“Hhhhh…… Hhhhhh…….. Hhhhhhh………..”

My breath is starting to get heavy. My clothes are wet already, full of sweat. I still don’t know how, but the last ten minutes suddenly turned out to be a disaster. The gorilla is still chasing me with an abnormal speed and agility, while the chimera is behind the gorilla, trying to catch up with us, but having a problem with the forest terrain.

To make it worse, here is a strange guy that blew up my plan to avoid any confrontation with Gorilla, keep following me while keep doing something idiot that makes the two beasts chase us. Honestly, I have managed to distract the beasts twice with my gun, shooting random beasts while running in the opposite direction. But this idiot keeps shooting his arrow at the beasts to make it turn its direction back to us.

When I glared at him, he just grinned sheepishly, as if he did nothing wrong. ‘Urgh.. When this is over, I will beat this idiot to death..’ I vowed inwardly while increasing my pace to leave the gorilla as far as I can.

‘I have shot at least twelve times, twice to the gorilla’s eyes and ten for the distractions. I still have five more, but I need to be careful about how I will use them. Another distraction will not work anymore, not when this idiot keeps following me.’ I took a glance at the man who have been following me for almost fifteen minutes, slightly impressed at him for being able to keep up with my pace.

‘I need to slow down the gorilla so that the chimera can keep up with us. I still don’t know who is the one that the chimera chased, is it this guy beside me or is it the gorilla? I hope I can spark a battle between the beasts if this chimera managed to catch up with the gorilla so that they will leave me alone.’

Looking at the gun in my hand, I suddenly got an idea of where to shoot. If he is not slowing down even after getting shot in the eyes, then I just need to shoot his knees to make it stop, or at least slow it down. I glanced at the guy beside me for a moment, and within a second, I turned around in the opposite direction from the guy.

It managed to surprise both the guy and the gorilla, and that little surprise moment is all I need. I aimed down swiftly at the gorilla’s right knee, shoot, and run away at the next second, without looking whether the gorilla is affected by my shoot or not. But by the gorilla’s roar full of pain that I hear in the next second -I bet it is loud enough for the twins to hear it-, I know that I nailed it.

After a few more minutes of running, I finally slow myself down and take a deep breath. While I may be the fittest soldier in the military, getting chased by a gorilla and a mythical beast twice bigger than me will make me drain, definitely. I sit at the nearest tree and took a bottle of water out of my bag.

After a few minutes of rest, I can hear a heavy breath coming from behind me, and when I take a look, it is from the guy that has been following me since the beginning of my confrontation with the gorilla. His condition is far worse than mine, with his clothes covered with sweat and a hint of blood in there.

“Hahahaha… Good job at escaping from two ferocious beasts. I have my doubt, but your last attack to the gorilla’s knee is an impressive one. Good job man, hahahaha!!” For a man who looks like he just visiting his death door, he seems pretty relaxed. But for me, he is getting more and more annoying here. Hearing his laugh, I stand up suddenly and throw a punch at his face, enough to give his face a red mark and bleed his nose. He growled, not expecting me to punch him.

“What the hell man! What is your problem?”

“I don’t know, maybe because your face is too ugly that I cannot stand it, or maybe it has to do with the fact you lead the gorilla to me when I managed to distract it, TWICE! So I don’t know what is my problem with you?” He growled for a second before sighing,

“I am sorry okay?! I thought it was a funny prank! And it is not like you are completely out of the guilt itself, you know!” This time, it is I who is surprised.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything except being unlucky enough to accidentally stumbled across a gorilla’s lunch session!”

“That is the problem! You interfered with a sacred test for a proud dwarf warrior! It warrants a horrible punishment! You should thank me I didn’t hand you to father, though. The punishment will be worse than my little prank.”

“Wait, what do you mean a test?” I ask, deciding to ignore the dwarf part for a while. I want to avoid more headaches as I know this will be a very long explanation, so I decided to ask about the important thing first, about what is the test he is talking about and how can I interfere when I don’t know anything about it.

“Well, this test is a rite of passage for every youngster in the dwarf tribe if they want to be a dwarf warrior. The test is simple, we only have to bring the head of one animal from this forest, and our rank will be decided by how dangerous the animals we caught. My target is the gorilla before, and by attracting him, you will be considered as the one who interferes with our rite, and you will be punished according to our council’s decision.”

“WAIT! That’s not fair! I didn’t even know about your test at all!” I widened my eyes, shocked at what have I unconsciously done here. He just shrugged like it is something not worthy of his attention.

“Well, that is the rule. But you don’t have to worry about it because I will not report your involvement here to the council.” I have a bad feeling as he grinned widely at me.

“What is the catch?” I ask wryly.

“Well, you are a smart one, aren’t you? It is simple, you don’t have to worry about anything. Just help me kill the gorilla before, and we are even. Simple, right?” Now, I get more confused.

“Wait, why do you need my help? I have wounded the gorilla bad enough, so it will be easy for you to deal with it, right?” He shakes his head, denying what I said.

“No, your shoot my slowed down the gorilla, but it will definitely not be enough to wound it, because I cannot feel any magus come from your weapon. All of the animals in this forest have a strong resistance, only magus user or magus weapon can kill here.”

“Great, just great. Now I don’t have a way to deal with the animals here. I hope this situation cannot be worse any more than this.” I muttered grumbly. He bursts out a loud laugh at my reaction.

“Hahahaha… Don’t worry about it. You can help me kill the gorilla, and I will give you one simple weapon from our tribe as a show of gratitude. How about it?”

“If I could not hurt it, why do you need my help anyway?” I frowned, cannot think of a logical reason behind his request.

“Well, it is because all animals in this forest can detect magus manipulators, so if it is only me, I will definitely have a hard time beating it. But you are not a magus manipulator, so the animals cannot detect you and your attack. You prove it by managing to slow down the gorilla before. What do you think?”

“Magus manipulator?” I frowned at this new term. He looked at me strangely before widening his eyes in realization.

“Ah, you are from Pangea, right? You may know magus manipulator as a mage.” I nodded at his explanation and deadpanned at him after realizing something.

“You want me to be your bait, right?”

“Hahahaha!!” God, meeting him is probably the worst thing that happened to me today. he and his laugh are very annoying!

In the end, though, I decided to join him in his test. I don’t know what is wrong with me, because usually, I will not make a deal or agree to one if I don’t have sufficient information about it. But now, I am a bit interested in how the so-called mage will fight and what kind of power he has.

“Okay, you have a deal here. What should we do?” He laughed once again.

“Hahahaha! Good answer! I am Sarfak III, a proud son of Sarfak II, the chief of the dwarf tribe. How about you?” At this moment I realized we don’t really introduce ourselves.

“Devin, a proud member of the sky family. Nice to meet you.” I try to do the same kind of introduction to make him believe we are equal. He laughed at me once again, even though I don’t really know what is funny anymore.

“So Sarfak, you are a dwarf, right? You look like a human to me.” This is the first time since I met him that I assessed his appearance. He looks pretty normal to me, with a bow in his hand and a lot of arrows on his back. The only weird thing about him is his abnormally long beard and the strange hat that he wears, almost looking like a Viking from the land of Nordic. He snorted at my question, staring at me like I am the stupidest person in the world.

“Lad, it is not us dwarfs that look like humans. It is you human that look like us, with a little touch of elves of course.” He added the last part quietly, but I still managed to catch it.

“What do you mean?” I cannot help but ask curiously. He just waved his hand, trying to change the topic.

“Forget about it now. You will know about it when you learn about your origin. For now, let’s talk about our ‘gorilla hunt’, right?” He grinned mischievously at me.

“What is it to talk about? I am the bait, and you will wait until the right moment to kill it, is there any more that I need to know?”

“Nah, that will not work. The animals in this forest will only hunt you if you are a magus manipulator, you disturb their battle, or you destroy their home. If you are not, then the animals here will just let you do whatever you want.

“No, here is the plan. I will be the bait. You will hide deep enough until I cannot feel your presence, and when you found an opening, you shoot it on its knee like the first time you did it. After that, I will finish it, and boom! We kill the gorilla! How about it?” I am dumbfounded at his explanation.

“Wait, what do you mean you are the bait? I thought you agree that it will be me?” He just gives me a sly smile and said,

“What do you mean by me agreeing to your plan? If I remember it correctly, I was just laughing at you, not denying or agreeing with what you said. Remember?” I stared at him intently, trying to remember what he said. Then in a second, laughing very hard after realizing he is right.

“Hahahahaha!!! You are something more than a stupid grin and loud laugh, right?” He grinned, showing his feracious teeth.

“You got it right, Lad. Come on! We have a giant gorilla to kill!”