Free Web NovelChapter 11: Too Good to Be True
While the monsters were charging toward them, Lian quickly looked at his stat points. He still had this winning card and could continue fighting by increasing his stats again.
[Stat Points: 41]
He had leveled up twice and reached level 7. He had gotten 20 points from that.
From the seven monsters he had killed, two were level 8 and each gave him 3 stat points. The other five monsters were level 7 and each gave him also 3 stat points and that brought his total to 41 stat points.
Using these, he should be able to increase his resistance and speed by a significant amount. He did not think he needed to increase his strength because it was already very high.
In addition, he did not obtain a new skill after killing one of those Level 8 monsters.
Overall, he realized that killing the Level 7 or 8 Mammoth Bears did not grant him any skills. Obviously, this was because they were ordinary low-level monsters.
Such monsters usually have only one or two skills at most, and those skills are generally just racial traits shared by all members of the species.
He had already obtained the Iron Hide skill from killing one of them before. That meant they didn’t possess any other worthwhile skills besides that one, and they didn’t display any additional skills during this battle either.
But before he could do that, suddenly a rain of arrows covered the sky.
The sound of shooting echoed in the air. Fast, one after another, non-stop. As if the forest itself had turned into a weapon.
The mammoth bears were still charging, but the first wave collapsed before reaching their target. Their huge bodies fell to the ground one after another, mixing dirt and blood together.
For a moment, Lian just watched. Not the bears, but the direction of the arrows. The accuracy... the coordination... this was not amateur work.
Were there other Awakened here? But what were the chances that several archers had all been summoned to the same spot in the ruined realm?
The chance of something like that was less than one percent!
So what was happening here? Who shot these arrows? A very powerful archer?
Even Seris did not lower her sword. She just watched.
From between the trees, seven or eight people came out. They wore light armor, made of leather and handmade. Their bodies were strong and built for hunting and survival. Like people who had done only one thing for years: stay alive. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
"Easy... we are not enemies." One of them stepped forward and raised his hand.
Lian frowned a little, but the frown quickly disappeared. These people did not give him the feeling of Awakened. In fact, they did not give him the feeling that they were from his world at all.
Seris did not react either. She just lowered her sword a little. Not completely.
The man who stepped forward looked at the group. At the wounded ones, at Lian, and especially at Seris. Then at the bear corpses.
"You must be good fighters to have killed this many mammoth bears." The man said with admiration.
"When you are trying to survive, it is natural to fight with everything you have."
A few of the group smiled briefly. But not as a joke. It looked more like agreement.
"We are guards from a nearby village. We heard the sound of fighting. We came to check." Another person stepped forward and said.
This sentence worried Lian more than the previous attack. Village guards in a ruined realm? In a place that should only have monsters?
It was not that there were no natives in the previous ruined realms. But their numbers were very low. And the chance of meeting them by chance was extremely low.
But that did not make him show hostility right away. After all, this was a ruined realm. It could be completely different from the previous ones that humans had cleared.
One of the natives looked at the wounded. Ryan was still half-conscious. Aria and Alisa were breathing with difficulty.
"These three are badly wounded. We need to take them to the village." He then said.
Lian wanted to refuse. His instinct was screaming that this was wrong. He really did not want to go to the village with these natives. Besides, everything looked too good.
"Please... help us..." But before he could speak, Ryan said in a weak voice.
That one sentence was enough to make Lian stay quiet. Seris did not take her eyes off the natives either. But in the end, neither of them agreed.
They just had no choice. The two of them were also wounded and tired. They needed to rest.
Maybe that village was safe. A good place to rest.
The natives picked up the wounded. Light and fast, as if their weight meant nothing to them.
They started moving. They left the open area and went back into the forest. The trees around them became denser.
The path was clear. The two of them followed the natives quietly. Time passed slowly. Without facing any trouble, they got closer to their destination.
On the way, no monsters attacked them. No strange things happened. This made Lian think that maybe he was being too guarded against these people. But he did not like that thought.
With every step forward, the air became heavier. Breathing became harder. And the further they went, the colder the air became.
So cold that even Lian, with his resistance higher than a normal person, felt it clearly.
But before he could think too much about it, his gaze went forward. Between the branches, something was seen.
A mountain range. And in the middle of it, a peak that was higher than all the others. Shining and golden! As if it was producing its own light.
Lian stopped for a moment. Something clicked in his mind. The key!
That mountain itself was the same mountain where the key should be. The same mountain that could be his way out of this ruined realm.
’So this is why breathing gets harder the closer we get. Near the golden mountain, the energy is very dense and intense. Breathing in such a place is hard.’
The natives walked slowly ahead. No fear, no hurry. Besides, breathing did not look hard for them at all. They seemed to breathe without any problem.
Maybe they were just used to it.
After some time, the trees moved back. The ground opened up. Finally, a village appeared. But it was exactly at the base of the golden mountain, a little above ground level.
Houses made of wood and stone. Weak light and smoke rose from a few spots.
Its appearance was simple, exactly like a normal village with no problems.
Lian quietly looked at Seris. Seris looked back at him and neither spoke.
But both of them had, very "coincidentally," reached the place they were looking for.
But was that coincidence really a coincidence?
