Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player
Chapter 197 - 197: Detour

"... We are ruling out this region because there is some bloodthirsty beast that lives around here and we don't know what it could be."

The last words that Narghull said to Kaizen, before the two went their separate ways, left the player a bit thoughtful.

Could that beast mentioned by the leader of the dragon knights be connected with Klank's HP drop? Kaizen didn't want to imagine that this was the case, because at best, Klank could have just been thrown out of the carriage by Yokoso as well and lost more life by falling at high speed.

Kaizen stood thinking about all this as he walked with quick steps to the northern end of the forest, the place where the Ferris' carriage should soon pass.

This time, he no longer felt that strange feeling of being watched, nor did he hear any more breathing in the forest. Everything was calm and nothing else disturbed him for the rest of the way.

When Kaizen finally finished crossing all the closed woods, he arrived almost out of stamina on the lonely dirt road.

The fire in the Psyker's right hand and the light of the moon illuminated together that deserted road.

Kaizen waited quietly for a few seconds, longing to hear the sound of the horses' hooves running along the road or the sound of the carriage's thick wooden wheels. But it was still very quiet, and he could hear nothing but the chirping of cicadas clinging to the tree trunks.

At this point Kaizen decided to jump out onto the road to try to check the ground closely for wheel tracks and horseshoe prints. Obviously, he didn't even have to try very hard to find a few such marks, but none of them looked as recent as if they were from only a few minutes ago.

The ground under these tracks was hard, and if they were recent it would probably still be a little soft and the tracks more prominent.

Just as Kaizen was about to conclude that the Ferris chariot had not yet passed that way, he had a surprise. As he drove back down the road a little, he found wheel tracks that were much newer than any other. Stepping over these marks, he felt that the earth was still tender. However, there was a problem with that.

"The marks of those wheels do not follow the road. There was a clear shift to the right." Kaizen concluded and raised his right arm, better illuminating the stretch where the wheel marks led.

On the unevenness between the road and the forest, there were obvious marks that a carriage had passed by and driven hard into the forest. In addition to the crumpled earth, there were fallen branches, messy footprints, fallen leaves, reddish wood splinters, and blood all over the place.

"An accident...?" Kaizen thought.

The Psyker knew it was too much of a coincidence that another carriage had crashed a very short time ago on the same road the Ferris' carriage was supposed to pass, and he still hadn't forgotten that Klank had lost some hp. So, all this led Kaizen to have no doubt that if he followed the wheel and hoof tracks he surely would find his mission partner at the end of it all.

Following the tracks, Kaizen entered the forest and began to walk at a slow, silent pace. The moonlight helped him to see a little better, but it was still difficult to see anything clearly because of the trees. So the Psyker continued to use the fire in his right hand to light the way, although this showed the enemy where he was.

The path became steeper and steeper, and at a certain point with many rocks and a steep drop, Kaizen thought about the possibility that the chariot had fallen from that place.

As he got closer, Kaizen noticed that just near the drop, all traces of the carriage had disappeared. So he bent down a little to try to see something at the bottom of the cliff.

His fire illuminated many rocks there, then a large carriage wheel that was lying loose among the rocks, and finally some rags of white clothing.

'The old man was wearing some kind of white coat, wasn't he?'

Persisting in using the fire to see below, Kaizen finally caught sight of the destroyed Ferris carriage and, around it, a lot of blood.

The Psyker put his hand over his eyes, not believing what he was seeing and trying to see better. Looking at the scene, Kaizen unconsciously spat out a swear word.

"Fuck... What happened here?"

After a few moments of silence, Kaizen got up and headed for the spot where the carriage had crashed. The Psyker did not know what to expect to find, and with some apprehension, he walked cautiously.

But upon arriving at the spot, superficially, Kaizen found nothing special other than the wreckage of the carriage and the two horses pulling it. With some ease, he lifted one of the doors of the overturned carriage, which was locked from the inside, and was relieved to find Klank inside.

At that very moment, Klank woke up, still a bit confused.

"What... Where am I?"

"The carriage has pulled off the road. Come here, give me your hand. I'll help you get out of here." Kaizen said, smiling with relief. Besides, Klank's confused expression was funny, in a way.

Klank accepted Kaizen's help, still not quite understanding what had happened, and jumped out of the carriage. When the Feral-Crocodile Class player saw the unpleasant sight of the horses' corpses, shredded and with their necks broken from the fall, he frowned all over his face in disgust.

"It's serious... What happened here?" Klank asked, looking away from the scene.

The Psyker was taking a moment to rummage through the wreckage of the carriage and replied:

"I don't know either, well, tell me... What is the last thing that you remember?"

"What do you mean? You were the one in the front seat.... Wait, you're looting the mission carriage at a time like this?!" Unhappy with what he was seeing, Klank inquired.

Crouching down, Kaizen turned his neck slightly to answer him. "The chariot is destroyed, they won't complain. Look, I found a trunk!"

Klank's eyelids fluttered with stress. 'Honestly, does he have nerves of steel or something?' He thought although he was already a big fan of Kaizen it was inevitable to be surprised that the Psyker wasn't the least bit tense about the situation.

"Look, there are some good items here." Kaizen said, taking everything inside the chest.

[You earned 'Empty Potion Flask' (2x).]

[You earned 'Antique Pocket Watch' (1x).]

[You earned 'Piece of Scroll with Runes' (1x).]

Klank looked at all that, not believing what he saw. "Do you really think we should take all this stuff?"

Kaizen looked at Klank again, then at the wreckage of the carriage, and said, "If they miss it here, I'll give it back, but they're not here, so I don't even know if they're alive."

The Psyker's words finally made Klank remember that he was talking to the old man just before everything went dark.

Kaizen realized just by looking at Klank's thoughtful expression that he was slowly remembering things, so he revealed:

"A few minutes ago, shortly after we entered this region, Yokoso and I saw a deer on the road. I got up to scare the deer off, but for some reason, the little shit butler kicked me out of the carriage. And what about you? Do you remember what happened?"

Kaizen's news surprised Klank and seemed to succeed in making him finally remember what happened.

"So that was it! Damn you, Yokoso... I didn't expect that this could happen, but taking into account the difficulty of the mission, it's not unbelievable. Just before everything went dark, I was talking to the scientist Rismar just as normal, and suddenly saw his life bar dropping. I was confused and called his name, only to hear Yokoso answering with a strange tone."

"What did he say?"

"I asked where you were and if anything had happened, and he replied in a strange way, like that it was normal to use you as bait so that we could get through the region without any problems."

"Bait? Bait for what?"

"That's the part where everything gets confusing. I don't remember it... I know that something hit the carriage and seconds later, Yokoso screamed in fear, the carriage started rocking a lot, and after that, all I remember is that I hit my head on one of the walls. Whatever it was that attacked us, I think the old man escaped, I don't see him around here either, as well as Yokoso."

Kaizen grew tenser and tenser as he listened to Klank tell all the story. "I think I know what Yokoso was so afraid of."

Klank frowned. "What?"

"It's too long a story to tell all of it, but I had to cross part of the forest to try to reach you in time, and halfway there I met a man, and he told me that in this region there is an atrocious beast."

"A beast?"

"Yes, and if something large has collided with you to the point of making you veer so truculently off the road, there is no doubt that it is a beast of the highest level," Kaizen said seriously.

When the two players realized that, for the first time since they started playing Rise Online, they had become the prey of some powerful creature, they also noticed how insignificant they were amidst the darkness of that forest. No matter how much they screamed for help, they were cut off from any other players.

The forest, which seemed so vast, became small and limited only to the small space that their eyes could see.

Everything else was darkness, and their predator could be lurking somewhere.

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