Sensing Whisker's bond co active again, it freed a knot in Alex's heart that had been there since his arrival within the realm. Whisker was alive and well from what he could sense, and close by too.
He had to be within this island even.
"I'm so happy you're here, Whisker," he said through his bond. "Where are you? I'll co find you."
He waited for an answer, but it didn't co.
"Whisker?" he called out again, but there was still no answer.
Alex frowned. He couldn't help but worry about why Whisker wasn't answering. He worried that Whisker was unconscious, which was why he wasn't responding. But Alex couldn't sense any distress either.
He tried to tap into Whisker's senses to see where he was through his own eyes. If he was within this island, as his bond suggested, then he should be able to sense him.
But he failed.
He could not see the status of his Seeking Mouse. 'Is this the doing of the island?' he thought.
All this ti, it had blocked any and all aura to the outside world after all, so it could be doing the sa.
'But I could talk to Pearl and Scarlet in the previous islands. Is this the only one where it is doing this?' he wondered. A part of him feared that sothing had happened to Whisker, which was why he wasn't responding.
But since he was already here, nothing that happened to Whisker mattered anymore. Even if he did die, he would likely go back into his Beast Space to revive again.
With that thought in his mind, Alex stepped away from the edge,
walking into the forest. He finally gave so thought to the island before him and the final trial he had to go through.
He didn't know what the trial itself was. From what the bird had said, he needed to go to the center. But that in itself could not have been the trial. There had to be an obstacle along the way, did there not?
The forest ahead of him was dense with all sorts of plants covering the majority of the island, except for the center area where an isolated, steep-sided, flat-topped mountain lay.
Alex could barely see anything on the flat top of the mountain, unable to tell if there were any plants there to begin with. Although, from ti to ti, he could see a massive fire bird coming down from the smog clouds before flying back into the smog.
'If I need to get to the center, Alex thought, 'does that an I need to climb that mountain?'
He would have to get close to it. It worked in his favor that he was sensing Whisker from that general direction as well. Even the Sun God pointed in that very direction.
At that point, there was nothing else left to do but head in.
Alex felt a sense of pressure surrounding him as he started walking, not one that caused much of an issue, but an annoyance just the sa. He walked into the forest, one that was filled with many poison plants yet again, but not to the sa degree as the previous trials
were.
If soone told him that these plants just happened to grow here on their own, he would believe them. They were sparse enough that anyone who knew enough about plants could easily navigate through them.
Around five minutes into his walk, he heard a loud caw as one of the fire birds flying above the smog ca down toward the island, moving straight in his direction.
Alex could try and fight it and see where he stood against the bird,
but he decided to instead avoid the fight altogether. With a simple thought, yang aura flooded out of his body, and the bird could no longer find him.
It returned to the sky, where it road around once again.
There was not much else for Alex to do. Nothing for him to worry about or fight against. Even the pressure was nothing more than a subtle weight on him.
The final trial wasn't even a trial.
'What's going on?' he wondered. He did not believe that the final trial, which had to be the most important, was without any actual challenge. If there wasn't one, then it ant he just hadn't seen it yet.
'Just what is going to spring out on ?"
He was more worried now than he had been throughout all the
previous trials.
There was nothing much to update Pearl and Scarlet on, so he
continued through the forest in the direction where he could sense Whisker. After a while, he arrived before the rock face of the flat-topped mountain, with a vertical wall that went nearly a hundred ters into the sky.
"Is the platform sowhere up there?" he thought, wondering if he should go there right away. But before that, he needed to find
Whisker.
The feeling from Whisker still ca from straight ahead, as if he was hiding within the mountain itself. Sending his senses ahead, Alex found it impossible to sense anything within the mountain. The mountain seed off-limits to all senses.
Looking around, he failed to see any way to get into the mountain either.
Alas, there likely was no need to get in there. If Whisker's bond was coming from straight ahead of him, then he was likely on the other
side of the mountain instead.
Alex called out to him again, but he failed to get anything back. So, he could only go around the mountain, trying to find him.
The mountain was quite large in size. As he started going around it, he realized that the mountain itself was easily over a few kiloters wide, which ant he had to walk a long way around it.
As the direction of his bond changed while he walked, Alex was happy
to learn that Whisker was, in fact, sowhere beyond the mountain. At his current speed, it would take no more than a few minutes for him to finally et the little mouse once again.
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