The Hidden World

“First, tell me all you know about trolls,” Yuki said. “Anything at all. It doesn’t matter  how small or unimportant it may seem— just tell me. I need to know how much you know about what we're going up against.”

Yuki sat on the grassy ground and waited for the others to reply. They were thinking quietly to themselves as their eyebrows furrowed. The amount of time it took them to answer didn’t fill Yuki with much confidence.

‘I know that Yuna knows. I would be surprised if she didn't. I think she just doesn’t want to talk unless necessary which I understand. But the others should at least know something.’

“I’ll start,” Yuna sighed after a while. She seemed to have given up on keeping quiet. “Trolls are monsters that average at about rank C to rank B. Their primary strengths lie in their physical abilities.”

'Oh, so she's just giving a little information. Is she trying to get the others to be more comfortable?'

“Anyone else?” Yuki asked.

“I think that’s most of it,” Jared replied hesitantly. “I can’t think of much. We haven’t gone over trolls before in class.”

Yuki glanced around at the others, waiting for them to speak.

“Well, they’re really stupid and are horrible at magic,” Natalie said. “And pretty solitary?”

“Is that all you know?” Yuki said. No one said anything. “Let me think for a moment.”

He glanced over to Yuna who gave him a sad look and shrugged. Sighing, Yuki put his hands to his face and sat silently.

‘How much do I say without being out of the norm?’ he wondered. ‘Well, I don’t have to participate in the actual fight. Maybe I can be that person that is book smart but bad when doing practical things.’

“Alright, you all have said the basics for what trolls are,” Yuki said out loud. “Troll are very powerful but they make up for that with extreme stupidity. A troll by itself is ridiculously easy to kill. You could probably get it to kill itself with its own fists. That shows you just how dumb they are. And I'm not insulting trolls. Their intelligence has been proven to barely surpass that of a baby. The problem here lies in that they aren’t by themselves anymore and are in a community.”

“But aren’t trolls solitary creatures by nature?” Jared asked. “I don’t see how they could get together in a group.”

“They are solitary because they are stupid,” Yuki explained. “They don’t have the mental capacity to create a community. It's not that they are by nature solitary, but rather because they never thought to gather together. All they know are the basic urges of eat, sleep, and sex. They form communities only when one thing happens. A troll evolves into a troll chieftain and then organizes a community.”

“I’ve never heard of a troll chieftain. What is that?” Joseph said.

“An evolved troll that has heightened intelligence in exchange for a slight decrease in physical abilities. And with higher intelligence, comes an increase in their magical capabilities. They don't become masters at magic, but they are considerably better than other trolls since they actively use mana instead of using magic on instinct.”

“How do you know all of this?” Jared said. "I don't remember any of our classes going over this."

“I read,” Yuki replied shortly. “I recommend that if you want to do good in anything, you should at least read a bit on that topic. Anyway, let’s get to the plan. The worst time to fight would be at night. So let’s not do that.”

“Wait, why not?” Joseph interrupted. “Wouldn’t it being dark mean that we could sneak up on them?”

“Trolls can see in the dark and rarely need sleep,” Yuna explained to him. “They also have extremely good sense of smell and so don't really need to rely on their eyes. We, on the other hand, do not have night vision and need sleep.”

“Exactly,” Yuki nodded. “So a nighttime assault is out of the picture. That means we really have a shorter window of time to attack. What we should do right now is track down where the trolls are located and then plan how to attack once we’ve scouted out the location.”

“How are we going to track them down though?” Natalie asked. “They could be literally anywhere in the forest.”

“No, they won’t be literally anywhere in the forest otherwise we would need a lot more than two days to complete the mission. The trolls should be relatively near our intended drop location. So we should go back to our drop site and then start our search from there. I recommend that we find the trolls before night arrives.”

“So. Do we get a rest, or…?” Jared said, his question trailing off.

“No, we do not get a rest,” Yuki replied. “We don’t have time for one. It's approaching the afternoon and we don't know how long it would take to locate our target. Let’s go back for now and then we can start to track the trolls down.”

He stood up and dusted the back of his pants. The others beside Yuna who was already standing didn’t move.

“What is it?” Yuki asked.

“I really can’t go without a rest,” Natalie said. “I’m sorry, but jumping out of a hovercraft was a bit much for me. Those type of things shouldn’t be done without warning. I could swear I almost had a heart attack.”

Yuki didn’t understand why skydiving would be such a shock to someone that lived in a world where there were monsters and magic. There should be many other things that would be much more terrifying than falling.

“Honestly, I don’t know how you and Yuna are so calm about this,” Joseph piped up. “I was screaming like a baby and I’m sure Jared was. I don’t know about Ben.”

“I nearly shit myself,” Ben replied. "It wasn't because of the falling though. I was just surprised that we had to jump out of a plane."

“Well there you go.”

Yuki glanced at Yuna who gave him a look of mystification. It seemed that she didn’t know why the others were so shocked as well.

“Have none of you skydived before?” he asked. “It isn’t the most terrifying thing in this world. I would be more scared of transporters than jumping from a hovercraft.”

“Well, if you put it that way then transporters are more scary than skydiving in theory,” Jared admitted. “But we grew up with transporters. I didn’t get raised with jumping off of moving objects.”

‘That’s true,’ Yuki thought, nodding. ‘But I wasn’t raised to jump off of high flying objects either.’

He stood there, looking at the other four who were sitting. Yuki didn’t want to waste any time by resting. There was no need to rest and he just couldn’t understand why the rest of his team were begging for one.

“Yuki, let’s rest,” Yuna said quietly.

He glanced over to her. She shook her head slightly, signaling to him to just give in and let the others have their break. Yuki sighed and sat back down.

“We’ll rest for one hour then,” he said. “But after that, we are going to start this assignment. There will be no more rest after this one until we locate where the trolls are.”

“Seems good,” Joseph stretched. “I’ll take a quick nap then.”

The others voiced their satisfaction as well.

“Then I’ll be keeping watch,” Yuki said. “Remember. One hour.”