Though this time Weed was traveling on a horse, his mood wasn’t quite as good as it should have been. On his way he was noticing traces of the hunting party, or, to be precise, items, left by them.
Weed could see them clearly, but couldn’t come close enough to pick them up. There were strong monsters living in those areas, that would be hard to deal with alone. Besides, hunting party was coming through the middle of such areas, where the number of monsters was the greatest.
At first glance plains looked like they were empty, but that was a misleading first impression. Every kind of monsters had its own territory, by walking into which players were forcing all of the monsters inhabiting it to attack. These territories were scattered around the plains, forming a complex labyrinth.
Weed had a copy of the map, therefore he was able to avoid all the dangerous areas. But even with that map and a horse, he had to follow a tortuous path, which was really slowing him down.
After a day of constant gallop the horse started to foam at the corners of its mouth. It was getting exhausted. Especially since Weed was carrying a pretty weighty Orc statue in one of his bags.
Usually horse owners were taking care of their rides: stroking, comforting, feeding carrots to them, and of course letting them rest when they were tired.
Weed was rushing his horse instead.
“Come on, run. You can do it. You belong to a species of runners after all, aren’t you disappointed, that you never actually reached your limit?”
After that he suddenly started to thump out a tempo on the horse’s back. And it did start running a bit faster, expending the little power it still had. But after some time the speed started to drop again.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? Hold on a bit more. When we arrive you’ll be able to rest as much as you want.”
The horse believed those words, stopped slowing down and put some more effort into it.
Weed’s kind voice and his hich charisma and leadership attributes were helping him to convince the poor horse to run ahead in hopes of reaching their destination.
But however long it was running, there was no sign of their destination and Weed wasn’t letting it to slow down.
“Come on, a little further.”
The horse was running.
“Almost there.”
It was still believing.
“Just a bit left.”
Weed’s attitude towards his mount went beyond horrible. He was squeezing every last drop from his horse.
In the end it couldn’t stand such a treatment any longer, made last few steps and fell to the ground, completely exhausted.
After examining the heavily breathing horse and realizing, that he won’t be able to ride it any further, Weed took his bags off it and said:
“You’re free now. Go wherever you want. Good luck.”
He took out the small Orc statue. He didn’t have time to wait for the horse to recover, so he switched to his original way of traveling.
“Sculpture transformation!”
The journey to Rosenheim Kingdom took him 7 days. But now, that he covered a significant part of his way on the horse and saved his strength, this time was going to reduce by half.
“Chwiik! Chwik!”
The small Orc headed to the east.
He still was terribly short on time. last time he visited all the villages of exiles in the center of the plains, now he had to visit as many of the remote ones as possible.
Taking into account the way back to the fortress of Dark Elves, it was going to take about 12 days.
“And I have 15 days until the battle starts.”
Having concluded, that he has just enough time, Weed was continuing to run, when all of a sudden, he noticed someone standing on a hill. The person was standing with his back to Weed and looking at something out of Weed’s field of view.
“A player? How… It’s not easy to get here. That must be some villager. Chwiit!”
Villages of exiles were scattered all around the plains. And despite the abundance of monsters, they were full of life, villagers were hunting and going out of villages for other business. It was not unusual to meet one of them here.
“Chwiik, is there a village nearby?”
As he was coming closer he was noticing more details about the person on the hill. Graceful posture, waist-long hair.
‘That must be a woman.’
Though he could only see her back, his sculptor’s senses were telling him, that she must be very beautiful. A woman watching the sunset. No, a young lady.
Deciding that it was not his business, Weed continued to run. The girl could obviously hear him, but wasn’t paying him any attention, so he decided to simply run past her.
While running up the hill, Weed noticed something at the edge of his field of view. A huge bull-like monster was running in the same direction.
“Hunter of Plains!”
That was one of the few kinds of monsters, that didn’t live on some set territory. Hunters of Plains were roaming all over the Plains of Despair, hunting people or even occasional monsters.
Villagers said that they were warriors of about 320th level, who got cursed by a dark spell and turned into monsters with large health pool and an unpleasant ability to reduce player’s vitality a bit with every hit.
That last feature made them incredibly hard to fight against.
Weed prepared for a hard battle.
“Damn. I didn’t even sharpen the sword or polish the armor…”
He was focused on running, so he didn’t prepare for a fight at all. And the difference between fighting after preparations and fighting unprepared was huge.
If he encountered the monster on plain terrain, he’d be able to go around the monster. But on a slope he noticed it too late and there was no way to avoid a fight.
However Hunter of Plains wasn’t going for Weed, but for the girl, standing on the top of the hill!
It was hunting her.
‘Great. I’ll escape in the meanwhile… Oh, no, I can’t run away!’
At first Weed got relieved and was going to use the opportunity to escape, but then he remembered another trait of that kind of monsters. Hunters of Plains were always chasing their prey to the end.
Once it finishes the girl, it’ll follow Weed until it catches up with him. And that’ll most probably happen when Weed will be tired, which will make fighting with it even harder.
So his best bet would be to deal with it now. Besides this monster had a certain week point.
‘While it’s busy with the girl, I’ll come from behind and stab it.’
The Hunter aimed his spear at the girl.
Weed got a better grip on the glaive. He was counting on making a single powerful strike, that’ll most likely be lethal.
He thought he planned for every possibility. But in the last moment the girl turned around with incredible speed and unsheathed her sword! The blade flashed and seemingly divided into 3 separate edges, which immediately struck the Hunter, that was about to thrust his spear forward.
The next moment the monster was dead.
The girl looked at Weed.
When their eyes met Weed got stunned.
He knew her.
Knew her well!
That was Seoyoon.
“Chwi, chwiik…”
He froze with a glaive lifted in a striking position. From the side it looked like an ugly small Orc was going to attack a lone girl.