I adjusted my pouch a little and attached it to the back of my belt, close enough to reach but far enough from my scabbards. Making sure nothing restricted my movement, I left the grove.
After spending more than a week in the Eserian, I was used to its humidity and temperature. If anything, it felt weirder to carry the soldiers' steel blades in their scabbards than to roam the massive forest.
Carrying three blades, two daggers, and a spear might have been a little bit of an overkill. I snickered to myself before shifting into the weakest accessible Kerink form. Flapping my wings, I shot into the air, weaving around the dense undergrowth. Fern told me enough about the traps placed around the Eserian Grove that I wanted to avoid them by all means.
Triggering a trap, let alone an alarm, was the last thing I wanted to do. Hence, I made a detour and burst through the canopy of the ancient trees and flew north until Shift's effect neared its end. I descended on a branch high up in one of the trees, my head snapping around to search for potential enemies before transforming back into my main form.
Even though I was still close to the Eserian Grove, I caught sight of a few monsters. Not all were as ferocious as Hnolls and Kerink, but if there was one thing monsters had in common, it was violence. Exceptions existed if what the fae said was true, but I had yet to see a monster that didn't want to kill me.
Nonetheless, I wasn't planning on hunting everything that crossed my path. The pests and some of the more violent monsters were my main targets, to gain more Accessible Shifts to use in combat and to please the fae as well, showing them that I heard their complaints and wanted to help them.
I jumped from the branch high up in the tree, my body liquefying as I landed on the ground with a wet thud–in slime form, of course.
My body emerged from the Blue Slime form after landing smoothly, and I continued heading north until I located my first target: an anthill. More precisely, an anthill and a beehive in close proximity.
Their queens have to survive, I told myself, etching Fern's words into my mind.
The Medium of Beasts would relocate the beehive in the following weeks. Until then, their numbers should be regulated, which posed a problem since both the Herculean Ant Queen and the Veridian Bee Queen were at war, leading to a massive production of ants and bees. The production was so high, the ecosystem was suffering. Hence, I was to turn into an enemy strong enough to force them to stop fighting each other.
The plan Fern and I came up with was more complicated, and some details confused me even now, but I trusted Fern's understanding of the queens' behavior. She knew what she was doing.
First things first, I stayed human and waited in the thicket. Herculean Ants moved through the undergrowth in the distance, carrying small corpses, branches, and whole plants I failed to recognize. As they moved on, they neither paid attention to me nor the bees overhead. Only when a group of larger Herculean Ants climbed an ancient tree did that change.
The smaller worker ants scattered as Veridian Bees emerged from the vehicle-sized beehive hanging down from the same ancient tree the Herculean Ant soldiers were trying to climb.
A fight ensued, and I watched in silence as they stung and pincered each other. Neither side appeared particularly powerful to me, yet I watched until most of the fighting monsters were injured before I leaped into action. I transformed into a Hnoll, spear in hand, and snarled out loud as I charged. The monsters didn't respond right away. They were more guarded against each other until the smell of wet dog and foulness reached them.
At least, I hoped that was the reason their fighting came to an end. Fast enough to close the distance to my targets, I struck out. The first spear thrust found its target in the least injured Veridian Bee. They were smaller than the Herculean Ants by a few centimeters, but their stingers were problematic.
First of all, the Eserian helped the Veridian Bees mutate. Not only were they much more like wasps or mosquitoes when it came to their stingers, they didn't die when stinging their target. If anything, Veridian Bees seemed to grow more energetic after stinging their target. Their stinger also contained substances with paralytic properties, and it reacted fast enough to bring four Herculean Ant workers to a standstill. A few more stings and they'd die from suffocation–if not for the spear blade reaping their lives before that.
I moved fast enough to finish one bee and four paralyzed ants. Then the others joined the fray. One Veridian Bee stung yet another Herculean Ant. It turned to me and attacked, appearing more energetic than before. I twisted out of the first bee's trajectory and slapped another with the pole of my spear. Twisting around, I shifted into a stronger Hnoll, hoping to use the additional strength and speed to crush the remaining enemies. Alas, only two Veridian Bees failed to recognize the danger ahead.
One was sliced in two, whereas the other had one of its wings pierced. The latter plummeted to the ground, where a Herculean Ant worker crushed it with its mandibles.
"That was mine," I grunted, ramming my spear blade into the Herculean Ant worker. The strongest Hnoll form provided the force needed to do so, but time was running low. I took that into consideration and transformed into another Kerink form. My spear clattered uselessly to the ground a moment later.
Ignoring the momentary confusion, I shot toward the Veridian Bees that tried to return to their hive and riddled their wings with gaping holes. They fell to the ground and were dead upon impact, talons raking across their small bodies.
Last but not least, I transformed back into my main form beside the spear. That was Shift's only issue. My belongings shifted alongside me normally, except when I carried them in my hand.
The easiest solution was to carry more than enough weapons to last a long fight, without having to worry about being unarmed. Or acquire a spatial ring.
A spatial ring would be amazing. I want one… Unfortunately, the grove did not have something that valuable. And even if they did have a spatial ring, they wouldn't give it to me.