Chapter 54：Chatter

Needless to say, Stanis knew Orena wouldn't let him run now and so he proudly walked towards the three, slightly jutting forward his chest as he walked.

"Oh, Stanis, well that's all of us so let's go" said Orena, her voice still chipper…

Caleb looked at Stanis, sizing him up before saying, "You sure you ok man? You look like a corpse compared to what I remember you looking like."

Stanis looked down at his arms, well arm, and noticed that his skin was still pasty white. The yellowish tint had begun a slight recovery, but it was still barely visible.

"Yeah" responded Stanis, forgetting for a moment how vibrant his skin used to be.

"You got a hidden weapon or anything? Or you fighting bare-hand?" asked Caleb.

"Yeah, bare-hand I guess" croaked Stanis, his confident image going down the drain as he realised he had forgotten to take a weapon. Not that he needed one anyway…

"Whatever suits you man" responded Caleb, his voice without worry as they began walking out of the village. They were all professionals here, Caleb had no need to pester him about weapons and amour since Stanis already knew. Or should have known in his case, just that his mind was working a bit slower than he wished it was.

The white-haired girl ignored him, doing her fair share to pester Caleb as they walked.

Stanis had slept a decent night's rest and thus had a clearer view of the world. They were soon out of the Yora village and walking through its outer defences. The village was heavily-fortified in comparison to what he remembered, the defences no longer rotting or broken. There was a pseudo-wall a few paces out of the village, its height about a metre and length about a metre. It was made out of stone and the area walled off was quite clean, whereas its outside was sticky with blood, literally.

There were fences and spikes, pitfalls and traps, broken arrows and blades lying all over the place, all of them stained with dry, dark blood. Some of the defences had been broken down the middle whereas others had only been chipped. All the corpses had been cleared away but there was still the odd limb and muscle tissue Stanis would catch sight of while walking, all of them unhuman-like. There were people busy at work as they walked through, some clearing up the battlefield but most repairing or building defences, the one-metre stone-wall growing as its jaws, the traps, were sharpened.

Caleb, Orena and the white-haired girl who he now knew was called Sil, all seemed unfazed by the battlefield as they casually walked through it, the workers greeting them or staring at them with reverence. Stanis wasn't a fool and could easily tell that the people he was walking with were clearly big shots in the Village, most likely half of all this carnage their personal work.

That was when he remembered how Rikkey had been talking about making a sword for a big-shot called Caleb. He looked towards Caleb's thigh and noticed a sheathed sword, unnaturally long but actually just arm's length for Caleb. Stanis could lightly sense mana coming out of the sheath, clearly Rikkey hadn't done a good enough job. But if he was anyone to judge by remembering the swords she had been making before, this one was clearly her magnum opus to date.

Their whole group was walking south, opposite to the mountains and instead into the plains. The brown, barren soil seemed to stretch on forever, although Stanis knew this wasn't the case, otherwise these strong people wouldn't be scouting this way. From what he had heard and previously seen, he knew that Caleb and Orena were the top of the village.

He remembered seeing the rankings up the mountain, his name shortly followed by Caleb and then Orena. Considering he had only gotten his rank by destroying what he now knew was a teleporter, they had clearly killed hundreds to get their place. As for Sil, Stanis had never heard of her before but Rikkey had said that she had come here when Yona village and Riverbeat village had joined together, meaning it was highly likely that this lithe girl with skin paler than his was just as powerful as the rest of them.

This journey was not meant to be a silent one, nor a quiet one as Stanis very quickly realised. Orena had hummed ever since she had left the village, her hum an upbeat one, concreting the bad premonition Stanis had thought up so far.

Sil wouldn't leave Caleb's side and pestered him, saying whatever came to her mind. Her mouth was like a reverse black-hole as word after word was spouted, whether it be about mana, fighting, monsters, Caleb's tattoos or anything else she could think off. Caleb was far harsher and gloomier than Stanis remembered him being in the short time they had shared in the tutorial. Although, Stanis wasn't sure whether this was due to the transformation the apocalypse had had on him or whether it was more due to the chatterbox walking right next to him.

Nevertheless, the chatter soon became background noise to Stanis as he entered a meditative state, using this time to practise as he circulated the mana inside of him. He wasn't training now and thus he didn't do the accompanying movements but even circulating the mana made him feel stronger, for reasons he wasn't quite sure of yet.

He had thought that he could sense mana better when he had become an Origin and now he knew it as he could feel it clearer. Orena had said that they were just going to scout but Stanis heavily doubted that such a powerhouse team such as this would just do simple scouting, rather he was almost certain that they were walking towards some kind of dangerous battle, which would, in turn, explain Orena's behaviour in the past hours.

Not that he was worried or anything though; he didn't know exactly how strong the people around him were but he himself had experienced battles so many times that he now had no choice but to be confident. This was especially true when considering who his sparring partner had been for the last few weeks.

It was about an hour into the walk that Stanis began to see signs of life. The first thing he saw was a skeleton, not a human one he could tell, but that of a bird's. It had been licked clean of any life it previously had, its bones browning in the sun. Caleb walked over to it, half-curious and the other half running away from Sil, and touched it, his finger sticky with dried dribble as he checked.

"It's quite fresh."

He then applied force onto it, increasing the pressure until it snapped in his hands.

"Also is decently strong."

He wiped his hands across the ground before walking, the mood taking a dive for the worse as all four of them got serious. Well, three of them in a cold type of seriousness while the last was in a jollier type of seriousness, at least Stanis hoped she was.

Such signs such as the licked clean skeleton became common-place as they walked onwards, none of the skeletons rising to above hip-height but the number still worrying. Stanis had initially thought of skeletons soldiers or something from fantasy as this world could accommodate such evil, but he was then confused as he realised there was no mana change in the atmosphere.

The sun was now beating down on them and would have caused heat-strokes was it not for the amount of constitution each of them had, easily walking through as they drifted past skeleton after skeleton.

Caleb was the first to talk, "I think there might have been a battle between two monsters camps here."

The others seemed to agree and so Stanis was left alone to ask what he meant: "What do you mean? I thought they only attacked us?"

It was truly like they had seen a ghost as they looked at the pale man wearing dulled, defenceless clothes behind them.

"Where have you been all this time? A cave or something?" asked Sil with a sharp tone, the first thing she had said to him so far.

The slight flush of colour was hidden by the brightness of the sun and so he was clear, Orena finally deciding to explain as the silence remained.

"That was weeks ago. Then other villages and monsters began popping out all over our surroundings. Lucky that they hate each other as much as us meaning that we are now just another race of people here, no longer the only prey."

Stanis could add one and one together and thus made the connections.

"You guys haven't been here before?"

"No, that's why it's called a scouting, fool" responded Sil, clearly someone who didn't have the best of impressions of Stanis.

"No, we haven't been here yet. Just that one of the proper scouts noted something shady going around these areas and we thought we might as well see what's happening since it's so close to us and that" properly responded Caleb, his tone fresh and calm as he spoke, perhaps happy that Sil had finally found someone else to annoy.

Stanis was about to ask another question when he squinted his eyes, still staring at Caleb.

"We're being watched" he whispered, his voice calm as he spoke.

"Which way?" asked Caleb, slightly doubtful.

"Thataway" said Stanis while pointing towards at Sil.

The three of them kept their composure but their brows furrowed, especially Sil's…