Bonus Chapter(250 stones!) Enjoy!!
...
...
As the sun came overhead again, Nathan's wandering led him closer and closer to the mountain he had decided to head towards. Halfway down the path, his senses began to pick up again. He slowed his pace and it was not long before he came across a large lake buried between the trees.
The still surface of the lake glistened beautifully in the trees. The bank held all kinds of flowers that smelled fragrant and soothed the soul. The forest itself seemed to be glowing in this strange space. And it was here that Nathan saw them.
Dozens of monkey like creatures. They sat by the lake, jumping over each other, cackling like monkeys possessed and one of them threw the other into the water with a thunderous cry. Their brown fur and long tails were clearly visible and their limbs were a little too long, even by monkey standards. Nathan didn't feel any real danger from them, like when he was faced with the Draugr or the Cynocephali. They were simply... there. Like they were part of the natural scenery.
Looking at them, Nathan felt a certain sense of calm in his soul and his eyelids started to get heavy.
Just then, his eyes shot up wide and he hurriedly shook his head; a dumbfounded expression blossoming across his features.
He looked back towards the monkey like monsters and gave up on attacking them. He wasn't risking fighting them, even if they didn't seem all that harmful.
The Kobaloi, although numerous, were skiddish and didn't pose any real danger even if they numbered in the dozens. These monkeys? They were as large as him and their muscles certainly didn't lie.
Nathan wasn't about to pick a fight with magical primates for no reason. If there was even the slightest possibility of it, he wanted to avoid getting squashed like a banana. Besides, they seemed chill enough. The Kobaloi's laughter just grated his nerves. These guys seemed cool in comparison.
But just as he turned to leave, he sensed some movement in the branches above him.
His eyes widened in alarm as his head shot back and he looked up.
There, resting on the branches were some of the monkeys. They had shit-eating grins on their faces and one of them was eating an apple.
"Um... hi?" He said, meaning to continue to explain he was only passing through.
The monkeys snickered and one of them spoke to the others in Ancient Greek.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
Nathan suddenly felt the ground below him shoot backwards, and he lurched forward, falling face first into the ground!
Thud!
Spitting out some grass, he looked back, finding that the ground he had been standing on was a net of vines that the monkeys had pulled away at that moment. Above him, the monsters laughed with reckless abandon, finding him amusing.
He reassessed his judgement of their laughter not being annoying. Nathan gritted his teeth and found a surge of irritation shoot through him.
He launched to his feet and prepared his bow. But when he tried to grab the arrows, he grabbed nothing but air.
"Huh?" He looked back, finding no arrows in the quiver. "Oh."
His eyes trailed upwards, finding his possessions in the hands of those monkeys. "Goddamn thieves!" He yelled and de-summoned his bow. The quiver would take time to return the arrows, but until then, his range had effectively been nullified.
Nathan grabbed at the air, preparing to summon his sword, but before he could, he felt something shooting towards his leg!
Whoosh!
He jumped back, narrowing avoiding whatever it was that tried to attack him. At least that was what he had thought.
As if alive, the object twisted in mid air and wrapped around his ankle!
Waah!
He screamed as he was hoisted up into the air, head down and legs up. He looked down... or up, whatever way his feet were. It was a vine. A vine had attacked him out of nowhere.
kekekekeekekekekeke!
Muahahahaha!
The wild and rambunctious laughter of the monkeys was never ending.
They hopped off the branches one by one and stood below him, laughing all the while. They called out to all their buddies sitting by the lake and they came sauntering over, as if excited at the prospect of finally finding a victim. He noticed a few dryads among them and some more were coming out of the trees from the sides; they were most probably the reason the vine had bound him in the first place.
Ugh, I can't sense tree nymphs when they're trees. That was a limitation of Hunter's Instincts. He could not sense dryads and other nature spirits if they weren't manifested. And because of that, he had been caught like this.
They didn't do much apart from crowding around him. All of them collectively pointed and laughed.
Nathan felt himself burning with embarrassment. He decided that if he was ever going to tell anyone about his travels, he would be leaving this part out. His hand twitched, etching to summon his sword and break out.
Wait, he told himself. His arrows returned every 2 minutes. Right when the time would be up, he would free himself, cut down 2 or 3 closest to him and shoot down the rest. That was the plan.
The monkeys all cheered out in ancient greek and one of them moved over from the back. In his hand was a brown object that looked suspiciously like poop.
"Don't you dare." Nathan warned, his hand already preparing to summon the sword, arrows or not.
But his warning seemed to have the opposite effect as they grew even more excited. The ones that held his arrows held them into the air with both hands, making faces at him. With a wide grin, the monkey in the front drew back his hand; watching as the cheers and hoots grew louder around him.
Definitely not a story to be told. Gritting his teeth, he counted down the final 15 seconds.
But the time would be up before that. The monkey threw the poop at him, and that was the end of Nathan's patience. In a single motion, he lurched his body upwards towards his feet, his hand summoning the sword and cutting down the rope!
He felt something soft and wet impact his back and splash onto his nape but didn't let that distract him.
With the vine cut, he felt gravity take it's hold and send him earthbound. His body twisted in the air, his face turning towards the monkey who had thrown the poop.
He had beef with that monkey now.
He had beef with all of them.
With a war cry, he brought his sword down upon that monkey, the edge barely reaching him. The blade cut into it's skin from the upper right torso to the lower left, and the monkey disappeared in a shower of dust.
[You have gained 0.3 Customization Points!]
A Kerkopes or Cercopes. Originally two troublemaker brother two encountered Herakles on his adventures. Later, they got cursed by Zeus and turned into a monkeys called - Cercopes(tail-men or monkey-men). The fact that there were so many of them here meant that the ones in the myth eventually had many many descendants.
Well, bad for them.
As the leading tail-man disappeared into dust, the others instantly descended into a panic mode. Nathan didn't miss the opportunity. He moved like the wind, stepping forward to stab one right in the chest. Then, he moved to the right, catching two others in a single slash.
Before the monkeys could begin to run away, several more of them had been slain!
Nathan completed the countdown and felt his quiver grow heavier. His eyes didn't lose their sharpness and he chased after another group of them, bringing his sword down at them. A single cut was deadly. Celestial Bronze was the Antithesis of all monsters, and magical creatures.
In front of such a metal that offered a natural rejection of the monster kind and the shock they got from seeing so many of them die in a short period, the Cercopes ran away without looking back.
Nathan was like a god of death among them, each slice of his blade took them down one by one. When they were scattered, he returned the sword to his inventory and took out the bow.
Whistle! Whistle! Whistle! Whistle! Whistle!
The whistle of the arrows sounded like the ringing of the grim reaper to the Cercopes. Nathan's marksmanship had gotten far better than before, as did his firing rate.
Most arrows hit their marks. The rare few that didn't would return to his quiver like the rest.
As the area cleared and his senses finally began to wane, Nathan shook his head and focused on the poop the Cercopes had thrown at him.
"Ugh... Those monkeys..." And it was on this day that the spawns of the original Cercopes made a sworn enemy.
Nathan walked over to the lake to wash himself. After half an hour, he was completely clean and ready with a fresh new set of clothes. Nathan smelled himself again and found that the smell of poop had vanished.
He was thankful he had brought some soap with him.
"Alright, let's check the spoils." The Cercopes themselves hadn't dropped anything, but what had given him were points.
He checked his status and his eyes nearly fell out.
[Customization Points: 9.3]
"...Wow." That was all he could say. Each monkey had given him 0.3 points and he had 0.9 points from before.
That meant he had killed a total of 28 of them here. Right when he did the calculation, he felt that it was a shame he had failed to kill more.
"I guess that was worth it." Nathan smiled, feeling in high spirits again. Holding his head high and vowing never to speak of this to anyone, he moved ahead towards the mountain!
...
...
After Nathan left, the Dryads came out of their trees and looked over in his direction. Their expressions were frightened and a bit confused.
"Why was a human even here in the first place?" One of them asked.
"No idea." Another dryad shook her head. "That was really scary."
"Think we should be worried?" The youngest of them asked with teary eyes. Her voice was trembling a bit and it was quite clear she wasn't taking this very well.
Seeing her state, another dryad hugged her close and stroked her head.
"There there, Liz, it's alright. I told you those darned monkeys were too mischievous for their own good!"
"Don't go defending her now! You know she aided them by catching that man's ankle! He was about to walk away just fine! He even said hi!"
"Are you actually going to blame her for that!? She's just a kid! Let her figure herself out!"
"Everyone!" A sudden shout quieted them down. They looked towards a beautiful and well developed tree nymph. She was the oldest of them. "The man is gone. End of story. This was just an accident that passed without hurting anyone."
"But wouldn't that man be dangerous? He was carrying Celestial Bronze, but he didn't seem to understand ancient Greek. Could he be a Norse Demigod? Or a demigod of another native culture?"
"I think we should call him." One of them suggested.
"We will not be doing anything." The eldest tree nymph sharpened her voice before the discussion could derail into something dangerous. "Move along now. He's gone."
With sour faces, the rest of the dryads went about their business as usual.
...
...
A/N: He's lucky I didn't have every monkey throw shit at him.
Bonus chapter every 250 PS!