Chapter 313
Chapter 313
Kyon instantly accelerated the moment he disappeared behind the trees from thousands of spectators. One participant went to the forest every five minutes. It was Artie’s turn next who was eager to finish him off, and Kyon would hate to waste his time on him. In fact, there was no point in meeting anyone so soon. Kyon was not interested in penniless losers. He was going to start looting in about seven days when they would get a few animal keys. With the formation in his bracelet, his upgraded senses, and flying spies, he would have no problems tracking the opponents, even more so robbing them.
With each kilometer, the dense forest became thicker and thicker. Kyon began to come across ancient giant trees measuring several meters wide. At times, the area turned into a swamp; at times, there was a clearing full of the most peculiar mushrooms and plants.
With his upgraded sense of smell, Kyon could differentiate thousands of forest smells, among which damp moss and conifer trees prevailed. He could hear myriads of sounds from little rodents under the ground to wild beasts stomping everywhere. With his keen eyes, he could see swarms of the smallest insects from mosquitoes and ants to ticks and centipedes. The forest evoked memories from his past life full of traveling.
Lovr had always admired the beauty of wild nature, but there was no time to be sentimental. He had to go deeper into the forest, preferably about three hundred kilometers away from other participants.
The planned journey took six hours. Synergy’s error-free calculations reduced the risk of getting a cross-country speed penalty to a minimum, letting Kyon move as fast as average noble phasers (in the forest).
The Elk Woods stretched over a vast territory, but it was like a meadow against the endless wild jungle in comparison with the kings of nature. The level of danger in the Elk Woods was about 2 points out of 10 because there were no animals exceeding the advanced phase, no supreme beasts that had inborn intelligence, no deadly poisonous creatures, insects, or plants. A standard antidote would be enough to ensure a safe trip. There were no predatory vines, natural traps, or tricky formations. It was a kind of forest park where a noble phaser could feel absolutely safe.
It was getting dark. A cold autumn wind stirred the tent that Lovr had set up on a hill. Only two months before winter. In the current conditions, those who didn’t bend the heat element had better wear something warm.
After dinner, Lovr left his tent and threw a chicken bone at the growling wolf: – «Do you think you’re after a weak prey? No way!» – He waved his hand with a predatory smile, releasing ten silent shots previously fired from a sniper rifle.
Ten carcasses of gray wolves went limp, their eyes shot through.
Kyon took out a hunting knife and proceeded to skinning. The catch wasn’t bad: 9 keys of the superior phase, 81 keys of the advanced phase, and souls that filled his nucleus for a fraction of a percent. It was disappointing. He would need at least ten thousand animals to meet the requirements of his body of the void! A phenomenal amount. No hunter would kill that many animals in their lifetime.
Lovr didn’t let it go to his head and went off raiding.
It was already five in the morning.
With blood up to his elbows, Kyon got washed and set up a tent to have a nap. In twelve hours, he had killed and skinned only two hundred animals. He wouldn’t fill his soul in two weeks at this rate. It would take him at least a month! On the other hand, he could always come back after the tournament. It was forbidden, but who would ever catch him?
Before Dick Baker had closed his eyes, he winced as if in pain. His flying scout showed someone approaching him at high speed. The grumpy first prince was about five kilometers away from him. The second prince was following his brother, keeping at a kilometer behind him. The third prince walked at the tail of the procession.
Normally, the participants didn’t look for the opponents in the first few days of the tournament. There was nothing to take from them, anyway. But the princes had been actively using the tracking function of their bracelets (once every 20 minutes, sharing the allowed time among themselves). Apparently, they wanted to find and defeat Princess Haya as soon as possible and get their school first place. Unfortunately for them, the princes had confused the beauty with Dick Backer, who was even more wonderful in every sense of the word.
{Just my luck!} – Kyon quickly took down his tent and sped away from the brothers’ line of movement. When he left them many kilometers behind, he pitched his tent again and went to bed, but a minute later, he opened his eyes agrily. – {Are you fucking kidding me?} – The princes approached him with enviable determination. Maybe, if all guys in love pursued their girls so persistently, there would be less broken hearts in the world.
Lovr did not want to go back a hundred kilometers so that the bracelets of his pursuers would point to another closest opponent, but it was too soon to disable them now. They were still to collect lots of keys in two weeks! Lovr was going to lay his hands on about half of them! It would be careless of him to lose free labor.
The first prince stopped abruptly and picked a piece of paper with a message from the tree: “Three pathetic losers! Stop pursuing me or I will have the pleasure of destroying you one by one like bulls in the slaughterhouse. Haya Feruz.”
The prince stared at the message in disbelief, cold sweat running down his spine: {Fucking genius bitch!} – He turned ashen pale and rushed back to share the information with his brothers. He was allowed three minutes by the rules.
Initially, the first prince of Liberia was planning to find a member of the Feruz family who had been camping in the area. They were going to take him or her hostage and make them use the family formation to call for help. Then the princes were going to disarm as many main competitors as possible. If they were lucky enough, the three of them would even defeat Princess Haya. However, they turned out to run into the biggest fish in the lake, a real shark! The princess had found out who was following her, how many of them, and also managed to compose a message! She would have easily disarmed them if she really wanted to! Apparently, Haya didn’t take them seriously if she gave them a chance to run away…
Kyon smiled contentedly when he made sure that the annoying overgrown bullies had retreated. He made another dozen kilometers, pitched his tent and finally fell asleep.
The next day, another annoying pursuer caught up with Dick. His attempts to leave her a threatening message failed. The blind hen didn’t notice any of them. It didn’t help to change his location every time she found him. The girl persistently used the tournament bracelet once an hour to track the fleeing fat guy.
When Kyon got tired of wasting his time, he made an ambush.
Before the girl knew it, she got a dart in her neck and fell fast asleep. No pursuer, no problem. Everything she had was his for the taking. The girl hadn’t reached the lord phase. It would have been absurd to use big guns on her. A sniper rifle was enough to pierce the soft skin of her neck with a dart.
As expected, the girl had almost no keys.
Kyon saw no benefit in activating her bracelet to disqualify the silly girl from the tournament. He had nothing to gain from this. She could still get him more keys. He wrote her a threatening message under Dick Baker’s name to stop her from following him and stuck it in the gap between the bracelet and her hand.
The first real confrontation ended before it even began.
The next day, Lovr went deep into the forest, skinned a bunch of animals, partially filled his nucleus with souls, and met two more participants. Two unexpected shots from the sniper rifle with a written warning were enough to get rid of the pursuers. It struck him as strange, though, that six participants had found him in the depths of the forest.
In the evening, just before he was going to bed, Kyon smelled a subtle scent that an average person couldn’t feel. His eyebrow raised in surprise: {Psychoactive substance!?}
He wasn’t surprised by the presence of this smell in the air, its wide spectrum was stunning. As many as thirty-two types of psychoactive substances had suddenly appeared in the air! Most of them belonged to hallucinogens. Among other things, his nose sensed fungal spores.
Rummaging in the library in his head, Kyon found the only possible option: {The demonic mushroom!}
Any huge ancient forest was believed to have a heart that received nutrients through the roots from all over its area. It looked like an ordinary unremarkable tree to keep it safe from animals or intelligent creatures.
The demonic mushroom was mythical medicine. It searched for the heart of the forest to grow there for fifty years, and then bloomed during the parade of the moons (when there was a month in the sky). During three days it scattered its spores to find a new incubator and disappeared without a trace.
This mushroom was phenomenally rare. The price varied from reasonable to exorbitant. Usually, the price of a Demonic mushroom was only a few million spheres because no one knew how to use it apart from taking it as a drug. But collectors were usually ecstatic about it.
Kyon wanted to get the mushroom anyway. He would certainly find a good use for it. Why giving up a pie falling from the sky! The question was where it was located and how long it would still bloom.
{The moon parade was eighteen hours ago. Considering the average speed and direction of the wind, the Demonic mushroom grows two hundred and fifty kilometers to the east!} – Lovr took down his tent and ran in search of the rarest mushroom in the world.
Almost five hours later, already late at night, the smell of narcotic substances became unbearable. Kyon heard someone breathing ahead and slowed down. A hundred… two hundred… almost three hundred wild animals were nearby! They were making no fighting or growling sounds.
His feathery spies saw an army of beasts who absolutely lacked their will-power. They were standing around an ordinary thick tree covered with about a hundred ball-shaped red mushrooms with notable white spots. The mushrooms contracted in unison like lungs, spewing a rich green gas into the air.
Lovr immediately understood the reason for this unusual zombie parade: the Demonic mushroom used narcotic substances as protective measures while it was in bloom to enslave wild animals and make them protect it at the cost of their lives. Even a noble phaser would lose control within a fifty-meter range.
Without hesitation, Kyon stepped forward and greeted the zombie army with an artillery discharge.
There was no sound heard, only an unpleasant whistle of the shells, and then…
~BAAAM~ ~BAAAM~ ~BAAAM~
The mushrooms shriveled from the roaring rumble. Five large craters deformed the forest floor. In an instant, half of the animals were blown to pieces. The rest was badly injured, but they pressed a furious attack, anyway. Another couple of shots had finally calmed them down.
The forest in the shot-range of a hundred meters looked like a military chronicle. A great number of trees were felled or destroyed to pieces. Guts, eyes, pelts were hanging from the branches like decorations. Bones and chunks of flesh were scattered everywhere. What a glaring demonstration of the advanced civilization!
Sensing a dangerous human nearby, the Demonic mushroom started to contract feverishly, releasing even more gas, but it was not in its power to dope up the owner of Synergy and the upgraded nervous system.
Kyon cut the frightened mushrooms and placed them in the ring. He felt as thrilled as a mushroom hunter who had found a secret hiding spot of the king boletus.
Later, when Kyon was fast asleep, he dreamed of myriads of mushrooms, dancing to seduce him so that he would not eat them.
Early in the morning, Kyon stretched and rubbed his eyes lazily. Four days had passed since the beginning of the tournament. It was time to loot… However, he could hunt first, and it was exactly what he did.
An hour later, a sudden loud tiger’s roar made Lovr jump. All living creatures instantly rushed to its source, abandoning their affairs and even their cubs. Predators and herbivores ran side by side, completely ignoring each other.
{A supreme beast!} – Kyon realized, stunned.