Chapter 72: [72] Skeleton Privilege, Trouble On The Road
Esau and Sazan returned to the camp when they were sure everyone was asleep. But instead of waking Olivia and Thalia to begin their shift, Esau pulled out his jar...
He sneaked around the camp, using a stealth skill, and then he carefully doused a lavish amount of the powder on their bodies.
He glanced around to where Sazan stood, and he gave him a thumbs up, meaning he had dumped just enough on the two girls.
But when he got to Ark, he frowned slightly as he stared at the skeleton.
He may have seemed inconspicuous, but for some reason, Esau felt more wary about him.
Unlike the rest of them, this time Esau emptied the rest of the powder on him which was far too much.
Once they touched his bones, it sank in, vanishing as though it was never there.
Without wasting a single second, Sazan and Easu hurriedly left the camp. They would come back. A few minutes later to wake the girls, but for now, they needed to give the powder time to work.
But unknown to them, the moment they left the camp, Ark sat up straight and sighed.
"Well this is a strange turn of events..."
Skeletons did not need sleep, so wherever he laid down, he mostly just pretended to be asleep. Who would have known it would come to help him one day?
’What was that powder?’ Ark mused as he sniffed his arm. There was no smell. It was almost as if there was nothing at all? But Ark had seen it happen, he had definitely seen them dump that voodoo powder on him.
But even though he had no idea what it was, one thing was certain... It was bad news.
’Is it possible that they are responsible for the disappearances?’
Although it would have been easy to draw a conclusion, there were too many variables that didn’t add up.
What would be their motive? What would they stand to gain from it?
The cash price involved with this quest was definitely more than enough to provoke some greedy players into killing one another.
When out on a quest, there were many ways to kill an ally and blame it on some innocent monster.
But that theory did not work for them because of one simple reason...
The quest was never completed.
Players had repeatedly gone missing while trying to attempt this quest. So it was either they kept killing their teammates and failing to steal the egg, or there was another thing making players vanish...
’Well, no need to overthink...’
Ark laid back down, placing his head on the rock he was using as a pillow.
He yawned. ’I’ll figure it all out tomorrow anyway.’
Why spoil the fun, when the shocking reveal would be far more suspenseful?
<•••>
As early as four in the morning, Esau and Sazan woke the party. They needed to start climbing the mountain very early so that they would meet up with their schedule.
Ark got up and stretched his limbs, his bones popping into their right places.
"Damn, I don’t think I’ve slept this well in ages!"
"Hahaha! You need to learn to sleep lightly as an adventurer kid." Sazan tapped his back in a friendly manner. "You never know when a monster will crawl right into camp."
"I’ll take your advice to heart, thank you."
Sazan offered him a hand and Ark took it, the kobold pulling him to his feet.
"Are we all ready?" Esau asked in a serious tone. Once he saw that everyone had packed up, he nodded. "Let’s go."
Wyverns built their nest atop some of the tallest mountains in the area, needless to say that hiking up a mountain of that size at 4AM in the morning was no joke.
Sometimes they would walk on inclined land, which felt like climbing up a flight of never ending stairs, but that was nothing compared to the times they would have to use their daggers to scale the steeper parts of the mountain.
The higher they went, the harsher the wind got. Some gusts of wind were so heavy that they nearly blew his light body right off the mountain...
After climbing non-stop for seven hours with barely any breaks, they finally got high enough.
They had gone so high up that the air had turned chilly, the green foliage had given way to snow laced grass and ashen leaves. It was as though they had stepped right into a new biome.
"Hey, I think I see a nest over there!" Thalia said with glee, pointing at a brown shape in the distance.
She was right, it was indeed a nest, albeit a terrifying one.
Unlike birds who built their nests with twigs and dry grass, the wyverns had uprooted trees to build their home...
Olivia hovered in the air above them and let out a steamy breath. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold, and she would occasionally rub her fingers together to warm up her stiffening hands.
"Um, guys..." she said.
Ark gave her the stink eye. Unlike them who had struggled throughout, Olivia had simply flown over every obstacle. Never did he imagine he would someday grow envious of Olivia.
"What?" He asked curtly.
"Is there a problem?" Sazan asked, almost screaming to be heard over the howling wind.
"There is something strange about this place... Didn’t you say the mountain was home to the rock bears?"
Easu and Sazan shared a look.
Sazan nodded. "Indeed... but how is that a problem?"
Olivia frowned, wondering how they hadn’t already gotten her point.
"Isn’t it strange that we haven’t even encountered a single one of them??"
"That is true..." Thalia voiced. "We should have met a pack by now, or even more..."
"Exactly." Olivia nodded. "And not only the bears, I haven’t seen a single animal come near us since we started climbing, not even birds, and birds are usually drawn to me..."
Her eyebrows creased as she took a look around the place. "It is either they are not here..."
"Or they are avoiding us for some reason..." Ark finished her sentence.
He had noticed the absence of Rock Bears right from the beginning of their journey, but Ark had assumed the reason they were not running into them was because he had killed far too many.
He glanced deeper into the forest. At first, he did not notice them, but now, when he decided to really pay attention, he could see—
Far in the distance, there were outlines of a few creatures hiding from them.
That was when he realized, it was not only the rock bears and the birds that were avoiding them, it was everything else.
Ark felt a chill run down his spine.
’Esau, Sazan... you bastards!’
Ark had finally realized just what they had been doused with.
"We need to get out of here. Right now—!!"
He didn’t even get to finish his sentence, before a large shadow blotted out the very sun.
The wind howled from the beat of its massive wings. The air turned even chillier, so cold that Ark felt his bones would freeze over, and then—
BANG!!
Something landed right in front of them, causing the snow to shoot up into the sky, and then the monster unleashed a bone chilling snarl as it stared at the invaders.
"Shit." Ark hissed through gritted teeth as he stared at the monster in front of him.
[Threat detected! ICE WYVERN, Level 25 x 1!]