Cedric’s POV
——
I took a sip from my tea, then my gaze shifted to the fireplace in front of . I couldn’t go back to sleep. Or rather, I was too terrified to try. So I just sat there, lost in the echoing silence of my own thoughts.
According to Aika, she was asleep when she suddenly felt that sothing was wrong. Instinctively, she rose to check on . That was when she saw thrashing and seizing in my sleep, my face contorted like soone trapped in the depths of a waking nightmare.
At first, she tried to calm down, but when that didn’t work, she switched to trying desperately to wake . However, no matter how hard she tried, I couldn’t wake up. When she also couldn’t reach ntally, that was the mont she realized that sothing was indeed wrong.
Gar Privileges wasn’t responding to her either, leaving her no option but to keep trying to break through. While she struggled, Ino was keeping watch, and the other awakened party mbers gathered around in worry.
Then eventually, the sa notifications that popped up for earlier, popped up for her too, after which I woke up seconds later.
I didn’t need to explain anything to her as she suddenly reached into my mories the mont I woke up.
As for the others, we just told them that it was indeed a terrible nightmare.
There was no reason to create more panic by telling them that beings who were probably in the Grade Four have been targeting , and finally succeeded in attacking through a dream.
They all returned to sleep shortly after, except for Celeste, who, for so reason, decided to join at the fireplace. She didn’t say anything, and simply sat on the ground beside with her legs folded and leaned gently against my side. Perhaps that was her way of making feel better.
However, I didn’t pay much attention to her, as I was lost in my thoughts.
I suspected that the two people who invaded my dream were likely part of the group that attacked us at the cave back in rdini’s burial ground. They also wore modern clothes and had Korean nas.
However, there were a few things that were bothering . The first was the fact that the man who went by the na Lee Lim spoke to in kaldor rather than Korean.
How was he able to speak Kaldor if he has never been to the empires?
...Could it be a skill?
He did say he was omniscient. So it could be that maybe, he knew how to speak kaldor because of this.
But I couldn’t be sure.
Besides that, the second thing that bothered was that among this people, there were those even in the Grade Four.
If they were beings of the Grade Four who were hunting dominants in the first ring, what did that an for us?
Would many of us even be able to survive till the end of the six months?
If there was one thing I confird from this encounter, it was that for so reason that did not make sense to , they were actively looking for .
They must not have been able to find all this while, probably because Gar Privileges was passively hiding my existence. But when I agreed to the update, it looked like Gar Privileges had temporarily dropped its defenses, and that was how they found .
The thought of how not only were my abilities completely useless against the man Lee Lim, but how he sohow managed to wield my own flas, made distraught.
Suddenly, I couldn’t help but shudder at the realization that I would have died if Gar Privileges hadn’t roared back online exactly when it did.
I sighed and slowly raised my index finger. Then I activated my exclusive skill, and a small, dark wisp of black fla coiled on the tip.
’How was he able to suddenly wield this power with such absolute precision that he could just dispel mine?’ I wondered, examining the fla before making it vanish.
My tea had gone cold, but I took a sip anyway, before turning my gaze back to the fireplace while also drowning in my own analysis.
***
A few hours after sunrise, the party began the construction of the raft. The boys pitched in, hauling most of the waterlogged wood back onto the land. As for the larger pieces, Dion simply used his exclusive skill to float them directly out of the water and stack them neatly on the edge.
With Celeste’s guidance, we began to asure, cut, and notch the heavy timbers for the main fra. I provided lengths of rope from my inventory for lashing the logs together, and we quickly organized an assembly line. Evelyn and Ino managed the knot work, while Dion and Julius held the heavy pieces in place.
As the fra took shape, we imdiately began cutting the remaining logs into smaller, uniform sections to fill the interior space for buoyancy.
It didn’t take long to finish building the raft. In fact, the entire process took less than three hours.
At the sa ti, while we were working on the raft, Aika filtered and boiled as much water as possible, filling all the empty pouches that we had.
When we were all done, we huddled together around the empty fireplace to eat and plan out our route. We didn’t spend much ti; we needed to get across the river, and cover as much distance in the next territory as possible before nightfall. Therefore, just an hour or so after noon, we all got on the raft.
The three boys imdiately began paddling, and before long the raft was moving smoothly and steadily against the current, toward the opposite bank, which was the beginning of a mountain range.
At first, the movent was surprisingly easy and quiet. Though we were not naive to think that it would be this way till the end, as there were creatures called snappers that tried to prevent anything or anyone from crossing this river.
Luckily, there was soone on this raft who had an ability that would make it so that we would cross without being attacked by the snappers.
Half an hour later, we were already well past the midpoint of the river, and that was when we began to hear loud clacking sounds like hundreds of jaws opening and snapping shut in rapid successions.
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