Chapter 14: Nighttime Talk and Daytime Slaughter
Darkness completely enveloped the dense forest, tinging the surroundings in a monotone of night, signifying the approaching end for the first day of the coming-of-age ceremony.
Only after night had fully descended did Lei groggily open her eyes from her involuntary slumber, letting off a soft yawn while stretching her stiff body. She appeared confused for a few seconds before looking hurriedly around the surroundings with a fearful expression.
Upon noticing that she was inside a fallen tree-trunk leaning against its bark-covered walls, being bathed in the warm glow of a campfire and that Xing was directly opposite her, she regained a calm look.
Xing guessed that scenes of what had happened to them both before she fell asleep suddenly came back to her, and only regained peace when she knew that they were both fine.
She gave off a sign of relief, "Thank god you're fine," stretching once more she continued, "Thanks for saving me, just how did you manage that?"
[Hisssss, this girl should be thanking me!] Umbra made her presence known to Lei by hissing and staring directly into her eyes, the snakes own glowing gold with anticipation.
Umbra had made her home by wrapping her body around Xing's wrist, cozying up inside his long hemp sleeve.
Lei stared dumbly at the little black snake before questioning Xing, "Why is this snake staring at me so intently? …No, more importantly, why is there a snake wrapped around your wrist!?"
Xing smiled wryly at her confused outburst and began explaining everything that happened after she lost consciousness. From how Liang used the Rank 2 Spell: Fireball to blow up the surroundings breaking Xing's bones, causing him to lay helpless on the ground. How Umbra saved him from certain execution by biting Liang's rear-end. And how he defeated Liang by using the shadows released by Umbra to cut off Liang's family jewels, earning laughter out of Lei. To finally how he left Liang and his warrior lackey lying unconscious on the ground, bleeding out from their wounds, after taking all of the monster-cores they had on them.
"Wow… you really cut off Liang's man bits, looted his things, and then left him there bleeding out? Why didn't you just kill him? Leaving him there like that up to fate is quite cruel since he will likely still die anyway from blood loss, or from some random monster." Lei questioned.
Upon the re-telling of the events Xing started questioning his decision and with Lei joining in he thought hard about just why he did what he did.
'The reason I didn't kill him was that I didn't want to end a human-life with my own hands and to keep my personality from being further combined with my souls' overarching personality. So I decided to just leave it up to fate and walk away. It seemed to be a good decision at the time and I believed I was taking a middle-ground in the battle between personalities. However, now that I think about it, didn't my soul win out since Liang will likely die anyway?'
'Damn! No wonder I never realized I was doing something so cruel! My personality had been warped at the time! It's getting harder and harder to stop the influence of my soul, and now I can't even tell when I'm being led by it!'
The raving within his mind was interrupted by Lei adding her own insight, "If it were me I would have just killed him and got it over with. You know, to get rid of the trouble. Because if he does survive he won't be in any shape to continue participating in the ceremony, and since you took all his cores he won't be able to complete it either. He will forever be an ashamed member of the tribe, meaning he and his father will hold a massive grudge against you."
'Survive? …Yes! I hope that bastard survives, simply so I can spite my souls' personality!'
'Haaaah,' Xing signed within his mind, 'maybe I should just stop fighting against the influence, this is too mentally draining. Next thing I know I'll be growing white hair.'
"So anyway, what is with the snake- you named it Umbra?"
Xing realized they had gotten sidetracked so he continued on with what happened. He told Lei how he carried her through the jungle until it started getting dark, earning a blush from Lei. He told her how he came across the fallen down tree-trunk, turning it into a camp for the night. He then told Lei about how the snake had followed him the entire way. About how it came inside the trunk and started etching a complicated and ancient Spell-Model in the dirt, and how it stared him down until he cast the spell. Finally telling her the spell connected their souls together and that they could communicate.
"Eh? So the snake is female and you named her?"
For some reason, Xing thought he detected jealousy from Lei's tone of voice, but he brushed that away as ridiculous.
"Yeah her name is Umbra, and as you now know, she was the one who saved us. The reason why she is staring at you intently is that she wants you to thank her."
[Yes, thank me! And give me food with the thanks!]
Xing could feel voracious hunger coming from the snake through the soul connection. With a cough, Xing informed Lei, "She wants you to thank her and give her food… just toss a core and be done with it, or she will pester you forever."
"Alright then, it's only the end of day 1 and we already have so many cores." Lei took out a round-sphere of pulsating mana and threw it through the air toward Umbra's mouth.
When the core had reached a suitable distance away, Umbra sprang out of Xing's sleeve, jaws wide open showing off her pearly-white fangs. Like last time the core was gobbled up whole and was devoured into nothingness upon entering Umbra's maw.
"Wow, where did the core go? She doesn't even look full- just how much can she eat?" Lei looked amazed at Umbra's eating ability, or more aptly- devouring ability.
[Yes, be amazed at my abilities!] If the snake could it would be puffing her chest out with pride.
"Anyway, Lei what should we do next? Do we venture deeper into the jungle? Since there isn't really anything that can threaten the three of us on the outskirts, besides an overwhelming number of goblins surrounding us." Xing asked.
Lei thought about for a moment before responding, "Well, there are two ways to get into the top 3 which are through quality or quantity. Most years people just go with quantity since it is far easier to kill many weak monsters than it is to fight a strong one. It is also much more dangerous deeper in, not just from the stronger monster- its mainly because of goblin tribes numbering in the thousands and with goblins grouping up in the hundreds."
She took a breath before stating, "In my opinion, we should just stay in the outskirts and wipe out small goblin tribes and go the quantity route since we at most can deal with about one-hundred goblins at once. Maybe we could go deeper for a few days before the end of the week."
"Alright then, we'll go down the quantity route. Let's get some sleep, although I suspect you might not need any since you've been a sleepy girl for a few hours," chuckling to himself Xing lay down next to the campfire and closed his eyes.
"Sleepy girl-- that was not my fault!!" Lei yelled while blushing.
[This girl is a funny one master.] Umbra slithered back into her spot inside Xing's sleeve, wrapping herself around his wrist to keep her whole body warm.
As Xing was drifting off to sleep he thought he heard Umbra calling him something weird, but he chalked it up to hearing things and fell asleep.
***
Sounds of spurting blood resounded out into the wilderness as a black scaled snake darted away from a tiny goblin which was trying desperately to stop a fountain of blood from spraying out its jugular with stubby hands.
The snake descended into a nearby shadow as the goblin dropped to the ground, adding to the already substantial pile of corpses that littered the surrounding forest.
Nearby a male and female covered in blood were piercing goblins with spears and smashing goblins with fists. Any goblin that came close to the pair was executed, eternally joining their brethren in hell.
You would think that the remaining goblins would know that they were no match for the trio and would retreat, but these goblins were dumb. They kept charging toward the pair of humans and playing cat and mouse with the disappearing snake.
Soon there was only a single goblin left who by this point had a look of horror and fear on its face like it had only just realized now that it was a bad idea to fight these three.
"Are these goblins just that stupid or do their brains just work at a sloth-like pace, so they didn't realize in time just what they were doing?" Xing mused.
"Does it even matter? A goblin is a goblin, smart or not," Lei ignored the quivering goblin and started cutting open goblin corpses one-by-one, searching around their gruesome insides hoping to find a monster-core that hadn't dissipate upon its host's death.
All of a sudden an agonized scream of despair came out of the lone goblin. Umbra had sprung out of a shadow in front of the poor creature and ripped into its throat like a trained attack dog, spraying blood all over.
When the goblins life was over and it fell to the ground, Umbra bit into its stomach with precision and extracted its core. Then raised her head to look at Xing with the core inside her jaws waving the tip of her tail behind her.
Xing was starting to get confused with Umbra's behavior as she occasionally did or said weird things. Like right now she looked like a dog with a bone in its mouth waiting for the command to eat. There was also the fact that she never did anything that Lei told her yet was strangely obedient to anything he asked of her. Not mentioning the fact that she was regularly slipping up and calling him master, which at first he thought she was joking but now with it was happening regularly.
When he confronted her about it she denied calling him that and desperately said that they were just companions and she wasn't his servant, but it seemed forced. He assumed that something may have gone wrong with the soul contract since she was struggling when denying but without her telling him anything he could only speculate.
"You can eat it Umbra"
[Woo, thanks mast- I mean thanks very much!] Umbra devoured the core that was in her mouth making it vanish from the world like it had never existed.
Xing shook his head and bent down to join Lei in scouring the pile of corpses.
"How many goblin tribes does that make this in 4 days?" Lei asked.
"This was the 12th I believe, 13th if you count the encounter with the roaming band on the 1st day. In total, I believe we've slaughtered a few hundred goblins."
"And how many cores do you have? I've got 1 F-Rank and 9 G-Rank Cores."
"I'm sitting on 2 F-Rank and 13 G-Rank Cores."
"Hmm, those sound like winning numbers, you may even set a new record." Lei declared, "Since its the 4th day should we venture deeper into the jungle tomorrow and see if we can find a few more F-Rank Cores? We don't need to hand them since we already have enough to get 1st and 2nd so we can keep them ourselves."
"Sounds like a plan."
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