He stepped back about five steps and moved to the side. The Skarnids also did the same.
Seven steps.
Ten steps.
Now he was having a tough time hearing their movements, but he strained his ears to the max, picking up the sound of their usual clatter as they moved along with him.
'They can still see me even now...' He dropped his hands, pondering, before deciding to change his strategy, walking quite a distance away to slowly come in instead.
The further he walked, the fainter their screeching became, until he couldn't hear a single sound anymore.
"This should be far enough," Zephyr concluded after walking about thirty steps away.
He crouched down into a creeping position, moving sideways for a bit before starting to crawl forward carefully, pausing at regular intervals to listen. It seemed they couldn't see him at this distance. Either that or he just couldn't hear them and was totally wrong.
He hoped it was the former.
He continued to inch forward slowly, gauging the distance as he got closer.
...skreee!
Zephyr paused, picking up faint traces of the signature Skarnid screech, though from the direction of the sound, they didn't seem to be ahead of him.
'So, nothing within sixteen steps...'
Fifteen...
Fourteen...
It wasn't until he crawled past what would have been the fourteenth step that he heard a sharp cry that seemed to be drawing nearer. The single cry soon became a cacophony of shrill sounds in the distance ahead of him.
Zephyr stood up, squinting his eyes into the darkness where he knew his pursuers lay restless.
"So, about fourteen steps... plus the width of the ravine, which is like twenty-four steps, give or take..." he muttered in calculation.
"Thirty-eight steps. They can see at least thirty-eight steps ahead." He filed that information away silently. It was important.
He walked the way back to the edge of the ravine, trying to decide his next move. He couldn't just jump back there again, that was gonna be suicide because the Skarnids even seemed to have increased in numbers. Their constant screeching had pulled in others within the vicinity. Now, there were about twelve silhouettes Zephyr could make out on the other side.
"That's sixty points dangling right in front of my face." This was the kind of situation that made him regret not having the capabilities to be a ranged mage. The ants would have been easy picking from where he was. It was a prime spot to farm.
"Fuck." Zephyr cursed, shaking his head.
"At least I got something out of this," he consoled himself, turning to head further into the forest behind him. He couldn't waste his time lamenting about chances he couldn't take advantage of. Rather he'd prefer getting his hands dirty doing what he could.
Not long after he left, someone else walked right out of the shrubbery and straight to the edge of the ravine. The person's gaze seemed to cut through the darkness, gazing defiantly at the remaining few Skarnids on the other side in challenge. They went crazy at the provoking display of the human on the other side, screeching to call the others around the area.
"Hmph!"
"Dumb creatures," the figure spoke, a faint light glowing in their eyes as they started up a spell.
"I'm going to milk this," the person grinned.
.
.
Zephyr's walk through the forest was more careful this time. He paused to listen for sounds at regular intervals, and it had helped him so far, scoring him four kills—a single Skarnid which he jumped and finished off cleanly before escaping from the vicinity, and three other lesser beasts. So eleven points in total, plus his earlier five points, he was now on sixteen points.
"I should at least be in the top twenty right now," he muttered.
The fact that there was no way to know exactly where you ranked was excruciating to him, but he guessed it was all part of the goal for this test.
Boom!!
A loud explosion stopped Zephyr in his tracks. It was very close by. In fact, it was so close that he could feel the vibrations ripple through the ground under his feet.
"...there!!"
"... don't let it go!!"
"... cover for me!!"
He heard shouts from the distance. It seemed there were people engaged in battle not too far away.
"Now that, I have to go check out." Zephyr grinned in excitement. From the sounds of the fight, it seemed like it would be people from a higher class— at least four nodes— that were engaged in battle.
Zephyr crouched low and snuck up to where the sounds were coming from.
"Zeke?!" Zephyr whispered in exclamation. 'What's he doing on a team?' Zephyr thought in confusion.
His team was engaged in a battle with four wild Skarnids. They were taking turns to charge up spells, careful not to deal a killing blow. Just targeting their legs to immobilize them, then before they start their annoying screech, another person— usually Zeke— hits their vocal cords very precisely before they are able to harden their carapace around it.
'They're not killing them immediately?' Zephyr pondered.
'Splitting kills?'
Fizzz
Whoosh
Spells kept slinging about in the air consistently.
"Nah... They have to be at least eight-node awakened for them to be slinging spells after each other that rapidly," Zephyr muttered in envy.
The ease with which they could fight was on a different scale compared to bottom feeders like himself.
And this was just from a week of training. Though they were all casting the same fire arrow spell, they had nailed the consistency, not even giving the snarling and shrieking Skarnids in the middle of the burning clearing any space to breathe. They constantly changed positions to accommodate any change the Skarnids made.
Zephyr watched with rapt attention from his prone position in the shrubs.
On one part, he was finally learning how eight-node awakeneds fought, and on the other, he was filing away patterns, planning how he could counterattack if he was ever caught in the same situation.
Zeke fired another precise fire arrow spell down the throat of another Skarnid about to do a death cry, making the beast splutter and stagger before collapsing to the ground in a silent struggle.
The beast staggered all the way to where Zephyr hid before it collapsed, blocking his view of the fight, and at the same time blocking their view from anything he could do.
Zephyr paused for a second, thanking the rift gods for his newfound good luck, and with a shit-eating grin on his face, he slid his axe up to his front and slowly sliced the Skarnid's stomach open.
After a while, it stopped moving, dead.
Zephyr pulled out his weapon and slowly crawled backwards into the shrubs behind before crouching into a squat and running to another position, hoping to do the same again.