Nora smiled in satisfaction, she had only leveled up twice but she ended up getting 3 new skills, two passive skills, the first skill helped while she was flying and the second one helped her quite a bit when she was in a group. It was unfortunate that she was alone at the moment otherwise this passive would be a huge boon for her. The final skill, the active one, was the one that interested her the most though.
She now had a stealth skill that would definitely help her to survive, the only problem was that the MP drain was quite high for her right now. She only had 50 MP and at 3 MP a minute she could only stay invisible for about 16 minutes, which wasn't bad, but it made her feel a little uneasy.
Nora was just about to go find another creature, when all of a sudden she heard some strange noises coming from nearby. Turning around she noticed a deer, not unlike the deer that she saw in the corrupted part of the forest, but this one was different.
She couldn't sense any sort of danger or magic power coming from this deer. Over these past few days she had gotten pretty good at gauging the power level of different creatures without looking at their levels, however she couldn't quite determine what the level of this deer was.
The deer seemed to be walking weirdly too. It hadn't quite noticed her yet, but it had the sort of stiffness that wasn't quite right. Its legs seemed to crack slightly when it moved, and it almost looked like it was trying to walk on four legs when it wasn't meant to be walking on four legs.
The more Nora studied this creature the more unsettled she became. This deer wasn't right, and she didn't quite know what was wrong with it. She shifted uncomfortably in her perch, making the faintest of noises as she did.
All of a sudden the deer seemed to stop, a jarring stop, then it slowly moved its neck to look at her. As it turned all of the discs in its neck let out a loud cracking sound that made Nora flinch. The eyes of this deer met hers and all of a sudden Nora was paralyzed by fear. There was no real reason for her to be scared of this thing. It hadn't done anything.
It didn't present itself like it was very powerful or anything, but she couldn't seem to bring herself to move. None of her body was responding to her. She couldn't get away and all of a sudden out of the corner of her eye her system explodes with warnings.
Moving her eyes she just sees warning, after warning, after warning telling her to get away.
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Ding!
Warning
Host is in danger.
Ding!
Warning
Host is in extreme peril,
Ding!
Warning
Leave the area immediately
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Nora felt some non-existent sweat slide down her forehead as she sat paralyzed.
After what felt like an eternity, but was actually only about 30 seconds or so, the deer lost interest in Nora and turned to walk away.
Nora, breathing heavily from the fear and not quite yet comprehending what's going on, decided that she needed to leave immediately.
She turned around and flew away as quickly as she could, and as she was leaving that part of the forest, the system popped up with a new notification.
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Ding!
System Quest:
Description: get closer to the city Sablecross and steal something from the marketplace
Rewards: new skill: Shiny distraction, DEX, LUK and VIT increased(based off value of item), EXP+100
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In the distance, Nora could see a tracker suddenly appear. It was really quite far away, she reasoned that it was probably several hundred miles in her old world and it would definitely take her a couple days to reach it.
Nora decided she still had some food left over from fighting small creatures and harvesting them these past couple of days, and after her experience with that de-like creature, she couldn't, or rather, she didn't want to stay in that part of the forest anymore.
So, without hesitation, she turned and left, flying towards the marker at as fast as the speed as she could, occasionally taking some breaks, sleeping in whatever tree she could and surviving off of her rations and anything edible she could find.
After about 3 and a half days of travel on and off, Nora had gotten close enough to the city that she could faintly see the outlines of some buildings, but as she was approaching it, a slight commotion in the forest clearing nearby caught her attention.
'!!'
Looking over she notices that there seemed to be a gathering of people and, despite knowing better, her curiosity took hold of her and she decided to go and take a look.
Getting closer, she noticed that all of the humans seemed to be transporting a captured fox.
It was strapped to a sort of cage, made of metal and wood, each of the legs and the muzzle of the fox were held to the cage by a faintly glowing rope. The humans appeared to be rolling the contraption on the ground with surprising efficiency.
The fox in particular wasn't like any of the foxes that she had seen in her past life, more like a magical fox that she would come to expect from this world, it still looked mostly normal, but it had patterns of light fur all over it.
The thing that caught Nora's attention the most was that this fox seemed familiar. Getting a bit closer she got the foxes attention, it looked up and made eye contact with her and for a moment Nora's mind went blank.
The eyes of that fox looked so similar, looked like someone she would have known in her past life, a friend or family perhaps. She felt a connection to this fox instantly, and she couldn't look away.
The system broke her silence as I gave her another warning.
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Warning!
Host needs to get to the city.
Do not engage
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Heeding the system's warning Nora broke eye contact with some difficulty and tried to get away.
She flew upwards some more and started flying in the direction of the city again, but she couldn't help but keep thinking about that fox.
After a few minutes of flying the nagging feeling hadn't gone away, and Nora couldn't take it anymore so she decided to turn around and head back to that clearing.
By now, the group of humans had transported the fox slightly closer to the city, but Nora was able to track them easily through to their voices.
Looking at the fox again, Nora could still see something familiar yet distinctly different.
It almost reminded her of Ethan. Just the thought of that made Nora sad, remembering what she had lost. 'No it can't be, there's something familiar but it's not Ethan familiar.' Shaking away the sad thoughts she realized that she needed to act now.
This fox was in danger, and the humans that were carrying it didn't seem to have good intentions.
She quickly used all of her intelligence in order to come up with a solution. It felt like she was literally using all her brain cells looking around.
Even with all the intelligence she had, Nora couldn't see anything particularly useful. Nothing except for a couple of sticks off to her left, and an oddly shaped rock or two on her right.
She decided that she needed to be incredibly smart. 'One might say I need to be very big brain right now.' Nora internally smirked, laughing at her excellent use of the "kids' lingo".
'I have an idea!'
With a plan in place, Nora jumped into action, quickly flying off into the distance.
Once she had found a good covered spot she began her plan.
First she mustered up her best imitation voice, and to the best of her abilities tried to imitate the sound of a rather large creature.
During her thinking session she had remembered that crows, like most birds, have the ability to copy sounds that they had heard. Nora still had very limited control over her vocal chords, but after a few moments she was able to produce a low roar.
"rooooarrr"
The humans looked around, confused, unsure as to where the sound came from, but Nora had already moved onto another spot. Settling into some of the bushes nearby, she repeated the same tactic again, this time she managed to produce a much louder and more intimidating roar.
"ROOARR"
The humans quickly raised their weapons. There were about five of them, one with a sword, another had a bow, the third had a shield, the fourth, an ax, and the final human seemed to be carrying a sort of book. To Nora, this was the most perfectly generic set up of Adventures.
Even though these were humans, the species that she used to be, Nora didn't feel bad for them. Partially because they didn't have good intentions, and partially because Nora still saw all of this as a really realistic video game.
As the group turned towards the sound of where the roar came from, Nora quickly decided to fly up past the trees and into the sky. Appearing like a bird escaping a larger predator.
Once she was sure that she was out of their sight range. She flew around and chose a different spot, repeating the same tactic over again, drawing the adventures further and further into the woods.
She slowly and strategically moved them deep into the woods, then, when she was sure that they were completely and thoroughly lost, she headed back to the fox.