Eik's fingers bored into Olivia's shoulder, keeping her from moving too suddenly. "Do not move… a muscle," he whispered, his eyes never leaving the dirt-covered face that sat utterly unmoving in the bushes.

Ever so slowly, he raised both hands in a gesture of peace, but even at that the person flinched visibly.

The translation ability was still active on both Eik and Olivia, but he wasn't about to take any chances with this first contact so he switched to Danish. And even if her proficiency was a bit rusty, it should still be translated for Olivia by the ability.

"Hey… Hey, listen. Uuh, don't be afraid, okay? My name's Eik. Nice to meet you. What's your name?" he asked in Danish.

The person didn't say anything in response, simply continuing to stare blankly. What the hell was going on? With all that dirt, it was difficult to tell how old the person was. If nothing else, Eik was fairly certain that it was a woman, but even that was up for debate. Judging only by the shape of her face, he would put her at no older than twenty.

If so, then she would probably barely remember a time before the monsters and the despair. What a way to grow up.

"Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you understand me when I speak Danish?" Surely she would, right? "My name is Eik. Eik Magnasen. I grew up here. Or I grew up north of here, just on the outskirts of the inner city, I should say. Are you also from around here?"

No answer.

"Are you alone? Do you have family or friends you live with? Can I talk to them? We have a place that's safe from monster," he said, neglecting to mention that it wasn't safe from everything, as proven by recent events. Was he talking too much? "If you don't mind, we would love to bring you and anyone you live here with back with us to the settlement. Our population numbers in the thousands and we all support each other every day."

At that, the girl's eyes seemed to widen, brows climbing up the forehead. So at least she was understanding his words. Was this sounding too much like a deceitful sales pitch?

He took a single, slow step toward the girl, keeping his hands raised to show that neither weapon nor ability was prepared in palms. "Hey, if you're curious, you're more than welcome to ask us any questions you might hav—"

With a rustle of leaves, she was off, fleeing into a copse of trees, quickly disappearing among the trunks. Eik stared after her with open mouth.

Olivia glanced up at him. "Wow, Eiky. That went great."

"Shut up," he grumbled. "Should we go after her?"

She peered after the girl. "She's incredibly slow," she noted absentmindedly.

"I realize that. Probably E-rank at best."

"Which means she's definitely not out here on her own. She'd be dead if so. We should be prepared to meet someone who could be as strong as us."

Eik slung the rucksack of holding over his shoulder and followed Olivia after the girl. To them, she might as well have been crawling through quick sand on all fours for all the speed she managed.

Her maneuvers spoke of a certain familiarity with the terrain so it seemed like she wasn't just passing through. Pulling on her stamina, she maintain a solid sprint for almost five minutes before she began to slow.

Initially, Eik thought she might simply have grown tired of running, but the way she was throwing frantic glances over her shoulder said otherwise. She stopped by a pile of boulders with a last look back the way she had come. Having kept their distance, she didn't see them among the leaves.

With a feat of strength that flushed her face beet red with exertion, she rolled away one of the smaller boulders and disappeared into the earth. A few seconds later, the boulder tumbled back into place.

"They're living underground," Eik muttered, mostly to himself.

"It makes sense, really," Olivia said with a nod. "There are arguably way fewer monsters down there. And the difficulty of getting inside naturally protects them from the weaker and more numerous monster. I would bet that this is how most survivors are living. A settlement as big as Forest is probably not as common as this. It seems we were the lucky ones in this particular apocalypse."

"Damn. Living underground for ten years… That's absolutely brutal."

"Yeah…"

"Should we go in after her?" Eik asked, making to get up to approach the pile of rocks, but Olivia grabbed him by the wrist and held him back.

"And not only shock them out of their skin, but probably also ruin our chances of ever having a peaceful conversation without weapons brandished and voices raised? I think that might not be such a good idea."

"Uh huh, good point," Eik agreed after a second of consideration. "If she's living in there with someone of higher rank, they will probably be coming out to check us out once she tells them about it. They can't just leave a threat like us wandering around out here without knowing anything about us."

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"Alright, let's hope so."

They settled in to watch the pile, but didn't have to wait long. Within less than a minutes, the rounded boulder acting as the door to the underground hideout gave a hollow, grating sound as it was rolled away from the opening — this time much more smoothly and easily than when the young girl had done it.

At first nobody came out but a few seconds later, a shimmering barrier of glowing energy shielded a bearded man as he peeked his head out into the open air. He appeared to be the very embodiment of the word bushy, his beard, hair, and even eye brows so wild and chaotic that any beautician who laid eyes on it would either faint or cheer in the face of the greatest challenge of their life.

The barrier split into two equal disks as he emerged from the hole proper, each of the magical manifestations attached to each of his hands respectively. His head was on a swivel as he scanned the surrounding, checking every corner and shadow where someone might lay in ambush.

"Near the bridge, you said?" he called quietly into the hole in Danish. They couldn't hear the whispered answer from where they sat but the man rolled the boulder back in place with a foot and started walking in that direction, slowly with his shields still raised. A third one sprung into existence, running tightly down his back to protect even his blind spots.

They let him walk a few paces away from the entrance to the underground space before stepping out into the open to approach him. Eik led the way in Danish, both of them with their hands raised in the air.

"We come in peace. I swear we mean you no harm," he called.

With a gasp of shock, the bearded man whirled around, an orb of energy flung quickly from his hand directly at Eik. Olivia batted it away with a fist trailed by flames. Three more followed but she knocked away another two while Eik deflected the last one with a shell of solid toxin.

He let the ability drop and raised his hands again, expression as neutral as he could make it. "Again, we come in peace. I swear we mean you no harm," he called once more. "The young woman saw us. We saw her. She ran and we followed. You must know we could have caught up with her and taken her at any moment we please. We could have killed her. But we didn't. We just want to talk."

The man narrowed his eyes as he glared through bushy hair. His face was no cleaner than the young woman's, who, judging by the clear age gap, could well be his daughter. "Who are you?"

"My name is Eik Magnasen. This is my sister Olivia Valkiri."

"Where did you come from?"

"Ah, well… That's—" Eik stumbled, realizing that he wasn't quite sure how to answer that particular question, although it should have been simple. If the positions had been switched, and someone had shown up at the gates to Forest claiming to be from the other side of the globe and to have traveled instantaneously through some kind of magical, cosmic worm hole portal, Eik's first assumption would definitely have been a cunning attempt at treachery.

After all, how the hell could something so ridiculous be a real thing?

"I'm originally from just north of here actually," he finally said, the man's gaze having grown even more suspicious during the couple of seconds Eik thought of the right thing to say. "I grew up in a house right on the corner of—"

"I don't care about any of that!" the man hissed, his barriers hissing in response. "Tell me where you came from and why you are here!"

"Okay, okay, sure. We were hoping to make allies — friends. We have a huge settlement with thousands of people. We have water, food, and shelter. We have protection from monsters. We have many high-rankers. We have medicine. We hav—"

"I get it, I get it! Just… stop talking," the man interrupted and massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers, the barrier fading from his hand automatically. "Why in the world should I trust anything you say? How did you even know to find us here?"

"Well, truth be told we weren't actually looking for you at all. We were hoping to cross the bridge to Sweden, but it's…"

"Become one with the ocean. Yes, I noticed," he said dryly, a deep frown on his brow. "It is impossible to cross."

"Were you hoping to do the same?"

"Naturally," the man answered, looking at Eik as if he was stupid. He never lowered the barriers. "ever since the changes a few months ago, the plants and trees have grown weak."

"Really?" Eik asked, looking around. "It looks pretty damn lush to me though."

"Not if you knew what it was like before. Which you don't seem to. Where did you say you came from again?"

"We're from a large settlement."

"You said that already," the man said, growing visibly irritated. "I meant where is this settlement. If you didn't know about how the land is changing, that settlement of yours can't be too close."

Eik glanced to Olivia. "It's, uuh, it's in one of the large nature reserves in North America."

The man simply stared, his barriers flickering slightly in his palms. "Come again." Another layer of glowing energy seemed to settle in around the man's ability.

"I know it sounds unbelievable."

"No, not unbelievable," he said, his beard quivering as he huffed a humorless laugh. "it sounds insane. Give me one good reason not to kill you right now."

The translation ability was definitely still in effect because at that last part, Olivia's stance grew considerably more cautious. They didn't actually know how many others were hiding down there, nor how strong they were. Eik held up a hand in front of her, just to be safe. The bearded man's wariness also intensified.

"Well, first of all, I believe we've acted peacefully and cordially. But more importantly, we're all just people, aren't we? People trying to survive." It was a strange argument to make after having killed so many in the Championships, not to mention the humans he'd killed back in Forest, like Frank of the Black Fang and his cronies. But out here he had no enemies. There was no real animosity between them and these people living underground. It was simple caution.

"I don't know how it is back at this settlement you claim to live in, but out here people fuck each other over all the time. You two wouldn't be the first I put in the ground for having tried to double-cross me. I suggest you turn around and go back to where you came from before this gets ugly." His voice was firm and hard but the sweat on his forehead betrayed his nerves. He had probably realized that this wasn't a fight he could win.

"Listen, please!" Eik tried again. These probably weren't the people they had been looking for, but he found himself wanting to reach out a hand to them nonetheless. After all the killing, he wanted to do some saving for a change. "If you would just let us—"

A silhouette emerged silently from the ground, the boulder pushed forcefully aside. A young man who looked only slightly older than the girl shot straight for them, a spectral blade of deep green energy raised in his hand. There was murder in his eyes.

"No," howled the bearded man, panic and fear now crystal clear in his voice. He made to intercept the newcomer, but he had noticed it too late. "Kasper, don't!"

On instinct, Profound Toxin sprung forth from Eik's hands as he prepared to meet the attacker.

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