Chapter 104: The Third Day
On the morning of the third day, the mist in the forest was heavier than it had been during the previous two, condensing into cold dew that hung thick and heavy from every leaf tip.
Ryan woke in a natural rock crevice, dismantled the warning array, and packed up his gear.
After nearly carpet-searching the assessnt area over the past two days, he had already explored more than ninety percent of it. The resonance points transmitted by the Life-Preserving Rune Stone had grown increasingly sparse, and without exception, every attribute it returned was just another duplicate of one of the eleven types he already possessed.
What made him feel even more uneasy was this: for two full days, he had not encountered a single student from the Interdiate Departnt.
That was not normal.
The academy had explicitly said that twenty-three Interdiate Departnt students had been added to the assessnt. In his perception, the Mana fluctuations they emitted were like moving torches, clearly stronger than those of the third-year students.
Even with the forest’s vastness and the dispersal of personnel, given the range he had explored and the frequency of his movent, the chance of encountering none of them at all should never have been zero.
Unless they had deliberately avoided most of the areas where the third-year students were active?
That thought pulled the string inside his chest even tighter.
As the sun gradually rose, the forest instead began to feel strangely empty.
The figures he had occasionally glimpsed from afar during the previous two days, or the fresh traces of battle, had all beco far rarer today.
The air no longer carried only the sll of humus and rotting vegetation. It had also taken on the loneliness of failure and elimination.
It was easy enough to imagine that those who lacked wilderness experience, those who had been unlucky, or those who had fallen in plunder and counter-plunder like the three by the creek had already crushed their Distress Runes and withdrawn from this increasingly brutal ga.
Ryan moved through the trees with even greater caution than before.
He knew that anyone still left at this point either had considerable skill, extraordinary luck, or else, like him, possessed a clear objective and had no intention of giving up easily.
Close to noon, following a particularly strong Mana fluctuation, he arrived at the edge of a dark marsh.
The stench of rot hit him at once. A thick layer of duckweed floated across the surface, glinting with a strange oily green sheen.
The source of the fluctuation lay on a slightly raised mound of mud in the center of the marsh, overgrown with moss. A yellow-brown rune was half-buried in the muck.
But the guardian was there as well.
It was a Bog Terror Crocodile the size of a small calf. Its rough dark-brown hide was caked in mud, allowing it to rge almost perfectly with its surroundings.
Most of its body lay hidden beneath the murky green marshwater. Only its head, covered in knotted protrusions, and its pair of cold, cruel yellow-brown slit pupils remained visible as they fixed themselves on Ryan at the shore.
A mid-tier magical beast of combined water and earth affinity. Thick-skinned, imnsely strong, and even more dangerous in a marsh environnt.
Ryan did not hesitate.
Ti was precious. He had to get the rune as quickly as possible, whether it turned out to be a duplicate or not.
After two days of high-intensity real combat, the magic–martial techniques Barton had taught him were now being integrated into his battle instincts at astonishing speed.
He first tossed a Corrosive Foil into the stretch of water where the crocodile was concealed. The irritating sll and faint corrosive energy successfully enraged the magical beast, whose territorial instincts were extrely strong.
The crocodile let out a low roar. Its massive, heavy body burst from the water with a spray of mud, jaws opening wide enough to snap a tree trunk, and lunged forward with a speed utterly disproportionate to its size.
Ryan advanced instead of retreating.
With Windstride enhancing him, his figure blurred into an afterimage as he slipped beneath the crocodile’s lower jaw by the narrowest margin. In the instant they crossed, his right fist, hardened by Stone Armor, slamd viciously into the softer side of the beast’s neck.
Boom!
With that muffled impact, the crocodile’s charging montum skewed sideways, and it let out a howl of pain.
But its reaction was swift. Its thick tail, as heavy as a pillar, swept around with a howling rush of wind, covering such a wide range that it sealed off both left and right, leaving Ryan no room to dodge.
Ryan’s pupils contracted. He dropped his body in an instant, almost flattening himself to the ground as he rolled forward, barely avoiding a tail strike strong enough to smash stone.
Even as he rolled, his left hand flicked backward, sending out two Adhesive Foils that stuck precisely to the base of the crocodile’s tail just after it swept past.
The crocodile was about to turn, but its tail suddenly dragged with a mont of sluggishness. The Adhesive Foils had taken effect. They could not truly trap it, but they were enough to disrupt the rhythm of its movent.
That instant of delay was all he needed.
Ryan sprang up like a leopard, both feet stamping deep prints into the mud as his whole body shot forward like an arrow loosed from the string, driving straight toward the other side of the crocodile’s neck and ribs, exposed in the middle of its turn.
This ti, the index and middle fingers of his right hand ca together, and the fire Mana compressed to its absolute limit at the tips flared into a piercing red glow.
“Searing Touch: Pierce.”
There was no flourish to it, only a thrust that compressed speed, strength, and Mana into a single point.
Ssshh—
His fingertips were like red-hot iron awls, piercing precisely into the gap where the scales at the crocodile’s neck and ribs were relatively sparse. The instant the compressed fire Mana touched flesh, it erupted and drove through.
The Bog Terror Crocodile released an ear-splitting, miserable roar. Its enormous body twisted wildly, sending mud and filthy water flying in every direction. But Ryan did not linger after landing the blow. Windstride surged again, and he retreated sharply to a safe distance.
The crocodile struggled for more than ten seconds. The wound through its neck was not fatal, but the agonizing pain and continuous burning caused by the fire Mana severely impaired its movent.
With those yellow-brown slit pupils full of rage and a trace of fear, it glared at Ryan one final ti. At last, it let out an unwilling low growl and slowly sank back into the murky marshwater, leaving behind only a trail of rolling bubbles.
Ryan exhaled lightly, calming the sowhat turbulent Mana within his body. The battle had not lasted long, but fighting a thick-skinned mid-tier magical beast like that still consud a considerable amount of energy.
He glanced at his right hand. His fingertips were a little red, but there was no real problem.
He waded through the icy mud-water up to his knees, reached the raised mud mound, and bent down to pick up the yellow-brown rune.
The instant it touched his hand, that familiar heavy sensation returned. Using the Life-Preserving Rune Stone for a brief check, he confird it at once. Another earth-aspected rune, its pulse frequency almost completely identical to the one he already had.
“…A duplicate,” Ryan murmured quietly, though his tone carried little disappointnt.
He casually stuffed the rune into the sh pocket on the outside of his backpack. Seven or eight duplicate runes of various kinds had already accumulated there.
Standing at the marsh’s edge as it gradually returned to stillness, he looked at the scattered points of light on his compass and, for the first ti, genuinely felt a trace of doubt.
Had his judgnt been wrong? Did the twelfth kind of rune not exist at all? Or was its number simply so small that soone else had found it first and hidden it away? Or perhaps the thod of obtaining it… truly pointed in so entirely different direction?
Just as he was lost in thought—
Boom!
A burst of sound ca from the forest roughly two hundred paces to the southeast. It was not especially violent, but it was unusually clear, mixed with the sharp clash of tal striking tal.
Ryan’s head snapped up, his gray-blue eyes instantly sharpening like blades.
That sound… a collision of magic and a clash of weapons. The two sides seed unevenly matched, and one was clearly at a disadvantage.
Since he could not seem to find the final rune anyway, he might as well go and take a look.
With that thought, he stopped hesitating. He shoved the compass back into his pack and, with a flicker of movent, darted toward the source of the sound like a wisp of smoke.
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