316 Jungle Wall

Vy grew bored of waiting pretty swiftly. So she decided to explore more of the Jungle instead. She already knew the location of their base, hence it would be easy for her to approach them when the time was right. 

Much to Vy's surprise, the Jungle was a lot larger than she had imagined. She continued her quest to look for a higher vantage point. Though it took a while, she finally found one. 

Climbing up the trunk of the tree took some practice but eventually, she got the hang of it. The callouses on her palms helped improve her grip as she climbed. When she finally reached the top of the tree, the sun was in the middle of the sky. 

She looked out beyond, finally able to see above the canopy and beyond.

"Is that… a wall?" She muttered to herself as she shielded her eyes from the intense rays of sunlight. 

She turned around to see that a wall stretched out beyond, surrounding the entirety of the Jungle. It was like a circle. In the middle of the Jungle, was a gigantic mega tree. 

Vy had never seen anything like it before. But her focus was not on the mega tree that towered above everything else. She was intrigued by the walls that surrounded the Jungle. 

Why was there a wall in the first place? From where she was, she could see that the wall towered above the Jungle, standing at least two to three times the height of the main canopy layer. 

She bit her lip. 

"It won't be possible to scale it," she sighed to herself. 

Vy recalled the conversations she's had with El and Fendrif, about the symbol of the Rabbit. Could the symbol be on the wall? It could mark as an exit for them to escape. Vy looked around to find the closest side of the wall to her current location. 

She was going to investigate it. Without much thought apart from her desire to find the wall, she quickly made her way down the tree. Carefully, she jumped off the branch she was on and landed with a thud on the jungle floor. 

As soon as she noticed the looming shadows and figures, she cursed beneath her breath. How could she be so careless? She had landed straight in the claws of the beast. 

She was surrounded by six spider beasts. Each of them hissed at her with their fangs out, ready to attack. They were surprised by Vy's sudden appearance but they were prepared to fight. 

Vy swiftly drew her sword. She dashed towards the nearest spider beast. Instead of heading for the head, she swiftly cut off its legs with one swift motion of her blade. Despite the wear on her sword, she was able to maim the creature. Blood gushed from its wounds. 

The creature let out a blood-curdling cry. The cry instilled a little fear in the remaining spider beasts. But Vy did not let them down easy. She headed for the next one, then the one after that. 

Her first focus was to reduce their mobility. With all eight legs intact, the spider beasts were able to move swiftly. It would have been extremely difficult to attack them efficiently. 

But by the time she maimed the third one, the remaining three seemed to have caught on to what Vy was trying to do. They quickly put a good amount of distance between Vy and themselves. 

Vy changed her strategy on the fly. She went back to kill and decapitate the maimed and injured spider beasts first. Just as she stabbed the third one with her sword, Vy's instincts kicked in. 

She quickly dodged to the side, narrowly missing a shot of spider webs that was shot from behind. The splat of spiderwebs hit a nearby tree trunk instead. Before she could heave a sigh of relief, she turned to see the other three spider beasts ready to attack.

Taking careful aim, Vy threw her dagger at one of them. With a bit of luck, it struck one of the spider beasts in the middle of its head. The beast slumped to the ground, its corpse twitching in a pool of its own blood. 

Vy ran up to collect her dagger, carefully avoiding the attacks of the remaining two. Though she was not able to move as fast as she liked, she was eventually able to kill the remaining spider beasts. 

With the battle finally over, she collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. She gasped and took in deep breaths of air as sweat trickled down her forehead. She wiped the droplets of salt water off her brow before they could sting her eyes. 

Looking down at the corpses of the spider beasts, Vy accessed the structure of its body composition. She also noticed that there was liquid poison dripping from the fangs of the spider beast. 

Just as she stood up, Vy noticed that there was a safe box nearby. She approached it with caution and examined its exterior. Unlike the one she had seen before, this safe box was not covered or hidden. 

On the cover of the safe box was the symbol of a bow and arrow. A quick examination of the lock made Vy realised that it had been recently opened. 

She was not alone. 

She could hear the sound of a bow being pulled. 

"I don't mean you any harm," Vy said as she sheathed her sword. 

She held her hands up, as if in surrender and turned to speak to the surrounding nature. 

"I am a survivor, just like you." She called out again, hoping that they would not try to harm her. 

Vy's eyes continued to search for the location of those who were ready to launch their arrows at her. She heard a soft whisper, the hush sounds of a conversation. It was going back and forth hastily but she could not tell what they were saying. 

Vy looked on at the carnage of spider beasts she had left. It was only now that she realised that there were blood footprints near one of the spider beasts. She had been so focused on killing the beasts, she did not realise there were others around too. 

Just then, a creature jumped down from its hiding spot in the trees. The creature was covered entirely with scales and held a strung bow with an arrow in its hands. 

"How did you get hold of the sword?" The creature asked. It had a feminine voice. 

"Usually the first question is who are you," Vy joked. 

"Don't try to be funny, human," the creature snapped back. 

"I was given the sword," Vy explained, "And my name is Vyrena. What's yours?"

"Who gave you the sword?" The creature continued to ask. Refusing to acknowledge

Vy's question. 

"A friend gave it to me," Vy bit her lip.

She needed to pick her words carefully. But she knew that lying to them would not bring her any good. She did not want to give away any information about El and the others either. 

Lucky for her, the creature seemed to accept her explanation and lowered her bow. The rest of her companions revealed themselves from their hiding spot. Vy realised that she had seen most of them from a few days ago. 

One of the humanoid looking creatures, with a pair of fur covered ears at the top of its head approached Vy. 

"Did you say your name was Vyrena?" He asked. 

Vy nodded. 

"My name is Ronni. Your skills with the sword are amazing!"

Vy was surprised by the compliment. Had they all been watching her entire fight with the spider beasts? It bothered her a little that none of them thought of helping but she managed well on her own. 

"We need to get out of here, fast." The scale covered creature instructed the rest of the group. 

As the group turned to leave, Ronni was reluctant to leave. 

"Wait, what about Vyrena? We can't just leave her here." Ronnie urged. 

The scale covered creature turned back, barely giving Vy a glance. 

"If she can kill the spider beasts, surely she has no problem surviving out here on her own."