Chapter 730 (1/2)

Naffur stumbled to a stop. Very slowly, he blinked. His hands rose, almost unbidden, and felt at the wound in his shoulder. Blood poured out of it, staining his shirt. Or it would have, had the shirt not already been soaked in mud and blood.

Gasping, Naffur collapsed to the ground. His breathing was uneven and he found it difficult to focus. After a great struggle, his forehead hit the ground. His eyes flickered and then were closed.

Congratulations! You Skill Feign Injury is now Level 98!

The six giant crows that had been chasing Naffur for the past hour cawed out their laughter, gleefully circling his “corpse”. They didn’t even bother to land, preferring instead to nip at each other playfully while singing their strange birdsong of victory.

Naffur suppressed a sigh. Some grass was into his partially opened mouth and it made his face twitch. But there was nothing that Naffur could do. These roaming birds were each Level 51. One was even Level 52. He was nowhere near the Stats to stand up to monsters at that level.

Luckily, these monsters weren’t after Naffur to eat them. Although not all monsters eat their prey, there was a significant portion of them that did. Naffur had learned this lesson painfully in the past month since he had left the Orchard. Whereas the solo monsters seemed to have no need of Naffur’s scrawny body, the group of kobolds that Naffur had encountered had only been too happy to drag him back for a stew.

That had been someone hairy to extricate himself from, but Naffur had made it.

That was all he could say about the past month: he had made it.

After about ten minutes, the crows fled, seeking more amusing targets for their attacks. Another half hour later, Naffur finally stirred. That was another thing that he learned. While he didn’t think monsters expected him to be feigning his death, some did wait around by his body for a while afterward.

What they wanted was to lure other monsters with the scent of his blood.

There was a strange balance among the ecosystems of the monster communities in Zone 1 which Naffur had slowly discovered as he wandered… well, he thought North?

Hard to keep track...

Sitting up, Naffur spotted a small flower blooming next to the spot where he had smashed his face into the ground. Mareen would probably-

Naffur froze. Very methodically, he annihilated the thoughts he had in the past ten seconds by blasting the thought of ‘WHITE’ over and over again at himself.

Only afterward could he calm down, feeling strangely numb. Naffur brushed himself off and stood. No reason to stay here. The monsters that used him as a lure were right; others would hunt based on the scent of blood.

So he fled further in the direction he had been walking and bedded down for the night in the hollowed out portion of a fallen tree. It wasn’t the most comfortable hiding spot, but it was at least away from the sky.

Naffur was still in a section where Ghost’s drones patrolled at night, finding and killing monsters that were overly active. But after a month of aimless wandering, Naffur had grown to resent the drones much more than he feared the monsters.

The monsters were predictable. They did the same thing every day, living a twisted life, but a life.

But the drones were different. They emitted a terrible buzzing as they operated, and the sounds of them ripping through the monsters was the stuff of nightmare. It was all cracking bones and the flaying of wet flesh.

Plus, they were a reminder of… before Naffur had come here.

Naffur’s heart hurt as he remembered his past life. He was such a fool. He was…

WHITE. WHITE. WHITE.

Naffur had a few berries from some time spent gathering this morning and ate those as a small meal. His stats had risen a great deal since coming into the wild away from cities, but even with heightened Endurance meals were satisfying. It reminded Naffur that he was still just a human.

Yawning, Naffur made himself comfortable and tried to fall into a fitful slumber.

He dreamed, that night. In his dream, a horrifying monster that was all bone and teeth stood over Naffur, watching him.