Chapter 17 - Run

Mill woke up with a start. He didn't know he fell asleep but that was beyond his concern as he felt a huge number of dread, that he now identified as dangers, coming to him.

He felt it coming in every direction, and if his guess was true, they should be the same with those huge black crows that chased him on the plateau. But unlike those crows, he could distinctly feel the danger not in the sky but on the ground, down the hills surrounding the whole island, and they were heading in his direction.

“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” he cursed.

He stood up from the tree and thought of what to do.

There were dangers coming to him in every direction and somehow he knew, for some reason, that they were targeting him. He had nothing that could protect him and all he could do at the moment was run, but where?

Was he going to die?

He had a title bar—whatever that was—and he had lost it. He had an ability that could make him understand foreign languages and another ability that enabled him to sense danger. The first one was clearly not useful in fighting, and he found the latter unreliable. It didn’t even register that the Dabomens were a danger to him. What good was sensing these tower monsters when he could not escape them?

He distinctly felt the presence of them and they were coming in eleven groups, from eleven different tower directions. Five huddles of them in his front and six behind him.

He contemplated going back to the mountain and climbed it, but he erased the thought. He would only be trapped there with the Dabomens and those black crows.

He had nowhere to go. Or more like, he didn't know where to go.

“Hey!” He said out loud with desperation and urgency. “Miss or Mister, the voice in my head, I need your help right now. Please, please, please help me.”

No one answered him. It was silent.

“Please, I beg you. I will do anything!”

Still no one answered him.

“Fuck! Are you the one who gave me these abilities?! Why can—” Mill stopped and breathed to calm himself. With a less angry voice, he said to the voice, “Why can’t you give me something like you did in the school, that shield. I’m not being ungrateful, but language can only do me good if I am alive. Please, I’m desperate.”

Mill walked back and forth all over the place, the danger he sensed everywhere was making him antsy.

He dropped to the rocky ground and put his head in his knees. “Am I going to die?” He asked grimly. “Right. I’m going to die, right?”

He stayed in that position, trying to get some calmness inside him. But the dangers he felt bugged his senses, as if it was begging him to run away from those dangers. But where could he go? In the eleven directions where these dangers came from, there was no space where he could escape on it.

“Can you at least remove this danger I am feeling,” he asked to it. “Can you take this ability back? At least I won’t know when they come.”

Mill felt something click inside him and suddenly the dread and danger he was feeling lessened.

He stood up, confused about what happened. He could still feel the eleven huddles of danger coming to him but they were significantly weaker than before.

Did something happen to them?

*#~*#~*#!!!

He grabbed his head as a static noise suddenly blared in it, his ears pinged and he tapped it a couple times just to stop it.

*~#*~ *#*~*# R-Runn-n #*#~

The word ‘run’ registered in his brain, and in that brief moment, he recognized the voice. It was the same neutral voice that saved him in Oxygen High.

Elated by its presence, he asked frantically, “Where? Where do I go? Is there a safe place somewhere? Where? Hey! Hello! Please answer me!”

There was a faint static sound then it abruptly stopped and went quiet.

“Hello? Fuck!” He kicked the fallen tree in frustration. “Shit! Shit!” He grabbed his hair in frustration and cussed continually. After he had his fill on cursing almost anything he thought of, he forcefully inhaled a breath to gain some calm and released it heavily. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

Still feeling the presence of those danger coming to him, he followed what the voice said and ran. He had no direction in mind. He just ran.

He ran in the darkness without care. He was in a valley with two hills on both of his sides, and even when the sky was clear, the light from the full moon was hidden by the hill on his right, making the trees that scattered from here and there look like skeleton fingers in the dark.

His feet caught on something and he stumbled to the ground. He quickly stood up and continued running. He saw in the distance a brighter section of the valley—where the moon shone directly—and ran towards it.

He just reached it when from his danger senses, he felt two huddles of danger directly behind him go out.

He paused and looked with wide eyes in that direction. He closed his eyes and counted the huddles of danger he could feel. One, two… nine!

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

There were only nine areas where he felt danger was coming to him. A section ahead of him had a space where he couldn’t feel any danger in it.

He was elated by this discovery and immediately ran into that direction.

He went back to where he had just run and relied on his danger senses to locate the direction.

His pace quickened and he reached the fallen tree again. He circumvented it and traced the foot of the mountain and planned to pass by its side.

Luckily, the moon shone brightly in the area so he was able to run in it without stumbling to the ground.

He found a walking trail leading to the side and he followed it as it led towards the east. He was not sure if it was the east but he needed to designate a direction and he chose the mountain direction as the north. Just behind that mountain, in the north east direction, was where the two clear spaces were located.

Just as he reached a deep gorge on his way, he suddenly stopped with dread.

The space where he thought the danger was gone, probably killed or something, was now back on his senses. The empty spaces in the north east were now occupied by two huddles of danger. He counted just to make sure it was not the other huddles converging there, but he counted eleven.

What happened? Why were they back?

He focused on those two huddles and noticed they were more scattered than the other huddles, as if they were apart from each other, and heading not on his way but to different directions.

He felt them stop after a few seconds and as if they had the same brain, they synchronously moved towards his direction. He could even feel their individual presence heading towards him.

They were not gone. When they went out of his senses, it did not mean that they happened to disappear. They were there all along, it was just his ability to sense them had lessened.

He contemplated what to do. His brain turned to think of a way and then he discovered a detail.

Those two groups of danger he felt in the distance were scattered and were running in random directions before he could feel them.

Beside that, there should be a reason why they were able to sense him. Maybe it was an object or something within him.

The key detail was the part that he could sense them. What if it works both ways? What if when he sensed them then they could sense him too.

That was why his ability to sense danger weakened when he asked for it. As the voice had the ability to give him abilities, they should be able to take them too. And if the voice wanted him alive then they would have to make him untraceable

Then why did it not remove the ability altogether so that those tower monsters would not sense him?

Then he felt his danger senses faded a little. That should be the reason! His senses should be shrinking in size. That was why he could not feel the other two huddles of danger. It should be that they were far from his senses.

Should he stay here and wait for his senses to completely vanish? Would it vanish truly? What if it would only shrink for a specific area? What if it would vanish but before that happened, those dangers had already reached him?

He hoped for the best and looked for a place to hide for some time before his danger senses vanished.

He banked on it vanishing.

The voice told him to run, but there was no direction where to go? Ran in circles? Ran towards those dangers?

His best hope now was to look for a place to hide, maybe a cave, and hope that his senses would die down eventually, and before they reached him.

He checked the area around him for a place to hide. There were only hills, valleys and occasional trees around. There were some bushes but he did not think that was the best place to hide.

He could see the sea to his right as there was a break in the hills but it did not offer him anything.

He decided to walk towards the direction of the sea and look for a river. There should be a river somewhere on this island.

If there was a river then there was a possibility that there was a hill beside it that could house a cave, either man made or natural. He knew his assumptions could be wrong but if someone or something had to make a cave, they usually would do it beside a source of water.

He climbed out to the right side of the gorge and just as he followed the trail leading to a small hill in front of him, he heard some voices above it.

He ducked to the ground and did not move. The voices gradually faded to the distance but as he was too far to hear he did not know if they were the Dabomen or those altaworlders that escaped before him.

He moved again when he couldn't hear the voices and started climbing the hill.

The hill was less inclined so he was able to pass it. He reached the top of the hill where knee length grasses were growing and continued following the trail that now led downhill towards another valley.

The trail transitioned later on into carved stairs making it easy for him to scale down the hill.

As he was walking in it, the quarter view of the island presented itself to him, together with the serene sea and the moon’s reflection on its surface.

He had no time to appreciate it, as in the distance, he could feel the danger coming from four directions.

In this vantage point he could pinpoint where they were. Though they were still far and had to also trekked hills to reach his position. But eventually they would reach him.

He finally reached the bottom of the hill towards a valley with a deep gorge in the middle of it.

Judging from its formation, it was possible that it used to be a dry river. They looked similar to the dry river beds he passed back when he worked on a mountain farm before.

Even though the valley was narrow and the gorge took most of the space in the middle, there was still an elevated space on both sides of the riverbed, enough for even a car to pass.

He ran in it for some time and contrary to what he had seen from above, the valley seemed to be going deeper the more he passed it till eventually the hills beside him grew so tall that he could not see its top anymore.

The trail was laid with huge stones from here and there, and he found where those rocks came from when the hillside beside him became straighter till it had become a straight wall of stones and earth, it had some loose rocks in its wall making him extra careful. The other side though still resembled a hill with the occasional bushes and trees growing in it.

Eventually, the sloped trail became even and he saw a bend on the trail ahead. He ran for a minute, the trail now curving with the valley with the occasional dip here and there, while looking for possible places to hide.

He also checked the riverbed to see if there’s a hole in it but even if the moon was shining on the other side of the hill, giving enough light to make him see his way, it was still hard for him to see the riverbed’s floor.

It was at least ten feet deep and if it was a river once, then a cave could hardly be in it.

He rounded another curve again and noticed a trail leading above on the hill on the other side. He did not use it and continued looking for a cave or someplace to hide.

He passed another turn and this time, there was a huge rock on his trail occupying almost half of the way.

He passed it without caring and stopped.

On his right was a space or a clearing directly carved from the walls of earth and rock of the hill behind it. It was wide, around fifteen meters across, and right on the far edge of the clearing sat a small hut.

And there was something moving in it.

He heard some scuttling and saw shadows moving beside the hut, but as it was nestled and shadowed by the walls of earth behind it, it was too dark for him to see

He decided to pass it quietly, fearing that there were Dabomens inside it.

He walked silently on the trail, tiptoed with haste, making as little as sound as he could.

He was halfway on the trail, right in line with the hut, when he accidentally stepped on a rock that made him slip.

He skidded to the ground to find his balance, but it already made some sound.

He heard some people shouting, then he felt something hard hit his chest.

“Fuck! Stop!” he shouted, and continued running to the trail but a light suddenly flashed in front of him. The glare blinded him for a second, then someone tackled him to the ground.