"My back is starting to hurt," Alicia said, sweat soaking her hair.

  "Almost there, I can see the mine," I looked at her and Alicia raised her head and looked at me without the energy to hide her frown. I told that I will climb with them, but I didn't tell them where. Climbing on Nazir's shoulders was also a struggle for me, (Not really)

  After climbing a hill for about an hour, we came to the mine.

  Normally, as far as I knew, the ores were usually in the interior of the mines, but I could recognize the siyah ores even from the entrance. Small light runestones placed on the walls of the mine provided a nice reflection.

  We were about to continue towards the mine when Ivo took a step forward, held out his hand, looked at Nazir and asked, "Where are the guards?"

  I narrowed my eyes slightly and looked carefully at the mine. Really... Shouldn't there be at least a few guards at the mine? This place was too quiet.

  Nazir tapped me twice on the leg, pulled me off his back and took the rectangular runestone from his belt, which had been on my eye for a while but I couldn't figure out what it was, and smashed it in his hand. And as I took two steps back in astonishment, a great sword appeared in his hand, gray in color, with fine lines of engraving on it, like a zweihander.

  This was not the great sword Nazir usually carried. The old one was a much simpler design, a beautiful claymore-style sword made of quality steel, but nothing compared to the sword he has now.

  Nazir looked towards Alicia and she nodded. She examined the earth and then approached the mine, clicked her finger and a woman's voice was heard inside the mine, "Is anyone there?"

  I think Alicia cast an illusion spell, the voice was too real. We hid behind the trees and waited for someone to come but instead of someone, something... came out of the mine.

  After the creature on 4 legs, pale gray in color, but without fur, with blue eyes and claws the size of my two hands came out, I was looking at it curiously and Nazir covered my mouth with his hand and raised his index finger.

  I frowned in surprise, we waited in silence until the creature entered the mine again, and then Nazir looked at the team and said, "We're going back to camp." The others nodded and we started to walk back. I looked at Nazir, "Are they that dangerous?" I asked and Nazir sort of answered my question by saying, "We don't talk unless we have to and we walk away slowly."

  There were so many things I wanted to ask… Why were 9 people afraid of one beast? Did they live in packs? Why was it so important to be quiet? Does the creature hear very well? Etc, etc... And how long would it take to slowly and quietly return the way we traveled in an hour with all our energy?

  As the questions in my head continued, Nazir grabbed me by the shoulder and whispered, "My Lord, be careful with your mana, if you feel any pain in your arms or in your chest, do not try to cast a spell. Also, if we are attacked, do not leave my side, and if I am attacked, do not leave the Wyll’s side."

  "Can't you kill that creature?" I finally couldn't resist and whispered my question and Nazir nodded, "Five or six, yes, but if there are more than six, and Blightheards usually live in packs, I will definitely lose.

  They are fast and clever, and when they realize they are losing, they will retreat and look for an opportunity.

  They can think of basic sneaky tactics like waiting for us to tire."

  “That sounds scary.”

  "How did they manage to reach the mines undetected?" Lisa asked and Euric added, "I wonder too, there are several roads that connect to the mine, even if it's new, someone coming here should have at least noticed the problem."

  "I noticed some dungeons..." Alicia joined the conversation and continued when everyone looked at her, "But since we're not involved, I didn't feel the need to report it, the most likely possibility is that they found a way out of those dungeons to the mine."

  "That's possible," Nazir nodded, "And we need to check them."

  Nazir turned to look at me and after a short silence said, "We should at least mark the entrances so that people don't die for nothing."

  "I can go-" Alicia was saying this when Wyll cut her off, "No, we're not splitting up."

  "This is not our responsibility." As soon as Elsie said that, everyone turned to her. "Let's leave the signs on the roads. I think it is absurd to even approach the caves, let alone enter them."

  It sounded a bit harsh, but in fact Elsie was right, at least in my opinion. Yes, if we didn't check the caves, maybe we would have left them to die if there were people inside, maybe we couldn’t learn if the creatures had found a tunnel or if they had dug a tunnel, or if they had reached other places such as mines or wells near the city or near the main road, but it was not our responsibility to try to find out.

  But as much as my word was superior to theirs, it was also true that I was the most clueless person in this party about the nature of creatures. I didn't want to make a mistake with a decision I thought was logical.

  Wyll turned toward me and bent down, saying, "Getting Lord Altevia to the city is our priority." He picked up a large stone from the ground and put it in front of Nazir and Nazir sliced it in two with a straight swipe of his sword. Wyll held out his hand to me and asked, "May I take your dagger, my lord?" And when I took it out and handed it to him, he carved the words 'Blightheard Ahead, Stay Away' into the stone and dropped it in the middle of the road.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "We'll make a few more of these and put them in the middle of the road, we don't care about the rest," he said, and after everyone looked at each other, then at me and nodded, we moved on.

  The trip was quieter than I expected, but there was a nervous side to this silence. After about 2 hours we reached the camp but... Of course there was going to be a problem, could I have a quiet, carefree activity?

  The camp was in shambles, pots, chests, tents, everything was scattered and shattered. Wyll put his hand to his forehead and I said, "At least the carriage is intact," and he turned to me and held his laughter.

  Alicia rolled her eyes and looked at the almost completely eaten horses for a while, surveyed the camp, then said, "I think they were looking for food, and they seem to have found it..." and threw the small crate she had picked up onto the ground. She sighed too.

  "What do we do now?" She asked, and as Wyll said, "Let's have a look around and then-" his eyes widened and he grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me towards Nazir and grabbed the monster by the neck, whose silent roar I could suddenly hear, and started to choke him. He took a step back and wrapped both arms around the creature's neck, and while I was in the shock of the moment, a sharp icicle from the ground pierced under the creature's chin and came out over its head, and the creature stopped moving.

  From that moment on, my body began to tremble and my heart began to pound. After the ice shard disappeared, the creature's blood soaked the earth. Even though Nazir grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me close gave me a sense of security, I can't lie, I was extremely scared.

  "To the main road, now!" As soon as Euric said that, we all ran to follow him and Alicia. As we were moving through the trees, we heard a few more roars close to us, but I couldn't tell where they were. No matter how much I looked around in fear, I couldn't see anything. Which made me even more uncomfortable.

  As soon as we started to approach the road, I felt a sense of confidence, but then I realized that three blightheards were running towards us. All three of them were approaching from our left, one of them occasionally getting up on two legs and using the support of the trees to increase his speed. The other two kept running around the trees. And despite these three creatures, only Wyll and Lisa were looking to our left. Nazir, Alicia, Ivo and Euric occasionally checked to our right and behind us, but in general they never looked to the left.

  And just when I thought we were getting close to the road, we saw 4 blightheards in the direction we were running and Alicia said, "They're trying to scare us, we’ll attack!" and the team nodded and the creatures realized that we were running at them and started running towards us.

  "My lord, don't stop, we'll keep running!"

  As Nazir said these words, he thrust his sword into the chest of one of the creatures that jumped at us and caught it in the air like a shishkebab, and swung his sword to the right and threw it away.

  Seeing this, the blightheards started to increase their speed and Ivo killed two of the other 3 blightheards by trapping them in something like a stone box and filling it with flames, while Euric first stunned one with a small knife and then sliced it in half with a large sword resembling a claymore, and we continued running at full speed.

  And as we were running, I realized something. I was getting tired. These little legs were already not very strong, and on top of that, I was living a very sedentary life, even though I was a child.

  Fortunately, the creatures must have realized that they can't beat us, so they started to retreat. The blightheards who had just come from our left have retreated back into the woods and out of sight. But actually, I wasn't sure if it was really a good or a bad thing.

  "Are you all right, my lord?"

  I nodded breathlessly and when I saw that we were on the main road, I stopped, put my hands on my knees and started to catch my breath. My heart was beating faster and faster.

  "We shouldn't have let the three of them go," Elsie said, breathing slowly.

  "If we started chasing them, they would start running away, there's nothing we can do," Alicia replied and touched her shoulder. Elsie sighed and smiled looking at her, and noticing that Euric had a cut on his arm, she reached out her hand towards him. After a flash of dark blue color, the cut on Euric's arm disappeared.

  It was the first time in this world I had seen a healing spell other than my own. I looked curiously at Euric's arm and then at Elsie. "Are you hurt, my lord?" Elsie asked as I looked at her and I shook my head.

  After the team took a breath, Alicia scratched her forehead, "On second thought, Elsie was right, we should at least have tried to chase them." She continued to speak as everyone looked at her in amazement.

  "We need to shorten the road, it's too dangerous now."

  "What do you mean?" Lisa asked and Alicia pointed in the direction we had come.

  "Let's create a path down the cliff, it'll save us at least 3 hours and might get rid of the blightheards altogether."

  "It's too dangerous, why take such a risk?” Wyll entered the conversation in a harsh tone, but I don't think he meant to start an argument.

  "We just fought a scouting pack of about 10 creatures, do you really want to know how many creatures are in the main pack?"

  After Alicia's words, there was silence. "That’s a horde, not a pack..." The words slipped out of Wyll's mouth.

  "I'll build a stairway, Ivo will keep it going when I'm low on mana, and if we both fall short, Lisa will finish last," Nazir said all of a sudden and everyone looked at him and there was silence again for a very short time. Everyone looked at each other with a bitter smile, then we started to walk back the way we had come.

  As we started to walk again after running back and forth, I took the purple potion from my belt to help me in case of danger. This was a paralyzing poison far more powerful than anything I had ever made before. If the blightheards' resilience system is similar to ours, they would be paralyzed for 7 hours 16 minutes 23 seconds if they were affected by this poison.

  Don't ask me how I know that.

  I took my dagger out of its scabbard, poured some of the poison from the flask into the scabbard and put the dagger back in and placed it on my belt.

  As we continued to walk at a fast pace, we heard countless roars through the trees and we started running again. I was getting more and more tired, but I was a person who had won a life-changing race twice, I could keep running.

  With the tension building, we picked up the pace and continued to follow Alicia and finally we managed to get to the edge of the cliff.

  "Too high!" Ivo's voice trembled and I saw Nazir frown and look down.

  "We have to try," Nazir said, and he was forming a stone step from the edge of the cliff when five creatures charged on us at the same time. I realized that we were surrounded by at least 30 creatures as Lisa was blasting them away with the spikes of ice.

  "Don't waste your mana!" said Wyll and Lisa looked at him in shock but said nothing.

  "This will not work, let's run down a bit and force them to retreat. Then we can safely go down."

  After Alicia's words, we started running and as we continued to move, Alicia kept the endless number of creatures that jumped at us away with walls of fire she created. Nazir and Euric slaughtered those who crossed the wall with their greatswords.

  Everything wasn't going well, but it was going somehow, but at the end, as the bodies of the creatures continued to pile up behind us, I couldn't breathe with an icy burning feeling in my throat. I reluctantly slowed down, or rather my legs stopped listening me, and in that split second a creature jumped on me.

  And we started to fall off the cliff.