Shin led his new travelling companions through the forest in silence, a silence Anton and Mariana were none too keen to break, following tentatively and without objection. Although the boy, which they had figured out he was, hadn’t done anything strange in the hour they’d been on the move, nothing could erase the sight of him slaughtering those goblins like cattle. Shin looked around and came to a stop, and they did too with some concern.
“Here’s good.” Shin turned to them. “Wake me if you see or hear anything.”
With no further explanation, Shin sat against a tree and closed his eyes. The two ordained guards look at each other before sitting down. The hollow realization of their loss had already sunk in and now the weariness caught up. All in all, they had been saved and gained a protector for the night, but the emptiness didn’t make it feel like such a blessing.
The two sat in silence, but only Anton’s expression grew firmer, taking occasional glances at Shin. “We need to take his items.” He whispered quietly to Mariana after a quarter of an hour.
“Are you crazy? You saw what he can do.” Mariana was in disbelief and fright at the thought. “We need to convince him to let us join him.”
“And he’s going want dead weight like us?” Anton shot back.
“He needed us to sleep…”
“If that’s such an easy job, where’s the rest of his party?”
Mariana had no good response to that point, taking a couple moments of silence. “...what else are we supposed to do? We can’t survive on our own. We can just follow him and do what he asks, like this…”
“What if he doesn’t want to? What if he just gets up and walks away in the morning? Then we’re stuck with nothing.” Anton’s tone and demeanor grew firmer still, rising to his feet as quiet as possible. “He has to have a lot of items, potions too. Things we be stronger with.”
“What are you doing?” Mariana stuttered with quiet alarm.
Anton hushed her and said nothing more, taking careful steps over to sleeping boy. It was nothing difficult, he persuaded himself, he just needed to take the bags and leave. Nerves threatened to pull the decisiveness from him but he willed himself closer, mind starting to race as he urged himself up with repeated words.
Close now, he glanced up just to make sure, and saw an open eye, deep and consuming as the night, focused directly on him. Anton broke into a cold sweat as his mind went blank. The boy hadn’t moved an inch, aside from a single infallible eye. How much had he heard, what was he thinking, primitive feelings of such questions circulated the core of his being.
“I… just, move…stretching…” Anton babbled nonsense as he slowly backed away, returning to his guard spot and knelt down next to a panicking Mariana, his breathing heavy and erratic.
Shin looked at them for a few moment before closing his eyes, with the intention of following asleep for real this time. With his perception, he could hear everything they whispered. It was good they hadn’t intended on killing him, but he had to make sure them wouldn’t try the slightest offense. The druid was already opposed to acting against him and any ill intent the blond warrior held had just left him. Shin was confident they wouldn’t try anything again tonight.
Four hours was normally more than enough for him to function at full capacity but with the mental fatigue he accrued, he suspected he would need at least six to go on another four days, if needed. Shin willed his body to sleep, the last thoughts of the night about the need to settle down and focus on training his body.
---
Shin awoke to strands of the morning light glazing through the branches, a few hours past dawn he gleaned immediately. He rose, his body feeling well rested and in good form, ready to work. He looked over at his watchdogs who seemed like they were starting to have trouble staying awake, but they had done their jobs.
“Anything specific you want?” Shin’s questioned jolted them alert, Anton rose to his feet and Mariana followed, looking confused. “Items.”
“Oh, we…”
“We want to follow you.” Mariana cut in.
“You’ll slow me down…” Shin chimed. And they would. Shin had no doubt they wouldn’t be able to keep up with his travelling speed.
“We can keep guard! Just like last night.” Mariana tried to plead their appeal, Shin’s silent thought only making them panic more.
“Okay.” The casual change of opinion caught them off guard, but Shin had thought seriously about it. They weren’t reliable guards but he wasn’t exactly flush with choices to pick from. And he planned to stay relatively still once he found a good place to workout. Having them to stand watch would benefit him.
“Let’s go.” Shin glanced around with his spirit eyes and walked off. The two guards hurried after him.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Um. where are we going… exactly?” Mariana found the courage to ask.
“Need a place to train.”
The concept of training in this place where survival seemed impossible was completely alien to the two. Shin thought for a moment. “Haven’t you increased your stats naturally?”
“Yeah…” Anton answered. “Just Vitality though.”
Shin took note of that. “All you did was run around and try to survive, right? You never did strength or agility training.” Anton’s silence was all he needed.
“No reason the other stats aren’t the same.” Shin glanced to the right and changed direction.
“My name’s Mariana.” The druid blurted out, trying to keep pace. “This is Anton.”
“Shin.”
She rolled with the lukewarm response. “Identify doesn’t work on you. Is that a skill.” Shin took a bit more interest in her efforts.
“I ranked up.”
“How?”
“250 total stat points.”
“Stat? Attributes?”
“Yeah. You get points for maxing skills at level 10.”
This was extremely valuable information for the two and it showed. “Is that how you got so strong? What’s your class. Warrior or monk, right?”
“Priest.”
“Huh…” An answer completely outside their expectations and one they didn’t fully believe, but it didn’t seem like the boy was lying.
“What are your skills?” Mariana was a bit taken back by the first question Shin had asked them, but regrouped herself quickly.
“Thorn Whip, Treat Wounds, and Tripvine. I picked Tripvine. It binds the target with grass and plants, strong grass and plants. Thorn Whip turns plants into a vine with thorns I can strike monsters with. Treat Wounds…”
“I know Treat Wounds.”
Mariana close her mouth and nudged Anton until he participated. “Enhanced Strike and Basic Melee Weapon Combat. Turned into Basic Sword Combat. I picked Backstep. Lets me jump back faster.”
Shin recalled the skill the second ranger had used against him. A movement skill, something useful, something he wanted. Shin could imagine how other movement techniques would form into skills of their own, but all were beyond his reach. The system wouldn’t afford him the space.
“Where are you from, Shin?”
“Japan.”
“Venezuela.” Mariana pointed at herself with a smile.
“Switzerland.” Anton said before Mariana could prompt him again.
“Crazy how we can all understand each other right? I mean to speak spanish but it feels like I’m saying something else, but it’s exactly what I want to say.”
“Oh, that’s right…” Shin didn’t realize until the now increasingly talkative woman pointed it out. He hadn’t thought about the Universal Translation aspect of the Initiate perk since the dark zone, which made him remember something else. “Did you see red light-”
A flash of gray, faster than Shin’s eyes could keep up with, and the crunch of metal and bone interrupted his question. Time came to a still as he saw the source. A giant wolf with vicious feral eyes staring right at them. In its jaw was the wheezing body of Anton, his blood flowing down the large teeth that pierced through his armor like a knife through paper.
Shin’s pause lasted but a fraction of a second. Three angels burst into existence, weapons bearing down on the great beast, and he fled. He pulled every ounce of power Body Supremacy could allow and fled, faster than he’s ever run before. Darting through trees and over bushes, around boulders and down ledges with not an instant of hesitation. Every fiber of his being was focused into fleeing as far away as possible.
He felt a connection to one of his angels vanish. No screams reached his ears in the half dozen seconds it had been. Perhaps the wolf didn’t allow them time. Shin had ordered his angels to dodge and block to stall for time but he doubted any order mattered much. Prismatic colors flashed in his eyes for a moment as he changed direction, avoiding any monsters that would slow his stride or leave a trail.
In the corner of his vision he spotted something and shifted direction once more, sliding down a short cliff into a pool of mud, rolling through it and leaping up back into a sprint without a moment’s delay in action, smearing mud on the parts of his body and gear he had missed.
Another angel died and then a third. Shin ran and ran, in a single direction now, mustering every ounce of his focus to maintain top speed through the obstacles and avoid the leaves on the ground. No cliff or cave in sight, no tree tall and strong enough, his only option was to run.
Not a minute had passed but Shin felt a bad premonition from running any longer. He leaped into the thickest cluster of trees nearby and crouched down behind one of them. The beast wasn’t a trained assassin, or a huntsman. It had been half a minute since he doused himself in mud. This distance would be sufficient to lose it, at least until it tried the wrong direction and gave him time again to move.
A footstep on the ground beyond the trees froze him in place. Another footstep and another, weighty, long, and slow. Shin went completely still. Not a single muscle moved, not even the slightest twitch of his eyelids. He held his breath and stopped the beating of his heart, shutting off everything but his mind.
Could the wolf smell him even through the mud. Was its perception as high as its speed. He didn’t hear the initial attack. Was it a stealth ability. Why was it not using it now. Did it not know where he was, or was it toying with its prey. Questions swirled in Shin’s mind.
The speed of this giant monster far surpassed anything he had encountered so far. Trying to outrun it was as futile as fighting it. Out of mana and no items in his spatial bags able to save him, there was nothing he could do. Nothing but keep as still as a stone.
The footsteps drew nearer then past him, that and the low ominous breathing the only sounds in the world. Slowly they drifted away and then suddenly right behind the trees. Shin made no movement, used no abilities, as the wolf growled, lowering its head closer. A howl in the distance, powerful and pleading, caused the giant wolf to perk back up and sprint off in its direction.
Shin still did not move, straining his ears until the last vestiges of its footsteps disappeared, and then broke into a sprint in the opposite direction. Even faster than before now he ran, taxing his body beyond its limits. Through a clearing he spotted a river. A quick flash of prism and Shin dived into it from a sprint, swimming to the other side and returning to a sprint. There would be no second chance. Even if his muscles tore, if his ligaments detached, if his bones fractured, he was going to run for hours.
---
Shin panted on the ground in the dead of night, sincerely breathing heavily for the first time in years, pulling in the oxygen he needed to rid his body of the lactic acid filling his muscles. He cast Treat Wounds on his body continuously. A healing potion had fixed his cracked bones but a second did nothing but fill his mouth with the taste of ash.
His body was battered and worn but fortunately nothing that couldn’t heal naturally in time. But this changed little. He now knew that this stage held dangers far more overwhelming than mere goblin warriors. He needed to be stronger. He needed to be stronger fast.