Sid POV

  “Did you find it yet?” called Aditi, one arm resting on a trunk with an ‘X’ mark and watching the others with a tight focus that did not quite hide her impatience.

  Sid stood before another trunk with an X scratched into it, then raised his hand to call the others to gather around.

  “Who was marking the trees when we were here yesterday?” asked Sid, rubbing his chin.

  “There was no one person in charge; all of us marked,” Varun said, eyes moving along the undergrowth and up through the branches for anything out of place. “Did you lose your memory or something?”

  “Isn’t this mark a bit too high?” Sid asked, pointing to the X, whose top notch sat well above his natural reach on this side of the trunk.

  Rohan stepped closer to the trunk. The ground sloped sharply on the side where the mark was carved, and he stretched his arms to trace the pattern, barely reaching the top of the X. He turned back to Sid, waiting for a response.

  “People generally do not stand on their toes to mark something,” said Sid, looking between Aditi and Varun to gauge their reactions. “This mark is at the same height as the previous one if you measure from the base of the tree,” he added.

  “What are you trying to say, Sid?” asked Aditi, her breathing quickened, sharp and uneven.

  “I don’t think we made this mark,” Sid said, steady and low.

  “You think some other group crossed the same path and made this mark?” Varun asked, planting the spear butt in the dirt and leaning on it, his eyes never leaving Sid’s face.

  “No. I think something is leading us into a trap, and the feeling is getting worse the farther we follow these signs,” said Sid, meeting Varun’s gaze as he spoke.

  The goblins had definitely been tracking them yesterday. The only reason they had not ambushed them in the night could be that they were not confident in their numbers. Their best option would be to lure Sid’s team into an ambush and take at least one of them by surprise.

  That was what happened last time. They didn’t have time to set up a proper ambush, but still they took out Aditi. Besides, Sid had always felt there was one more goblin involved that did not reveal itself.

  “Sid, hear me out. I would have drawn this mark higher, thinking that a boar or something bigger might scuff it off,” Rohan said, rising onto his toes to trace the X where the bark was pale and damp, his fingers coming away with a fleck of dew.

  Varun let Rohan’s words slide past and turned back to Sid. He asked, “You think other people are trying to trap us?” He stressed the word people, his incredulity clear.

  “Not just people,” said Sid, “it could be monsters as well. Remember the two murders in the camp before we left.”

  “Yeah, I had a feeling it was goblins who attacked us,” said Varun, gazing into the distance before focusing on Sid. “Do you think goblins are smart enough to create plans like this?”

  You have no idea, thought Sid, keeping his face neutral. Wild goblins were trouble for anyone below Adept level. They had a kind of feral ingenuity that bent your own weapons and tactics back on you. That raw inventiveness rarely survived their evolution, which changed how they fought without making them safer to meet.

  “It could be goblins, or it could be something else,” Sid said, giving Varun a small nod that acknowledged the line of thought. “Whatever it was, they chose an ambush and pulled back when they lacked numbers, which suggests intelligence.”

  “You think the correct marker is close and we just have to look harder?” Varun asked, turning slowly to check each trunk as if the answer might reveal itself if he stared long enough.

  “What if we have already been sent the wrong way?” Aditi said, voice tense. “If the diversion had started earlier, we would not have found the real marker in this area.”

  “We widen the search,” Varun said, the spear shifting in his grip while he considered the route. “We work back through the last three markers, and I remember making the one before that.”

  “Sid,” said Rohan, “are you absolutely sure something is going on here? We have already lost daylight due to training. If we spend more time and it turns out to be a dud, we might not make it back before sundown.”

  “Yes, I am getting the sense that we are near danger from my skill,” Sid lied. He was fairly confident they were being tracked and that the goblins would attack, and he wanted to make sure the fight did not happen on ground prepared by them.

  “Alright,” Rohan said, the word slow with reluctance, “we search for half an hour, and if nothing turns up, we head back on the path we know.”

  “Should we even keep on this path?” Sid cut in, lifting a hand toward the nearest mark as if it were a bad instruction written in plain sight. “We have covered most of the distance and should be close to camp. We can loop around and come in from the side.”

  “I do not think we should,” Aditi said, her tone settling into something firm. “If we leave the marked trail, we increase our chances of getting lost.”

  “We are close to the camp. I remember a few landmarks around it, so we should be able to find our way back easily,” said Sid. He felt confident he could navigate to camp, since he had spent years in this dungeon after joining the army.

  “What if we get lost? We are running low on these mushrooms, and we do not have Naga with us to help identify the edible ones,” said Rohan, showing their remaining stack of mushrooms, his voice turning stern.

  “How about this? Let us put both approaches to a vote and go with the majority decision,” said Sid. He did not want to push this hard, but he could not guarantee that everyone would survive an ambush with his current skill set.

  Rohan’s jaw dropped for a second. “Alright, all in favour of ignoring the markers, raise your hand,” he said.

  Sid slowly raised his hand, and Varun followed a moment later.

  Rohan looked at the two of them and sighed. “It is a draw. How about this: we look for original markers? If we find them, we follow that path; otherwise, we stay on this path and move with extra care,” he said, pausing after each sentence to make the instructions clear.

  Varun checked Sid for any pushback and then nodded, accepting the terms without argument.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Sid gave a slow nod, the lines around his mouth tightening in quiet frustration. I pushed too far, he thought. We don’t have the skills to find the original markers, not if a goblin trapper laid them. Looks like we’ll have to take the ambush head-on.

  “Alright, let us backtrack three markers and start from there,” Rohan said, his face loosening a fraction.

  “Everyone, keep your eyes peeled for signs of trouble and sweep from the ground to the canopy,” Rohan said, voice tight. The group moved in a diamond formation, with Sid at the front, Rohan and Aditi in the middle and Varun bringing up the rear.

  “Watch your step; there could be snare lines or stake pits like the one we used on the boar,” said Sid. They didn’t find any of the original ‘X’ marks; the fourth goblin was likely a trapper, which could be why it didn’t show up last time.

  “Is it just me, or is the fog getting thicker?” Varun asked, flicking his eyes from the watch to the path and back again. “Going by the time, we should have two hours of light.”

  “It is thicker,” Aditi said, the words clipped as she measured the distance in front of her and came up short. “I cannot see beyond ten feet.”

  “Aditi, focus. Do not get distracted,” said Sid, turning back and meeting her eyes.

  “Let us go back,” Aditi called, panic shaping the last word as she nudged Rohan, and he caught her wrist for a second to steady her without making a scene.

  “Sid, should we head back?” Rohan asked, trying to keep his tone level.

  “Yeah, let us slowly turn around and walk back the way we came,” said Sid, turning with everyone else, with Varun now leading the group and Sid bringing up the rear.

  The mist thickened until it swallowed the silhouettes in front of him, and Varun vanished from view even though he should have been a short reach ahead. “Where is Varun?” Sid called, the sound falling flat in the damp air as unease crawled up his neck.

  “I cannot see you either,” Varun said, turning his head as if that would clear the haze. “We should get out of here fast.”

  Sid felt the group go rigid at once, shoulders rising and breaths shortening as the shared understanding clicked into place—that they had walked into a trap.

  “Whatever you do, do not run,” said Sid. The trapper had likely set the field, and running would only make their demise faster.

  From the last fight, he remembered the goblin shaman used Mana Shield and Minor Heal. The fog clung like a working skill. Mist Veil matched the effect. If they had Echo Sense, they weren’t seeing them—they were hearing them.

  Varun’s cry rang out, followed by the dull thud of something heavy striking the ground somewhere in the fog.

  Rohan sprinted forward to help him, but a snare yanked him off his feet and dragged him through the leaves, while Aditi screamed as the sound cut through the mist.

  Sid’s heart lurched. He tackled Aditi to the ground, just in time to avoid a projectile that would have struck her head if they had remained standing.

  “Rohan, cast Mana Webs everywhere, and do not worry about us, we are staying low,” Sid shouted just enough to be heard, then he turned and whispered to Aditi, “Get him loose, he will be tied to the nearest tree, and keep it quiet since they are tracking our echoes.”

  Aditi gave a quick nod and moved in a crouch toward where Rohan had vanished.

  Sid crawled to the base of another tree. The fog was a double-edged sword—yes, it blocked their vision, but the same held true for their attackers as well. The shaman was using the Echo Sense skill to track them. He was hoping the echo from the tree would help mask his own.

  He shifted to the far side of the trunk, away from the direction the earlier projectile had come from, and he whispered, “Varun, are you there?”

  A heavy thump struck the bark near his shoulder, and then Varun’s voice answered, “Yeah.”

  “Go to the nearest tree; they are tracking us like bats. Move slow,” called out Sid.

  “I see a goblin,” Varun answered. A quick rushing swish followed, which meant he had chased after it using Dash.

  Sid crouched low and turned his head from left to right, and when movement brushed the edge of his vision, he pivoted hard on his right leg, driving his left foot into the trunk to create space from the attacker.

  The goblin, seeing the surprise fail, shuffled back in two short steps and slipped beyond his narrow field of view. Backstep, thought Sid.

  Sid felt exposed without the tree covering his flank, so he unbuckled his backpack and hurled it to his left, and the moment it struck the ground he sprinted the opposite way toward the nearest trunk and dropped into a crouch before the echoes fully faded.

  He settled beside the bark with the spear angled across his body, ready to slash or stab the next goblin that dared close the distance.

  “Sid,” came Rohan’s voice, thin with distance and blurred by the fog.

  That single word told Sid they still had a team to save, which meant he had to move toward Rohan and Aditi before the ambushers finished closing the net. He shifted the spear into his right hand and bent for a stone to throw as a distraction, hoping a false clatter would peel a listener away from them.

  Something slid at the edge of his left ear, and he turned with a slash. A sharp pain shot up from his thigh as a goblin’s dagger punched into the muscle and withdrew in one smooth pull.

  The goblin tried to angle its next blow towards his groin, but Sid clamped down on its wrist and dropped the spear to free his right hand. A full-length spear was clumsy in close quarters. He hammered a short punch into its face and followed with a harder one that broke its rhythm.

  He reached for the Veil of the Mind’s Eye and let himself fall out of the goblin’s senses, which left the creature blinking and searching for an attacker it could no longer perceive. Sid seized the free wrist, shifted weight onto his uninjured right leg, and lifted the goblin enough to swing its body like a bat, slamming it into the trunk with a full turn of the hips.

  Bones snapped cleanly on impact, and when the body sagged, he stripped the dagger and drove it through the neck in one decisive thrust to end the struggle.

  A brief flash lit the roots, and a crystal appeared beside the corpse as the echoes of the strike faded.

  [Skill Crystal Detected–Compatible Skill: Mist Blend (Common)]

  [Would you like to absorb? Y/N]

  Sid mentally selected yes with a tired sigh. He had been hoping for Backstab, which would have paired cleanly with his other skill, or at least Keen Eyes, which would have helped them slip past this ambush without bleeding for it.

  Mist Blend was not a popular skill. It offered little more than shallow control over the surrounding mist, just enough to blur one’s outline if they remained motionless. The moment the user shifted or left the mist-laced area, it became dead weight.

  He exhaled quietly, the memory of a familiar voice from the Institute surfacing unbidden. One of the senior researchers had once scoffed during a training session and said, “There are no worthless skills, only those who wield them poorly.” Now, standing still amid a creeping haze, he wasn’t so sure.

  Sid slowed his breathing until it no longer hissed at the back of his throat, pressed his left palm hard over the wound to dull the leak and the pain, and sank into the mist using his new skill while the dagger waited in his right hand and his eyes scanned for motion.

  Sid caught a glimpse of movement to his right, quickly turned his head to see a goblin appear. The sudden movement broke his camouflage, but he promptly targeted the goblin with Veil of the Mind’s Eye. The creature flinched at first but then snapped its head from side to side, as Sid stepped outside of its cognition.

  It noticed a body near the base of a trunk and began to creep towards it. However, it never made it, for a dagger soon found its way to its brain. Sid had stabbed it from below its chin, ending its life instantly.

  He lowered himself with a wince, and plucked the fresh crystal from the damp leaves, while the fog swallowed the small sound of the corpse settling.

  [Skill Crystal Detected—Compatible Skill: Keen Eyes (Common)]

  [Would you like to absorb? Y/N]

  Perfect, thought Sid, and he was about to confirm with a mental yes when a heavy blow smashed into the side of his head and cut the thought in half. Darkness claimed him.