He thought about what to answer, and eventually he told her at least his current feelings about the idea of what comes next, "Depends. I do think that the forest could serve as a proper base for at least some time, but if we end up finding more people, or even hell, entire groups of them, it might be more beneficial to leave for good. We'll have to leave eventually for expeditions out into the wider world if we plan on leveling up more and seriously trying to earn what we came here to try and accomplish. Whether or not we come back, I guess depends on how attached to this place we end up getting."

"That's good to know. I'm also glad that you're starting to say we a lot more. Happy to see that my feminine charms are working," she replied happily but a little sarcastic. 

He rolled his eyes and chuckled, "For now, I think we should just focus on tomorrow's excursion into the cave." 

She gave a nod as she took out their packets of food and grabbed some forks for them to eat with. As they both opened the package and smelled the deliciousness of the food inside, they enjoyed a calm night by the river eating some yummy steak. Tomorrow would be quite a major event depending on how things ended up going for them.

Eventually, one morning came. Benedictus was the first one up. Emma was sleeping next to him in bed, and she looked so cute and peaceful. He gave her a few pats of her head and down her back and a couple scritches under the chin. She, too, woke up and began licking his face in response. 

"Time to get up and do a perimeter check. Let's go girl," he said after giving her a little smooch on the snout. 

They both got out of bed, and after he grabbed his gun, they walked outside the cabin and started checking around. He had changed the layout of the pit traps so they could more effectively catch any creatures trying to enter from the edge of the tree line while remaining well hidden by vines and leaves from anyone who didn't know they were already there. He also used the wood from the trees that he had shot down a few days back when he was testing the increase in power he got from Arcane ancestry to create a wooden wall around the clearing right behind all the pit traps. Outside of the pit traps, he also set up some net traps he made primarily with plant material that he was able to turn into more primitive rope.

Thankfully, nothing had set off any of his traps and the ground outside the wall looked undisturbed by anyone outside of them. It did help that he had moved the corpses of all of those dead vinuu out into the forest around the area. This lets the smell of the corpses both bring creatures to the area, only for the number of corpses to scare them away. Most animals, upon seeing enough corpses, associate certain areas like that with extreme danger or sickness.

For now, it must have been sufficient in warding off any creatures trying to come closer to this part of the forest. Feeling satisfied, he went back to his cabin and grabbed a change of clothes. He took the largest pot they had and filled it with water. He set it on the makeshift stove and walked up to the door of Marcelina's shelter.

Giving it a knock, she slowly woke up, and she said, "I'm up now. I'll purify the water in a moment."

With that, he went back over to his cabin to grab his bathing supplies. This was now their routine for mornings as it allowed them to get in a somewhat primitive bath and change into fresh clothes before they headed out into the forest. 

It was about an hour later, after both of them had thoroughly washed themselves and changed into fresh clothes, they had finished up eating some of Ben's snacks for breakfast and took some water bottles with them. They made sure that all of their weapons were ready and Ben actually wanted to do something special. 

"Could you hand me your pocket knife? I'd like to try something," he politely requested from her. 

"I don't see why not," she spoke as she handed it to him. 

He took both his pocket knife and his switchblade and, with all three of them in his hand, he used his minor geo manipulation to merge them all together into a proper dagger. Since they were all made out of only metals, it was easy for him to shape them into the rough form of a dagger, and then use some of the nearby wood from nearby sturdy trees to create a comfortable handle. With some of the plant life around, he created a plant-based fiber wrap around the handle with a similar design to what you would see on traditional Japanese tanto daggers with a primitive design that would be more comfortable to hold. Once he was done, he checked the edge to make sure that it was sharp enough to work with and gave it a few cuts and stabs into a nearby tree. 

Seeing that it held up just fine, he handed it to her and said, "Here you are. Fighting with a pocket knife is not the best if we're going to go inside their nest. Something with a little bit more reach and lethality will go a long way. Especially since you don't use magic like I do, and your powers are more support-based."

"Thank you. It looks very nice. I'm sure it will be very useful," she thanked him, gladly taking the now improved weapon.

He gave her a nod and then created stone stairs with his geo manipulation that they used to walk to the top of the wall and then walk down to the bottom outside before making them disappear back into the soil, "It will take 3 hours of walking to get there and once we've arrived we can take a brief break. Once we've rested enough after arriving, we'll head in and see what the hell that cave has in store for us."

All three of them gave him a nod, understanding the mission, and they began to head out in the direction of where the cave was. They did not know if they would come across any creatures on the way, but they were certain that inside the cave there would be at least a couple of vinuu. He did not know how many they might find there or if the cave was really the nest of those creatures. He hoped that it was because those creatures were starting to become annoying and getting rid of the rest of them would also provide quite a bit of XP and safety.

Realizing that they were probably about to have to do a lot of fighting, Benedictus went ahead and finally allocated his stat points and skill points that he had been holding off on assigning. He increased his brilliance to 38, his endurance to 26, and his might to 16. He increased his perception to 33, his arcana to 30, and his animal handling to 31. 

With that, he did some quick mental math to try and get an understanding of just what he was doing in overall damage currently. All of his spells are level 1 and share the same base damage of 18 to 72 with some of them allowing him to add his Brilliance to the total damage dealt. For those specific spells, it brought the overall minimum and maximum up to 56 at the minimum to 110 at the maximum. That was before adding the overall plus 70 to the damage that he gets from his two positive traits, battle hardened and magical genius.

All in all, this means that his spells that don't apply his brilliance to the damage dealt was 88 to 142, and the ones that allowed him to add his brilliance to them would deal 126 to 180 damage. He couldn't help but smile at that, seeing as such damage made him very effective at dealing with enemies so long as he hit them with whatever attack he was using. He hoped that if he could make the right choices, he could potentially become a more DPS focused magical tank.

He was cut off from his thoughts as Marcelina asked him, "I see you smiling over there. Found something interesting on your character sheet?" 

"No.... Just went over some mental math for my current damage output. I'm very happy with my current combat capabilities is all," he explained while trying to hide the smirk on his face.

"As long as I'm not on the receiving end of that, I will be happy," she remarked while giving him a cautious smile. 

He reassured her, "You haven't given me a reason to even consider that yet. You're fine. So long as you don't suddenly start trying to kill me for no reason, I won't ever have a need to defend myself against you. Besides, I like having you around at this point. Your positive attitude is starting to become infectious."

"Well, optimism is better than pessimism any day. Life is always going to be hard, but it becomes easier when we choose to look at the brighter side of things. At least that's what I've come to accept," she commented nonchalantly, just happy to feel appreciated.

Emma and Charles made happy noises in agreement with her which made Marcelina and Benedictus chuckle a bit. They then turned their attention back to focusing on getting to the cave. Thankfully, the next 3 hours of walking flew by without issue, and they arrived to the outskirts of the cave without encountering any wild animals that seemed to want to attack them.

"Finally made it......... Now let's take a 20-minute break. I made sure to grab my backpack and bring some snacks and drinks so we could make sure we won't go in fighting hungry or thirsty," Ben told her as he took off his backpack.

At the same time, Marcelina used her class-specific ability, which allowed her to look over the surroundings and spot differences and changes that most people couldn't. She was happy that there didn't seem to be any wild creatures lurking about outside the cave. She informed him while gladly taking another bottle of water and two granola bars, "The coast also appears to be clear, and my Wild Sight doesn't show any beast lurking about hidden in the surrounding area. We should be good for now, but keep your eyes and ears peeled in case anything decides to go in the cave or come out of it while we're taking a rest."

"Noted," he replied while grabbing some dried fish that he had prepared in advance for Emma and Charles. 

They all took essentially about a half hour break outside the cave. For the most part, nothing interrupted them until towards the end when they had heard howling nearby. Looking in that direction, they saw a pack of at least 8 vinuu returning to the cave with some of them dragging back what appeared to be a deer creature. But instead of having fur, it had feathers and its hooves and horns seemed to be made out of marble. 

There was a response howl from inside the cave from several different similar creatures that seemed further in. It looked like none of them had noticed the group hiding nearby and keeping a watchful eye on the situation. The group chose not to intervene as attacking now would probably result in many of them running away or worse. Sitting and watching silently, they saw the pack enter the cave with this freshly caught and killed prey.

They chose to wait another 10 minutes just so they could see whether any creatures would exit the cave. They were at least certain now that the cave was desperately a nest for these creatures. After 10 minutes of further waiting and seeing nothing exit, they stood up and got ready to head inside. 

"Once we enter, we don't leave unless we have to, or we have finished the job. Keep in mind safety first, as none of us are going to be doing anything heroic. I don't want anyone dead or severely injured. Understood," he instructed like the old sergeant that he once was. 

They all gave an affirmative nod, and he responded with a nod of his own before leading the way. He chose to cast Infuse Flame on his pistol as they reached the mouth of the cave, and he took one final deep breath, preparing for the battle ahead. To his surprise, the second he looked into the cave, once they had reached the entrance of it there were at least 6 vinuu right there just a little bit inside, partially hidden in the darkness, watching the entrance for intruders. 

He recognized that these must be the guards of the nest, and they immediately got aggressive. Without hesitating, he knew that they were either going to signal the rest themselves or the fighting would definitely alert the nest. Seeing no other option, he chose to be the one to initiate things, firing a bullet straight into the first one he saw. The sound of his gun firing echoed through the cave. But he kept shooting as he accurately shot all six of them. 

The explosions from the impact scattered stones and body parts from the creatures. Although that dealt with the entrance guards rather easily, he took note that he only had 10 bullets left, and he could hear all the nearby vinuu rushing towards the entrance as they started howling to alert the rest of the nest further in.