The Mountains after Alexia Leaves the Group
Before Shawn can make it to his friends and thank The Reaper, she vanishes from his sight in a glitching teleport where she appears to just glitch in place for a moment before disappearing in a purple flash of dim light. She then reappears several meters away only to disappear again immediately.
Shawn slows down as he reaches his friends, just watching the girl quickly vanish into the distance.
When he had first run into the girl, he was absolutely shocked. Both because he instantly recognized her from the screen showing the Tutorial Champion and because he remembered seeing her points shoot up soon after the Legendary Feat announced her finishing her dungeon. So he and his group had assumed she immediately went on a massacre, just killing random users after leaving her dungeon.
But now that he thinks about it, he realizes something off about that assumption.
If she really was going around killing people, then why would her points suddenly stop going up after that? And why would her points go up all at once instead of spread out over time? Almost as if she had immediately run into people upon leaving her dungeon.
Now Shawn regrets initially treating her like a monster when he had first run into her.
I wish she would join our group… we would be a lot safer if she did.
He glances at the group of four girls and his best friend guarding them. Of the girls, two of them are his sisters, with the other two being their own friends.
Their group of six were originally on vacation together before the Reset happened, so they quickly began to work together to survive after it started. Which was helped by Shawn’s experience in the military.
But the wendigos had caught them off guard.
“That was…” Shawn’s best friend, Arthur, asks, having approached him at some point while he’s been lost in thought, making Shawn flinch in surprise.
Shawn quickly recovers, hiding his flinch by turning away as he says, “It was her. But she wasn’t a murderer as we’d assumed.”
“Yeah, I could tell,” Arthur says, sounding a little shaken up despite his slightly sarcastic tone.
“Did she say anything after saving you?” Shawn asks while turning back to Arthur and then glancing at his sisters and their friends, each of whom are hugging in order to comfort each other.
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Arthur nods his head and says, “She asked where the level capped monster was.”
“Figures,” Shawn mutters before beginning to walk over towards his sisters.
That girl… is softer than she makes herself out to be. She acts like she only really cares about the level capped monster, but it probably would’ve been easier for her to follow me to the group and then follow the wendigos back to their base where the others could’ve been killed. Or she could’ve just followed me here and tried sensing for the monster itself. I doubt it would’ve taken that long.
Shawn can’t help but smile at that thought.
But she chose to save them instead, and in a way that wouldn’t hurt them.
“Shawn!” his younger sister Lily exclaims as she jumps at him and wraps her arms around him in a hug. “You’re okay!”
Shawn’s smile grows.
She was worried about me even in her situation… classic Lily.
The man looks back in the direction of the large mountain as he holds his younger sister in his arms, his older sister walking over as he does so along with her friends. And his mind quickly returns to that of The Reaper.
The look in her eyes was absolutely terrifying. Like I was gazing into death itself. And yet, despite that, she wasn’t necessarily a bad person.
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Alexia
It doesn’t take me long to reach my destination after spamming Quantum Displacement. And along the way I manage to bring the skill to level 8 as well. A very nice improvement. One that further sped up my trip here.
Teleporting is a nice way to get around.
Anyways, I focus on the large cave at the very bottom of the large mountain. The cave is filled with energy sources walking around with a purpose, and the outside of it even has a couple wendigos stationed there.
Although the wendigos in question aren’t exactly the most intelligent of creatures. According to my monsters claws at the academy, they’re on the level of goblins. A Class D species.
Not very intelligent, but they do have some intelligence. Kind of like the ancient cavemen from long before the System. Or at least how the academy depicted them. I still have trouble believing the idea that there were humans going around grunting to communicate.
But who knows.
The wendigos in question are acting like dogs, just walking around, sometimes on two feet and sometimes four. The creatures have pale white skin with white eyes and a mouth filled with sharp teeth. They have nothing more than a simple loin cloth on, and I haven’t seen a single female wendigo including these and the ones I found earlier. Which makes sense if what my professor said was true about them basically keeping their females deep within their cavern dens. Far away from any possible danger.
They don’t have any hair on their body at all and have sharp claws on both their hands and feet.
I close my eyes as I focus on the energy all around us.
One use I’ve learned about energy is that I’ve gotten much better at sensing for presences with Energy Manipulation than I was with just Quantum Attunement. I can even search for non-magical stuff now as well. So I use that to sense around the tunnels, only to find my senses cut off after reaching about halfway through the tunnels due to it being out of my range.
Okay, it looks like there are around fifty or so wendigos in the cave. And all of the ones that are let inside have stronger energy sources than the ones I sense outside, so I’m guessing that means they’re a higher level.
Looks like I have my work cut out for me now.