[NR] The Trip Back To The Clearing- Chapter 565 (Patreon)

With their responsibilities taken care of, Courtney and Rosha do a final look around the market before heading out. Though Jason was going to have a little more time to work on the clearing by himself as the trip back was a lot less peaceful. Despite having managed to get in and out of town quickly enough that, in theory, they could have been back the same day, Courtney and Rosha ended up facing a lot of monsters.

At first Rosha was suspicious of this, but Courtney pointed out these were likely just the monsters returning to their homes after the horses were gone. Though why now was a mystery. Either way, they ended up fighting a lot of wild cats, monkeys, and so on. About the only thing mostly missing was snakes, but that was likely just a result of whatever they used to repel the previous monster horde.

Despite all these encounters, the two didn’t end up killing all that many monsters. In fact, most encounters generally involved them staring down something while circling until one side had enough and started to back away. After all, neither side was there to fight, rather, both just wanted to get home.

This didn’t mean the encounters were short. If anything, these stare downs took longer than the fight would have. Try to circle too fast and the monsters get fidgety and if they tried to leave before the monster was ready to leave? Well, that was showing weakness! A deadly sin in such a dangerous place that would tempt even a meek monster to attack, let alone some of the predators they came across.

It was almost silly what fights they did get into. They had been seeing all kinds of strange and powerful monsters. A jaguar sporting a bronze coat with black bronze spots, a family of gorillas with a silverback rocking a set of floating vines that swirled around it, and a shadow they couldn’t figure out that likely only went away because of Courtney’s heritage. Yet it was the bog standard, run of the mill, small fry, barely monsters that attacked them.

A wild pig that might have been a little bigger than normal? A small forest cat with slightly green hair and might have been poisonous? Neither of those, nor any of the other few similar encounters, should have resulted in a fight. Yet they did, and Courtney could only shake her head. It was pretty clear what was happening. These minor monsters didn’t know better.

Those more threatening beasts all had more than base creature cunning and were able to judge the duo. Maybe they weren’t sapient, but that didn’t stop them from weighing the odds and recognizing the danger in the unknown that the two represented. But what’s a normal cat going to do? All hopped up on becoming a monster and with the sense that others won’t want to nom on it? Why not attack the weird two leggers?

Either Way, Courtney and Rosha were held up in the jungle and forced to set up camp for the night. They could have tried to keep going as Courtney naturally had excellent night vision and Rosha had it because of training with Peter. However, night time was the time for hunters to prowl. Any encounters would likely be an ambush with the monster being out for a meal.

So they sidestepped the whole issue. Not that they slept through the night. Rather, the two huddled up in their tent and meditated. Not on cultivation or anything since they weren’t doing that in NeoRealm, but rather just for the practice and to make time pass without also making noise.

And it was not a peaceful night. Even the insect background noise was threatening as there were clearly some larger specimens out and about, their deeper calls overshadowing their normal brethren. It was honestly kind of odd as neither had seen many signs of giant bugs, but they were clearly out there somewhere.

Though worse was that they chose badly when they set up camp. Maybe it was all the critters coming back home that forced new paths, but whatever the case, there were way too many beasts brushing past their tent. Sometimes literally, as the two sat in there and watched the bottom edge of the tent flex.

However, despite the danger and the scares, they kept quiet and made it through the night. Then bright and early the next day, emphasis on the bright because they weren’t chancing things until they could see the light through the tent, they set out again. And maybe it was just an afternoon thing, but they hardly saw any monsters and arrived back at their clearing before noon.

Once back, they were surprised at how much work Jason had managed to get done. Even with the assistance from higher stats, digging a trio of holes wasn’t exactly a quick process, at least not at their level. Except Jason had figured out a trick to make it easier. Though even with that, a normal person would probably not have gotten this far. He was simply oddly good at digging holes.

As for his trick? Runic bloom, his stamina based effect on his War Stomp skill. It released a bloom of power that sliced everything up. This conveniently also worked on the ground. So instead of putting effort into breaking up the ground, he can just shovel the dirt away.

It was tiring, what with the skill literally using his stamina, but the effort put into the skill was many times less than using a shovel to break through the roots, rocks, and generally hard packed earth. Never Ending Threads might have worked for this, except the Energy dissipated too quickly when used on the ground, while stamina had a fixed range, but it covered that range.

Though once he found out about the parasite detecting pipe, he paused everything to do some tests. The obvious being a check of their nearby water sources. On top of that, he runs a few samples from the burnt area, though. There wasn’t anything detected, but that was the expected and hoped for result so all was well.