The wave of anger flowed through her body. She couldn’t focus on what to even say, so many things rushed through her head. Her sleep inertia was gone in an instant. No tiredness, heaviness, or foggy thoughts left, just pure rage.

  Liz was not thinking when she lifted her bag, and she was not thinking when she threw it at him, unconscious. Some sort of uncontrollable overreaction, you often feel towards our relatives.

  “What on earth are you thinking?” She shouted.

  Despite lying down really close to the heavy bag, he had never been hit by it. When the bag was about to strike him, his hand suddenly extended and caught it mid-air.

  “What's happening?” he asked with his voice raspy from the long sleep.

  “How did you do it?” she shook her head in disbelief. “Anyway, why didn’t you watch your shift?”

  “Well, I tried but fell asleep.”

  “You fell asleep, ha.”

  Liz felt as if she were an adult now, not the other way around.

  “How can you be so careless? What if someone attacked us?”

  “No one is going to attack us, and if they do, who cares?”

  “Who cares? Are you that dumb?”

  At this point, Liz didn’t know what she was more mad about, his lack of responsibility or his stupid replies.

  Shortly after, she was over it. Liz got to her feet, stretched after a first relatively good rest, and took a sip out of her flask.

  “I’m hungry, let’s find some food,” he said, yawning.

  After hiring him, her stomach growled. Liz’s cheeks became red, so she looked away. Her glance landed on the beautiful waterfall, rumbling through the peaceful morning. She thought it was time to say goodbye to a rare discovery. She was glad she found it, but wasn’t happy with how she found it.

  They packed all their stuff lying around and headed somewhere deeper into the spooky forest. Despite it being late morning, the tall trees blocked so much light that it seemed as dark as it gets in the evening. Yet the man went through with such confidence as if nothing in the world could scare him. She was jealous of that.

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  The longer they went, the more apparent the difference in temperature had become, but she was fine thanks to TT’s cloak.

  The vast forest provided them with mushrooms, nuts, and berries. They collected everything their hands could lay on.

  Suddenly, the man stopped. He pressed his index finger to where his mouth would be, and shushed Liz. She wondered what it was for, but didn’t dare to ask, just did as she was told. He slowly crunched, then picked up a rock from the ground, and shot it blazingly fast. The rock had cut grass on its way and hit something in the bushes.

  “What did you do?”

  She could hear him smirking.

  “Lunch.”

  When they reached the bushes, there was a breathless rabytet lying. He picked it up and threw it into a separate bag.

  How can someone be so irreplaceable and so reliable at the same time? Liz thought.

  Rabytet was a small creature that people often hunted in the Forbidden Forest. Primarily, it had white fur, featuring olive-green accents. It had floppy ears, a puffy tail, buck teeth, and long, wide feet. They generally inhabit grassy parts of forests, but could also be found on open steppes or mountainous areas.

  The man caught two more rabytets, and Liz collected some more mushrooms before they finally camped. Liz was tasked with skinning and gutting the animal, while her new friend was making a new campfire.

  When the fire was strong enough, it was time for cooking. Liz secured the meat with Y-shaped branches that a man in a hat found. She roasted the meat slowly over hot coals for roughly thirty minutes. It had made the rebytat’s back tender and a caramelized exterior.

  The delicious smell attracted the attention of a new friend. In roughly sixty feet, Liz spotted a colossal creature. The Dire Bear, a massive grizzly, had shaggy brown fur, with a shorter, stubby snout, sharp teeth, and long, menacing claws. Its eyes were glowing red. Liz read they were highly territorial and aggressive, but she never thought she would see one in the flesh.

  The dire bear was staring in their direction, but had yet to move. Liz's hands were limp. She was paralyzed with fear. She wasn’t even this scared when Frey was attacked, when Shin killed the demon who was pretending to be her mother in front of her.

  The bear was about to leap forward when it suddenly stopped. It huffed through its short nose, snapped its teeth, and its ears were flat. The bear retreated, moving backwards, and after a few steps bolted away from them.

  Liz felt a bloodlust sensation from behind. She slowly turned her head to its source, but there was nothing. She searched with her eyes up and down, left and right, but there wasn’t a single trace left. Only the man in the hat, peacefully cutting mushrooms and humming an unfamiliar melody.

  She doubted she even saw a dire bear in the first place.

  It can’t be. It looked so real.

  “Did you see a dire bear a moment ago?”

  “Oh… yeah.” He didn't look scared by it, as if he saw just a bird or something that had no way of harming him, or anyone.

  “Why did it run away?” Liz was puzzled, but relieved she wasn’t going crazy.

  “They do that sometimes.” He said, then continued humming the melody, as if nothing happened.

  I’ve never heard of the dire bear running away. I should tell Zywa when I see her next time.

  Dire bears are the apex predators. Being scared of something just wasn’t in their blood, but seeing it with her own eyes made her question other facts she read in her books. She was imagining facing many other animals she read about: Wyverns, Hippogriffs, Owlbears, Dire Wolves, Arachnes, Hydras, Banshees, and many more.