Fatigue, fear, and many other feelings were present in the hearts of everyone in the group. Suddenly, a horrible monster had appeared and forced them to flee through the endless tunnels.
But it was not all bad luck, not when after almost two hours of walking, the group entered another cave of average size and in the center of it a small pool of crystal-clear water.
"Water!" one of the young women shouted as she ran into the pool, her throat parched from dehydration.
Kalen frowned and quickly approached Elisabeth before whispering in her ear.
"Stop her if you don't want her to die"
Elisabeth opened her eyes in shock and quickly reacted by running towards the young woman, screaming.
"Stop, it's dangerous!"
There were still a few meters left for the young woman to reach the pond, enough time for her to stop and look back with some resignation.
"It's right in front of us!"
The young woman couldn't understand why Elisabeth had stopped her in the first place, and Kalen started walking towards the pond.
"She stopped you because it's dangerous" Kalen said, pretending that the person who had noticed the danger was Elisabeth and giving her the credit.
"Dangerous?" asked Oliver from behind.
Kalen nodded and bent down to pick up two small stones lying on the ground. Then he walked on until he was in front of the pond.
The diameter of the pond was about one meter, which made it quite small, but in comparison Kalen couldn't even see the bottom.
There were several crystals in the water, but somewhere their glow faded, preventing him from seeing any further.
Oliver approached Kalen quietly and watched him.
"The first stone stirs them up" Kalen threw one of the stones he had picked up earlier into the pond and waited almost half a minute before throwing the next one.
"And the second one attracts them"
The stone approached the surface of the pond, but before it could touch the water, something came out of the pond, ate the stone, and dived back down to disappear into the depths.
The young girl paled at the sight of such an animal, while Oliver was quite amazed.
"Those are piranhas... but how did you know there were any in the pond?" Oliver looked at Kalen who was pointing across the pond.
"That is why"
On the other side of the pond were several bones, slightly buried in the ground.
"Those are the bones of a fish...though I didn't know what kind"
Everyone was so focused on the pond because of their thirst and hunger that they overlooked such an important detail, even Kalen almost missed it, and if he wasn't used to looking around as soon as he arrived at a new place, he wouldn't have noticed the existence of the bones either.
Elisabeth came to Kalen's side and looked greedily at the pond.
"What do we do now?" asked Oliver.
Kalen fell silent and looked at Elisabeth, she was supposed to be the one giving the orders, but for a while now she had been rather unfocused.
Elisabeth responded to the group's looks and cleared her throat before speaking.
"Most piranhas are freshwater, so the pond water is consumable. Besides, if we manage to catch a piranha, then we also solve the food problem"
Donovan also approached the pond and looked into its depths with some reluctance.
"How are we going to hunt them?"
This time Elisabeth didn't know what to say, but luckily one of the young women approached her somewhat nervously.
"I think I have an idea"
***
A few meters away from the pond, everyone was sitting with dark expressions on their faces. In the center of the group, four dead piranhas lay on the hard stone floor of the cave.
Kalen looked at everyone with some amusement.
'They must all be from high society'
With no way to make a fire, they could not cook the piranhas, so they were forced to eat them raw.
Being freshwater, piranhas were edible even raw, but it tasted terrible as long as it was unprepared. But without any spices or anything else to go with it, they would all have to learn to eat raw fish for a while.
Kalen was the first to reach over and grab one of the piranhas, then, in an unpleasant sight for all to see, began to peel off its skin and then get at the flesh.
Most watched Kalen bleed the fish with considerable disgust, others didn't even look.
Next to him, Oliver again watched with some interest.
Kalen seemed to be the only one here with the knowledge necessary to survive in the wild, and that was unusual.
In ancient times, few people would know how to survive a week in the forest or any other place far from civilization, now, in modern times, it was much less common... at least for people of high society like everyone here was.
Kalen, being trained as an assassin, naturally knew certain things that were not common knowledge.
But Kalen was not interested in what others thought of him, so as he bled the piranhas, he remembered what he had seen a short time ago.
The young woman who had approached them with the idea of catching the piranhas turned out to have some skill.
According to her, she could predict the piranhas' movements and throw stones at them to pull them out of the pond the moment they jumped out of the water.
'She must also have hunter as a trait…'
Although he wasn't sure, it was somewhat likely, seeing the kind of skills she had. More than that, Kalen felt a bit jealous.
'Why does she have an ability and I don't? Is there a condition for having one?'
Having a skill would come in handy for survival, especially now that he had discovered that there were great dangers in the caves. Like that terrible monster.
Time passed, Kalen finished bleeding the piranhas, and they all forced themselves to eat, even though they didn't like the taste of raw fish at all.
They also quenched their thirst by drinking directly from the pond, being careful not to attract the attention of the piranhas at the bottom.
And so came the second night since they had arrived at the firefly cave.
They all lay down around the pond, as far away from it as possible. Kalen also leaned against the cave wall and sighed before looking up at the ceiling.
He was tired, both mentally and physically. Seeing that the group was smaller than before, and that the cave was also smaller than the main cave, he decided to sleep tonight to regain his strength.
He didn't think that anything bad would happen to Talika during the night, and he didn't want to get too far away from her to have enough time to react if something woke him up in the middle of the night.
With that in mind, Kalen closed his eyes and pushed the useless thoughts out of his mind before drifting off to dreamland.
Several hours later, Kalen slowly opened his eyes and looked around carefully. His own mind was clearer and more alert, which helped him think more clearly.
Straightening his clothes and checking that his scroll was still with him, Kalen noticed Talika who was still sleeping soundly near him.
After making sure the young woman was safe, Kalen looked around to check on the others. Only to realize that of the 12 people there were only 11 left.
Kalen began to count them all, and after a head count, discovered who the missing person was.
'Jaume Che...' Kalen thought with a frown.
The young man with the mushroom hair and the one who looked the most helpless had disappeared from the cave.
Kalen stood up and looked around for any sign of Jaume but found nothing.
The young man was gone.
'Elisabeth is not going to like this'
With each person who left, Elisabeth was closer to not fulfilling her test. And even if Kalen was not directly affected, the lack of information from Elisabeth would somehow affect him.
They were barely two measly days into the Urasis trial, and already everything had gotten complicated, and would surely continue to get more complicated as time went on.
Sitting back down to wait for the others to wake up, Kalen sighed again, just like the night before.
'…Everything is so complicated'
The situation itself was not complicated, but not being in control of things was not to Kalen's liking, and he would not sleep well until he found Rodhlann Danneir. But the way things were going, Kalen suspected that it would take him longer than he had planned to complete his tests.
Fortunately, he didn't have to wait for everyone to wake up, as a high-pitched scream echoed through the tunnels, waking everyone instantly.
Seeing how everyone woke up desperately knowing the source of the scream, Kalen sighed again more deeply.
'...And now it's worse'