Book 2, Chapter 9

In and out. Grabbing two bodies with each entry. One in each hand, no time to risk using the bag of holding. With a firm grip usually on a tail, he would retreat as quickly as he could. The lizards were heavy but with his extra strength manageable. Once safely outside their zone, he would process the lizards dumping the useless bit in a bedroom, hoping the smell would attract nothing. Then rinse and repeat. Watching carefully between each incursion to ensure that there were no visible lizards. Hoping that they could not track him from underground and set an ambush. For safety, each time he utilised a V to get in and out. Ensuring that he retreated along a different path to the direction he entered from. After the eighth lizard paranoia was ramping up so when retreating he took the liberty to include an extra two steps, propelling him well clear of the lizard zone. Ambusher Steps abilities were activated to the full every time he got near the zone, and fear made his eyes twitch as he prepared to duck in for more corpses.

There were no signs of any ambush or any lizards at all, but he did not drop his vigilance. Enter from different directions and exit elsewhere. Only moving when he had full charges of shadow steps and every other time he would feint without engaging. Throwing stones ahead of him, hoping to prematurely spring any traps that might have been set. There were not any. For all intents and purposes, the lizards had fled the dangerous area, yet the itch between his shoulder blades did not dull. For a moment he considered abandoning the bodies, but remembering the Octopod hardened his resolve. There were twenty-three lizards collected and only two had had their cores destroyed. From now he would only enter the wasteland to pick up bodies, prolonged exposure was too dangerous and while he had got lucky, this time it was not something he could rely on. Hunting from the outskirts would take longer, but that is what he would do. He would embrace the coward's way. The smart way. He would be death from a distance.

Washing his hands down with water to clean them. Lizard blood was a thick red rust colour with an earthy smell. A glance at the sun showed it was late afternoon. It had been a successful hunt twenty-one core was more than had expected.

There was nothing moving anywhere near him. Staring out at the hazy air of the wasteland in front of him, looking for movement. There was nothing, just the old remains of burnt out husks of houses and the impression of where proud trees used to stand. Even the air had stilled, so there were not even the usual playful swirls of displaced ash. There were still three or four hours of daylight left, but twenty-one cores were so much more successful than he had ever hoped. The bottleneck to his development might end up being the challenge of getting time to observe the lizards using their magic.  Rather than what he had originally expected to be the greater challenge which was gathering enough cores. Of course he could substitute cores for observation time, but that was inefficient.

Out of all the alpha species that had come through in the event, the lizards were one of the good ones. Yes, they were deadly. Yes, when they were forced into this world from whatever world they had been scooped up from and as a result humans had died. But No, they were not human killers.

They were victims, having been given no choice. Finding themselves in an unwelcoming world before instinctively established their own territory. The humans had died in that explosion of desperate territory building. Not the lizard's fault. Blaming them would be like blaming the earth after an avalanche.

Now they were established they would live their lives happily amongst their soot and ash, relying on their magic to maintain the world around them at the perfect temperature for them to flourish. Never stirring and challenging those around them, happy for their own territory and then if they ever expanded beyond this place they would choose somewhere devoid of sapients and if possible even missing established colonies of non-sapient creatures. They were the ultimate leave us alone and we will leave you alone species.

Hell, it was possible that they were the good guys. Having them guarding the flank of the town might be saving lives, a stable border that people did not need to guard. Yet he wanted their power, the flame sprout spell was too powerful to not covet. There were lots of animals out there and possibly even boss monsters where the flame sprout would be a true game changer. Being able to hold Ambusher active and strike magic down on helpless creatures. So powerful. If they lacked the skill to determine where the attacks were coming from they would be helpless. Like with potion throwing at the Eggercough slugs, striking his enemies from a distance.

Shaking his head. There was no point standing here and he was not going to try and hunt anymore today. It was not late yet but it was still time to head back towards the Campbell Boutique Hotel.

Stealth slipped on naturally. It was not abandoning awareness to the point of recklessness. Instead it was allowing the interface to guide his steps. There was no need to concentrate on maintaining stealth as his body did it for him automatically. The only area that still required focus was observing the world around him, stealth would do nothing if he ran into something nasty. This close to town he was most likely safe but half of his mind still processed the images coming to him to make sure he was not going to run into something that he should not.

While his foot moved automatically he pondered the nature of the different flavours of magic. Trying to tease out what they were and how they interacted. There was clearly a fire flavour and a guiding force mana to direct it from one spot to another. Even Flame Sprout when he eventually acquired it would require guiding magic. Manipulation of air used a different flavour. In fact that magic was very similar to the guiding force magic. It was not the same because the same guiding magic used for fire was still required for manipulating air. Both Air mana and force mana worked together to get things done. He would need to explore everything else.

Reaching the hotel it was at the tail end of dinner service, the big open windows showed that most tables were full of people and empty plates. A woman wearing a police uniform was standing at the door. It looked like she had repurposed someone else's clothes, she lacked the bearing that he associated with police officers and the clothes were a little baggy.  She held a clipboard with a list of handwritten names.  Little ticks were next to each name.

She took one look at him and waved him through

“What's happening?” he asked, curious about the extra process being put into place.