Chapter 98

In hindsight, altering their direction to run closer to the mountains probably wouldn’t have actually helped that much. The squirrel folk seemed to keep an absolutely enormous amount of territory and almost certainly would have found them anyway. They would have delayed the initial contact, but been that much farther from getting out the other end when the sun came up.

Luke might still have said it was worth it, except for one thing. The squirrel folk had no problem whatsoever following him and Zea well outside what he figured were the borders of their territory. They’d gone at least ten miles past the home tree and hadn’t run into a squirrel of any variety in front of them in the last hour, but they’d been attacked three times by small groups of three to six pursing squirrels.

Another strong indicator that they’d passed beyond the regular territory of the squirrel folk was that the underbrush had thinned out considerably, to the point where they were moving almost twice as fast now. Unfortunately for them, that was still not nearly as fast as the squirrels themselves, and Luke was concerned that the smaller scouting patrols who were chasing them down were soon going to turn into whole squadrons complete with supporting druids and archers to maximize their infantry’s combat advantages.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Zea said when he mentioned his thoughts to her. “We could stand our ground, but what does that accomplish? Even if we try to fortify an area, they’ve got magic users with builds designed to take advantage of this terrain. I can’t picture anything we could make that they couldn’t rip apart in a fraction of the time.”

“Do you think a few fires might work as a distraction?”

“Might work. I don’t think there’s a strong chance of us getting caught up in it. It will definitely piss them off, maybe so much that they send more guys after us and chase us farther.”

“Yeah,” Luke agreed, a frown on his face. “On the other hand, they’re kind of already chasing us past the ends of their territory as like, I don’t know, vengeance for fighting back and killing some people.”

“I don’t know shit about these squirrels. System, anything you can tell us?”

The apparition appeared between the two of them and ghosted along as they ran, simply passing through branches, bushes, and vines. “I can answer some questions about them as a whole, but am not able to give specific information regarding any individual.”

“Okay, how about why these fuckers are still chasing us? Any thoughts on that one?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not able to speculate on their motives.”

Luke couldn’t help it. He started laughing. Even with the upgraded bloodline, System was still borderline useless. The knowledge was there, but most of it was locked up and trying to figure out which questions to ask to tease out even a hint of what he wanted to know was an exercise in frustration and futility.

“Are we outside their territory?” Zea asked, ignoring Luke.

“Based on your distance from the home tree, it appears so. However, there are several smaller satellite colonies that regularly communicate and trade with the home tree. You would need to move thirty-two miles directly north of here before you leave the range of the most distant colony.”

“Shit,” Luke and Zea said in unison.

“Is there a way to run a route that threads through these individual territories, or are they all overlapping?” Zea asked.

“There are some overlapping territories that you will not be able to go around, but if you were to plot a route that minimizes the time spent inside territories, you would need to travel eighty-three miles to reach the edge of the northernmost territory.”

More than doubling their travel time was a bad idea, in Luke’s mind. The squirrel folk were just too expansive to avoid, which meant punching through was going to be the fastest and most efficient course of action. If there were that many of them still in front of him, he didn’t think his ‘setting shit on fire’ plan was viable either. There would be more than enough squirrels to fight a forest fire and chase them down.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do besides run as fast as we can,” Luke said. “There’s just too many to try to fight back. Eventually we’ll get far enough away that they’ll leave us alone.”

“Or if they don’t, it won’t matter,” Zea replied. “My biggest concern is what happens when twenty or thirty of them jump us at once.”

As weak as they were individually, Luke was more concerned about keeping them off Zea than his own safety. “As long as the forest doesn’t get bad like it did near their giant tree, I think we can clear that thirty-two miles in about two hours. I say we just keep going.”

Zea grimaced, but nodded. She was breathing hard now, which Luke couldn’t blame her for. Even with high stamina, it had been a grueling run through enemy territory that had lasted for hours. He was tired in a way he hadn’t been since having to fight off all those poisons Myla had tagged him with.

At least he hadn’t needed to use [Life Surge] yet. All things considered, if it came down to it and that was what he needed to finish a fight, he figured they were basically dead anyway. Pulling the trigger on that skill was more of an act of final revenge against whatever enemy happened to be in front of him than a tactic that would lead them to any sort of victory.

Despite the sun being fully in the eastern sky now, visible over the peaks of the mountains and everything, they made it almost an hour before they encountered another group of squirrels. Even better, this group didn’t have any of the bipedal ones with thumbs and weapons in it. On the other hand, there were eight of them, which made things quite hectic for about six seconds.

Luke laid into them left and right, every blow smiting another one. He killed three of them before the rest even hit the ground, and two more with a sweeping strike that caught them both in one move. Of the remaining three though, only one attacked him.

Zea was fast, and she had a rank in [Dagger Mastery]to give her some basic combat proficiency with that knife. She decapitated the first squirrel in the air, but then the second sunk teeth into her leg and she cried out in pain. Before Luke could cross the distance to help, she drove the knife down through its skull and pried it off of her.

“Shit,” she swore. “That’s going to slow me down. Here, you’ve got [First Aid], see if you can tie this off or something.”

Another thing high stamina was good for was preventing infection, which was the only reason Luke wasn’t too worried about the state of the cloth he used to tie the wound. It would stop bleeding soon enough, and his shirt was already so tattered that it wasn’t like he was going to miss three inches off the bottom.

There was enough length to go around her leg three times, and he tied it in a tight knot. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I couldn’t get them all.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” she told him. “You know I can take care of myself. And honestly, this barely hurts. I’m sure it’ll be healed up in an hour or two.”

“The next hour or two is when we kind of need to be at our best,” he said. “I should have seen them coming quicker than I did. I just don’t get why they’re so suicidal. I know they can feel how much XP I have, which probably isn’t doing much to help keep us hidden, but normally monsters that are 15 levels below me don’t charge in like that.”

Some of them did, the particularly stupid and aggressive ones who were used to hitting above their level thanks to their natural size, but squirrels were not predatory animals to begin with. The smart ones, he guessed he understood, but the normal squirrels were a different story. Well, normal-ish. They were still pretty big, but otherwise they looked normal.

His suspicion was that the druid squirrel folk had something to do with it. It seemed pretty likely to him at least, but he was going off some admittedly spotty memories of what kinds of abilities druids in games back on Earth had. There really wasn’t anything to guarantee that things were the same here, even if he was remembering correctly.

Curt would have known right away. He’d have been able to list off a hundred different powers and skills druids in stories and games back home had, probably would even have already had names for all the abilities Luke had seen the druids use and theories about how those powers worked. Luke felt a sudden empty, hollow pain in his chest. It had been a while since he’d last thought about his brother like that.

Luke shook off those kinds of thoughts. He didn’t have time to wallow in misery, not while they still had close to twenty miles to go. “You ready?” he asked Zea.

“Ready as I’m going to be. It’s not like we have time to stand around.”

It was slower going, but they picked their way through the brush and, as they got farther north, it got thinner and thinner. Another hour, and one attack from two random squirrel folk armed with rocks of all things, and they’d reached the point where they could easily walk between trees without stumbling over any roots, getting snagged on branches, or caught in vines.

“I think we’re clear of them now,” Luke said. “And if not, I would say we will be soon. How about we add a few more miles just to be sure, then we’ll find somewhere we can defend to hole up in for a break?”

“Sounds good,” Zea said, panting as she spoke.

Something thumped against the ground hard enough to shake the leaves off the trees overhead. Both of their heads snapped to the south, where the sound had originated from. “The fuck was that?” Luke whispered. “Come on, let’s go.”

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good news for them. If they were quick and lucky enough, it would be an avoidable problem, and he was going to do everything in his power to make sure it stayed that way.

They hustled off, mostly with an eye on the ground to spot dips and holes hidden under a carpet of leaves and pine needles, occasionally broken by a jutting root or rock. Zea took the lead while Luke came up behind her, his attention split between following her and keeping an eye on the boughs behind them. If an attack came from any direction, it would be there.

Another thump shook the ground a few minutes later, this time to their left. The two exchanged glances and silently adjusted their course to angle off to the right. A minute later, there was a new thump, this time straight ahead of them.

“Okay, what the hell is that sound? Is it the squirrels?” Zea asked. “System, can you tell us anything?”

“You are well outside the established range of their territories, though not far enough away that they couldn’t easily reach you,” the apparition told them.

“Can you tell us anything useful?” she amended.

“On this subject? Perhaps. What would you like to know?”

“Forget it,” Luke said, cutting the conversation off. “Look up ahead.”

Through the tree line, he could see a clearing. In the middle of it, hundreds of feet away from any of the other trees, was a massive old oak. Even as he pointed at it, one of the oak’s roots tore itself free of the ground, rose up in the air, and slammed down with a resounding thump. The tree dragged itself forward a few feet, and another root broke free.

The squirrels were literally waking up the forest around them.