Chương 117: Alone Within the Vortex

Having killed another Mushroom Wolf, Lloyd bent over its lifeless body and carefully collected its soul — a familiar, practiced motion of the hand by now. Then he immediately summoned the System, and before him, woven out of those familiar purple sparks, a translucent window unfurled, flickering softly in the muted, gray light of this new island, casting a faint, trembling glow over the flattened grass at his feet. Souls Collected: [9/25].

"Nine already. Feels like I've gotten stronger, though maybe I'm just hyping myself up. Well, I'll figure out what these are for eventually." A faint, satisfied smirk crossed his face as he studied the changed number on the screen, and then he slowly closed the window with a short, familiar gesture.

"I've killed three out of five already, and it's only been half a day. Could today actually be the first time I finish a quest completely?" These thoughts clearly warmed something in him, spurring him forward with far more enthusiasm than usual — he didn't even notice himself quickening his pace as he headed toward the next edge of the island, hopping over moss-covered boulders jutting up from the ground.

"Plus the chronometer hasn't let me down once today. This is definitely my day." Reaching the edge of another island, he stopped, watching it spin at a frantic, dizzying speed, even though the wind itself only faintly, almost lazily tugged at strands of his hair, as though all that mad churning existed somewhere apart from him, never quite touching him directly.

It remained an incredibly strange sensation, one that even after a whole week still hadn't become truly familiar — every time he looked at the blurred, rushing landscape, his knees seemed to buckle on their own, even though his mind knew perfectly well there was nothing to fear here.

Sitting down in the stiff, prickly grass near the edge, he settled in to wait for the island to finally calm down — fortunately, he had plenty of time to spare, and the chronometer, rematerializing in his free hand, obligingly showed a good couple of hours still in reserve.

Lost in thought, he lifted his gaze upward, to where thousands of other islands continued spinning at that same frantic speed, weaving together into one unbroken, dizzying pattern of stone and green, stretching, it seemed, all the way to the very edge of this warped world.

"I'm only on the lowest islands — haven't even made it to the middle of the Vortex yet. They say you can even run into Phantoms there. And honestly, how long is it going to take me to get there? Doing this alone is definitely going to take way too long."

Picking up a small, smooth pebble nearby, he tossed it absently over the edge — the pebble sailed off on its usual, steady path, as if entirely unaware of any magical anomalies, but after a couple of seconds the island's magic stopped affecting it, and the invisible Vortex immediately snatched it up, sweeping it off to the side, into the swirling gray haze, where the pebble instantly vanished among thousands of other fragments, forever circling within this endless, roaring storm. Love this story?

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"I really need to find some kind of team. Doing this alone, I can barely even get through the simplest quests." He lowered his gaze to his own hand, recalling that strange, pulling sensation that gripped his body every time he used the skill — over the past week he'd gotten fairly good at controlling that feeling, summoning and releasing it almost effortlessly, as long as he focused on the right sensation in his chest.

Though for some reason the skill only ever worked through his right hand, and Lloyd still hadn't quite figured out whether that was down to his own inexperience or some inherent quirk of the skill itself. Unfortunately, the descriptions of his abilities always kept the useful information buried under vague, unhelpful phrasing, leaving him with far more questions than answers.

"But what kind of team could I even find? I can't even properly fulfill my own role as Support. At this rate, even the dregs wouldn't want me." He let out a heavy sigh, feeling the enthusiasm of the past few minutes gradually fade, giving way to that familiar, nagging self-doubt that had settled somewhere deep beneath his ribs ever since the day he'd failed the Exam.

Somewhere in the distance, amid the swirling gray haze, an indistinct, fast-moving shape flickered past again, but Lloyd, already used to such fleeting shadows, only glanced after it briefly, without giving it much thought — over the week he'd learned that most such shapes kept a respectful distance from smaller, isolated islands like the one he was sitting on now.

The wind, meanwhile, picked up, carrying with it a faint, sourish smell of ozone from somewhere far off, as though lightning had just struck deep within the Vortex. Lloyd raised his head, peering into the dark, leaden haze above, but couldn't make out anything beyond the usual, monotonous mass of swirling clouds and the distant silhouettes of islands flickering between them.

"I wonder if high-rank Players even still notice this wonder around them anymore. Or has it long since turned into nothing but routine for them?"

He smirked at his own thoughts, recognizing them as a little childish, but couldn't quite shake the bitterness lodged somewhere at the back of his mind — bitterness at the fact that for a whole week now, he'd had to handle all of this completely alone, without a single friendly soul nearby, without a single companion to share even a fraction of the exhaustion he'd built up.

Suddenly the island he was sitting on began to slow down gradually, drifting smoothly toward another, identical island nearby, its rocky edge steadily drawing closer, blotting out part of the gray haze and casting a wide, blurred shadow over the grass at his feet.

"Finally." Stretching out his legs, stiff from sitting so long, Lloyd got up, did a couple of light warm-up movements, feeling his joints answer with a faint, barely audible crack, adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder, and, after a short run-up, leapt across the narrowing strip of empty space, landing on the springy, moss-covered ground of the new island and leaving behind him the flattened grass and the faint, dark trace of black blood spilled there once before.