"Wind Scythe," I hissed, launching a blade of wind at a patch of discoloured mana hiding within a tree. Alas, the casting delay was long enough that my target had enough time to fly upwards, out of my sight, before the scything wind struck. It sliced through a few branches, causing leaves and wood to rain from the canopy, but failed to strike flesh. The upgrade was working against me; if I'd been casting [Wind Blade] instead of [Wind Scythe], I might have been quick enough to catch it. Not that it would have helped much, given the other four feathered hornets. They hid themselves too, completely uncontested.

  Even the thinner parts of my armour provided decent protection—that was kinda the point of armour, after all—but a stinging sensation indicated at least one of the spines must have struck flesh. A stinging that quickly faded to a cold numbness. I hurriedly pulled an antivenom from my storage ring and downed it before the paralysis took effect.

  I was lucky only one spine had injected its payload. A higher dose might have overwhelmed my Constitution too rapidly for me to react. I hadn't picked up a [Cure] skill crystal, on account of skill points not being an unlimited resource and antivenom being far cheaper than healing potions, but perhaps I'd overlooked the advantages of spellcasting versus potion drinking with paralysed limbs.

  Thankfully, one stinger worth of venom didn't instantly shut down my arm, fingers or throat, and I had enough of the little bottles of antivenom not to begrudge needing to drink one. The potion worked quickly, the numbness fading even before I plucked the spine from my back.

  That left me once again with the question of what to do next. My fake-paralysis trick would be far more risky against multiple monsters. I wouldn't be able to take them all out in a single surprise attack.

  Past-me doubtless had some sort of magic that would slaughter them all without requiring accurate targeting, but I still had no idea how he did anything that he did. If he wanted me to make it to the tower alive, maybe the next time we met in the empty dream world, I could convince him to teach me.

  If I just stood here, without toppling over or running away, how would the monsters react? I knew that while they couldn't fire spines in rapid succession, it would be less than a minute before they could take a second shot. Would they descend again as soon as that next shot was prepared? Their ingrained hostility would prevent them giving up, but how long would they wait for their venom to take effect?

  I charged up a [Wind Scythe] and waited, keeping an eye on the tree from which the first round of attacks had come for the slightest hint of monstrous mana.

  Of course, given the way the things could fly, and had no trouble moving up and down between branches, it was equally no problem for them to switch trees. The feathered hornets were ambush predators. Why would they attack from the front?

  [Sixth Sense] blared its warning, but this time, tensed and ready to dodge, I had enough time to avoid the attack entirely. A spine thumped into the ground, sinking deeply into the soil. Given how far it penetrated, I was honestly impressed my armour had blocked most of them.

  "Wind Scythe!" I chanted, swinging around and aiming at the visible monster. Having had it already charged and ready to go, the hornet failed to react in time. It launched itself upward, but not quickly enough, and my magical blade sliced off the lower pair of legs along with a third of its body.

  Again, a small shower of wood and leaves fell from the tree, but this time it was accompanied by a corpse and a splash of yellow blood.

  That was one down, with four more to go. Preferably quickly, too: while [Wind Scythe] was quieter than [Lightning Strike], slicing up trees and the resulting rains of heavy branches wasn't exactly subtle. The soil muted some of the impact, but it was compacted rather than soft, and the falling debris would be audible for a fair distance. If I didn't take care of my attackers quickly and get a move on, there was a danger of being swarmed.

  Thankfully, the other four monsters seemed disinclined to wait, now that it was obvious their first attack had failed. All four dropped at once, one of them right in front of me, letting me blast it with a pre-charged [Wind Scythe] before it even fired its next spine.

  A quick dive forward caused the other three to miss, too, and I was already charging the next spell before I'd returned to my feet.

  This time, the hornets didn't try to hide, presumably because they'd seen their attacks miss and knew there was no point waiting around for the venom to take effect. The three dropped from their trees, wings buzzing as they headed for my head, bodies curved into tight C shapes to ensure they'd impact stinger-first, the stingers visibly growing even as they flew. They may not have been able to fire them in rapid succession, but it was only a matter of seconds before there was enough there to apply manually.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "Wind Scythe!"

  At the more oblique angle, the blade of air continued straight into a tree trunk, undisturbed by twigs and branches or other lesser obstructions. It tore a deep gash into the trunk, but even the C-rank spell failed to fell it.

  "Stab!" I cried, not having time to spellcast again before the final pair of monsters reached me, and hence reverting to daggers. The attack tore into my target, but rather than a small wound, the result was better described as pulverisation. The active Skill may have long since been at its final stage, but the force behind it still scaled with my Strength and, to some extent, the evolution of [Dagger Mastery]. The small monster, with a body-width beneath the feathers that wasn't all that much wider than my blade, had the central section of its thorax reduced to mush.

  That just left the final monster. I swung with my other dagger, but unlike the first, I didn't have the element of surprise, and it easily curved its flight path around my strike. I had more than enough Dexterity to avoid its attack, though, so I ducked under the attempted swing and made another strike with both hands, catching the hornet between both blades as it flew above my head.

  Alas, in a rather serious tactical error, the positioning meant that the yellow blood rained down over me, running down the neck of my armour, seeping between the leather plates, and even dribbling into my boots. Yes, that was rather gross, but worse was that I knew the scent of the blood attracted other monsters. I needed to get it off.

  I hurried away from the scene of the attack, on the basis that the sound of the fight had probably travelled further than the scent, but how was I supposed to remove it? I hadn't crossed a single stream since entering the jungle.

  The soil was damp, so it must have rained here recently, but I didn't have time to wait for the weather. Or could I? I had my warding stone, after all, but that wasn't perfect protection and certainly wouldn't help against monsters that had noticed me before I activated it. Would smelling the blood count as noticing 'me'? I activated it anyway, now that I'd put some distance between myself and the battle site, on the basis that it wasn't going to do any harm.

  With [Mana Mastery], I could see the shell of mana it expelled, ballooning outward, then stopping, turning into a perfectly spherical white-black-yellow shell a few metres distant from me. A shell that didn't move at all as I moved the warding stone around. In fact, moving the stone caused the shell to wobble dangerously, so I put it down carefully on the floor before excessive movement broke the effect. Alas, [Mana Mastery] wasn't sufficient to tell me if it was blocking the scent. Or perhaps it was, and I just didn't have the required knowledge to read the patterns of mana.

  I had a lot of water in storage, but that was supposed to be for drinking. It was in canteens, not buckets. Trying to wash with it would be time-consuming, and given that I'd need to remove my armour to make a good job of it, very unsafe. And, of course, it would waste my supplies.

  Drat. Letting myself get soaked like that had been a really stupid error. Wasn't my Reasoning high enough to prevent me doing things like that? Reasoning wasn't any help when I lacked sufficient information, but I knew full well that things bled when cut and that blood respected gravity.

  It had been an instinctual reaction, hadn't it? It was the difference between fighting relying on [Dagger Grandmastery] and having actual experience. I'd just done what the Skill had told me was the best move to make if I wanted my enemies dead, but the Skill didn't care about what happened after. I'd already considered the difference between Skill and skill, but with [Dagger Grandmastery] being freshly evolved, I hadn't yet got used to it. Given more experience of the non-System kind, I'd bet I wouldn't have made such a stupid mistake.

  [Adept Foraging] pointed out that water must be available in the jungle. The luscious trees could be obtaining water from deep roots, but the uniformly moist soil suggested recent rain, and unless the soil was really absorbent, rain meant water features. If I headed downhill, rather than in the direction of the tower, there was a good chance I could find a fresh water source fairly quickly, and jumping in a brook would get more blood off me than pouring canteens of water over myself. But I had no idea how long it would take me to find a suitable place to wash.

  I could tip a few canteens over myself now, get the worst of it off, empty what blood I could out of my boots, and hope to hit some flowing water later? But even if I did, I still had the choice between cleaning myself now and risking something turning up while I was vulnerable, or waiting for a bit to see if anything turned up despite the warding stone. I really didn't want another batch of feathered hornets to show up while I had my armour off. The monsters might be weak, but if I took a few of their stingers at once, their strength or lack thereof would rapidly become moot.

  Along with [Cure], another skill crystal that would have been damn useful, albeit very situational, would have been a cleaning spell of some sort.

  Oh well. Best to get it over with. I reached up to pull my helmet off.

  Before I could reach it, the trees before me parted, the thick trunks that [Wind Scythe] had done no more than gash bending as the head of a braccus tyrant pushed its way through, eyes fixed on me.

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