Later that day, Kaisen sat on the pool's edge.
Elfie and Llyod had decided to watch the periter rather than venture deep into the forest.
Maximus, Sable, and Alice chose to tend to their steeds instead of searching for berries.
Everybody was on edge.
They knew sothing was wrong with the forest, and Kaisen planned to tell them the truth about sothing out there later.
He still didn't know what the hell he was even dealing with.
'Sable will answer . But I don't think she fully knows anything.'
Kaisen thought, shaking his head.
He had let Alwyn go, and if he tid his plans perfectly, he could easily find where these people were hiding.
For that, he needed to hurry.
If he didn't, he could potentially lose everything.
'Let check my rewards first.'
He had received three or so system notifications last night, but had decided to sleep instead of checking them.
Thinking about the system, he realized there was indeed sothing suspicious about it.
The pain he felt earlier was undoubtedly inflicted by sothing powerful.
His pri suspect was, of course, the system.
'The system acted this way because I ntioned the Night Shade.'
Kaisen thought, splashing the water with his leg.
'That ans the Night Shade is really that powerful. For the system to react like that, it must be either incredibly ancient or imnsely powerful.'
He also had doubts about this Corrupted One that the system seed to serve, the entity that gave him powers and quests to corrupt won.
It was all suspicious.
From the information he had gathered, it was fairly easy to find out that every single player he had t had the sa questline, except for him.
He was the only one with lust points that increased his level.
'Well, the players could also just lie, but... it's unlikely.'
Then suddenly, he rembered sothing from earlier.
The pain in his head occurred when Maximus was talking about sothing. Sothing about Lightbearers or sothing.
For so reason, he couldn't specifically rember what the conversation was about.
He strained his mory to recall it, but it felt as though there was nothing important in the conversation worth rembering.
He grabbed his head and replayed his earlier conversation with Maximus.
The scene was scattered like pieces of a painting, and he strained and concentrated again.
The painting pieces slowly moved forward and began to glue together, one by one.
Conversations started to flow from the pieced-together painting.
"We're just wasting our ti here, Kaisen-kun. There's nothing out here. It's been over a week, and we still haven't..."
"We should go back while we can. Food is running out."
"This is a suicide mission. We cannot hope to win against whatever we are up against. Hell, they have been here before the third *****"
Maximus's voice echoed in his mind as the pieces of the mory ca together.
Random lines and scenes played in his head.
It was hard for him to hold onto the mory for so reason, especially that last part.
"What was here before the third...?"
He gnashed his teeth together, struggling to rember what Maximus had talked about.
"Even he was defeated here. What made you guys even think we have a chance against that thing?"
Maximus's voice slowly played in his mind like an old audio tape.
"Who was defeated?"
Kaisen fell forward into the pool, unaware that he had even lost his balance as he continued to clutch his head, trying desperately to rember what had happened.
Sothing was very wrong with his mory, especially after experiencing that unbearable pain in his head.
Bits and pieces of his earlier conversation were missing, as if they had been erased by so unknown entity.
The pool was obviously large enough for even Elfie to swim in. It was deep, with the water level easily reaching nine or ten feet in height.
For a little human like Kaisen, the water level was far deeper, and now he was slowly sinking to the bottom.
He didn't open his eyes.
He couldn't, as he was still in the process of rembering what had happened just hours before.
His body, on the other hand, was trying to swim, but Kaisen's mind was so occupied that his body was flailing around, causing him to sink deeper into the water.
"B-but the third ******** wasn't defeated though, right?"
Kaisen strained to grasp the mory, the fragnts of conversation swirling in his mind like leaves caught in a whirlwind.
Another piece surfaced, his own voice this ti, but it was incomplete.
"Oh yeah? He wasn't defeated? Ah, that's right, he wasn't. You know why? Because he got corru--"
Now it was Maximus's voice that he heard, but it was missing a crucial part.
This was the mont where he had felt the searing pain in his head. This was where he had felt sothing piercing his brain.
But what was it?
Then suddenly, he rembered a line spoken by soone else, and that too from a long ti ago.
"There's only one way to save our kingdom, and that is to find the ******* among you. The one who will end this Eclipse like the previous two ********"
As he struggled to recall, he couldn't shake the feeling of missing pieces in Queen Roslyn's words at Hero Square when she gave them the optional quest to defeat the Night Shade.
It seed like crucial parts were absent there too.
anwhile, it had been a few minutes since he was subrged underwater.
His body was losing oxygen, and the lack of it was causing him to shut down.
Kaisen felt his mind growing blank, darkness encroaching from all sides.
?!
All of a sudden, he opened his eyes to a sea of blue, slowly fading into engulfing blackness.
Realizing he was underwater, he looked around frantically, attempting to swim upward.
But he had already depleted too much oxygen, and the encroaching darkness blurred his vision, enveloping him completely.
As he slowly sank into the depths of the pool, his vision began to black out entirely.
But just before he lost consciousness, he caught sight of a beautiful rmaid—a naked one at that.
She was large, with green hair, and wore a startled expression as she laid eyes on him.
'Let just...taste you...'
With that final thought, Kaisen closed his eyes.
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