After about four days on the road, Old John drove the rented car and brought Everly and Misha to the university.
The journey was not entirely smooth.
Just as Everly had feared, driving across multiple states was a very dangerous thing in a horror-world setting.
Along the way, when they passed through the wilderness between two cities, the trio encountered bandits disguised as travelers.
It was a seductive woman with long golden wavy hair, bright red lips, and a slender figure. She stood beside a broken-down red sports car, dressed lightly, striking flirtatious poses. From a long distance away, she reached out toward their vehicle, forming a classic hitchhiking gesture with her hand—four fingers curled, thumb extended upward.
Old John’s response was to floor the accelerator without hesitation. He didn’t even acknowledge her, simply driving straight past her side.
At the mont the two vehicles passed each other, all three people in the car realized that the so-called blonde woman standing by the broken-down sports car was not a young beauty at all, but an elderly woman with heavy makeup and a face full of wrinkles.
Seeing that the approaching vehicle showed no intention of stopping, the woman lunged forward, trying to use her body to block the car, but she was thrown aside by the speeding vehicle.
“Rumble—!”
Not long after the car sped past, a deafening engine roar erupted from behind them.
Through the rearview mirror, the people inside the car saw a modified light pickup truck erging from the hill near the red sports car, roaring as it chased in their direction.
Fortunately, their car had never slowed down and had been maintaining top speed the entire ti. It was much faster than the pickup.
After chasing for a while, the other vehicle not only failed to catch up, but the distance between them kept widening.
Just as they were about to shake off the pickup, several bandits with grotesque appearances and vicious expressions leaned out from the passenger seat and cargo bed. They let out muffled roars, raised their guns, and opened fire in a burst toward the car.
“Left! Watch the tires!” Misha and Everly had been pressed against the window the entire ti, closely monitoring the situation behind them. Seeing the gunfire, they imdiately warned Old John.
The car they were riding in was a rental and had no bulletproofing. On a wilderness road like this, being hit would be extrely dangerous.
Old John reacted instantly. He jerked the steering wheel left, swerving the vehicle sharply across the road—“da-da-da!” A burst of bullets narrowly missed the tires, striking the concrete and sending shards of stone flying.
By that ti, their car had already surged far ahead.
Under the gaze of the bandits, the vehicle remained completely unhard, roaring down the road and disappearing into the distance.
Once they had driven a long distance, the three people in the car finally relaxed and had the mood to chat.
“I told you that woman was suspicious. Look at how fashionable she was dressed, but the sports car was covered in dust and even the windshield was dirty. It didn’t look like a recent breakdown at all. I knew I wasn’t wrong!” Misha chattered excitedly.
Everly nodded. “More than that, I also saw a reflection from glass lenses behind the hill. That slope was completely barren, so normally no one would be there. I suspect soone was hiding there, spying on us with binoculars. If that was the blonde woman’s accomplice, he should have co out and stood with her when we approached—but he didn’t. That’s suspicious too.”
“Yes, I saw the reflection too. And I checked before leaving—there have been several reported cases of vehicle disappearances in this area in recent years,” Old John added.
Fortunately, all three of them were experienced enough to imdiately see through the woman’s disguise and did not stop the car. Otherwise, with the performance of that modified pickup truck, they might not have been able to escape.
After getting out of danger, they reported the incident at a police station in the next city.
However, the local police were very perfunctory. Their attitude was evasive, clearly implying that an attack outside city limits was not their responsibility.
Since Everly and the others were just ordinary passersby, and the police kept brushing them off, there was nothing they could do except beco even more cautious on the road ahead.
Fortunately, they did not encounter another highway ambush afterward. But when they stayed at a hotel, they ran into an arson incident.
Even though it was a well-established hotel with a good reputation, sothing still happened in room 1408 on the sa floor on the night they checked in.
The guest in that room was an ordinary middle-aged man.
After checking in, he first called room service, complaining that the air conditioner in his room was malfunctioning, causing quite a commotion.
The hotel building was quite old, and the soundproofing was poor. After struggling through the noise until room service finally left, not long afterward, the man’s terrified screams erupted from the room again.
The screams disturbed the other guests, and soone called hotel staff. Strangely, this ti the staff stood outside and knocked on the door for a long ti, but the man inside kept screaming “ahhh” hysterically, completely ignoring any questions or attempts to calm him down.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #1: pay attention to hints.
With such an obvious sign that “sothing bad was about to happen,” Everly naturally couldn’t ignore it. On top of that, her own danger sense had already started blaring alarms. So the mont the man began screaming inside the room, she imdiately called Old John and Misha, grabbed their luggage, and hurriedly left the 14th floor via the ergency stairs.
It was labeled as the 14th floor, but in reality it was the 13th. In the West, 13 is considered an unlucky number, so so hotels renumber it as 14 to avoid the superstition.
The descent took a while. By the ti they followed the winding staircase down to the ground floor and stepped out of the hotel, room 1408 above them was already on fire.
Raging flas poured out through the open window, licking at the building’s exterior walls. In the glow of the fire, they could faintly see the middle-aged man running back and forth in a frenzied state.
The fire was intense, and the burning floor was very high up, beyond the reach of the fire truck ladders. The building contained many flammable wooden materials, and in the rolling smoke, the 14th floor—and even the rooms above it—gradually began to burn as well.
Fortunately, Everly and the others had co down early, avoiding being caught in the chaos.
Later, they checked out at the front desk and got a refund, then booked a room at another nearby hotel.
After all these twists and turns, constantly living alongside unexpected dangers, by the ti they finally arrived safely in Dalami City, where the university was located, all of them breathed a collective sigh of relief.
By this ti, several days had already passed since the official start of the sester.
Fortunately, Old John had already arranged a deferred enrollnt for the two of them in advance. After arriving at the university, aside from so inconvenience with course selection and make-up classes, there were no major problems.
After sending the girls to the university, Old John did not leave imdiately.
He had always been sowhat worried about the incident on the Killing Island, so the old man deliberately stayed for a while in a ranger’s cabin. Only when the news began to snowball—when more and more people joined in condemning the killing ga, and even the President of the United States, under mounting pressure, publicly stated that such inhumane activities must be thoroughly investigated—did Old John finally feel reassured enough to bid farewell to the two girls, board a plane, and leave Dalami City.
By the way, the route Old John chose for his return trip was the Concord–Gilosha–Sunken line.
According to Native Arican sources, Gilosha was currently undergoing intensive reconstruction. No strange illnesses had reappeared in the city, and it was considered safe. However, the local fishing industry had been heavily damaged, and it was unclear when it would recover.
Passing through Gilosha as a transit point at this ti would not pose any danger.
After seeing Old John off, Everly and Misha devoted all their energy to their studies.
After advancing to their third year, they finally began taking major-specific courses.
As a practical discipline, the university’s wilderness survival program used a combination of theory and hands-on training. In simple terms, the first half of the sester focused on building foundational knowledge, followed by a theoretical exam mid-sester. Students who passed could accompany instructors into the wild for field exercises—learning and practicing at the sa ti, which made the course quite interesting.
Everly had previously learned so survival skills from Old John and did have a certain level of competence. However, during the Killing Island incident, she realized that her knowledge and skills still had noticeable gaps and weaknesses.
To give just the simplest example: when they were drifting at sea, Everly and Misha could only build a basic wooden raft. They didn’t know how to rig a sail, and they had forgotten how to construct a sunshade. As a result, the raft could only move forward by oars or ocean currents.
If it hadn’t been for Everly’s “blessing of the sea,” and the stroke of luck that they encountered a working whale, they might have ended up literally drying out into human jerky in the open ocean.
This clearly showed that there was still a lot of room for improvent in the skills she had learned.
Having gone through so much hardship just to arrive at the university, Everly deeply valued this learning opportunity. Even though much of the theoretical content being taught in class was already familiar to her, she did not beco impatient.
After all, most of what Old John had taught her were scattered fragnts of knowledge. What the university provided, on the other hand, was a complete, structured system of knowledge—more organized, more detailed, and far more scientifically sound, which also made it easier to rember.
Misha, who hoped to one day travel across the United States, felt the sa way.
By mid-November, the two of them successfully passed their midterm assessnt and earned the opportunity for the second half of the sester’s field practice.
This practical training lasted two weeks.
During this period, students, under the guidance of three instructors, would attempt a hiking traverse route called the “Black Trail,” carrying only minimal supplies.
The first traverse would be done as a full group. One instructor would stay at the starting point, while the other two would accompany the group throughout the route, explaining various concepts along the way as they hiked.
After reaching the endpoint at the town of Cornis, the group would take a short rest before attempting the return journey in smaller teams.
This return segnt would not have any instructors accompanying them. If any danger arose, students would need to use the satellite phones they carried to request assistance. The three instructors would be stationed at the start, the end, and the midpoint of the route respectively, ready at all tis to provide rescue if needed.
It sounded sowhat dangerous—but it was also a rare and valuable training opportunity.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #4: stay away from desolate ruins, campsites, castles, forest villas, suspicious caves, or anything resembling those kinds of places.
Before departure, Everly first searched for information about the hiking area, focusing on whether there were any bad rumors associated with it.
The search results showed that the Black Trail was located in the northern part of New Osebuch State, running east–west along the mid-mountain line of the Black Mountain Range. It was a mature interdiate-level hiking route, with a total length of about 75 kiloters. The terrain mainly included basins, high mountains, and hills, and the average completion ti was 5 to 7 days. Every year, it attracted a large number of hiking enthusiasts who ca to challenge it.
The Black Mountain Range, where the trail was located, was a branch of the northern Abanaqi Mountain Range. It had 28 peaks above 1,200 ters in elevation, as well as the vast Black National Forest Park. Most of the hiking route this ti would pass through the mid-mountain slopes, an area filled with dense coniferous forest ford by spruce, maple, and beech trees.
In such a vast wilderness far from human habitation, hiking without adequate preparation could easily lead to accidents caused by wild animals, getting lost, injuries, or extre weather conditions. Indeed, when the Black Trail was first opened, there had been fatalities during hikes.
However, this situation had greatly improved after the national forest park authorities cooperated with a nonprofit organization called the “Abanaqi Trail Conservation Committee,” adding several shelter cabins along the route.
In recent years, aside from occasional inexperienced hikers who only followed online guides and impulsively attempted the trail, serious accidents had beco rare.
From this perspective, the danger level of the hiking activity was actually not very high.
After this evaluation, Everly and Misha happily signed up for the field training program.
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