Chapter 99 : You Were the One Spying on , Weren’t You?!
Ryan released his grip and stepped back two paces, his chest rising and falling slightly as he adjusted his sowhat hurried breathing.
From the mont the ferns stirred to the mont the magical beast collapsed, no more than five breaths had passed.
There had been no dazzling exchange of magic, no blinding storm of sword flashes and blade shadows.
There had only been environntal judgnt so precise it bordered on cruel, perfectly tid support from Magic Tools, and close-quarters control and strikes that fused bodily capability with basic magic to the utmost limit.
He lowered his head and looked at his left hand. The rock-like gray-white color was rapidly fading, returning to the skin’s natural tone, but waves of burning pain pulsed through his palm. That was the combined result of localized Mana overload and intense physical contact.
At the tips of the index and middle fingers of his right hand, there were still faint blackened traces, giving off a slight scorched sll.
It seed those past few days of intensive magic–martial training had not been in vain.
He pulled a flat iron box from the side pocket of his backpack, scooped out a bit of pale green ointnt carrying a cool herbal scent, and spread it evenly over his stinging palm.
The cold sensation quickly spread and effectively eased the discomfort.
On the ground, the Shadow-Pattern Panther’s chest was still rising and falling faintly.
Ryan glanced at it, bent down, and quickly checked the beast’s vital signs. Once he confird it posed absolutely no danger, he paid it no further attention.
Turning around, he looked toward the dead stump in the middle of the clearing.
The dark iron-gray rune lay there quietly, as though it had felt absolutely nothing of the brief yet violent clash that had just taken place a few paces away.
He walked over. This ti, there was not the slightest hesitation in his steps. The instant his fingertips touched the rune, he felt a cold, heavy texture, along with sharp, needle-like remnants of Mana.
There was no trap, nor any additional guardian. The Shadow-Pattern Panther from monts ago had been the only key to obtaining it.
The sixth rune was in hand.
He did not study it further. He placed it into the insulated compartnt as well. The Mana fluctuations around his body thickened by another subtle degree, as though a sixth stone had been dropped into the surface of a lake, the ripples it sent out weaving together and stacking atop the others.
Only after finishing that did he walk to the other side of the clearing, where there was an extrely narrow seep in a crack of stone, almost hidden beneath the weeds.
He filled his waterskin with the clear seepwater, then carefully filtered it through a folded water-filtering cloth.
The standard drinking water issued for the assessnt would last no more than thirty-six hours at most. Any reliable source of fresh water was worth noting.
After replenishing his supplies, Ryan slung his pack onto his back once more and reactivated the Life-Preserving Rune Stone.
Within his awareness, the ripples representing the different runes steadily emitted their own pulses.
Farther away, deep in the forest, new and indistinct points of resonance were still faintly calling to him. The next clear direction appeared to the southeast, and the distance seed sowhat greater.
He looked up through the now much sparser canopy toward the sky. The originally pale daylight had already been dyed with a faint warm orange, and the shadows in the forest had grown long. Afternoon had passed. Dusk was approaching.
He stepped away from the clearing where he had paused for a short while. The soles of his boots once again pressed into the thick layer of fallen leaves, producing that familiar rustling sound.
After walking a dozen steps or so, he glanced back almost for no reason at all.
The dead stump was still there in the clearing. But the place where the Shadow-Pattern Panther had been sprawled monts ago was now empty. Only the flattened grass and the several deep claw marks in the ground silently proved that a contest fought at the speed of life and death had taken place there only monts earlier.
The forest swallowed all traces with a speed that was cruel.
Ryan turned back and continued southeast. His right hand rose unconsciously, reaching over his shoulder to touch the hilt of the longsword wrapped tightly in gray cloth across his back.
The coarse fabric rasped against his fingertips. Beneath the layers of binding, the hardness and coldness of tal could still be faintly felt.
His fingers rested on the hilt for a mont, then slowly withdrew and fell back to his side.
He clenched his empty hand into a fist.
Almost the instant that thought flickered through his mind, a long, strange, indescribably shrill cry rang out from sowhere deeper in the forest, from a location whose exact direction and distance could not be judged.
The sound dragged a wavering tail behind it, pierced through layer after layer of forest, entered his ears, and then slowly faded into the thickening dusk.
The dusk was like diluted ink, slowly but steadily seeping into every corner of the forest.
Ryan halted only after finding two more runes.
One deep brown rune had been buried at the bottom of a natural hollow ford by the buttress roots of a giant tree. The other, a blue-violet rune, had been wedged into the crack of a hollow section of rotting wood.
Including the ones he had already obtained, the total number of runes in the insulated compartnt of his backpack had now reached eight.
But the crimson and pale gold fluctuations were still highly similar. And one of the newly obtained earth-yellow runes also had a pulse frequency almost identical to that of the earliest earth-aspected rune.
“Duplicates… At least three attributes have already appeared more than once,” he noted silently to himself.
That likely ant the number of rune types was limited to begin with, and the academy had increased randomness and the intensity of competition by placing multiple runes of the sa kind into the forest.
Ti did not wait for anyone.
The light in the forest was rapidly becoming thin and ambiguous, and from the distance there were already rustling sounds of nocturnal creatures stirring awake.
The most urgent matter now was to find a relatively safe place to spend the night.
He rembered that while searching for runes earlier, he had vaguely sensed the direction of a stream. Following the moisture in the air and the increasingly clear sound of running water, he parted a curtain of hanging vines, and a small stream about two paces wide appeared before him.
Its water was clear, flowing with broken glints of silver in the dimming light.
Following the stream downstream was not a bad choice. Areas near water sources usually had relatively open terrain and better visibility, which reduced the risk of being ambushed by large creatures lunging out from the depths of the forest. And the stream itself ford a natural path. If necessary, he could move quickly along it.
He had not gone far. After traveling roughly two hundred paces down the bank, his eyes sharply caught sothing out of place.
The right bank was in complete disorder. Several bushes had clearly been snapped by force, and the breaks were fresh. In the soft wet mud, there was more than one kind of footprint: boot prints and the dragging traces of bare feet, crisscrossing and overlapping. On one exposed tree root, there was even a small scorched patch left behind, still giving off weak remnants of fire-elent Mana that had not fully dissipated. It had been left by a low-tier Fireball or a similar spell.
Signs of battle. It could not have happened long ago. Most likely, it had taken place this very afternoon.
Ryan crouched down, pinched up a bit of the mud stained dark red, and brought it close to his nose.
A faint rusty sll. Soone had been injured, but not fatally. The blood had long since been absorbed and diluted by the mud.
He stood and looked around. There were no discarded belongings. Either both sides had already moved on, or one side had subdued the other and taken them away. In either case, this place was no longer safe.
He decided to leave this stretch of riverbank at once.
Just as he turned, preparing to head back upstream and find so other place far away from trouble to settle for the night, sothing at the edge of his vision caught his eye.
Upstream, about thirty paces away, on the opposite side of the stream, behind a huge round river stone, several blades of tall grass that should have been swaying gently in the breeze had abruptly gone still for a single instant.
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