Mir opened his eyes and found himself staring at a mildly lit sky. Stars were twinkling, but their light wasn't enough to brighten the sky to such an extent. Was the sun about to rise? Sure looked like it.

His hands automatically went towards his table-

Oh.

Memories hit him in a rush. He wasn't inside his home, on his bed. He was lying on a raft, floating aimlessly on a stream, inside the sacred ground.

His third wish had knocked him out pretty fast, much faster than his previous two wishes.

Feeling somewhat dizzy, Mir sat up and found Reno sleeping soundly beside him. Murray was nowhere to be seen. The raft had floated to the middle of the stream. The reason it hadn't floated away along with the gentle current was the large rock blocking its way. Rocks like this littered the stream, having fallen and carried here by landslides and earthquakes. Reno had made sure they could sleep without worrying about getting lost, it seemed.

Mir didn't think much of it and checked his communicator to see what time it was.

04: 34

"Huh, I was out of it for almost three hours?"

Mir's brows furrowed as he recalled the previous two knockout sessions. The first time, he had been under the influence of the wish in the diary for over six hours and had ended up sleeping for an equal amount of time afterwards.

The next night, he had been under the wish's influence for over two hours, and had slept for the following four hours.

Tonight, the influence of the wish in the diary was somewhat vague, but it had to have remained for nearly an hour or more. And now, the communicator informed him that he had slept for less than three hours.

Both the lasting period of the diary's influence and the side effects caused by the influence were getting reduced. After making his fourth wish, he'd be able to figure out the mathematical formula behind the reduction rate, whether it was marginal, whether the two factors were interconnected, and what influence external factors could possibly have over this phenomenon.

He put on the wet full-body jacket once more and used a spare bamboo stick to paddle the raft towards the familiar side of the banks. Paddling turned out to be more difficult than he had assumed. He had to change sides every few strokes to make sure that the raft didn't veer off the route. And it was also excruciatingly slow. Mir wasn't sure how this raft could allow them to escape any pursuer who could use long ranged weapons like guns, arrows, and even contracted mutant creatures that could fly or swim.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Murray's plan didn't seem so decent anymore.

Landing on the bank, Mir tied the raft to a tree nearby and left to look for Murray. But since Reno was still on the raft, asleep, he chose not to venture too far away. He hadn't forgotten the horrors occupying this stream. If some tentacles suddenly popped out of the water and dragged Reno down to drown, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself.

The bees had gone quiet, probably having returned inside their hut to begin the process of grooming a new queen. They'd feed her a special jelly, unlocking her royal heritage's perks, and activating the mutation factors lying dormant in her genes.

Mir couldn't help wondering if this new queen bee would become his companion, his first contacted creature.

He spent almost half an hour at the edge of the stream, occasionally delving deeper into the woods to look for Murray. He didn't seem to have returned to the grassland to observe the bees. But where else could he have gone?

Slowly, a harrowing possibility began to take shape in Mir's mind.

Did someone come to attack while he and Reno were asleep? Did Murray make an attempt to face the enemy on his own?

That didn't seem likely. The enemy was looking for the diary. They'd want to check the backpacks on the raft first. Who would be stupid enough to let go of the main objective to fight it out with some teenager?

Then...

Suddenly, a second theory emerged in his mind, this one much darker, but even more plausible than the earlier one.

Was Murray using the two of them as baits to lure the enemy to the stream while he hid in the shadows?

"...Seems to make too much sense," Mir muttered as he rushed back to the raft and ripped off the vine that was anchoring it.

With a short burst of push and one final kick, Mir sent the raft floating back to the center of the stream, climbing on top of it once the water level got too deep to run in. Mir estimated that the stream had to be more than 3 meters deep at the middle, although its small width didn’t give off that impression. Whoever jumped in thinking that they could cross it on foot would be in trouble if they didn’t know how to swim.

Almost half a kilometer ahead of their current position, there was a bend in the route of the stream where it got wider, merging with a smaller stream from that went towards the gateway station. Mir quickly paddled the raft, hoping to get to that junction of two streams as fast as possible. With the current of the stream helping, the raft sped up to a normal walking speed.

There was a good possibility that his assumption of Murray's whereabouts was wrong. But Mir wouldn’t bet on it. Murray's tendency to use others as bait was not a factor he would ever overlook.

It took him more than fifteen minutes to guide the raft to the junction. There were too many rocks, fallen trees, and clusters of aquatic plants that had grown across the stream. Had it been a clear route, the current would probably have been enough to take them there in that time.

From this juncture, one wide stream had entered deeper into the sacred ground' territory. Mir couldn’t help but wonder why the current led into the sacred ground rather than out of it. Maybe there were huge bodies of water nearby? He had read on entertainment networks that Sacred Ground No. 6 was a very complex terrain despite containing less dangerous mutated creatures. From mountains to lakes, from rivers to flatlands and dense woods, it was a marvelous tourist spot for powerful Transcenders.

Standing on the raft, Mir surveyed all five directions carefully and checked the map on his communicator. Behind him, at East lay the small jungle preceding the flatland they had crossed to reach this place. At the West, the smaller of the two streams led the way to the gateway station, running parallel to the railway tracks. At his North, the combination of the two streams, a 40-50 meter wide channel, entered the sacred ground like a snake, twisting every couple hundred meters or so.

Lastly, in the South lay the unoccupied wasteland outside the sacred ground. These regions were filled with humans once, before the activation of the sun's curse. Now abominations and stray mutant creatures roamed the ruins there, constantly fighting, killing, devouring each other, and breeding to give birth to more horrendous beings.

"Which way do I take..." Mir muttered to himself, feeling squeamish from the helplessness that was beginning to envelop him.

Right then, he heard the sound of gunshot coming from the jungle he had just floated out of.

Bang!