62 A bad feeling

*Booom!*

*Boom!*

The sound of deafening explosions resounded through the never-ending rainforest. The hot heat evaporating the rain only to be showered again. Trees, corpses, and stones flew everywhere and hitting the poor monsters who were too slow to dodge the barrage of debris.

*Ding!*

"Haaaah, how long are we here now?" asked Derat while fishing for the lost souls in the corpses that are littered around them. On the other side, Raas was busy charging his next [Sun breath] before shooting it at another pair of Crazy Bombardier Beetle.

*BOOOM!*

"It only has been eight hours! So stop whining and make yourself useful Derat!", but Derat completely ignored Sahra and continued to lazily collect souls. "Stop eating souls before I completely flip and crush your core, you piece of flying guppy!" shouted Sahra, between slicing and dicing hoards of Steel Worms, Grave Eaters, and Blight Bringers.

Derat immediately shut up, as he knew Sahra was meaning it.

Beatrice who was in her real form was helping Raas, but she wasn´t as nearly as stressed as Sahra, who had to fight all on her own because Derat decided to take a few quick bites.

"Ah, shit. My mana is running low," said Raas as he jumped away only to see his previous position being blown up into smithereens.

"Hmm, why not just use your racial skill [Ash field]?" asked Beatrice, sidestepping a Bloodened Spider´s webshot.

Gathering his last bits of mana he blew up the spider and a few slugs that got caught in the explosion.

Having killed the last few on their side Raas could finally take a breather. Catching his breath for a second Raas slithered next to Beatrice and said, "You know it doesn´t work like this right? I already used up all my charges two hours ago, also it would be a total overkill to use it on these few monsters. And here under the constant rain, I can´t possibly recharge..."

"Oh, right. Forgot about that. It´s still a powerful skill, despite its shortcomings. I can still remember you standing in the middle of the chared monsters. That looked really epic. It even made my scales tingle feeling the heat of the attack" said Beatrice with excitement.

"Heh, what are you talking about? Your skills are far more destructive than mine. I still can´t believe you just casually destroying and making a forest like that!?" said Raas with twinkling eyes, as he could still remember the utter destruction that Beatrice created a few hours back.

"Ahaha, yes I am quite impressive!" boasted Beatrice while flexing her sharp claws and grinning brightly, showing her sharp teeth.

"Hey, stop flirting with MY Raas, and get your ass over here Beatrice. Derat is completely useless here!" complained Sahra from afar, having some troubles dealing with the monsters. "I am not useless, it´s not my fault they completely negate my skills..." pouted Derat silently so no one could hear him.

"Yes, yes... Stop being jealous. I am on my way..." said Beatrice dismissively. Stretching her wings she jumped towards the hoard and took a deep breath, filling her lungs to the absolute limit. Holding her breath till she was closer she unleashed a sea of fire, engulfing the hoard and killing the weaker ones instantly, while the stronger ones writhed in pain.

"Pah~" letting out a small cloud of smoke, Beatrice stood with her head held high and a proud expression plastered on her face, and her hand on her hips. "Puhhh~, that was the last one for today. I think we should head back and rest for the night,"

Sahra sighed in relief as she slumped towards Raas and hugged him, pushing his head between her soft bosoms. "Raas, are you alright?"

"Yes, but what about you? You had to practically deal with them all on your own..." asked Raas looking up at her face that had a few cuts and bruises.

Looking at her tattered robe that was now barely hiding her body she hugged him tighter, "it´s just a scratch." Smiling mischievously she leaned closer towards Raas' ear while whispering, "if you are so worried, why don´t you heal me with your [Healing fang]?"

Raas blushed slightly at her sudden attack and tried to back off, but failed and gave up. Taking a deep breath, he looked into Sahra´s two pitch-black dots, "That sounds like a good idea. We don´t want to leave scars on your beautiful face, right?"

Not expecting a counterattack her cheeks flushed and turned her head away, while barely stammering out a "R- r- right..."

Beatrice who was feeling like the third wheel coughed, breaking the pink atmosphere between the two. "Now you two should stop flirting and get going. I don´t want to stay in this rain for any second longer than necessary!" All the while Derat was enjoying a scrumptious meal, he was fairly useless against the monsters on this floor, so he mostly just scouted ahead or was consuming souls. And as a "fish" the rain didn´t bother him. If he wanted to he could make himself intangible and let all the rain pass through him. But more on him later...

Sahra released Raas and nodded before they finally searched for a dry place to rest their exhausted bodies. Raas was eager to finally look at his stats, during all the fighting he ignored the constants stream of notifications as he didn´t want to be distracted.

So marching through the wet undergrowth they looked high and low for a place, but all they found were more monsters out for blood. They killed so many monsters that they completely filled Beatrice's spatial robe that she always wears.

Derat flew ahead to scout and after 20 minutes, the three of them saw a blue anglerfish swimming for his life towards them while screaming. "Bad news! Another stampede!"

"Ah shit, how many are there?" cursed Beatrice.

"A few hundreds at least..."

"Should we head back?" asked Raas, looking concerned at his group. The last stampede nearly killed him if he hadn´t used his [Ash Field] ability. Even Sahra was lost on what to do.

"No, those crawling shits are charging right towards the town, and we can´t outrun them, especially when we are this exhausted," responded Derat while nervously swimming around.

...

Breaking the silence Sahra stretched her limbs and faced the others, "Guess there is no other way than to fight our way through."

"You became quite reckless Sahra, I quite like that new attitude of yours," said Beatrice flexing her claws.

Raas sighed but nodded. That was the only option left.

Opening her hand Beatrice summoned three blue potions and giving each one of them one. "Drink up, those are my last ones... how far away are they Derat?"

"Hmmm, about 10 minutes away, give or take. The faster ones should be here in about five minutes or so."

"Meh, just enough time to restore my mana. A few more levels are always welcomed," said Raas jokingly trying to lighten up the tense atmosphere.

They all drank up their potions and sat down for a few seconds to at least get some kind of rest. Raas sat next to Sahra and curled up on her thighs. The minutes passed as they anxiously waited for the Stampede to come but after 5 minutes there was still nothing.

"Where are the monsters?" asked Raas who was ready to shoot some miniature suns.

All eyes and dots turned towards Derat who was swimming around. He looked at the front in confusion, "they should have been here already. Or at least the fast ones... but I don´t sense them anymore. It is like they were never here..."

"Should we investigate it?" asked Sahra.

But Raas only shook his head and replied, "No, definitely not. Whatever happened there, is probably more dangerous than the stampede. I have a bad feeling about that... I think we should head back." Raas' words made them look at him confused, but they too didn´t want to risk it. A monster could never be too careful out there.

"Haaaa~, well that was a waste of money..." said Beatrice looking at the three empty mana potions, but remembering the huge amount of monster cores a wide greedy smile sprouted on her face, revealing her sharp teeth, "but we are going to be rich! So let´s hurry back and spend some time relaxing! I need a deep scrub to get all the mud off of me."

With those words, they began to march back while talking about what they will do with their share of the money.

Walking back they killed the one or two monsters they encountered and after a tedious walk back, they finally saw the stream of monsters walking in and out of the town.

They were joyous and happy to finally be out of the rain, but just before Raas entered the town he felt his heartbeat spike up, drenching him in a cold sweat. His instincts flared up and he jumped away from the forest with his pupils constricted into daggers. All the other monsters around him stared at him in confusion as they didn´t know what happened. He even got into [Grey out] making everything slow down while depriving his sight of any color. The whole time he only stared at the forest without even blinking. As the colors slowly returned, his bad feeling only intensified.

Sahra seeing him panic placed a hand on Raas´ back but nearly got bitten by him. Trying to calm him down she looked into Raas' scared and alarmed eyes and smiled. Seeing her smile made him come to his senses again, and showed her a brief appreciative mile.

Turning his head around he continued to stare at the endless rainy forest and wondered what the hell was the feeling he got.

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