The morning light shining through the window woke Niphru the next day. As he opened his eyes, he saw that Dawn had already gotten up, so he didn’t worry about shifting the bed as he stretched and jumped down to the floor.

  After a quick sniff of the air, he determined that someone was cooking and padded out of the bedroom. Seeing Dawn seated at the table, it was clear that Amilya was the one cooking today’s breakfast.

  Turning to Dawn, he asked, “What are you pnning on doing today? I was thinking I’d head into the forest and see how everything looks out there.”

  “I was thinking I’d talk with the people who’ve been out hunting, try to see what they’ve run into recently. Clearly, they found that things are different, otherwise Mom wouldn’t have known to inform us,” Dawn replied with a slight shrug.

  In reply, Niphru nodded, as Dawn’s idea made sense. He didn’t want to bother with that, though, so he’d just leave that to her. With any luck, there wouldn’t be too much that was dangerous out in the wilderness, though he did have the ability to fight things that were immune to fire now, unlike before.

  Not long after they spoke, Amilya emerged from the kitchen carrying three ptes of food and set them down on the table before joining the two. They shared what they pnned to do for the day, and Amilya nodded, stating that it sounded like they had things handled.

  After finishing their meal and helping to clean the dishes, Dawn and Niphru left the house and headed off in their respective directions, Niphru shifting down into a smaller size. As he approached the gate nearest the forest, Niphru jumped into the air and used force magic to let himself climb up to the top of the wall.

  “I’m headed into the forest; no need to deal with opening the gate for me anymore, so you can stay rexed,” he remarked to the guard who was standing watch.

  As the man nodded, surprised by the sight of a fox standing on the air, Niphru began to travel toward the forest, remaining flying as he went. While his rger, natural form was too heavy to fly, it barely took any effort to take the form of a smaller fox that could.

  While before, it had taken the spiritual power of three of his fmes, he could now maintain the fox form with only one, though the humanoid forms still took the same amount of effort. His improvements in strength left him with five of the six fmes avaible as a small fox, leaving him with the majority of his power accessible.

  Due to this, he had no difficulties spinning an illusion about himself to render his form invisible to anything that might happen to look midway up the trees. As he traveled, he kept searching the foliage below to see if he could spot anything unusual.

  Around an hour into his exploration, he started to see the pnts he had seen before, those that would ignite if crushed, some with shocking petals, and the sharp grass in a few pces. There were some other strange ones, however, that he hadn’t seen before.

  One of the pnts he passed over let out a faint puffing noise as a spray of particles rose into the air, being stopped by the same barrier he was standing upon. On closer examination, when he enclosed one in another barrier, he was able to spot a number of tiny spines.

  Due to this design, Niphru figured it was likely to either be a physical irritant, or possessing poison of some sort. Deciding to save people at the vilge some trouble, he collected the pnt and put it into one of the pouches on his harness.

  Another pnt was clearly poisonous, as the number of bodies of small animals beside it revealed. The small bush had roots emerging from the soil and digging into the bodies beneath the branches. Unable to safely collect such a rge pnt, he simply attempted to remember the location. Fortunately, he didn’t spot any others of the same type during his trip.

  Just before he was pnning on finding somewhere to rest, he came across a most disturbing sight. A deer y fallen on the ground, host to over a dozen beasts that clearly used to be squirrels. Each possessed some degree of spines on their back, folded down to avoid catching on the flesh as they dug into the body, crawling inside before tearing off chunks of meat and emerging again to consume them.

  A closer inspection revealed that each had small tusks that seemed to be quite sharp, given the cuts on the hide of the deer. Feeling that it was probably best to collect one for the vilge to study, Niphru used a quick burst of force magic to twist the head of one all the way around, snapping the neck and leaving it to colpse. Darts of incandescent fire pierced the skulls of the remaining mutant squirrels, and he collected the intact corpse before igniting the remainder.

  Since he couldn’t get rid of the smell, Niphru continued to travel for another half-hour before finding a rge tree with a bush covering a hollow in the roots. He squirmed his way inside before ying down to rest, informing Dawn through their bond that he was staying out overnight.

  While she was slightly concerned, Dawn also knew that Niphru was much stronger than anything they should encounter near the vilge, even ignoring the fact that he could use illusions to hide himself.

  Midway through the night, Niphru was awakened by snuffling noises nearby. Keeping the illusion of invisibility over himself, he emerged from the hollow and swiftly located a moderately sized beast with a tiny mouth, yet rge cws. Oddly enough, it had features that resembled a pig or boar, though it was cking even the smallest of tusks.

  The creature had its face pressed against the ground, snorting as it wandered back and forth for a few moments. Eventually, it paused before tearing at the ground with its cws, swiftly digging nearly a foot down. It suddenly perked up and looked in Niphru’s direction, likely having smelled him.

  A few moments ter, it turned back to the hole and bent over, pulling something out of the ground and chewing on it. Once it finished its meal, the creature turned and began to lumber away, clearly uninterested in Niphru, not even attempting to find him.

  Since the beast seemed harmless in nature, even if it had some fearsome cws, Niphru decided to let it live, even if he was supposed to be hunting mutant creatures. Instead, he simply returned back to the hollow he had been resting in and went back to sleep.

  The following day, Niphru ran into several other harmless beasts that he ignored, as well as more of the same types of pnts he saw the prior day. He did, however, run into a bit of excitement in the form of a lone wolf that had clearly smelled him, as it spent a fair bit of time following him and looking around.

  Since he was both invisible and in the air, the unaltered wolf had no hope of actually finding him and eventually gave up, leaving him to return back home peacefully. A few hours ter, he left the forest and let his illusion drop as he returned to the vilge.

  The sight of a flying fox surprised the new guard, though they did stand down when Niphru showed one of his fmes floating beside himself. A quick moment of discussion with Dawn resulted in him taking the squirrel to the butcher before finding an elderly woman to hand over the pnt to.

  Naturally, he was careful to keep the pnt surrounded by a barrier, which turned out to be a good idea since it puffed another burst of particles as soon as he pulled it out of the pouch. The woman appeared quite surprised, but motioned for him to follow her back into a fenced-off area, where she asked for him to pnt it.

  Following this action, she had him put some of the spined particles into a small bowl that she carried back into her home after thanking and dismissing him.

  Feeling quite hungry after having not eaten for over twenty-four hours, Niphru returned home and headed straight for the kitchen when he saw Amilya wasn’t present. A short while ter, he had made himself dinner and began eating. After a while, he determined that he was hungrier than he had thought, so he went ahead and made a little more food before heading to bed.

  A quick check over their bond revealed that Dawn was out at the farms, helping with a few minor problems that her magic could easily solve, and that she wouldn’t be back for another two hours or so.

  With a slight huff, Niphru curled up on the bed and let himself drop off to sleep, mildly annoyed that Dawn wasn’t present still.

  Shard