I dropped my spells and ran. I looked behind me and my Sense Monsters spell showed three distinct red hazes weaving between the trees as they charged me.
I held out a hand behind me. "[Static Illusion]." The spell tried to grab an image to manifest. I wasn't expecting it, so my brain focused on the tree I saw in front of me.
Behind me, a low resolution tree appeared.
The monsters gained on me. I could see them now as I looked over my shoulder, they were smaller, monkey sized creatures running on all fours with black growths on their shoulders. They ignored the illusory tree.
This time I knew what to expect from the spell. "[Static Illusion]." As the spell finished, I thought of Da... I couldn't remember his name anymore. He was my best friend, yet now I could only think of him as Sé.
I gritted my teeth as I pushed the grief aside as the image apparated behind me. I dashed behind a tree, leaving the image and my shame behind. This bought me a few seconds as the monkey monsters screeched at the stationary rogue as they circled him, then leapt. One dashed through the illusion, and hit its head on a tree.
I gained some distance, but my stamina was in the red. With the hungry debuff, I burned through my stamina faster than I could regenerate it.
I burst through the tree line trying to escape, and dashed along the riverbank. I nearly tripped over myself as I saw a figure running towards me. I skidded to a stop along the packed clay beach to dash back into the tree line. Then my brain caught up with me, and I recognized Eimear running towards me, she'd lost her shield, but she had her sword drawn.
"Eimear!" I shouted and waved as I stumbled towards her.
"Finally!" She shouted back as she jogged towards me.
The small monkey-like monsters screeched as they burst from the tree line.
"Shit!" Her eyes went wide and she started sprinting.
I fumbled as my stamina hit zero.
But I still had some mana. I conjured an axe, and turned to face them as I back peddled towards Eimear.
"[Flame Orbs]," she shouted from behind me.
The monkeys charged, and I tried to bat one with the axe. I didn't have the stamina to run, so I definitely didn't have enough stamina to swing an axe. My vision doubled as fear rocked through me from the Non-Combatant trait.
The monkey monster easily knocked my axe aside as it leapt at me, landing on my chest. The weight knocked me back, and I fell into the hard clay, knocking the breath from my lungs.
A bolt of fire rushed over head, missing everyone.
The monkey tried to beat its hands down onto my head, but I pulled the axe up in time to block it. It knocked it aside and raked my face with its small claws.
Eimear cast another bolt of fire, this time hitting the monkey on me as the others gathered to my right. One clawed at my leg and the other at my arm. I tried to kick the former away, but it was barely knocked back. Then it charged past my foot and clawed at my robes. Burning claws dug into my thighs. I screamed as I shoved the burning monkey on top of me to the side, and tried to swing at the one next to me.
It blocked my blow easily. Then Eimear arrived. "[Arcane Strike]." Her blade blazed as it sliced through one of the three blue fire orbs orbiting around her. She cut the one on my arms in half as the blue orbs followed the blade to slam into the one on my leg.
It rolled backwards with the blow, then lunged and grabbed my boot. The monkey threw it towards the river and bit my leg. I screamed and tried to kick it with the other leg, but it bit harder. Blood flowed freely from my legs in a comic explosion of sanguine color. I would've died of laughter were I not in so much agony.
Eimear twisted and kicked the one from my legs. It screeched, rolled along the ground to put out the fires, then charged.
"[Flame orbs]." Three more blue orbs came from her sword as she swung at the one on my feet. The blade cut through it as the orbs crashed into its head, she twisted on her foot to give a roundhouse kick to the face of the charred monkey monster coming back for seconds.
From there, she quickly finished them off. The evening sun behind her blinded me as her blue ponytail waved through the wind and she sliced her blade down by her side to fling the blood away.
My hero.
"Ow." She collapsed to her knees as the dashing image fell to reality. Her breastplate had been torn off, her gambeson had gouges along the right side, and there were claw marks all along the right side of her leg.
I winced as I felt the pain in my body. But I didn't want to show it. All that training from living as a man kicked into high gear, I'd been taught to be the protector, not the damsel. I should feel embarrassed about that fact, but I could only feel relief from being saved from certain death.
I stumbled to my feet, grabbed my boot back from the corpse of the monkey and put it back on before making my way over to her.
"Are you alright?" I offered her my hand.
"I should be asking you that." She grinned as she took it, and let me help her to her feet.
I winced again as taking her weight into my arm pulled at the torn limb. I suppressed another scream.
"T-thank you." I lowered my head to the side. "For saving me."
"That's what I'm here for." She beamed with pride. "I'm just glad I found you." She looked sullenly at the ground. "After the attack from the... " She shook her head. "Have you found anyone else?"
"No. You're the first person." I coughed, and my chest ached.
"You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," I said on instinct before I stopped to look at my status.
[ HP 2/10.
Bleeding: Lose one health every ten seconds. 0:30s Remaining.]
"Oh no." I tore off a part of my left pant leg to make a makeshift bandage.
"What's wrong?" Eimear's eyes went wide.
"I'm bleeding out." I gritted my teeth as I pushed the dirty and muddy cloth onto the gapping wound on my chest.
Her hand struck out and I flinched backwards, instinctively batting it away as though she was just another monster here to put me in my place.
"Damnit woman, let me help you," she cursed.
I froze as my hp dropped to one.
She grabbed my arm with one hand, then placed the other on the wound on my chest, just over my heart... on my breast. "[Clean Wound]."
I blushed, and awaited the release of embarrassment from unconsciousness, but it never came.
"You're gonna be okay." Eimear looked me in the eyes, as she shifted her awkwardly placed hand to my shoulder. "But we need to rest." She looked at the monkeys and her stomach grumbled. She grinned as she looked at me. "Think we can eat 'em?"
"Not raw."
"Then it's a good thing I have fire magic." She finally took a blessed step back from me, giving me room to collapse to my knees.
"Won't that attract monsters?" I looked nervously towards the woods.
"Maybe. But if it does, I'll fight 'em off." She looked down at me, grinned, and flexed an arm.
"Alright. Can you get a fire going?" I looked down at the monster. "And I guess I'll see if I can't butcher this thing."
She walked off to gather wood from the forest as I conjured an axe to butcher one of the monkeys. I had no idea what I was doing, and the axe was definitely not the right tool for the job. I accidently slashed an organ, and suddenly the monkey was covered in foul smelling bile. I looked guilty as it splashed across my face.
Eimear burst out laughing as she brought back her second armful of sticks. She dropped the load as she bent over cackling. That sent a few birds flying away from us in fright.
"Want me to try?" She asked once she calmed down.
"I've got it..." I said with feigned confidence. "Give me a moment..."
If I was going to do this, I needed to be smart about it. I swapped my Conjure Fire spell for Conjure Knife. Then I realized I had some other spells that might help me butcher our dinner.
"[Identify Monster]."
[ Chim-fang-zee: Tier Two Wind Aligned Monster.
Canopy dwelling monster of the Taur-na-Tastaith forest. While not much a threat, these ambush omnivores will attack anything they think will make for an easy meal. ]
These were only tier two? They nearly tore me to shreds! No wonder that tier five boss made short work of us. And what idiot was naming these things? This must really be a game world, because only a game developer could come up with names so silly and use them with a straight face. If this was reality, then surely someone would have thought up a better, more interesting sounding name. Boar-hemoth? Now Chim-fang-zee?
At least Oddri's sounded like a normal name.
Unfortunately, my spell didn't give me any more information. I probably needed some metamagic or a higher tier.
I dropped the Identify. "[Repository]." I could at least learn as I butchered the thing. I took my time, and while my NA didn't give me step by step instructions, I could at least remember what was the muscle and what was the organs. I carved off the muscles from its legs.
As much as I wanted to just toss the meat in the fire, I didn't want to eat ash-crusted monster. So I swapped out my Conjured Knife to my Conjured Axe, placed the chunks of meat on the axe-head and set it in the fire.