Reflections on the Warpath - [An Isekai Progression Fantasy]

Well, there's no chance I'm fighting those guys alone…

What can I do instead though?

Jay watched Ezekiel ruffle through the corpse while Amaya reached into her satchel and took out a series of lacquered wood slats.

Shit, the falcon.

If Karis' birds could search the treetops, so could Amaya's puppets. Jay quietly shifted towards the edge of his perch; Ping hovered in the air beside him. He had to move now, before Amaya finished her puppet.

Ping flew into Jay's hands as he leaned towards open air. Hopefully the way down would be easier on the shield.

Faster too.

The humid air pushed at Jay's cheeks as he drifted lower, hands clasped onto his makeshift metal hang glider.

He wondered if Ping had ever been wielded this way before.

She was protecting him from falling to his death, in a sense.

Once his feet hit solid ground, Jay crept away from the exit hub. He barely made a sound, floating over the forest flora.

A far cry from the last time he'd escaped his teammates.

After putting some distance between him and the exit hub, Jay climbed up a nearby tree, the conventional way. Ping hovered by Jay's shoulders, watching his back. He heard a faint hum behind him each time he dug the Conqueror's fists into the tree bark, a quiet echo of satisfaction.

Jay secured himself with his rope before carving the same diamond-and-lightning symbol into the bark.

Hopefully here's good enough.

Somewhat confident in his safety, Jay began to plan.

He knew he couldn't take on the duo guarding the exit hub alone. He'd have to wait until he found one of Karis' crows before even thinking about fighting them. What did that leave?

Jay remembered yesterday's team talk above the Celestial Swords. Although his main goal was killing Amaya and Ezekiel, he had to hold back until he met up with his true team. He couldn't observe them anymore without risking being spotted, so Jay switched gears to his second objective.

Relics.

There were two ways to obtain relics. Finding them throughout the jungle, like Caleb and his team had, or stealing them off teams.

Alone and outnumbered, fighting other teams was out of the question.

That left finding them in the wild and hoping nobody found him.

Not exactly the best strategy… and it still doesn't answer how.

Jay frowned as he looked down at the jungle. It wasn't that the pieces weren't falling into position — they'd never been there in the first place.

A small lemur-like rodent crept down from the canopy, its wide eyes locked onto Jay. It paused on one of the branches perching there and watching him.

Jay reached out to stroke the small animal, but it leapt off the branch as soon as he began to move. The creature spread its legs, pulling its furry skin flaps taut as it glided down towards another tree.

Maybe you're right buddy…

Anywhere's better than here.

Jay drifted through the forest floor, eyes and ears scanning his surroundings for any deviations in the jungle. Every layer of the Emergent Bloom scrambled for Jay's attention as he traversed it. Crumbling ruins caught Jay's eye the first three times he'd passed them, but none had the intrigue of the structure he'd seen Caleb's team enter before. Jay passed the fourth with nothing more than a quick glance.

But Jay ploughed on, perfecting his quiet footwork and training his steps to leave no trace as he loosely wandered away from the exit hub.

After several minutes of nothing, Jay finally found something that caught his eye. A giant, circular, pawprint. Easily two or three times the size of his own foot and sunken deep into a squishy, mud filled divot.

What the hell made this…

Jay wasn't sure how the giant beast would lead him to a relic, but its tracks felt strangely tempting.

Which was more than anything else he'd seen.

Jay followed the sunken pawprints, pushing through the rainforest drone to listen out for anything in front of him. A creature that large was bound to make noise as it lumbered through the jungle. Snapped twigs, crunching vines, anything.

When he heard it, Jay almost wished he hadn't.

A thundering roar sent tremors through Jay's bones. Like the sound itself clutched his skeleton and rattled it. The deep, booming rumble felt like a warning, but Jay heard something else beneath it. A smothered scream that he wouldn't even have noticed without his connection to Ping.

A faint but desperate cry for help.

Jay powered forward, masking his paces beneath the oncoming noise.

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A different set of cries weaved through the trees. Softer, shorter. They sounded more like cackles than whines.

Flashes of yellow fur ran across the rainforest in front of Jay. He slowed down, ducking behind a gigantic buttress root before a clearing opened in the jungle.

The pained moans were closer now, interspersed between laboured, gurgling breaths.

Another faint cackle and the scuffle of underfoot plants piques Jay's interest.

He braved a look.

Jay poked his head above the root.

A crimson flicker shot towards his face.

He ducked back.

Jay dodged it in time; his hair didn't.

Viscous, clumpy blood splattered into Jay's hair. He held in a retch while combing his hand through and wiping the residue onto the root. The blood stank of rotten meat and clung to the bark like wet mud before sloughing onto the ground.

GRRRRRRRAH.

Another seismic roar rattled Jay's teeth and shook the loose soil off the giant root he hid behind. Jay poked his head out again, eager to finally see the giant bellowing beast.

A colossal, hulking hippo bellowed out to the rest of the jungle, unfurled jaws baring its tusks. The ivory spears were stained blood red, dripping with torn flesh. Age old scars littered its muddy, grey hide, atop them sat an arsenal of fresh gores.

A mangled hyena corpse bled out beside the colossal creature; fresh blood rolled down its matted fur.

The hippo stomped its front left foot into the carcass, crunching its ribcage, embedding it inches deep into the dirt. Four more hyenas circled the hippo, heads bobbing as they paced around their titanic opponent.

The hippo spun around, snapping its jaws at a hyena that darted forward. The nimble creature dove aside, backing away and rejoining his pack.

Since when did hyenas and hippos live in the rainforest?

A flash of red caught Jay's eye before he could ponder further. A black metal dagger, with a ruby embedded in its pommel, poked out of the hippo's rear right leg. A fiery red glow pulsed from within the gemstone, illuminating the dim forest floor. The glow rushed beneath the hippo's leathery skin as previously invisible veins bulged up to the surface. Lit up from within.

They continued toward the creatures head, until the glowing blood pooled in its bulging eyeballs.

The creature unleashed another guttural roar. Blood spilled out from its eye sockets like tears of pure agony.

That dagger… could it be a relic?

The hippo lunged forward, jaws agape at the pack of scavengers. They scattered. Three hyenas dove into the safety of the treeline.

The smallest didn't react in time.

Its paws skittered atop the wet, trodden plants beneath it before a colossal tusk pierced through and shattered its skull.

The three remaining hyenas regrouped at the clearing's edge. Their gargantuan opponent spun around, mindlessly trampling the headless corpse of its latest victim with its hind legs. It chewed on the hyena's severed head for a moment before spitting out a mangled lump of red mulch.

The creature pried its jaws apart and bellowed in tortured fury.

Another pulse of light coursed through its bloodstream.

Another scourge of pain.

The hippo rammed its head into a nearby tree, shaking it from its base. A dense nest of twigs, leaves, and fungi tipped out onto the clearing. The eggs inside splattered into a puddle of orange the moment it crashed into the ground.

A self-inflicted gash opened between the behemoth's eyes. A streak of crimson rolled to one side of its face. Fusing with the tears of blood.

The remaining hyenas began another attack, together this time. One remained in place, while the other two circled around their hunt.

One of the hyena's sniffled as it skulked past Jay, twitching its nose. It twisted its neck, peering around the root he used as a hiding spot and stared directly at him. Jay curled up a fist, but the animal brushed past him and walked to its position.

Shrouded by treetop shadows, the hyenas leapt in all at once.

Yet their final assault was doomed to fail.

The unlucky hyena facing the hippo's mouth dashed forwards. It darted right, eager to evade the colossal jaws it stared down. Not enough. The corrupted beast was no mere hulking giant. The hippo flicked its head aside, snapping its neck forward. Its tusks didn't clamp down on the poor whelp's skull like before, but a tusk goring through the eye socket worked just as effectively.

As their brother stared down a brutal death, the other two hyenas made contact. Their canines sank into the hippo's exposed flesh, digging into the still-fresh wounds. Their paws scraped at the creature's torn-apart skin, yet their feeble fangs and raking claws sank into dense muscle and no further.

The cursed red blight oozed from the dagger once more, defiling the hippo's bloodstream.

This time when the hippo wailed in suffering, the two hyenas alongside it joined in.

The hippo collapsed onto its right side, rolling over and crushing one hyena beneath its weight. The other catapulted into the air, eventually crunching into a tree beside Jay. Thudding to the dirt.

Blood pooled beneath the hyena. It wobbled up to blood-soaked legs.

It glanced back at its fallen brethren and its undefeated prey before limping away. Scampering back to the jungle.

Jay covered his ears as the hippo's jaws stretched open and wailed once more. The pained howl shook the trees, the ground, and even Ping floating mid-air.

By now, Jay was almost certain that the dagger embedded into the beast was a relic. Unfortunately, he was almost certain of something else too.

He didn't need Eye of the storm to hear the hippo's final cry, and the other gladiators wouldn't either.

If Jay wanted his first relic, he had to get it now.

Ping shot out of the cover, instantly sensing Jay's intent. She whizzed in front of the wailing hippo, drawing its attention as Jay circled to its rear.

Ping skimmed above the ground, rotating as she flew, reflecting what little light there was off her. She dropped lower, dipping into a ravaged hyena corpse.

She spun faster, flinging blood and gore into the air.

Viscera jetted out of the corpse, shooting into the hippo's eyes.

Where'd she learn that?

The beast lurched forward.

Ping retreated from its gaping jaws, and all the tusks met was a mouthful of airborne electricity.

Jay accelerated his assault as Ping began another taunt.

He lost sight of his shield. Sprinting towards the beast, Jay's focus narrowed to nothing but one foot in front of the other. Anything and everything to reach the relic as fast as possible.

His foot bounded over a mound of blood-soaked soil. A crisp leaf crunched beneath it on firmer ground. Eyes that once scoured the jungle floor for the quietest route now hounded the ground for secure footing.

When Jay neared the hippo's rear, he leapt.

Jay flung himself up and dove over the giant creature. His left hand dropped down, grasping the hippo's leathery hide. It stabilised his flight while his dominant right hand snatched after the embedded dagger.

He expected a struggle, but the knife easily slid out from the beast's skin. Propelled by a fountain of viscous blood shooting at Jay's arm.

Jay rolled through the dirt and began running again.

He didn't think about the creature behind him, or the dagger in his hands. He didn't think about looking back for even one moment as raced into the relative safety of the treeline.

All he thought about was getting the fuck away from the hippo he'd just stolen a relic from.

Another pained wail assaulted Jay's eardrums as he ran. A shockwave of sound, pounding at his back.

But Jay heard another pain in this roar. A new sound, one he hadn't heard from the beast before.

The pain of finality.

The pain of release.

Jay cut through the noise. He ran, stomped, trod on everything in his path as he fled the scene. Eventually he changed course, turning ninety degrees and abandoning the erratic trail he'd intentionally left.

After a few more minutes of silent escape, Jay began climbing. He embedded the Conqueror's fists into the black rainforest bark and ascended to the canopy. Rung by rung.

Jay perched within the familiar treetops that had become his refuge against the relentless pace of advancement. A flash of deep blue, stained with hyena blood, flew up to join him.

Ping dipped three inches as Jay let out an exhausted sigh, mimicking his chest. Jay chuckled as he held his new dagger out in front of him.

One down…