Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

"What are we going to do?" Klank asked, as his breathing quickened at the thought of the possibility of being attacked at any moment.

Kaizen looked at Klank and said confidently:

"We'll probably find that monster before it finds us. The mission hasn't failed yet, so Resmir must still be alive. To find out where that old man is, we have to follow the tracks that must be around here somewhere... Just stay calm, because I guarantee we will get the item you need."

Klank looked at Kaizen with admiration. He knew that Kaizen was ready to face any challenge. At that moment, Klank nodded and smiled.

"All right, you're right."

Together, they began to search for tracks or evidence of the whereabouts of the NPCs who were in the carriage along with Klank. Surrounding them, besides the overturned carriage and the corpses of the horses, there were many rocks, tall grass, and especially trees. Finding the tracks among so much clutter would certainly be a challenge, and it was.

For a few minutes, Kaizen and Klank searched for clues with their own eyes among the darkness and the dim light produced by the fire in the Psyker's palm, which was neither bigger nor smaller than the illumination an ordinary torch would produce. At times like this, in a normal investigative game, all players would need to do is press any random key on the keyboard for the game to activate special vision or radar, identifying all the clues at the scene. However, Rise Online was not the kind of game that made things easy.

Even in the face of such difficulties, at one point Klank finally found what appeared to be a trail left by someone. The tall grass was crumpled and boot prints on the ground were present. Luckily, the trail was still very fresh.

Klank called out to Psyker, almost whispering, and said:

"See this? It looks like someone followed this trail not too long ago. Let's follow that trail and see what we find. "

Kaizen nodded, for, that was the only trail the two of them had found. So they followed the trail they had discovered.

As Kaizen was working as a flashlight, he stayed in front of Klank and after a few minutes they arrived at what seemed to be the end of the dark forest, where there was a stream, which turned into several small waterfalls on the further stretch.

The place was very beautiful. The whitish moonlight reflected off the calm water that flowed down the stream. The sound of the waterfalls gave a sense of tranquility and belonging. Kaizen and Klank could spend the whole night contemplating this mesmerizing landscape, but luckily for them there was something that caught their attention more.

On the other side of the stream, opposite the forest, were many rocks, as one would normally expect near waterfalls, only one of these rocks was bigger than all the others. Hiding under the shadow of this large rock was a Copper Nuzzling Monkey. The creature didn't even look in Kaizen and Klank's direction, yet it was already cowering in fear, trembling.

Without thinking much about this scene, Klank acted as usual. He stepped forward and was about to activate his claw skill to kill this monster.

'It's just a monkey, even if it's of the highest Mutant Classification level there's no way this could survive an encounter with me and Kaizen.' Klank thought, exacerbating confidence.

However, lucky for Klank, Psyker stopped him before he fucked up.

Kaizen grabbed Klank's head with one hand and pushed him down, forcing him to lie down on what little forest grass was still there.

"W-what are you doing?" Klank whispered, not understanding, but also not resisting.

"Shhhh... Trust me."

Since he was a child, Klaus had always been very assertive in his deductions. Before, this used to be a mystery to both him and the Park family.

When he first joined a professional E-sports team, obviously the coach and analysts tried to find answers to his miraculous deductions. The answer in the end was that Klaus, despite being very young and inexperienced at the time, had an above-average mental calculation ability, perceptive eyes, a nearly perfect environment reading, as well as a behavioral reading of the actions of his allies and enemies, not to mention his ability to memorize things. His brain worked like a machine, calculating several possible scenarios for each situation.

So what happened that night near the creek was nothing more than a small sample of the former prodigy's incredible latent deductive potential.

The context of the situation, their location, the expressive fear of the Copper Azucinating Monkey, and all the information they had from the mission. It all led to a single certainty and that by this point even you must know what it is...

'That beast is here.' Kaizen concluded.

Seconds later, for some reason the sky darkened where they were standing. Clouds cluttered the view of the moon and stars. Since Kaizen had deactivated his fire, everything became very dark.

The rain that began to fall was not a normal rain, because it formed too quickly and was too intense. Every drop fell violently from the sky, but there was no thunder or lightning.

Kaizen continued to stare intently at the Copper Azucinating Monkey on the other side of the stream and was curious to realize that when the monkey saw the rain begin to fall, it basically cringed more in fear. In a normal context, it would be normal to consider then that the monkey was afraid of the rain and not of something else. However, this was not an occasion like the others.

Suddenly, footsteps that made the ground tremble could be heard and felt, stepping on the puddles of water that the rain was rapidly forming.

Startled, Klank looked around, but saw nothing.

Still, the sound of footsteps persisted. This was undeniably close, only Klank couldn't see anything, perhaps because of the darkness around them or perhaps because of the pouring rain.

'My eyes and Kaizen's are probably a little used to the darkness by now. We probably can't see 100% as in daylight, but I'm sure at least 1/3 of that is possible. So if there was something big near us it should be possible for us to see, shouldn't it?

The sound of slow footsteps stepping on the puddles of water persisted for a few seconds, until they suddenly stopped.

The drops falling around the players were all they heard now. When Klank looked at Kaizen, he realized that his companion was staring at Copper Azucinating Monkey with his eyebrows arched in surprise. Without saying anything, Klank looked at the stone as well and at that moment he saw something in the stone that wasn't there before.

What he saw was not a large feral creature or a person, but the mark of a paw on the surface of the stone, a large animal footprint that had not been there before. He was sure of this.

Soon after Klank noticed the footprint, he saw another one forming out of nothing on the stone with his own eyes. It looked like something unbelievable, that his brain was unable to comprehend. There was nothing on top of the stone, only the monkey underneath, how could footprints be forming from nothing? To him, this made no sense at all.

One footprint after another was formed, groping up the large rock to the top. These tracks were black, as if the paws had been soiled with oil.

After this, the footprints stopped appearing, and at this moment Klank looked with narrowed eyes in the direction of the stone. His hair was wet and there was a lot of water on his face, making it difficult to see, yet none of this would be enough to convince him that what he saw next was an illusion. On top of the rock, there was a sharp silhouette outlined by the raindrops.

Klank couldn't see the exact appearance of what was there, but he was sure, there was something on top of the stone. When he realized this, he turned his head to alert Kaizen, only his hand stopped him from saying anything.

Kaizen looked at him reproachfully and looked back at the stone. While Klank was lucky enough not to be able to see the creature in question, for some reason Kaizen was seeing it from the moment it appeared accompanied by rain.

This creature was scrawny, had skin the same color as charcoal, pointed claws on each of its fingers, and although it had the body shape of a human, it had the head of a wolf. Around this thing's neck was a kind of scarf of darkness. And its eyes, well, they were so white they looked like two moons.

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[Creature: ?

Level: ? | Attribute: ? | Nature: ?

HP: ? | MP: ?

Attack: Defense: ? Defense: ? Speed: ?

Strength: ? | Wisdom: ? | Resistance: ?

Resistance to Spells of: ?.]

...

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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