Megan sat thoughtfully as she looked down on the main camp of the Golden-Haired Apes. For the last few days she had circled the area she first arrived in the dungeon. Once she had located a Golden-Haired Ape she had at first just followed that one ape for a while until it led her to a small camp of about five to six apes. After following these apes for a while eventually one ape led her to another bigger camp and so on until now, she found what she was sure was the main camp. In a clearing surrounding the entrance to shallow cave the main tribe of Golden-Haired Apes resided. There were about thirty-five to forty alert male apes, sitting around eating, being groomed or grooming others or playfighting around. She saw infant apes cavorting and tumbling over everything, including other apes who mostly just seemed to swat them away which appeared to entertain the young ones to no end as they either dodged or took a blow which always seemed to end up with the infant landing on another adult, shrieking in ape laughter.
In the centre of the camp lounging on a comfortable pile of animal hides and dried grass sat the biggest male Golden-Haired Ape of all of them. The obvious leader and Alpha of the tribe sat, looking bored, as female Golden-Haired Apes circled him, catering to his every need. The Alpha would put out his hand and fruit would be placed in it. He would stretch out a limb, and multiple females would jump up and groom/clean it. If the Alpha fancied an ape, that ape would immediately prostrate itself before the Alpha and he would have his way them, sometimes with multiple partners before he was satisfied. While Megan watched the Alpha would occasionally move around the camp, casually beating up the other males at a whim, never killing, just obviously showing everyone who was the boss. The rest of the apes appeared to hate/love/worship the Alpha in equal amounts as he displayed his might and power to any who looked at him wrong.
Megan knew deep down in her very soul that if she was to attempt to take on the Alpha ape as she was right now, she would lose her life. Strength just seemed to radiate from the beast like a thick invisible fog that couldn't be seen but was definitely felt. Megan carefully backed away and skirted around the main camp to continue to scout the domain of the Golden-Haired Apes.
Megan spent a few days studying the tribe of Golden-Haired Apes. She came to know thier patterns and habits as well as thier power structure. The main camp was always a hive of activity and centrally located and always held the majority of the apes. Along with the alpha ape there were roughly about twenty-five female apes of various ages. Of the females, there were six that were the exclusive property of the Alpha, another ten that were 'shared' around the other males and the rest were too old or young. Of the other males of the tribe apart from the Alpha who never left the main camp they appeared to always be on the move, in groups of four and five or occasionally alone. The cave the apes main camp surrounded appeared to double as both safety shelter as well as storage.
There was a total of twelve satellite camps surrounding the main camp and Megan soon learned that each camp was situated around a resource the apes valued and harvested, as well as protected. The movement of the male apes was now explained as Megan realised, they were travelling between the main camp and the others, delivering, processing and extracting resources like food, water and building supplies. The males also scouted and hunted for game while travelling. Each of the small camps were little more than a firepit and possibly a crude storage hut made from branches and leaves.
So, the total male apes came to a figure of roughly one hundred all in various sizes, ages and ability. Each ape appeared to travel around in loose groups of five to six apes. Each group would generally split up when travelling so as to cover more ground as they made their way around all the small camps. It looked like when one group came in, then another would leave each of the camps while a group was already there generally harvesting or processing resources. There was a camp that was situated within some very conveniently positioned rocks near some fast-moving rapids where the apes processed all the meat they hunted, using flat surfaces of rocks to butcher animals and allow the unwanted and discarded organs and blood to run into the river to be washed away. Another camp was situated around a grove of well-tended fruit trees, each tree meticulously planted in obvious manicured garden beds and fiercely protected. At yet another camp there was what was definitely some sort of mine with the entrance braced with huge roughhewn logs that continued into the interior. There even appeared to be a popular camp surrounding what for all the world looked like some mineral hot springs that apes soaked themselves in regularly.
Megan, studying the apes and their habits, started to develop a plan. The first step of this plan meant she needed to learn to fight these apes, she needed to practice her skills and possibly work out some strategy and the apes' weaknesses. To do this she needed to separate an ape from its friends and use it to practice on, a task easy to plan, but difficult to execute. She needed to somehow trap an ape in a way that allowed her to practice on it. Once she was more confident in surviving the attacks then she could attempt to pick off
To facilitate this Megan trained hard on her new and old movement skills, soaring through the air only to catch herself on a platform and swiftly change directions. She would leap up, hover standing on a platform, then strafe left or right, dismiss the platform, drop, create a grip and clasp it as she fell and use her momentum and the grip itself to twist around and somersault directly upwards, deftly land on another platform then randomly leap into another direction to start the sequence all over again. Megan gained speed, more control and precision with her movements. In fact, if anyone saw her practicing, they would be mistaken in thinking that she was beyond core awakening and well into the high stages of core compression with her movements being so quick and decisive.
In fact, despite warnings from Master Zanik advising caution and that cultivation would take a long amount of time and effort to progress when she looked at her core she could almost see the size increasing in real time and also the spin of her core was getting slightly erratic as core energy sometimes sparkled through one side but not the other. She devoted several hours every day to meditation and working on drawing in energy into her core and around her energy pathways throughout her body and everything worked the way Master Zanik inferred, all except the speed at which things happened. Master Zanik had mentioned that in the future her core would become bloated and painful again which would indicate it was time to enter the core compression stage but from what Megan had been taught was that time was supposed to be years away, years of drawing in tiny amounts of etheric energy from her surroundings, pushing them through her core and a small bit would be absorbed. Megan's core appeared to always be absorbing energy, even when Megan was not actively trying to do so and the absorption became five times as quick when she was actively cultivating it. Megan wished she could talk to Master Zanik about her situation.
Megan knew that was not an option at the moment. She straightened her spine, focused her mind and started making preparations. To start with Megan became very familiar with the territory of the Golden-Haired Apes. She would occasionally lure an ape from its meandering between camps to ensure her understanding of how they would and how the whole tribe would react to one ape going missing. The answer to actions of the tribe with one missing ape, not much really. It appeared apes would go missing fairly regularly, the rainforest was chock full of dangerous flora and fauna and Megan's unusually robust constitution seemed to make her immune to most of these but not so for the apes. Another aspect she discovered was the numbers of apes fluctuated but ultimately did not decrease but had a consistent growth pattern. An ape would die from combat or poisonous thorn and within a day or two one of the adolescent apes would rise to take its place, yet the number of infant apes never seemed to change, and she never caught any females giving birth, despite the number of times they copulated with others of the tribe. Megan decided it was likely a dungeon thing and left it at that.
Purely by accident Megan stumbled across the perfect ambush position. A small crevice leading into an almost circular arena area surrounded by tall smooth granite cliffs all around and only one entrance in and out. The cliffs circling this natural open-air arena curved inwards so that only a small opening cast bright sunlight down which had dappled shadows cast by all the plants that grew around the hole.
Shallow sand evenly covered the ground of the space which was fairly level and beneath the sand rigid granite could be felt making a strong foundation for the arena, allowing for fast and easy traversal of the terrain. Not that this mattered, Megan had become so proficient at summoning her 'platforms' that she now unconsciously created a platform under her feet at all times, and she no longer had to worry about triggering traps or falling in hidden holes. This method of travel also meant she was completely silent and left no tracks when she passed through.
Megan felt as prepared as she could be under the circumstances she was in. She cleared some obstacles and became familiar with the area around her new training ground. She also spent some time creating a pile of rocks precariously positioned so that she would allow to them to fall and block the entrance once she trapped her prey. She would need to take time to clear it once finished but at least the ape she was to trap would not be able to escape.
Silent and deadly Megan stalked her prey. Picking her victim, she followed relentlessly, studying and cataloguing her victim's movements and habits. Not the biggest of Golden-Haired Apes, the male ape was still bigger and stronger than her, which was the whole point really, Megan was not interested in quick easy kills, she needed to be able to grow in strength and power, the more she learned, the more ignorant she felt. She hated this feeling of the unknown; she wanted to know everything. With knowledge she could evolve and become more and gain the power to make her own decisions, carve her own path and succeed. Megan would be no one's slave, not anymore, she would rather die in obscurity than live long in captivity.
Hardening her resolve, the timing chosen, Megan started the plan. She refused to think of it as murder despite being ultimately what she was doing. She justified her actions by assuring herself that dungeon creatures were not really real and they had a purpose to them that even required her to cull their numbers.
Megan crouched on a limb of a tree that overlooked a well-trodden path, every stealth trick she knew working at full capacity. Her patience was rewarded as the unsuspecting Golden-Haired Ape came plodding along, taking his time to check the usual spots where knew mushrooms grew every now and then. Just as Megan had planned the ape stopped just below where she was hiding due to finding a particularly big and juicy specimen of purple mushroom all the apes appeared to covet the most. While he was chowing down the purplish fungal delicacy Megan made her move, like a silent bird of prey she leaped from her position above the ape and came down hard, not aiming for a fatal blow she made sure she gave the ape just enough sensory information to realise the danger, but not enough time to get completely out of the way, this made it seem like Megan's ambush attempt had failed to instantly kill when really she just wanted to give the ape an impression of incompetency so that he would not call for reinforcements and would follow her when she retreated.
So, although it appeared that Megan originally targeted the back of the ape's skull with an attempt to break through and kill him Megan's conjured blade on the end of her staff managed to stab into the ape's neck, temporarily destroying his ability to vocalise sound, which was the outcome Megan was looking for in the first place. Megan landed behind the ape, then slashed at the ape's legs, managing to cut enough flesh on the ape's calves to impair the speed of the ape for a while, giving Megan a better chance to lead this ape to her chosen training grounds.
As predicted the ape reacted with fury born from its aggressive nature and focused purely on the puny little human female that dared to attack him. With a silent roar he came at her, swinging a fist the size of a large melon directly at her face. Smirking at the predictable behaviour Megan twisted her body to avoid the blow letting the fist blow past her head with the barest of space, so close the air from its passage sending her short black hair fluttering around. Quick to react, after missing with one fist the ape brought his fists together and brought both of them down together in a devastating double blow so fast and powerful it caused the ground to bow down and then explode outward, sending gravel, dirt and other debris flying in all directions. Confused at the lack of squishy human bits missing from the explosion the ape at first just lifted his two fists and peeked under as if his blow had been so powerful the little human must have been driven into the ground like a nail.
Seeing her chance Megan who had dodged the blow by simply stepping back a step and was already standing on a platform just behind the back of the ape's head. She dropped, landing silently on a platform behind the ape spun her staff, creating a big, heavy blunt mace head on one end to allow the momentum to build up then swung out and brought the staff up between the ape's legs.
The ensuing 'CRUNCH' sound that permeated the local area was a sound that would cause any self-respecting male to go cross-eyed in sympathy. The ape, unable to make loud noise, lifted its head to the sky and a high-pitched whine escaped through it's lips as his whole body crumpled, its hands unable to do more than cup the pained parts of his anatomy. The look in the ape's eyes showed the pain it was in but as those bloodshot eyes focused on Megan standing so tantalisingly close, they squinted at her in abject fury as the ape made its decision. This human must die!