The Hunt 8

They landed on the first beach they came across. Not out of any immense necessity. Stamina wasn’t the problem, it was a hot day and as a cold-liquided being, as long as the environment was hot, Apexus’ only limit was the food supply. He may very well have been able to go until nightfall and sometime beyond that. In that, it was rather lucky that they had been ejected from the dungeon midday.

No, the reason why they landed was that Reysha desperately needed the break. “Tigers aren’t meant for the sky,” she declared as she rolled off Apexus and onto the sands, where she sprawled out her arms and dug her claws into the ground. It was as if she wanted to claw onto the world itself and never let go.

“You flew before,” Aclysia pointed out.

“That was a fucking skydive and kind of awesome!” Reysha shouted back way too loudly. “Not an hours-long flight across the ocean with a gods damn arrow in… my… ARM!” she ripped the projectile out with a quick yank and then tossed it into the salty waters. Aclysia quickly moved in and began healing.

When it took longer than she thought, the metal fairy blinked and inspected the wound more closely. Rolling back the sleeve, Aclysia saw the thee impact pints around a heavy bruise. “Your ulna is broken.”

“Yes, thank you, I noticed,” Reysha drily returned. “I am just going to assume that’s the name of the bone.”

“Affirmative,” Aclysia mumbled and quickly went back.

Apexus looked back across the water. “How did he find us? The Inquisition wasn’t with him… even if they were, they shouldn’t have gotten there that fast.”

“You saw the fucker run,” Reysha stated. “He could have definitely chased us in that time.”

“That would have meant he knew exactly where we were,” Aclysia added.

The tiger girl gave her a deadpan stare. “Yeah, because that’s exactly what the fuck is going on,” she returned. When the metal fairy opened her mouth to retort, Reysha was already continuing. “I know it sounds impossible, but if your maid-ass has a better theory how a hunter with that,” she waved around her half-healed arm, “kind of power found us than him having an ART then I am going to listen with all four of my ears!”

“…You wouldn’t still have an arm if he was level 50,” Aclysia suggested.

“Maybe this bodysuit is actually that sturdy or maybe I am or maybe he is out of fucking practice,” Reysha countered and rolled her blue eyes. “Use whatever metal-brain is in that pretty skull of yours, there is literally no other way that he has found us this quickly than Hunter’s Mark and Hunter’s Mark doesn’t track for that distance on its own. Unless you know something about that spell that I don’t, he has a fucking Art.”

“I… yes,” Aclysia had to concede. “This spells dire for our situation.”

“So,” Apexus tried to get back into the conversation. “We have to assume we can be tracked wherever now?”

“Well, you and me, yes, since we got hit,” Reysha confirmed and snickered. “Kind of exciting, isn’t it?”

Her mad antics were ignored as Apexus and Aclysia brooded over the situation. “We can’t face that man,” the metal fairy mumbled.

“Neither can we stay,” her slime lover stated the obvious. “This leaf isn’t big enough. Our best bet would be to hide in the dungeon again, but he can find us even there. We also can’t get stronger than him here, if understand… if I understand levelling correctly.”

Although even the beating of challenges far below one’s own power feeds into the divine spark of adventurers, that eventually became such a miniscule addition that it was akin to trying to fill a barrel drop by drop. Apexus worked in a similar way, despite not having a divine spark.

“We can’t run here and even if we could, there would be no hope in sight,” Apexus finished his thought. “We have to leave.”

Aclysia thought about this for a little bit longer, only speaking up when the golden light around her hands ebbed away and Reysha rolled her sleeve back over her now healed arm. “Yes,” she agreed with the assessment. “We can’t stay here. I am not sure if fleeing from this leaf will solve this problem, but it is definitely more likely than staying. If we assume, he is an adventurer in retirement here, then I can’t imagine he is after more than money for this mission. He may just drop the chase if it becomes too much of a hassle.”

They were banking on a lot of maybes there, but they didn’t have another idea. “Question is how we get off the leaf, then,” Apexus stated, remembering what he had been told about the stem and the rules of this world.

This was a flat world and as such it had an edge. Unlike most worlds of that kind, this one had a barrier surrounding it, making it impossible to just fall off. Similarly, it was impossible to fly over the edge and approach the stem from the side. No, they had to go through the city of Haralry. The border fortress, to be more exact. Getting through the gates would be the problem. If they got caught, they were as good as dead. If they didn’t try, their time, or Apexus’ at least, was also limited.

“You said you knew smugglers?” Aclysia asked the redhead.

“Comes with the profession,” Reysha answered with a nod. “It’s a bunch of short-term relationships, but I have someone in mind who could help us. Hates authority, the church and loves to smugly laugh about all the things he’s pulled that nobody knows about.”

“Could we trust him?” Aclysia didn’t like that description.

“Trust?” Reysha laughed in a truly amused fashion. “You’re asking whether or not we can trust a criminal whose job it is to get things through under people’s nose?” She weighed the adventurer’s bag on her hips. “I would trust him exactly as far as I can throw this.”

“Well, I trust you as tall as Birchia,” Apexus chimed in and got two semi-confused glances. “I am sorry, did I misunderstand and trust isn’t measured in distance?”

“It’s a metaphor with negative connotations to say you trust someone as far as you can throw something,” Aclysia told her beloved awakener. “It doesn’t quite work in the reverse.”

“But why though?”

“You wouldn’t say something is untasty either. Unless you wanted to try and be oddly poetic.”

“You really wouldn’t?”

“No, you would say it tastes awful,” Reysha giggled.

“But that’s way longer!”

“Yes but…” Aclysia stopped herself. “This certainly isn’t the time for this. We have to hurry while we still have an ocean between us and that Hunter.”