Noah appeared in the Scorched Acres with a pop. He’d headed back to Tim and his cannon after leaving the arena, only stopping at his room to grab his gourd and a spare set of clothes which now hung at his side in a small travel pouch that was slung over his shoulder.

Shaking the last vestiges of confusion from the teleportation off, Noah shook his head and scanned the area for monkeys. He could hear them hollering in the distance, but there didn’t look to be anything in the immediate area.

Noah tossed the bag holding his clothes into a tree. It missed spectacularly, flopping back to the ground a few paces to his side. Noah glanced over his shoulder, glad that nobody had seen that happen, then grabbed his bag and chucked it into the air.

This time, his throw was more accurate and the strap hooked on a protruding branch. He nodded to himself and mentally marked the spot before heading into the forest in the direction of the calls.

His goal was twofold. First, and most importantly, he needed to get stronger. He had four more Wind Runes to replace, and all of his new Runes would have to be filled with energy. He didn’t dare risk replacing another Rune until his Vibration Rune was at least slightly useful, though.

Second, he needed to figure how to help Todd and Isabel each defeat a Slasher – preferably without getting ripped in half in the process. Noah paused as the hoots grew closer, rubbing his chin.

There would be time for more thinking later. Noah placed his gourd in the shadow of a tree and called on his magic before creeping forward.

A group of four smaller monkeys sat in conference around a pile of bloody scraps, grabbing and scratching at each other to try to get the biggest piece. Noah wasted no time in sending a blade of wind into the nearest one.

He got a second spell off before the first connected, and two of the monkeys crumpled to the ground, dead, before the others even realized he was there. The remaining two screamed in fury and spun toward him, their beady eyes burning with hatred.

Blood still dripped from their mouths as they charged at him. Their high pitched screeching dug into Noah’s ears, but he didn’t let it distract him as he fired another wind blade off and threw himself to the side.

The unlucky monkey slammed into the tree behind Noah with a crunch, its throat slit. Blood and spittle flying from its lips, the final monster snagged a branch and redirected its motion, throwing itself at Noah.

It was considerably faster than him – but he knew where it was going. Noah reared back and swung his fist with all the might he could muster, charging it with power from his Vibration Rune.

His knuckles connected with the monkey’s flat nose. Bone crunched and it slammed into the ground, tremors rippling through its body. Noah brought his foot down on the monster’s head before it could lunge at him again, killing it. He shook his hand off, only pausing to shudder as a wave of energy flooded into him.

Not bad at all. They’re really starting to get predictable. These things just charge in a straight line at me. Actually, the Slashers kind of did the same thing too. That’s kind of odd. Shouldn’t there be a little more variance in their behavior?

Noah wiped his knuckles off on the dirt, getting as much of the monkey’s blood off them before he continued. Killing off the small monsters wasn’t bad, but he got more energy from the Slashers, and fighting them was basically killing two birds with one stone.

He didn’t have to search long. The Scorched Acres were absolutely riddled with monsters, and he soon found a Slasher digging at a tree that had somehow drawn its ire. The massive, long-armed monkey was just as ugly as all the others had been.

Noah raised his hand, preparing to summon his Wind Rune, then paused. Nobody else that had been using magic ever actually summoned the Rune to their hands before they used it. For that matter, with how closely people guarded their Runes, it felt like showing it every time he fought was probably in poor taste.

Instead of picturing the Rune in his mind, Noah just called on its magic. It responded just as before, forming a thin white crescent before his palm – but without the Rune behind it. Noah grinned, then fired the spell into the Slasher’s neck.

It bit deep, but the monster’s sinewy muscle was thicker than that of the small monkeys. A furious roar shook the tree and the monkey lurched, instantly spotting Noah and loping toward him.

The urge to dive out of the way threatened to strangle Noah, but he shoved it to the side and stood his ground, watching the monkey with all of his concentration. It lifted its hands to the sides like a sumo wrestler.

It’s going to try to grab at me from the sides.

Noah dropped to the ground. The Slasher’s hands flew over his head, catching nothing but air, and he dove between its feet. He hit the ground in a roll and nearly slammed into a tree on the way up, but he managed to catch himself and spin around. The Slasher was already on top of him, its hands raised into the air above its head.

Again with the overhead attack.

Noah lunged to the side, staggering as he tripped over a root, but caught himself in time to send a wind blade into the Slasher’s side. It tore into the thick fur and blood sputtered from the wound. The Slasher howled in fury and swiped at Noah.

And that’s the horizontal attack.

Noah rolled forward, rising to his feet right in front of the Slasher’s chest. He raised his hands and fired a wind blade straight into its throat. The cut bit deep enough to connect with the other injury he’d inflicted on the monster at the start of the fight, severing its head entirely.

He jumped to the side as the Slasher crashed to the ground, dead before it landed. Noah’s heart thumped furiously and energy coursed through his veins. A huge grin crossed Noah’s face and he leaned against a tree to catch his breath.

I don’t get why they’re all fighting the same way, but it’s not that hard to react to moves when I already know what they’re going to do. It’s almost as if the monkeys all went to the same training camp. I wonder if there’s a drill sergeant monkey around here somewhere.

Noah snickered to himself. After he’d gathered the rest of his breath back, he knelt beside the monster, grimacing slightly at the thick stench surrounding it. It had been easy to forget when he was fighting, but it really did smell rancid.

“A claw should be just as convincing as its head,” Noah decided.

I have one of those already, but two can’t hurt.

Noah spent a few minutes removing one of the Slasher’s claws, then cleaned it off and stuffed it into his pocket. He left the monster feeling more pleased than he could recall in quite some time.

Barely any time had passed since his arrival, so Noah recollected his gourd and set off to find more monsters to kill – and he found them. With his steadily growing understanding of how they fought, Noah found every fight easier than the last.

Several times, he ran into the monkeys so quickly that he used up the reserves in his main Wind Rune and had to fall back to the second or third ones, but he always took a break to recover his energy after getting that far.

The last thing he wanted to do was ruin his clothes because he’d run out of strong Wind magic and have no way to fight back against the monsters effectively.

Time passed, and the day quickly turned to night. Noah continued his hunt, bolstered by the refreshing energy that greeted him after every kill. He was already remarkably bad at keeping time after his years spent in the afterlife, and this wasn’t helping in the slightest.

Noah grew more confident with every fight, which only pushed him to fight harder and seek out more foes. It was an addictive cycle, especially when he didn’t have to deal with the agony of wounds.

That was, of course, when Noah’s luck ran out. He had just finished the last stragglers in a group of small monkeys off when he spotted a monkey staring at him from behind a tree – though the word monkey was starting to feel more and more like a stretch.

Its eyes were comically large, bulging out of its head like those of a frog. Two curling fangs jutted out from its lower jaw, and its knuckles dragged along the ground behind it as the creature stepped toward Noah, its tongue lolling out from its mouth.

“You’re one ugly bastard,” Noah muttered. This monkey didn’t even have any claws that he could see. It would have been fairly close to human had it not been for its impressively ugly face and long arms.

Noah readied a wind blade and took aim at its throat. He fired the spell – and the monkey ducked. It grabbed a rock from the ground and, with a furious holler, lobbed it at Noah.

The rock streaked through the air like a bullet and slammed into Noah’s forehead. He crumpled to the ground, and his soul launched out of the corpse before it could even hit the ground.

Noah stared down at his body as the wide-eyed monster loped up to it and slapped him in the face a few times before ripping him open like a ripe banana. Noah gagged.

“Goddamn it.” he embraced the rope of energy that tightened around his neck.

And that’s a good reminder to me. I’ll take it as a lesson. That’s how easily Todd and Isabel are going to get killed if I don’t properly prepare them. I can’t treat this like a game. They don't have second chances like I do.

Then he was flying, trees flitting through him as his soul was dragged back to the gourd. His body reformed around him and Noah sat upright with a groan, massaging his forehead and grimacing as sharp, burnt sticks poked into his naked backside. A violent headache pounded in his skull, worse than many of the ones he’d had before. Noah pushed himself upright, still cradling his head, and grabbed his gourd.

“That was humiliating. Damn,” Noah muttered, leaning against the tree and looking up into the sky. Night was already starting to fall away, and the morning sun had started to peek over the edge of the horizon. “I’m going to kill that thing the next time I’m here.”

Noah waited for a few hours, then trudged over to where his corpse should have been. His entire top half was missing along with one of his legs, but the monkey had tossed his torn up clothes to the side in a wet, bloody pile.

Grumbling in pain, Noah grabbed his grimoire and wiped it off. It must have been enchanted somehow, because the blood came off remarkably easy. He located his daggers and scooped them up as well. Clutching the book in front of his legs, Noah made the walk of shame over to his spare clothes.

He’d ventured deeper into the woods than he’d thought, but mercifully managed to reach and change into them just a little under thirty minutes before he was pulled back to Arbitage, headache and all.