The last time Xavier fought the Aquatic Dweller, his AGI was at 11 and his STR was even lower at 5, which resulted in him almost dying. But now....
Xavier rushed towards the monster with amazing speed, and slashed the creatures side, drawing a trail of blue blood. He flicked the mucus off his blade, which made cutting into the monster even harder. The mucus was pretty slippery, and that added to the scales and the thick muscles, made it a bit hard to wound the monster, but with his high strength attribute, Xavier could ignore most of that to some extent. The monster roared and charged forward, but to Xavier, the monster seemed pretty slow and he easily dodged it's attacks. As he dodged a rapid flurry of strikes from the monster, he could tell that it was slowing down, panting heavily and he could see it's gills twitching excessively. The monster made a sound like it was suffocating, and Xavier noticed that it's skin seemed a lot drier than before.
'Now I understand why it is called an Aquatic Dweller.' Xavier thought as he watched it rush back towards the river. Not willing to make his prey escape, he lunged towards it and stabbed it in the back of the neck. The monster fell to the ground from Xavier's momentum, and weight, and Xavier stabbed it with his second dagger in the head, killing it.
Xavier checked how the others were doing and as expected, they were doing fine. Mickey was squaring off with the crimson red Aquatic Dweller, and he used his bronze shield to block the creature's strikes, while counter attacking with his bronze sword. Their speeds seem to be around the same, which made the fight take longer than Xavier's, but he could tell it wouldn't take much longer as the wounds were stacking up on the monster and it was obviously running out of steam for being on land for too long.
Maria was taking care of the purple one. She kept her distance, while shooting arrows at the monsters. The arrows hit different spots on the monster, covering a large portion of it's body with arrows. Xavier counted a dozen arrows imbedded in the creatures body, and soon it fell to the ground dead. Xavier looked over at the other nine people in the group, who were simply on the sidelines watching the fights.
"Wow, you guys aren't even trying to help." Xavier said a bit irritated as he walked towards Rosie and the others.
"You guys seem to have everything handled." Rosie said, and just as she did, they heard an audible thud as the last monster fell to the ground.
"Fine then, since we fought them, you guys have to carve out the monster stones." He said and took up his bag, which he dropped to the ground and walked over to the river. He took off the beaten up cloth shoes, that all prisoners, and threw them to the side as he stepped into the river and sighed in content when the water touched his feet. He quickly peeled off his top layer of his prison garbs and looked at his wounds. He had gotten many wounds over the last few days, the worst of which was the stab to his stomach, but all of them were closed up, and his stomach wound has even left a scar.
He also noticed that his emaciated form has started sprouting muscles, not very noticeable yet, but they were there. He guessed that it was doing of the Stigma Window, and quickly took off the rest of his bloodied prisoner garbs and washed the blood off his body. Mickey found a spot in the river to wash the blood off his body as well, and Maria did the same after she collected her arrows. The new recruits went further upstream to give them some privacy, and Rosie and the original members of the Sisterhood went over to Maria to have a chat.
"Ah!!" Maria said a bit startled when the four of them appeared, and covered her body with her hands.
"Relax, you don't have anything we've never seen before." Anna said, but Maria didn't seem reassured and instead sunk into the water.
"Whatever you want, can't it wait?" Maria asked, looking at them with a shy expression
"Not really, this is the only time we really have when the boys aren't around, and we wanted to ask you something....privately." Rosie said, and Maria backed off a bit and Rosie sighed
"Look, we trust each other right. We just wanted to know what you guys were talking about this morning." Bella said, and Maria thought for a moment.
"You should ask Xavier, it's his secret to tell." Maria said, and Bella looked at her with an irritated expression.
"Look, we just want to know if you guys are planning to stab us in the back?" Rosie asked, scrutinizing her face for any signs that might betray a lie, but the only thing she found on her face was confusion.
"Why would we betray you?" Maria asked, with genuine confusion on her face, and Rosie opened her mouth to say something, but she found no words. It was true, they gained nothing from betraying them. The sisterhood wasn't big enough to threaten any of the other gangs around, so they couldn't gain any benefit there. And if they planned to kill them, there wasn't much they could do to stop them. Besides, Maria didn't seem like the cold blooded type, then again, looks can be deceiving.
'Maybe...maybe we were a bit too paranoid.' Rosie thought