CHAPTER 80: MOVING ON

Cedric’s POV

——

I took a sip from my tea, then my gaze shifted to the fireplace in front of me. I couldn’t go back to sleep. Or rather, I was too terrified to try. So I just sat there, lost in the echoing silence of my own thoughts.

According to Aika, she was asleep when she suddenly felt that something was wrong. Instinctively, she rose to check on me. That was when she saw me thrashing and seizing in my sleep, my face contorted like someone trapped in the depths of a waking nightmare.

At first, she tried to calm me down, but when that didn’t work, she switched to trying desperately to wake me. However, no matter how hard she tried, I couldn’t wake up. When she also couldn’t reach me mentally, that was the moment she realized that something was indeed wrong.

Gamer Privileges wasn’t responding to her either, leaving her no option but to keep trying to break through. While she struggled, Ino was keeping watch, and the other awakened party members gathered around in worry.

Then eventually, the same notifications that popped up for me earlier, popped up for her too, after which I woke up seconds later.

I didn’t need to explain anything to her as she suddenly reached into my memories the moment I woke up.

As for the others, we just told them that it was indeed a terrible nightmare.

There was no reason to create more panic by telling them that beings who were probably in the Grade Four have been targeting me, and finally succeeded in attacking me through a dream.

They all returned to sleep shortly after, except for Celeste, who, for some reason, decided to join me at the fireplace. She didn’t say anything, and simply sat on the ground beside me with her legs folded and leaned gently against my side. Perhaps that was her way of making me feel better.

However, I didn’t pay much attention to her, as I was lost in my thoughts.

I suspected that the two people who invaded my dream were likely part of the group that attacked us at the cave back in Merdini’s burial ground. They also wore modern clothes and had Korean names.

However, there were a few things that were bothering me. The first was the fact that the man who went by the name Lee Lim spoke to me in kaldor rather than Korean.

How was he able to speak Kaldor if he has never been to the empires?

...Could it be a skill?

He did say he was omniscient. So it could be that maybe, he knew how to speak kaldor because of this.

But I couldn’t be sure.

Besides that, the second thing that bothered me was that among this people, there were those even in the Grade Four.

If they were beings of the Grade Four who were hunting dominants in the first ring, what did that mean for us?

Would many of us even be able to survive till the end of the six months?

If there was one thing I confirmed from this encounter, it was that for some reason that did not make sense to me, they were actively looking for me.

They must not have been able to find me all this while, probably because Gamer Privileges was passively hiding my existence. But when I agreed to the update, it looked like Gamer Privileges had temporarily dropped its defenses, and that was how they found me.

The thought of how not only were my abilities completely useless against the man Lee Lim, but how he somehow managed to wield my own flames, made me distraught.

Suddenly, I couldn’t help but shudder at the realization that I would have died if Gamer Privileges hadn’t roared back online exactly when it did.

I sighed and slowly raised my index finger. Then I activated my exclusive skill, and a small, dark wisp of black flame coiled on the tip.

’How was he able to suddenly wield this power with such absolute precision that he could just dispel mine?’ I wondered, examining the flame before making it vanish.

My tea had gone cold, but I took a sip anyway, before turning my gaze back to the fireplace while also drowning in my own analysis.

***

A few hours after sunrise, the party began the construction of the raft. The boys pitched in, hauling most of the waterlogged wood back onto the land. As for the larger pieces, Dion simply used his exclusive skill to float them directly out of the water and stack them neatly on the edge.

With Celeste’s guidance, we began to measure, cut, and notch the heavy timbers for the main frame. I provided lengths of rope from my inventory for lashing the logs together, and we quickly organized an assembly line. Evelyn and Ino managed the knot work, while Dion and Julius held the heavy pieces in place.

As the frame took shape, we immediately began cutting the remaining logs into smaller, uniform sections to fill the interior space for buoyancy.

It didn’t take long to finish building the raft. In fact, the entire process took less than three hours.

At the same time, while we were working on the raft, Aika filtered and boiled as much water as possible, filling all the empty pouches that we had.

When we were all done, we huddled together around the empty fireplace to eat and plan out our route. We didn’t spend much time; we needed to get across the river, and cover as much distance in the next territory as possible before nightfall. Therefore, just an hour or so after noon, we all got on the raft.

The three boys immediately began paddling, and before long the raft was moving smoothly and steadily against the current, toward the opposite bank, which was the beginning of a mountain range.

At first, the movement was surprisingly easy and quiet. Though we were not naive to think that it would be this way till the end, as there were creatures called snappers that tried to prevent anything or anyone from crossing this river.

Luckily, there was someone on this raft who had an ability that would make it so that we would cross without being attacked by the snappers.

Half an hour later, we were already well past the midpoint of the river, and that was when we began to hear loud clacking sounds like hundreds of jaws opening and snapping shut in rapid successions.