The Hidden World

For a moment, Yuki felt weightless. He floated in the air as the time slowed and nothing moved. Then gravity kicked in and he began to free fall faster and faster as the air whistled past his ears and he spun out of control. Yuki slowly extended he arms and legs, slowing the speed of his decent and regained his bearings.

‘I’m upside down,’ he realised.

He flipped himself around and found himself facing a sea of dark green. Pulling back his arms and closing his legs, he tilted his body and dived back down toward the earth.

‘I really hope the drop site is directly below.’

Soon, he felt a slight buzzing on his wrist. He brought his right arm in front of himself and noticed that his watch was reading his altitude. There was an alert that was notifying him that he should engage his parachute.

‘I should probably do that.’

His hand went to the backpack that he had put on in the hovercraft and felt around. He found the handle, yanked on it, and was suddenly pulled upwards with a hard tug. Grabbing the handles that were dangling beside his head, he steered himself back to where he was initially falling towards. As he did this, he looked around to locate where his other teammates were.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ he sighed.

His team was scattered around him, going off in random directions and falling at different heights. One popped their parachute much too early and was hovering hundreds of feet above him. Two people were below him, still falling. His last teammate was the closest to him and was falling at around the same rate as Yuki was.

‘At least one person knows how to skydive.’

Yuki decided to focus on his situation first before he worried about the rest of his team. He scanned the forest below him for any clearing where he could land comfortable. Finding none, he readied himself for a rough landing. He straightened his legs and put them together. As he hit the trees, his feet broke the branches below him and, with a little wind magic, he landed softly on the ground. He looked up and saw a hole that bled sunlight into the twilight forest around him.

‘I guess I’ll find the others now,’ he sighed. ‘Though this might take a while if they start to wander around.’

He knelt down on one leg and reached down to the ground. Infusing some mana into it, he began to scan the area around him. Within a few seconds he located a bright and familiar speck of mana within the forest.

‘I’ll meet up with Yuna first then.’

Yuki stood up and brushed the dirt off of his knee and pants. Then he stretched and began to sprint in the direction that he had detected Yuna. It wasn’t that far off in the distance, maybe a ten minute run. It helped that Yuna didn’t seem to be in a particular rush to find anyone. He burst through a bush and saw Yuna immediately assume a combat stance before relaxing as she recognized him. She waved toward him.

“Hi, Yuki. I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” she said.

“The sooner the better,” he replied. “We should go searching for the others now. Do you have an idea where they are?”

“None at all,” she shook her head. “I know that you were close because I saw you when I was landing but the others are too scattered for me to keep track of.”

“Oh, you were the person that actually knew how to skydive,” Yuki said. “I guess I’ll have to find them then. Let’s walk.”

Yuki reached down to the ground and began to probe in a half mile radius around himself. As he walked, he continuously gave out pulses like a sonar. They walked in silence for the next ten minutes before Yuna spoke.

“I didn’t expect to have to jump out of a plane,” she said.

“I didn’t either. I was expecting us to land,” Yuki replied.

“I was surprised that you knew how to skydive,” she remarked. “The other people in our team didn’t seem to know how.”

“I never skydived before but I know the concept so that helped,” he explained. “I guess you actually did it before though.”

“I have. It’s really fun in my opinion. It’s almost like I’m flying.”

“Mmm. Flying is fun.”

Yuki thought back to the times where he was experimenting with wind magic and making himself zoom about in the air.

“The wind blowing in your face is a nice sensation,” he said.

“It really is,” Yuna nodded.

They fell quiet again and continued their march through the forest. Then Yuki felt a pinprick on his radar and focused on it. It seemed to be a person that was wandering about the forest.

“I might have found someone,” Yuki announced. “Let’s run. Follow me.”

Yuki started sprinting and he heard Yuna follow behind him. Within a few minutes, he had caught up with the person he was tracking and saw that it was Benjamin. He was looking around, his head twisting side to side.

“Hello,” Yuki announced.

“Huh, who’s there?” Ben said, twirling around with his fist raised. “Oh, it’s you Yuki. And Yuna too. Where are the other three?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find them, shall we?”

In the next hour, Yuki went about the forest as he located the rest of his team. Yuna and Ben followed behind him quietly. The rest of the group was easy to find since they managed to group up. Yuki found them and they went to rest inside of a small clearing.

“So now that we’re together, let’s make a plan,” Yuki said.

“I want to rest a bit,” Joseph said. “That jumping out of the airplane made me super tired. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“Yeah, I heard him. He probably got tired from all of his screaming,” Jared commented.

“Hey! You were screaming too.”

“Maybe, but you were shrieking. Never heard that before in my life,” Jared laughed.

“We don’t have time to rest,” Yuki interrupted their banter. “In case you don’t remember, we have a time limit. Two days. Then one week to get out of here.”

“Yeah, I remember. But two days is a long time,” Jared replied. “We can rest for a bit.”

“Two days is not a long time,” Yuki sighed. “Those two days include today meaning we really only have one and three fourths of a day to work with. With that time we have to track down out targets and remove them. I would prefer we do this as soon as we can.”

“I’m sure we can spare an hour,” Natalie waved Yuki’s comment off. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find a troll settlement.”

“Have you ever been hunting before?” Yuki asked her.

“A bit. Not in a forest this big though.”

“Then have you ever done tracking before? Looking for specific targets?”

“Well, no. I just went with friends and we killed whatever appeared.”

“Is that so?” Yuki raised an eyebrow. “Trust me when I say that tracking things down is much harder and more time consuming than just wandering about blindly. We need to plan. Now.”

“I agree with Yuki,” Yuna spoke, attracting the attention of the others in the group. “I’ve done some hunts and tracking is never easy. Yuki is pretty experienced at this so you should listen to his advice.”

‘Oh, yeah. I did that monster hunting assignment in the Academy Forest with her.’

“Well, if you say so Yuna,” Jared said. “We can do with some planning, I guess.”

“Great. Then let’s get right to it,” Yuki said.