"You may think I spent all this ti inside my shadow walking around like a loser, but that's not what happened. While most humans and cryptids can only see as a shadow, there are so that can perceive and fight inside the shadows. This is because shadows can see other shadow creatures and tell the apart from other shadows.
dusa once explained it to , it was complicated but she ntioned sothing about shadows being two dintional..."
"That still doesn't explain how did you know it was xico and not so random place."
"Don't you know about the south hemisphere?" Nika gasped, her eyes wide in shock as she gazed at the empty air where she felt Uriel's presence.
"Yeah, we lost it after the arrival."
"We didn't just lose it, Uriel, it's covered by an ever growing darkness. Light just cannot reach it, not artificial light, not sunlight either, they've even tried to poke at it with traits, but all they've managed is to slow it, never stop it entirely. It's not called the POR for no reason."
"POR?" Uriel echoed.
"Point of no return. No hunter that ever ventured inside the darkness has ever made it back, except for that is." Nika crossed her arms in a prideful manner. "Not that I want to go back, as in ever..."
"Why not? Perhaps you could find the source of that darkness, I bet there's a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money for any information about what's going on in there."
"Not even all the money in the world is worth going back there. I always thought cryptids were scary, but so of the things I saw there..."
Uriel would have loved to continue speaking, but realized that although Nika seed in good condition and was brimming with flux energy, she was psychologically spent. This sowhat confird that she didn't just 'chill' inside the statue the whole ti and Uriel decided to let her rest.
Besides, while spending more ti with Nika and catching up with her was important, right now night was drawing near and he didn't want to be anywhere near that accursed bottomless pit when it happened.
Sure, the 'father of horrors' didn't harm him in any way and even gave him a precious gift, the fact that it so blatantly disclosed its hatred against humanity didn't reassure him in any way.
However, the fact that he found fresh foot tracks on the mud pointing at the fact that a great number of people recently passed through made Uriel think that perhaps what the cryptid said about his friends passing by was actually the truth.
How did his friends learn of the secret passage or why would the so called Father of horrors let them pass remained a mystery, but it didn't change the fact that he now had trail to pick up.
"At least the ranger training wasn't useless." Uriel let out in high spirits as he followed the path left by who Uriel guessed where his friends, but his good mood didn't last for long as he soon encountered the first battle traces.
It wasn't unexpected since traveling in groups was bound to draw a lot of cryptids, but Uriel soon figured that the number of foot tracks and the battle traces were too nurous to be just the Dungeon Raiders.
A blood splatter here, so ragged clothes there and the signs of struggle in the mud indicated the the fights were intensifying until he finally saw the first corpse. It was hard to say much about the victim due to the grueso wounds she sustained, but a female disembodied hand still clenching its fist to a broken chef knife let him now it wasn't one of his closest friends.
"They're in trouble!" Uriel rushed his steps and took a quick second to check the battery left on his smartphone, which he now knew was correlated to his flux energy pool. While he didn't enjoy the low battery warnings, the fact that his smartphone indicated with a precise percentage how much flux energy he had left made it even more useful.
Besides, he also learned that by pressing on the 'power saving mode' he could downgrade to an ascended which not only would allow him to save energy outside combat, but it could also potentially make his use of skills more efficient.
After all, using Dash as a heavenly rank consud way more energy than back when he was just an ascended. It may not seem like much considering how fast he was able to move without Dash active as a heavenly rank, but during his recent battle against Bella Eurus he realized that thinking faster was way more useful than simply moving fast.
Lost in thought, Uriel paid no mind to the scenery and mindlessly continued his race. The recent developnts had shed new light about his trait, like the possibility that his museum was actually a physical place, but also removed the dust on many of his lingering questions about it. For instance, he was certain that there was no 'power saving mode' in the system back when he was an ascended.
He knew it for sure since back then the smartphone was a novelty to him and he spent quite so ti fidgeting with it.
Once he beca a heavenly rank hunter, though, he had been so busy that he barely paid any mind to the smartphone or the system thinking that it would always remain the sa, sothing that now he knew for a fact wasn't true.
'But what triggered the power saving mode icon to appear? Was it when I was promoted to a heavenly rank hunter or... could it be? Maybe it was when I learned how to conceal my flux energy! If so, it's not that the system allowed to downgrade to the ascended rank, but the fact that I learned how to do it is the reason why the icon appeared in the first place!' Uriel thought excitedly.
He pondered about what else could have changed in the system and if there was sothing he could do to unlock new options. If the museum was truly a physical place, it might be a good idea to check it in person. Perhaps he could renovate the place and beco more powerful or he might even find the answers to questions he had yet to co up with.
For a brief second, Uriel felt the excitent of the many possibilities lying in front of him and he realized just how little he knew about his own trait. Most traits he knew of were pretty straightforward, like firing projectiles, shapeshifting, summoning weapons or controlling the elents, but there were also so traits that worked in mysterious ways.
There were also so traits that didn't manipulate an elent, but an abstract concept like Shaker's ability to cause vibrations or Rusty's ability to oxidize tal.
In spites of his excitent, Uriel was also painfully aware that it wasn't sothing he could figure out on his own.
He thought on asking Professor Fermi who seed to know at least how the summoning skills work, Luna who might know a thing or two about shapeshifting traits and even dusa who after becoming a heavenly rank hunter with a rare trait that could very well fit in the abstract concept category, but was brought to reality once the path he followed started to show more and more corpses to the point where the foot tracks were becoming scarcer and more disperse, making it clear that the huge group was taking heavy losses.
"All that can wait..." Uriel fumbled after realizing that there was no point in concerning himself with all the possibilities of research and growth right now when his friends could possibly be in trouble.
Uriel knew that most of his friends were more than able to defend themselves from most, if not any of the cryptids they could possibly encounter and kept himself from using Dash, though the impatience of being late made him anxious.
Especially since he also knew so of the mbers from his company didn't possess traits suited for combat or they weren't strong enough to participate on a big scale fight against cryptids.
Studying the trail, Uriel soon encountered sothing strange, sothing that defied everything he learned in the ranger course. The clear foot prints left behind by boots and so bare human feet soon gave way to all sort of slither marks, animal tracks and even deep punctures in the ground that seed to be made by so sort of insectoid cryptid.
The first explanation that ca to Uriel's mind was that they were being followed by too many cryptids and that those tracks belonged to them, but one detail made him think otherwise. It was strange, shocking even, but the strangest thing about it was that as soon as the foot prints shifted piles of ragged clothes started appearing on the ground.
He pondered for a few seconds as to what could be the cause, only to stumble upon it right after passing a small hill.
Reviews
All reviews (0)