Chapter 1: Part 1 - Unexpected Reunions

Having Sharpie returned to her was a blessing. A mixed blessing, but a blessing none-the-less. If it had been just Sharpie to come through the gate, or whatever one might call it, she would be thrilled and without a care. Instead, her top student, Ahn, has ended up here in the Second Realm along with her.

Heading back to where she initially arrived in this Realm, Ki Jung takes a bee-line, not worrying about anything in her path. She will fight it if she must, or outrun it. A faint thread of fear has entered her heart, though she hides it from Phong as they chat as she dashes back to meet her. The fear comes from the increased danger presented by the various beasts here. For herself, they are worthy opponents. Ahn, on the other hand, while she has considerable strength back in the First Realm, she is quite vulnerable here.

Sharpie is flying above, watching over Ahn and showing her which direction Master will arrive from. Soon, the connection Sharpie shares with Ki Jung increases enough for Ki Jung to use his eyes to see any hidden dangers. With no immediate risks to Ahn, the heaviness in her heart lifts.

The reunion is bitter-sweet. Ki Jung doesn’t have the heart to tell her outright that there is no way back for them. At least not in this vicinity. Therefore, she avoids talking about it, for now. Instead, her focus becomes finding a settlement where they can find safety.

With Sharpie taking wing, the two wait for him to get a better look to see if there are any rivers or large bodies of water to be seen. There is one river, but it is a long way to the west, which is in the opposite direction of Ki Jung’s original direction of travel. Having no better options for finding some kind of settlement, the three of them head west with Sharpie acting as a scout.

With Sharpie watching from above to help them see and avoid unwanted encounters, Ki Jung feels that their path should be mostly unobstructed. However, Sharpie is barely strong enough to be in the Second Realm. This, combined with his lack of familiarity with the creatures and their means of ambush, trapping, and camouflage, means that he is going to miss something sooner or later.

It’s not an hour later when disaster strikes. A massive creature that at first seems to be part of a huge dead tree, springs at the two young women expecting an easy meal. The fact that its movement was noticed by Sharpie, and thus Ki Jung, gives them just enough of a warning to avoid instant death when Ki Jung throws Ahn to the side even as her blade slashes in a parry to block the initial strike.

Ahn, while slightly surprised, does not freeze in fear. She has been in many life and death situations to hone her battle skills. Thus, it comes as no surprise to Ki Jung when the young woman springs up, weapon in hand, and joins the battle.

The monster they are faced with looks a lot like a praying mantis, but on an enormous scale. Unlike its miniature Earth-based cousin, this has chromatophores that allow it to change its coloring and blend in with just about any environment. It is an apex ambush predator. The next most noticeable difference is the eyes, they aren’t nearly as reliant on movement to see its prey. Instead of two large eyes at the outer upper portions of its triangular head, there are four. Two are baseball-sized down; the other two are golfball-size. The smaller two are located at the centermost position of the face. The larger two are at the top corners of the head. The largest ones give it a wider, though less detailed view of its surroundings. The two golfball-sized eyes are high definition optics that can see from the upper Infrared portion of the spectrum all the way into the low end of ultraviolet.

Battling this beast is difficult. It is nearly impossible to sneak up on it and attack it from the rear. Unless one has such good fortune that they can slip into the narrow 90° blind spot, they will be seen. If one does manage this feat, then they have a chance to attack without detection.

Ki Jung, with her Nagamaki in hand, is moving fluidly with the mantis as if they were dance partners as she learns how it moves and strikes. She even allows a few of its attempted blows to come within mere centimeters of her. This, of course, leads to her getting a few cuts and bruises as this beast is frighteningly fast.

Throughout this lightly forested area, the sounds of battle can be heard as sword and limb clash repeatedly. This dissonance is added to by the additional sounds of grunts, and loud scratching sounds arise from Ahn’s attempts to pierce its carapace from the side of the beast. Sadly, it seems that it has an armor class that is too much for her skill and weapon to penetrate. Only through a bit of fortune would her spear be able to find a weak spot and cause harm to their foe. Even so, she fights. Standing idly by is not an option. All other sounds within a kilometer of their fierce battle have gone quiet.

After about five minutes, Ki Jung believes she has its measure. With a burst of speed and power, she stops following the mantis’ lead and takes charge of the situation even as she bleeds from cuts to her head, arms, and legs. With incredible skill and timing, she parries strike after strike, flawlessly, while at the same time twisting the defensive move into a deadly assault. Clangs ring out from the impacts that leave the ears ringing. A significant amount of damage appears on the monster’s left forelimb, nearly severing it.

This act of nearly severing the creature’s limb causes it to twist in such a way, at just the right time, as to seemingly open a chink between the mesothorax and the metathorax and drive it onto Ahn’s spear. It may not seem like much, but the combination of speed, the direction of thrust, and lay of the chitinous armor actually drive the spearhead right into the right half of the metathoracic nerve bundle. This causes to legs to instantly become paralyzed.

When the titan sized mantis falls to one side, its speed and strength greatly reduced, Ki Jung can remove its head and end the fight without further trouble.

The two young women are awarded for their efforts. Phong Ahn gets the following notification:

~~~~~~ Congratulations! ~~~~~~

You have survived your first encounter in the Second Realm.

You have assisted in the kill of a class Baleful Titan Mantis.

You have been awarded four Omni Points.

You will need to kill at least 10 more Baleful Titan Mantis to advance in rank.

~~~~~~ Congratulations! ~~~~~~

The four new Omni Points give Ahn six in all. She will need to use them to provide her with the needed power to survive in this Realm. At the same moment, Ki Jung receives a similar one, but her reward for killing it is plus one to constitution and Agility.

Ki Jung is about to put the corpse of the mantis into her pack when Ahn tells her that she requires assistance to remove her spear from it. The spear is firmly stuck and wedged deep in the body, preventing her from removing it on her own. With Ki Jung’s assistance, they manage to free the spear, but it has been damaged. The spearhead is fine, but its shaft will need to be replaced soon. Fortunately, Ahn has a spare.

Once the body of the beast is put away, they are back off and running with Sharpie, now even more aware of the hidden dangers. Surely he will not miss another mantis, now that he has seen one.

Sadly, this is the Second Realm, and they are far from being masters here. More than that, Phong Ahn’s presence actually draws the attention of beasts within ten kilometers of them since she’s such an easy bit of prey to dine on. Thankfully, with so many monsters seeking her flesh, when they converge on the group, a battle-royal breaks out between all these massive creatures. The weakest of them leave even more swiftly than they arrived, not wanting to suffer and perish against the might of the others.

Due to the heads-up that Sharpie was able to give them, they found a place to conceal themselves. It isn’t enough to protect them from direct attacks, but it does provide cover from the brawl. Following Ki Jung’s lead, they dash out when one of the creatures fall, near death, and end its life with thrusts of their spears. In this way, they rack up assisted kills for twenty-three beasts, when the last creature falls. This is because all the beasts died primarily from their life-force being destroyed in battle by the other beasts. Still, the increases in their statistics are very welcome.

Ahn’s notifications show that she has leveled and received the following increases to her stats: Plus 3 perception, plus 2 strength, plus 4 agility, plus 2 constitution, plus 2 intelligence, plus 1 wisdom, plus 2 Omni points. Spear skill plus 3, while Ki Jung’s notifications show her increases as follows: Plus 3 strength, plus 4 agility, plus 3 constitution, plus 1 intelligence, plus 2 wisdom, plus 3 perception, plus 3 Omni points, and plus 2 to Sword.

In a few minutes, they have cleaned up the battleground and take a moment to go over their new stat numbers and to assign their Omni Points. In Ki Jung’s case, she uses her OP to bring her base perception score up to 15 and her base Agility to 30. Ahn chooses to place all of her OP into Constitution, which brings it up to 20.

As soon as they finish with their stats and making the adjustments, they drink some water and head west once again. If they keep experiencing battles such as the one they just went through, they are bound to raise up like rockets to new heights. Ahn has already advanced to Apprentice 2 in spears.

At this point, they have traveled about one-third of the way to the river from their starting point, which means the chances of more attacks, singular and massive battles are more likely than not. This is proven to be true just as they are ten kilometers from the river when they are faced with two opposing groups of predators that have caught their scent. This is nothing like the last battle-royal. These two groups are pack hunters, and they have long since become proficient hunting together in each group.

Each group consists of six or seven beasts. The crimson crested group sends four of its kind to attack the other group of beasts and three to go for Ki Jung and Ahn. The green and gold scaled group’s leader sends three in each direction. This puts six in total against Ki Jung and Ahn, but they are also up against one another, too. The other seven engage in a deadly battle for dominance.

Caught out in the open, the two young women fight back to back. There is nothing around them to use as shelter or give them some amount of cover to reduce the area from which the monsters can attack them. If not for the increases they gained previously, they would be far worse off. Instead, they are able to keep the two groups at bay, though a lot of that is due to them also fighting one another. Roars filled with killing intent shatter the air as the battle rages. Whenever possible, Ahn and Ki Jung strike with the intention of landing blows to vital parts of the beasts. In one case, Ahn manages to drive her spear into a major artery under one beast’s forelimb, which leads to the creature dying from blood loss relatively quickly.