"Are we still on Earth?" asked Laurel, looking around.
"I doubt it..." Arlan replied with the same doubt as Laurel.
At some point they had slowed down to conserve their energy, then they had an opportunity to observe their surroundings more carefully.
Basically, their surroundings had changed completely from what it had been before, dozens of unfamiliar plants of different colors painted the ground, giving the forest a fantastical appearance.
"Where did all these plants come from?" asked one of the soldiers they were riding with.
Tristan, who was at the front of the group, grunted in annoyance and replied.
"The same place the damn monsters came from, now shut up"
Everyone remained silent at Tristan's words as they remembered the place, they were in. Even if they spoke quietly, they didn't know how good the monsters' hearing was.
The group continued to walk through the forest, surrounded by exotic plants of all shapes and colors. Even some of the trees had changed shape, their trunks looking more robust and their leaves more shiny or dull, depending on the type of tree.
But that didn't mean that the old trees had disappeared, no, it was as if half of them had been replaced by the exotic's ones.
If this change had happened to the flora, what about the fauna?
With this question in mind, Arlan began to worry about what was happening on the island.
'The monsters, the plants... what is going on here?'
Arlan leaned against a tree to get over an obstacle and felt a slight sting in his leg.
"Ouch"
He looked down to see what had pricked him, only to see a blue flower with three spikes in the middle, one of which had stuck into his leg as soon as he brought it close to it.
The first thing that came to Arlan's mind was that if the plant was poisonous, he was screwed, then he remembered the clothes he was wearing and turned pale.
They couldn't go on the expedition in normal civilian clothes. So, Laurel and Arlan had put on military clothing, which was generally pretty tough with the most advanced materials, and a single plant had managed to penetrate that same clothing.
'Are all plants as dangerous as this one?'
Every minute that passed, Arlan regretted his decision to leave the bunker.
"Are you okay?" asked Laurel when she heard him groan.
Arlan looked at her, hiding his fear behind a slight smile.
"Yeah, everything's fine"
"Good..."
The group continued on toward the Deus Bunker without much difficulty.
Although the flora had changed and the views were generally different from before, the geography was the same. So technically, the bunker should be in the same place.
Everything was going well, so far, they had had no problems in the hour since they had left the bunker. And they all really hoped it would stay that way.
Usually, a forest is very quiet, and this forest has the same characteristic. But there will always be a little sound, whether it's the occasional chirping of a bird or some other animal. However, this forest is completely silent, so much so that it was simply eerie and disturbing.
Only the sound of the wind and their footsteps could be heard in the silence of the forest. This made the group even more tense than they already were.
Suddenly, Tristan stopped and raised his hand for the others to stop as well.
"Did you hear that?"
Though Tristan tried to ask as calmly as possible, he couldn't stop the others from feeling a tightening in their chests.
"I didn't hear anything..." Arlan denied.
"Neither did I" Laurel replied.
The soldiers denied as well, which made Tristan frown.
"I swear I heard something--"
RRROOAARGHHH
Deep in the forest, a howl was heard that instantly paralyzed the group, forcing them to stop for a few seconds.
When Tristan was able to react and come out of his paralysis, he shouted:
"Run, damn it!"
The group responded to Tristan's cry and immediately ran.
A few seconds passed before the first monster appeared next to one of the soldiers, who reacted quickly by emptying a magazine into the creature's body.
The soldier's training helped him do all this without stopping, and even gave him time to reload.
With more than 30 holes in its body, the monster fell motionless to the ground, filling the green grass with blood and destroying the plants where its body had fallen.
The monster had two long hind legs like those of a kangaroo, which gave it high mobility, while its front legs were small and inefficient for attacking, instead using its jaws with sharp wolf-like teeth to bite.
This type of monster had high agility but depended on getting its bite right to finish off its enemy in a single attack.
This time, it was Tristan's turn to face the monster that appeared from the front. As he ran towards the monster and the monster ran towards him, Tristan didn't bother to shoot the creature.
Instead, Tristan took advantage of the monster jumping before attacking, leaving it exposed and forcing it to fall before attacking again.
"Don't come behind me!"
Arlan, who was behind Tristan, didn't dare stay behind the man when he saw the monster running towards them and slowed down to get behind Laurel instead of Tristan.
At that moment, Tristan accelerated toward the monster, which jumped at him and opened its jaws to devour him.
At the last moment, Tristan threw himself to the ground, barely missing the monster by a few inches.
He rolled on the ground before quickly getting up and continuing to run without looking back. On the other hand, the creature, realizing that he had missed his attack, tried to turn quickly only to lose his balance due to his poor agility and leg structure and fall to the ground, falling far behind the group.
Now they had managed to kill one of the monsters and leave another behind, but how many more would come?