A Transcended Wrath was one Tier above Enlightened, and one Scale above a Ravenger. Unfortunately, Zero did not know if the Nascent Drake's they killed were Fledglings or Ravengers because he did not have the Nexus say the scale.
Zero told the Nexus to report Scale, but he did not know if it would work for now.
More importantly, they had to wake up Alice and travel to the next island. A quick glance at his map confirmed that during his unconscious period, he was moved towards the ledge up north.
So they woke up Alice, after some effort, and began going north. Unfortunately, they left their meat, and only had two apples from Alice's Remembrance. They used Valiant Blade to split it evenly, then headed on their way, with the corpse of the Harvest Gnat.
The walk was fairly quiet, with the only talk being practical. Alice shared information about her Remembrance, which was a smoldering hot meteor hammer, and Zero shared that he could now breathe fire. It was when they were almost at the ledge when they heard a roar from behind them.
There was a wordless agreement to walk faster.
The ledge was surprisingly large to the point where there was no probable way of falling off.
'Unless of course that dragon attacks us… Why'd I think that!'
Fortunately, the 3 of them were able to successfully cross. Since the ledge contained no trees, a small dot in the sky was able to be seen moving around, but now it was unlikely to ever find them.
Though, since there was no dominant predator on this next island, there was bound to be more Chaos Beasts they would run into.
But for some reason, they didn't.
"Hey guys, do you hear something?" Zero asked.
"No, do you?"
"I do not hear anything either, Zero."
"Uh… never mind."
They continued their way westward until they eventually found something. Rooted into the ground was a Harvest Gnat, or maybe Harvest Critter? It was hard to tell since its size was somewhere between the two.
The Chaos Beast was rather docile, or perhaps unaware. Since it was not moving, they almost missed it entirely.
Cautiously, Zero approached the beast with Valiant Blade and struck at a weak point.
{Enlightened Fledgling, Harvest Critter slain}
{Received Enlightened Spirit Crystal}
"It's dead…"
Alice shrugged, "Odd, but good for us. Use the Spirit Crystal and finish healing."
"Actually, I got a Remebrance."
"Really?"
"No."
"Idiot… We should bring the thing's body with us in case there are no more water sources."
Caelum offered to carry it, and passed the Harvest Gnat he was carrying off to Alice.
'Perks of being injured, no extra luggage.'
Zero broke the crystal and felt his body heal a little bit. Aside from being quite sore, he was in fairly good condition now. He was also overleved to 6/4, so hopefully he would reach up to 5 today.
Now that Zero had experienced it, overleveling felt like a temporary boost of strength and Spirit. It was unfortunate when it evened out, but before that, he felt the slightest bit stronger.
Since this island was so empty, they had covered more distance than on any other day before. The only thing that slowed them down was the somewhat taller grass. Still, they did not cross the entirety of the island by evening, so it was time to find shelter for the night.
They wandered and wandered, but it seemed like the island was too flat and contained no cave-like structures. It was getting quite late, so they might have to camp out in the…
"Stop."
Zero held out his hand and hurriedly summoned Valiant Blade. The slightly curved blade, with a radiating red gem, manifested into his hand within seconds. A moment later, a dragon helmet encircled his head.
"Is something…"
"Summon your weapons. Something's watching us. In fact, it's been hunting us for a while."
Earlier, Zero did not hear something—he heard nothing. The lack of sound from even the blue birds who populated this land and sky pointed to one thing.
'I'm so stupid.'
An apex predator… and it was looking directly at him.
But Zero did not see anything in front, behind, to the sides, or even above him. The ground below him felt oddly normal, too. Yet danger bells were going off in his head.
Even with the Works of a Hero attribute taming his fear, cold sweat escaped from his body, and his breath became hitched. Panicking, he began scanning all directions for the source of danger, and his eyes eventually rested on a single direction.
It was a small detail, but a rather important one—symmetry. Behind a few trees and thick branches between them, a myriad of those branches were exactly alike on opposite edges. Flicking into the fractured plane, Zero saw why.
Assembled in a roughly humanoid shape were fractures, reaching up to 5 meters high. The creature must have been black, but it was hard to tell the color due to being illuminated only by the dying twilight.
It had a humanoid body, with long protrusions jutting out from it, like painful stakes. Instead of a human head, it had a rotting skull with two antlers on each side.
"St… op… ssstop… stop."
Zero's voice rang out. But it was not Zero speaking.
The voice was far too high up and came from some distance.
"Zero, you already told us to stop," Alice said, looking at him.
"Indeed, Zero, is danger encroaching?"
"Yes right there, in the trees!" Zero pointed to where the towering monster stood.
"Hellooo, Zero respond? Why aren't you saying anything?"
Then Alice spoke again in a voice that made Zero's hair stand on end.
"Say, say… Ze-ro respond, respond"
For a moment, when she spoke, a grotesque grin covered her face, and her eyes were no longer green, but glowed a spiritly white.
"What're you… NO, NO! LISTEN…"
Caelum ignored him and spoke with the same creepy smile on his face, along with glowing white eyes.
"Ze-ro, dannnger encroachingg?"
But Zero was not looking at Caelum when he spoke, his gaze already returned to the humanoid deer. So he responded.
"Yes, don't listen to… NO!"
The humanoid deer's eyes lit the same glowling white. Then all hell broke loose.