him, and he became a bleeding mess.
"Don't worry about it, guys; I pulled out most of my vitals in time, so I won't die from this. This truly is one scary world to be living in." He said this while pounding his chest, which was covered in wounds.
'He truly is a monster. If this were anyone else, this would've been an instant death.'
We hid ourselves in the forest, as far away from the lake as possible. Folarin was helping Diego, I was trying to make smoke signals for the wolves, and Forren was digging a hole to start building our future shelter.
"That's why survival shows suck; I really want to see Mr. Bunny survive this shithole the gods created." He shouted after spitting on the corpse of such a weird creature.
"Now, boss, I think we should-" Forren tried to calm him down, but he didn't seem all that angry to me.
"Folarin! Check that thing and cook it; Forren will be the one to eat it to see if it's poisonous or not."
"But-" she tried to argue back, but was immediately interrupted.
"Don't worry; mere poison won't kill him; it will just make him suffer a lot. He can even eat a whole pufferfish. He may suffer extreme pain for the next few days, but that's a sacrifice he's more than willing to make to ensure our survival." He explained it to her.
"We don't have the means to cook it." She responded hesitantly.
"Frey!" He shouted.
A spear appeared this time. He then proceeded to impale the dead creature and hand over the spear to Folarin.
"Now you have one."
'Why is he being such a dick all of a sudden?'
Folarin had no option other than to put the impaled crustacean straight into the fire for a couple of minutes at a time, trying to cook it evenly for Forren.
When Folarin gave the cooked creature to Forren, Diego was chopping down some trees.
Forren had no trouble cracking the tough shell with his bare hands. I noticed there were some weird large parasites on the sides of the creature, and its meat was also full of worms the size of my pinky finger and was unevenly cooked, with many raw spots and burnt ones as well.
I somehow resisted the urge to puke while watching him eat. That thing was vile, overcooked, and infested.
To keep myself sane, I just went in search of something to fuel the fire. After gathering a handful of tree branches, I decided it was time to go back.
As soon as I returned, I saw everyone working for the shelter. Forren was mostly carrying and setting up the biggest logs, Folarin was building the walls, and Diego was cutting down every tree in the area.
The shelter they were making was pretty rudimentary. The whole structure was sustained by a bunch of logs that were stripped of their bark and cut in half. Those logs were placed in the four corners, in the middle of the shelter, and in between the four corners.
I think they have enough hands there.
Before going out again, I considered practicing my magic skills.
PoV Satsui
"Brother, are you sure we can trust them? One of them had-" Tsuitame was clearly worried.
"Don't worry, I checked it. Those are not real soul weapons; those are artificial souls. That's why the patterns are so messy." I responded.
"So…."
"He's not a hunter and probably got those after beating the guardians. They don't seem very knowledgeable with regards to magic, but they surely found a way to compensate given the fact that they beat the guardians without suffering any major loss or scar." I explained.
"I'm not saying you can trust them yet. We need strong allies till we reach our peak again, and they're among the best ones we could find." I then added.
We kept running around, taking notes on every creature we saw.
At some point, we encountered a small creature that looked like a fawn, but it was a bit uglier than normal. Tsuitame immediately leaped towards it and proceeded to lock his jaws on the poor creature's neck.
"Tsui no!"
It was too late; he had already killed the small animal and was sinking his teeth into its neck while ripping its limbs away with his claws. He was so focused on his meal that he failed to notice the massive deer-like creature a couple of trees away from him.
Its antlers were broad and looked like hands. It was extremely muscular and tall.
'Shit! I don't think he'll leave us alone after killing his baby.'
I charged up all the aura I had, and as the creature started charging Tsuitame, I intercepted it, lacing both hands on its antlers and using the fire surrounding my arms to force the beast to shut his eyes, then I bit its neck.
I managed to make it fall to the ground, but as soon as it fell, it managed to kick me away.
'Ugh! This son of a bitch possesses a mighty kick.'
As soon as it got up, it charged me. I decided to match it, and as it tried to impale me with its antlers, I grabbed the antlers at the base, plated my feet on the ground as far back as possible, and used the aura to enhance my strength and durability in order to match the beast's strength.
The deer threw me to its left side without much effort, launching me against my brother, who was trying to make a sneak attack.
"What are you doing? Are you an idiot? Trying to match a massive deer like that with pure strength!" he shouted at me.
"Hey, it was worth trying." I shouted back.
We then had to roll away as the creature tried to stomp on us.
From the sides, we jumped, aiming at the neck of the creature. We managed to somehow attach ourselves to the sides.
'This son of a...'
I noticed that the deer was trying to smash itself on some trees in order to get rid of us, so I had to let go and jump away before getting smashed.
Thankfully, Tsuitame managed to injure the deer with its claws before jumping away.
"Just how incredibly tough is it? It refuses to die." Tsuitame was growing impatient.
"We don't have weapons with us, so it's reasonable."
The deer raised its head. Its antlers then started to shine, and the deer started screaming.
My brother used that opening to bite its neck, covered his hands in aura, and sank his claws into his throat, letting a fountain of blood out.
I assisted him by grabbing the antlers, and together, we snapped its neck.
"Whatever that was, take the body and hide on the biggest tree you can find nearby. We'll reunite with the others later, when we feel safe enough, and remember that this is all your fault." I shouted at him while also grabbing the body of the dead fawn. I noticed he was injured on his left side and was bleeding, so I used my last drop of aura to close the wound.
"I'm sorry, brother; I didn't mean to-" He tried to apologize, but I quickly cut him off.
"Don't worry, I'll be able to build back what I've lost today in no time. For now, let's hide."
"And learn to control your instincts." I shouted at him before he could even grab the dead deer body.
"Yes, yes, I get it." He said.
I sighed. We climbed onto a tree nearby.
I expected something to happen, but I was wrong. Nothing happened for the next couple of hours.
I noticed some smoke coming from somewhere in the forest.
'Did they leave the lake? I guess something bad happened there.'
I noticed a couple of wolves roaming around the area, probably lured in by the smell of blood.
I immediately summoned the little screen and proceeded to send a message in the group chat asking for help.
I also sent a couple of images showing the wolves and the dead deer.
When the tall guy arrived, Tsuitame had already finished eating the fawn, and the pack of wolves had already surrounded the tree we were using, howling.
One of the wolves managed to jump really close to us and was stopped by my brother throwing the bones of the fawn against it.
"It seems we'll be forced to fight." I commented.
The tall guy was swarmed by the pack of wolves. They were ripping apart his flesh, biting off huge chunks of meat.
At some point, he managed to grab one of them by the neck and use it as a weapon to create some space between him and the rest of the pack.
I noticed that all his wounds were healing extremely fast.
He proceeded to throw away the wolf he was holding and started screaming while charging the pack of wolves.
He had to grab a couple more wolves and smash them against the ground to get the rest to back off.
At that point, with his help, we safely made our way back to the campfire.
"Is that a moose?" Asked one of the girls.
"What?" responded my brother, who was dragging the creature with the help of Forren.
"A moose. It's an animal similar to a deer, just stronger and overall bigger." Forren explained.
"Ah, yes, I think it's a moose then." I noted.
"Why did you hunt it? We surely have enough food on our own," said the small girl with small horns.
"He wanted a quick snack and killed his baby, so whatever this is, he started attacking us." I responded.
"Well… How do we eat this precisely?" Asked small horns.
"Wait a second; mooses shouldn't live-" Said long horns, but was completely ignored by the rest.
"Do you have a skinning knife?" My brother asked the other girl.
"Hey, don't cut-" Long Horns once again tried to insert herself into the conversation but failed one more time.
"Sorry, we don't have one. I'm pretty sure we also don't have a cutting board and a pan to cook it, sooooo-" answered small horns.
"Guys?" Long horns was getting tired of being constantly ignored.
"Yeah, well, those are essentials for our future, so I don't see any problem buying them now." Said my brother while summoning the screen.
"Guys, are you even-"
"You can bleed out that moose by hanging it on a tree. It's probably not that difficult, and as for the rest, we'll figure it out as soon as this shelter is finished." Diego snatched the screen from my brother and handed it to me.
"Folarin I know what you're trying to say, but you have to remember… all of this was artificially made by those gods. You cannot apply basic common sense here. Have you ever seen a crustacean like the one we saw before?" he added later.
Diego decapitated the moose with a giant double axe, and Forren and Tsuitame hung the creature on a tree.
The group had already finished building the walls, and I noticed they used a weird power to secure them, making them more stable and durable. The same thing was done on the rooftop.
The girls were using a weird power to make many tree branches lock onto each other while also making them more durable.
Once the rooftop was ready, they simply put it over the shelter and used their magic power to fuse the walls to the rooftop.
"Can you create fire with that power of yours?" My brother asked the girls.
"Huh?" Responded little horns.
"Oh! Yes, we can," said long horns while creating a small blue flame on her hand.
"Why do you ask?" She added.
"We also have a power of our own, but it's vastly different from yours." I responded after creating a flame of my own in my hands.
The two girls seemed interested and got closer and closer.
"Let me show it to you since my brother has to rest," said Tsuitame.
He immediately pumped most of his aura into his claws, and with one swing, he managed to cut a tree cleanly.
"We can create fire and other stuff outside our bodies, but it consumes too much aura, so we mostly use it to strengthen our bodies to insane levels." He tried to brag, but the two girls didn't seem all too convinced.
"I guess your magic is not very good at enhancing the body." Said Diego to long horns.
"It's good enough, I think. It's definitely not as efficient as theirs, but it's nothing to scoff at either." Small horns said.
"Anyway, since the shelter is done, we can finally eat something." Said Forren.
We each took something out of our bags. My brother took out canned peaches, immersed in syrup, and some dried meat. Forren took out canned fish and a bag full of tiny yellow things stuffed with something, while the girls took out mostly bread and a huge sausage.
The yellow things were quite good. They were stuffed with meat and cheese.
Tsuitame went all in on the peaches and the sausage, while the girls ate only bread with a little bit of canned fish. Forren surprised me; he almost ate more than my brother. He wasn't picky, so he ate a bit of everything, while Diego ate mostly the yellow things, sausage, and half of the peach syrup.
"I'll leave the rest to you, Tsui. I'm going to rest inside." I said that while getting up.
"I won't disappoint you." He said it, smiling.
"I know," I said while petting him.
The insides of the shelter were pretty rough. The floor was made mostly of unevenly cut logs of wood.
I sat in a corner and started calmly gathering all the energy in the air in one place, creating a small sphere, and placing it inside me. This process was very painful and dangerous, as one distraction could have easily killed me.
Once the sphere of energy was inside me, I had to feed it to my aura slowly while also ensuring that the aura would still flow normally.
That is because if the aura gets somehow tangled up at one point as you keep growing, the nod could also grow and explode, causing even death in the most extreme scenarios.
This process would need to continue until every ounce of aura was fed. Once I was done, I gathered all my aura and created a small pill made out of pure aura in my left hand.
It was at that point that I finally opened my eyes. I immediately saw the two girls intently staring at me. I also noticed the sky being completely dark and a table right in front of the shelter, with the moose already cut into many pieces.
'It wasn't that bad today, especially compared to our first day here.'
I thought before falling asleep.