Chapter 182: Don't Bee Lost!
Noigakkuq frowned. She sniffed out of habit before hissing and clutching her nose. A bright green bee buzzed around her but she shook her head.
She was currently surrounded by trees, bushes, and flowers. On the surface, she stood in a perfectly peaceful and idyllic forest. There weren’t even any game trails, tracks, or decaying remains that would hint at deadly predators. She was at no risk of bodily harm.
And yet, Noigakkuq was in a worse position than she had ever found herself, in her opinion. Because, as she had no choice but to admit, she was lost. The karnuq hunters were currently training in the Tower Keeper’s new defense rooms on both the Tower Keeper and Chief Rohsuak’s insistence. Once they had learned how to traverse and fight in the forest and the lava flats, they would be permitted to challenge the Tower once again, and earn additional favor in the sight of their patron gods. Noigakkuq was very much vindicated to be included among the hunters this time, as an equal participant. So, she was all too eager to start challenging and to grow even stronger than she already had.
As such, she had volunteered to screen the body of the hunters, intent on using her innate mana sniffing to speed up the process. After all, this was a mere forest. She could understand the lava fields, but a forest wasn’t dangerous because of the trees. As long as there were no predators here, it shouldn’t have taken the karnuq any time at all to acclimate. So, she ignored the bees buzzing around her and set off into the brush.
She very quickly learned how wrong she had been, the very first moment she took a sniff. She had been immediately blindsided by a dozen overwhelming scents all at once, and only then did she realize that this forest was absolutely drenched in mana. Worse still, the mana was not all ubiquitous like it was in the rot cap field, every time she sniffed here she was subjected to countless different, seemingly random scents all mixing together into an explosion that assaulted her senses.
Her mana sniffing, the one power she had to her name for most of her life, was entirely useless in this forest. Forget keeping track of the karnuq and locating incoming enemies, every sniff left her incapacitated for a moment.
She clenched her teeth before turning back to return to the group. She walked…and she walked…and she walked…and she walked. Until now, when she realized that, somehow, in the handful of moments between leaving the group and taking her first sniff of the air, that she had lost contact with them entirely.
And now, she had no idea where she was.
“There you are.”