Suddenly the trees shook as the massive soundwave carried the wind towards Kaelrin.
'What the heck was that?" she exclaimed. She knew that whatever it was, it was dangerous, so she started to leave, but then remembered that she had eleven points in strength, so even though she was barely here for a day, she thought she should be okay.
But as she started towards the noise, her doubts started to creep in a little bit. 'Can I survive? I've only been here for so long.'
She pushed those thoughts aside and willed herself to keep moving forward. Whatever was ahead, she should be able to handle it.
Plus, she was curious to see what her new skill was like in action.
She slowly crept over towards the sound. There were many smaller sounds, it seemed as though a scuffle was going on, and that got Kaelrin excited. For some reason, she was itching to fight.
As she got closer to the sounds, she could see marks on the trees ahead of her. Some were deep, like harsh sword marks, some were shallow and clumped together, like claws, and there were a couple arrows as well.
It looked like a party was fighting a beast of some sort, and Kaelrin noticed some figures up ahead.
She shivered and recalled her embarrassments in the white room, thinking that the other people might recognize her and laugh at her, but she worried needlessly. She should've been much more worried about what transpired before her.
When Kaelrin got close enough to make out details of the figures, she froze. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed on the floor.
There was blood everywhere. The entire area was painted in red splotches all along the trunks and grass, and she saw three people laying on the floor, unmoving.
There was one person still engaging with the beast, though his arm was torn off. The beast itself though had formed no injuries. In fact, it didn't even look tired in the slightest.
The man swung his sword without purpose, merely using the movement to stall the beast for a chance to escape. However, the beast was too powerful and caught the man's sword in its jaws.
The man, surprised, accidentally let go of his sword, which was crushed into tiny pieces by the jaws of the beast. He turned and ran away quickly, with the beast following after him.
Kaelrin watched as the beast pounced on the man, biting off his good shoulder in the process. It then went to eat, which made Kaelrin almost throw up looking at it. She quickly turned away and steeled her stomach.
The beast, after finishing its meal, turned and saw Kaelrin on the floor. Deciding that it was still hungry, it lunged at Kaelrin and she screamed in fear.
Somehow, she was able to get up. She turned and ran furiously, trying her best to outrun the beast, but she knew deep down that she wouldn't make it. The other guy wasn't fast enough, and she had this stupid sword with her weighing her down as well. She decided to drop the sword and try to run faster, but it didn't do much difference.
The beast pounced on Kaelrin and gave a deep gash on her back, and she fell to the ground, screaming in pain. She felt her body getting colder and she knew this was the end.
BOOM
Just as the beast was about to land its final strike, a massive, tree-like entity appeared through the forest and stopped right in front of the two.
The beast quivered and immediately ran away while whimpering, making sure that it would live again, while the tree beast did nothing and simply kept walking its path.
Kaelrin groaned, feeling all her strength leave her. 'At least I survived,' she thought. 'Though not for long. I have to get out of here. I don't care where I end up, but staying means certain death.'
She started crawling anywhere, wanting desperately to find any way to be able to heal herself. She saw a notification appear in front of her as she crawled.
[You are heavily injured. You will lose 0.05 strength every 10 seconds]
Kaelrin saw the notification and her heart sunk. Not only is she about to die but she won't have any strength left at all even if she miraculously healed.
She crawled for what felt like forever until she finally felt some sort of relief wash over her. She relaxed, as the sensation of her back slowly stop hurting made her feel bliss.
Once Kaelrin felt she wasn't hurt anywhere any longer, she got herself up and looked around.
There was a small green box surrounding her, about the size of 3 Kaelrin's in diameter, the only way she knew how to describe it. The green outline sparkled, and little flecks of light lifted from the outline before running out of light and disappearing.
She looked above and saw that there were words above the box, almost at the top of the trees.
[Safe Zone]
[Time left: 12 minutes]
Kaelrin felt she was lucky to find this area. She hadn't seen one during the hours that she was wandering, so it most likely wasn't a very common occurrence. She sighed and relaxed against a tree as the time slowly went to zero.
While she was resting, she looked at her window to see the scar on her back and noticed that her back had healed entirely. Even her clothing wasn't ripped.
She checked her stats and her heart dropped once more. She couldn't believe how low her strength stat was.
[Name: Kaelrin Dawnblade]
[Strength: 9.9]
[Agility: 10]
[Intelligence: 9]
[Stamina: 10.1]
[More]
[Weapons]
[Armor]
All of the work she had put in to get her strength up had disappeared in a flash. She pouted at the fact that she probably wouldn't be able to lift her sword at all anymore.
The sword that she had left when she ran away from that beast. The sword that she would have to wander this dangerous forest to obtain again.
She thought that from now on, she was never going to overestimate herself. Hazel was right, this world is too strong for her. She had seen proof just earlier.
She sighed deeply and seeing that her time in the safe zone was almost up, she went to look for her sword again.