A glowing blue light combined with green aura enclosed in a transparent container containing runic letters had replaced Hope were she stood, Hope's body was no more, she was scorched in flames and burned to ashes.
After the life energy was extracted from Hope's body Beatrice said flatly while looking at Diego:
"It is complete, we would use this energy for the machine core while you gather all the other light of God energies, I believe that should be enough power source to run the machine and cleanse the atmosphere."
Diego was in awe of what he had just experienced and asked promptly:
"Is that the way life energy is extracted?"
Beatrice smiled softly before explaining:
"During the old days, we could extract the energy of any being even our own using highly advanced skills but now that those skills are banned, sadly our race know to only get energy that is freely given."
"I used the knowledge of the highly advanced skills to create runes which I then carefully wrote on the body of the container, burning the elf was just icing on the cake."
Diego smiled back at her and said:
"We'll rest for one more day and make preparations for the capture of the other light of God while also getting acquainted with you and the changes that happened in Darkovia while we were away."
Beatrice laughed softly and said:
"You are going to get acquainted with me."
"Are you now."
Diego hiccuped before saying:
"Ermm, I mean that if there is any forgotten knowledge about our people you want to teach me I'm all hears."
Diego turned his face to one side while trying to hide his embarrassment, while Beatrice was laughing wildly. The skeletons just stared at them none the wiser.
Beatrice guided Diego and his party to some rooms in the tower for them to rest while she returned to the room where the life energy of Hope was located, there she proceeded to keep the energy inside the container in a spacious shelf but before she could hold it she saw a crack on the glass and a bit of green aura seeping through into the atmosphere.
Beatrice was astonished and said:
"Hmm, I wonder what this means."
***
In a forest, that contained huge trees, shrubs that contained both medicinal and field crops, large clear streams of water and was painted with sunlight under deep blue skies, one might say this scenery was the best and the land was truly blessed but not everyone here might agree with you.
Deep in the forest a figure is constantly running from danger, lurking in the shadows to defeat enemies that could not be escaped from, setting simple traps for large animals or animals that could be eaten, while glancing at a crude wooden map ever so often to make little x marks on it with a sharp wooden spear, the other blunt end of the spear was bound with a sharp rock that was loosely bound with pieces of tinder collected from trees to the stick.
The figure was clad in a torn leather vest coated with patches of dirt and blood, a once beautiful black leather joggers had now become torn and hastily stitched with other parts of animals to cover the holes exposing some frail and important parts of the body, the figure was bare footed, her hair was tied in a neat bundle although covered with pieces of sweat, spider webs, mud and grime, and lastly the figure was holding a short wooden spear coated in a fading red colour at the handle and a deep red color at the tip.
This figure was Love, she had traversed the jungle for about half a week since her buddy Willow left her, without realizing it she had gotten used to Willow being there for her, cooking with her, hunting with her and keeping her sane by asking her questions about her life back on earth.
Now Love had to be there for herself, cook for herself, keep herself sane and the hardest of all hunting for herself. Love found it extremely difficult to hunt in the wild, there were so many things that could kill you if you weren't alert, she had to constantly watch out for danger and during many instances where she stumbled into danger or danger found her she had to run away from it while still watching out for more danger.
Another reason why this was hard for her was also because there were some places that could be considered safe to stay and had enough human resources to start a comfortable life but she had to constantly give that up pressing on to the elf village to tell them the news she had heard while also constantly marking places on her wooden map, she had made the mistake to safely follow the map without marking where she was, what type of danger she had encountered, how near she was to where she was going and also where resources could be safely gotten from in that area. Making that mistake had not only made her almost killed but she had strayed off the path of the map for a while causing her to explore some dreadful places. Through her travels Love also started developing something, that was her hunting sense, Willow often talked about the sense of an hunter but Love mostly took it as some of the bullshit of the world she found herself in.
But in the past few days, sometimes through sheer luck, sometimes through costly mistakes, sometimes through trial and error she was gradually honing her hunting sense.
She had to rely on her gut most of the time, sometimes scout the area, prepare simple traps that could aid her in escaping beasts that ranged from a ginormous size to some that were small but had the strength in numbers. In short, traversing the forest was not an easy ordeal for her, she sometimes missed Willow and oftened wondered about her in the few short times she could rest.
Lastly, she often had to rely on the training she got in medical school and apply first aid on the wounds she got along the way and trust me those wounds weren't pretty, sometimes she cried until she slept off, sometimes a piece of her skin would be poisoned and without the presence of antidote or any anaesthetic drug to make her shrug off the pain she would burn pieces of sticks she saw around the forest and put the burning flames into her poisoned hands, legs and sometimes chest.
After going through this painful process one too many times, she started looking out for herbal plants not just food crops. She had also greatly changed her diet to one that allowed her to stay sharp during the hunt and chose foods that reduced the risk of stomach upset, God knew that was the cause of most of her mistakes during the early days.
Returning back to the present, Love gasped softly while spotting the next monster she had to face, an enormous serpent with blue-black scales, terrible fangs that were so long they shot out of its mouth making its face look like that of a sabertooth, some weirdly looking eyes, that had small transparent bubbles covering the emerald pupil, a smooth head, something that looked like sharp rib bones that shot out from the middle of the stomach, and the end of the tail was coiled
She had seen so many horrors in the forest that so far this one was considered normal to her, but this enemy was also unique because...