Restful sleep had taken his mind deep into a dreamless haze. With the heavy injuries he incurred by his ritual slamming him into a tree, Ren badly needed the rest. The night had passed into an early twilight as an eerie sensation caused Ren’s eyes to flutter awake.

  Looking above him, a small sound came from a lizard above him. It was crawling slowly down into a position where it could pounce on him. With his injuries mostly healed, he leaped up and pulled free his knife.

  The lizard rapidly moved into position and leaped down toward him. Its body was nearly as large as he was, with two spread arms of wicked claws. He used analyze it as he moved to counter its strike.

  Arboreal Assassin Protomimus Lvl 14

  Ducking down under the leaping strike of its claws, Ren swept his blade across the beast’s back. It turned trying to bite into his arm as he pulled back. His speed was far greater than its ability to counter.

  Not wanting to cause a great deal of noise, Ren didn’t pull out the revolver. Instead, he dodged a swinging claw to give a deep wound down the lizard’s arm. Luckily the beast was small enough that he would not need to utilize the venoms he had collected. In a pure battle of cuts and stabs, he would win easily.

  A second arboreal protomimus leapt onto his back where it tore great gashes down his back. Blood began pouring heavily from the wounds. Having just had several broken bones, Ren’s health was already less than full. The bleeding he now sustained only left the pool draining far more heavily.

  In a moment of desperation, Ren flung off the second lizard, rapidly moving to take a desperate strike at the first of them. Trading a blow with the lizard, he earned a puncture to the left thigh while reposting the claw of its other arm. In the same motion that he made his parry, he stabbed the lizard in the neck, ending its life swiftly. Jumping onto another branch of the tree, he looked at the second protomimus looking to take his life tonight.

  It had wounded him badly, but his ascendant body could heal the wounds. Pulling free the revolver, he kept his finger from the trigger. The giant lizard pounced toward him, its giant claws ready to rend his flesh again, he dodged the leap.

  Steadying itself on a branch below him, it recovered from the missed attack. This time, Ren decided to take the initiative. Now, he leaped for the giant lizard below him. It claws swinging for him, he dodged one and parried the other with his revolver. Its mouth came in for a rapid bite, but his knife came in swiffer. The blade punctured into the head of the overgrown lizard. Going slack, the beast began to fall. Ren caught it, still not having eaten, he settled for it for breakfast.

  His bleeding slowly stopped as he realized he had no way of making fire. Feeling disgusted, Ren ate several portions of the beast raw. Knowing that his body was far more durable than any human had the right to be, he assumed intestinal parasites were far from a concern for him.

  His body now had food and water in it, he relaxed away in the morning as he regenerated. Though, there was one problem. Ren’s clothing, since he had gotten the strange stuff, has always stayed clean and repaired itself. With him actively making sure to not utilize any of his mana, the clothing no longer repaired itself. Ren sighed as he felt the dried blood on his back, as well as the large damaged portion on his back.

  Deep in the wilderness, and far from human civilization, Ren didn’t really have to worry about clothes, right?

  I don’t want to wander the woods naked like some weirdo…

  Holding his head in his hands, he tried to think of a rational solution. There wasn’t one. Unless he wanted to wear half-rotten lizard skin everywhere, his clothes were going to be destroyed.

  Looking up from his self-pity, he looked into the mountains that stood back from the shoreline of the river. Before passing, he had seen them from a great distance. Three solitary mountains had caught his eye, well besides needing the water badly too.

  In the early light of morning, he looked upon a strange sight. A large carved rock formation with a shadow lurking in its center. There were no exact carvings in the rock, but a general shape. It was not something that could have come to be by the slow erosion of stone. The formation was subtle, yet jarring when noticed. Something meant for the eyes of only those who would notice. Not many folks paid much attention to stone.

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  As he allowed himself to slowly heal further, he scrubbed away the dried blood across his back and thighs while studying the area high up in the mountain. Where the bank of the river was heavily forested, only one of the three mountains was. The other two mountains were far more rocky. From a distance, it was hard to even tell there were three mountains, as they were in a perfect eastward line. All the while the river meandered around their feet.

  Not able to see too far into the distance on account of the forest in that direction, Ren guessed the water may even be completely surrounding the three mountains. Three mountains, were isolated from contact with the outside world as the river was far too hazardous for anything to leave or enter the two separate ecosystems. It excited Ren to think about the opportunity to see a biome unique and untouched by the outside world.

  Making a mental checklist, Ren wanted to first see the layout of the area. Finding out for sure if it was completely isolated from the outside would give him a greater sense of security. If he was completely boxed in from the outside world, it would make the potential for the worshippers of the Silver Goddess to seek him out far less likely, maybe even impossible.

  Finding out what lived here, the extremes of what ruled over such a fruitful area would help him understand what threats were posed to him here.

  Finally, he wanted to check out what was going on in the mountains. Finding out why two of them completely lacked forests, and what caused the shone to be carved, or shaped how it was.

  Having scrubbed off some of the dried blood, Ren slowly and carefully ventured back towards the river. Wetting himself quickly, he cleared off the blood and got another drink. Sure, it was dangerous, but he doubted mega-crocs would murder him for spending ten seconds at the bank. There was much larger prey for them to worry about.

  Having cleaned off and gotten a drink, he felt quite replenished. Even if his health was not quite full, he began to venture along the bank. Staying back toward the treeline, he hoped to avoid any surprises.

  Slowly making his way along the bank, the river curved. Following the curvature, he slowly made his way along the land. It was unanimously forested, with little change to plant life. The biome was mostly uniform along the bank. Heavily covered in underbrush, with high-topped trees that reached into wide branches. Along his path, Ren did encounter one more of the arboreal protomimus. Avoiding it, he went deeper into the underbrush below the high tree that it clung to.

  Moving past where the big tree lizard hung out, Ren found the remains of a small creature. Do they camp out near food and water to ambush scavengers? He wondered to himself. It would explain why they came for me, a seemingly wounded prey item that they could ambush in the night. Perhaps that one had not seen me, or it did not want to attack me while I wasn’t vulnerable. If I had stopped to eat the corpse on the ground, it may have pounced on me, the little tree rats have some intelligence then.

  Finding himself bored, the life around the bank had quickly become scarce yet again. The river was curving further North, indicating it was coming to wrap around the side of the most westward mountain. Currently, he was South of the three mountains, but quickly coming closer to the furthest mountain.

  With his high dexterity, he traveled extremely fast. Dexterity did not translate directly into travel speed, but it did give a large boost to it. Mainly, his high endurance, in addition to his dexterity allowed him to travel unburdened by obstacles and obstructions. Over the day he was able to travel from the foot of the most westward mountain to the opposite side of the furthest eastward mountain.

  His guess that the river surrounded the mountains was correct. As far as he had traveled, the mountains were surrounded by the river. Not yet having seen the northern section above the mountains, he was not yet sure if there was water above them as well.

  Ren changed his direction to spend the last hours of the day to reach the central mountain. From there, he wished to look out over the northern section of land to see if water washed down above the mountains as well.

  His path began on the eastern foot of the last mountain. Abandoning his path alongside the water, he traveled West away from the bank. He moved with speed so that he could travel during the daylight hours. With his speed, he activated his basic stealth ability to better hide himself. Not wanting to drain his resources with his eldritch stealth, he also feared it could further damage the amber.

  Passing across the foot of the final mountain, and nearing passage onto the central mountain, loud steps suddenly rung out from a dense section of undergrowth behind him. Knowing his stealth had failed, he abandoned it, picking up more speed. Rapidly, he reached a large tree, half running up its trunk, then grasping onto branches, with alacrity he had reached nearly thirty feet into the air in mere moments.

  Looking down, his heart raced quickly.

  Devourer Protomimus Lvl 21

  A variant of the basic protomimus he originally saw, it was very similar. A lizard-like appearance, and standing twenty feet. With two rear legs supporting it, and a large tail for balance. This variant possessed small arms and two horn protrusions from its skull. A black and venomous green pattern covered its body.

  Unseen from the lower vantage of the protomimus, Ren looked down on it, quite glad he got to safety faster than it could run him down. While he as a human might have high dexterity, and travel quickly, a creature such as this would be far faster than him.

  Ren stayed high in the tree as the devourer protomimus wandered around searching for him. Today, he was choosing to avoid the battle.