Chapter 170

  Ways of the Wild (II)

  Rayce ran back inside the cave, his breathing ragged and quick, his heart all but leaping out of his chest. Snapping his fingers, the massive boulder at the entrance shook and trembled for a moment before rolling over, closing the gaping hole and turning the tunnel dark.

  Yet another snap of the fingers suddenly sprung the light along the walls, where circles and lines within them began to wiggle like worms.

  After catching his breath for a moment, he walked along the tunnel's walls and deeper into the cave; not too long later, it opened up into a hollowed-out chamber with tall ceilings and jagged crystals jutting out at strange angles, mingling.

  "Rayce, what happened?!" A worried voice caused his nervous expression to mellow out as he looked over to the tiny corner.

  "Aah, nothing much," he replied.

  "Nothing much?! You look like you've been hit with a sledgehammer!"

  "... Aray found me."

  "... we need to run," she said, grabbing his arm and trying to yank it.

  "No. We don't need to run anymore."

  "What?"

  "I killed him."

  "That's even worse!! We absolutely need to run!" she said. "We've been meaning to leave anyway, so why not?"

  "... I'm tired, Iryan," he said with a sigh. "I'm tired of running. This place... it isn't bad."

  "We're living in a cave, Rayce."

  "It's better than that torture chamber we used to call home."

  "That may be, but it's still just a cave," she said. "You know what woke me up this morning?"

  "..."

  "A bat."

  "That's not so bad."

  "It took a shit on me."

  "Oh."

  "If Aray found you," she said, her voice softening as the two walked over to a makeshift 'table' made out of slate and a pair of logs they heaved from the outside. "Then it means we haven't erased our trace well enough. And since he found you, others can find you too. No, they will find us eventually. There's only so much that the Bloodsucker's scent can cover."

  "... what if we asked him for help?" He regretted the question as soon as he said it. Iryan whipped her head toward him and gave him one of the coldest stares in a while.

  "Of course. We should also go bend over in front of lions and ask them to lick our necks clean. What could go wrong?"

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Fine, it's a stupid idea."

  "No, coming here was a stupid idea," she continued. "Suggesting we go asking that monster for help? It goes far beyond stupid, Rayce."

  "Fine! So, what's your brilliant idea, huh? Where are we supposed to run?"

  "North," she said. "We go north."

  "Oh, that's not vague, and insanely dangerous," he also felt a bubble of rage erupt from within. "What makes you think we'd be safer with those hapless cretins praying to the Void all day long than we are here?"

  "We're not safe anywhere," she said. "But at least out there we have a fighting chance. Here? We're like cornered beasts. How did you kill Aray, anyway? Doesn't he have four circles?"

  "Hm," he nodded, smiling proudly. "I drew a confusion scroll a few days back and, while testing it, accidentally left it impregnated in a tree. By happenstance, he encountered me while I was going to fetch it; I used the scroll to project a dragon's head and got him in the moment of confusion."

  "What about his body?"

  "I sensed his core explode a few moments later," he said. "There shouldn't be one."

  "Did anyone see anything?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, I am very sure that nobody was staring at the two of us fighting. Besides, if anyone did, do you think we'd be safely chatting as we are right now?"

  "... haah," she sighed deeply, stretching her arms out as the bones cracked. "I'm sorry, Rayce."

  "What for?"

  "It's my fault we're in this mess," she added, her head falling down onto the cool table. "If I'd only swallowed my tongue..."

  "You did. Many times. If anyone's at fault, it's the Counts. They let that Bloodsucker come and go as he wishes, and yet they banished you for just speaking out against injustice. It'll be fine. I'll go up tomorrow and resupply. The new shipment should have arrived by now."

  **

  Can I describe mountaineering in one word?

  Garbage.

  In two words?

  Putrid garbage.

  In many words?

  It's the worst thing in the world since the launch day of an MMO.

  No, seriously. How do some people do this shit for fun? What is wrong with their brains? Are they even humans like I am? Or were they skin-wearing aliens who found pleasure in climbing paths so steep they may as well be freakin' vertical ladders?

  And it's so cold.

  Oh my God, it's gotten so cold! Even constantly applying some heat to my robes is just barely making it tolerable.

  And it's all gray. So gray and so dull. Not a colorful tree in sight--just rocks and stones and dirt. Furthermore, there's no straight path, no--we like curves over here, sir. So, we go far left, then a few feet up, then we go far right, and then a few more feet up, and so on, making exactly a hundred feet or so of progress upward per day.

  Under the right circumstances, I could have peed that far back in my glory days.

  But, anyway, at least we're making progress, and there's been no other... incidents in the past week or so.

  Just dull days of climbing, listening to kids occasionally fight, but mostly just everyone being kind of miserable, you know? Though we were always together, there was also always this space around and between us that gave us an illusion that though we were together, we weren't stuck together.

  Here and now? That illusion's gone. It's sort of the same scenario of shoving six or seven people into a space shuttle and then sending them on a four-year mission to some planet or another. There will be fistfights at some point; it's inevitable.

  The only immune one was, as you'd guessed it, Long Tao--and that's mostly just because he never really engaged with anyone. If we'd reach a wide enough flat, he'd spar and observe kids first thing in the morning, but for the most part, he just stayed to himself.

  That left me trying to navigate the turbulent waters of the teenage kids jabbing each other, and let me tell you something... oh boy, am I woefully unprepared.

  Dai Xiu just called Wan Lan a 'homewrecker', which I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know what the word means, and in turn Wan Lan called her a 'nosey pecker,' which, apparently, was the worst thing in the world because Dai Xiu gasped and nearly started weeping.

  Xi Zhao stepped in, which only made the two girls turn on him, and that's where we're at now.

  "Aren't you going to step in, Master?" Light asked curiously. Right, she was also here. I forget, on occasion, actually. Though she wasn't as divorced from the rest of us as Long Tao (she'd occasionally take a jab or two, too), she really did have a tendency to just... blend in.

  "It's just the growing pains," I tried to put a positive spin on it. "It'll make us all grow closer in the long run."

  "If they don't tear each other to shreds in the meantime."

  "... we don't say that part out loud, Light."

  "Oh. Okay. What else don't we say out loud, Master?"

  "So many things. Oh, so, so many things..."