Chương 119: Strange Wind

Lloyd stood at the edge of the clearing for several more minutes, gazing at the still surface of the lake as if entranced — something about that strange, frozen scene kept pulling his eyes back, refusing to let go, as though the darkness inside the fissure itself was beckoning him closer, urging him to look harder.

It felt like if he stood here just one more minute, he'd finally catch some flicker of movement beneath that deceptively calm surface, some tiny ripple proving the water was actually real, not some skillfully crafted illusion. The air over the clearing remained utterly still, not a single leaf on the surrounding trees so much as trembled, as though the place itself were stuck somewhere between reality and dream, refusing to obey the rules of this already strange world.

But remembering the chronometer and the time he had left, he forced himself to turn away and headed back toward the island's edge, waiting for it to finally come to a stop again, walking over flattened, damp grass that still bore the marks of his own earlier footsteps. Some time later, Lloyd crossed onto a new island and immediately summoned the chronometer, woven out of those familiar white sparks right in his palm, bringing it closer to his face.

"Two days. Perfect for resting up. Though, lucky for me, I won't need it." Summoning the Sword of the Worthless Warrior, feeling the hilt's familiar weight settle into his hand, he headed forward, deeper into the island, which was covered in sparse, low-lying shrubs, their branches swaying gently in a faint, barely perceptible breeze.

Walking through the dew-damp grass, though, he couldn't help noticing something strange — every time he summoned a relic, something inside him seemed to drain away, leaving behind a light but still noticeable sense of emptiness. He grew slightly more fatigued each time, as though he were spending some invisible, hidden reserve of energy that couldn't be seen, touched, or measured in any way.

The effect of using his skills, though, felt far more pronounced and severe — that dragging, exhausting weariness that hit him every time he held down an enemy's soul was unlike anything else, as if half his day's strength got siphoned off in an instant. He summoned the System again, hoping to finally find some clear answer to this question, as he trudged forward, occasionally pushing aside branches that snagged at his sleeves with small, sharp thorns.

"Let's see what it says here." Relic: Sword of the Worthless Warrior. Type: Red. Level: I. Description: A plain, worthless sword. Echo: The sword is so worthless it doesn't even deserve an Echo. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Even though X describes it as worthless, it's honestly kind of hard to call it that. It does its job well enough. Sure, it's clearly not the best sword out there, but at least it doesn't have an Echo either. I guess for someone like me, that's about right." A warm, gentle smile crossed his face — he remembered this sword had been a gift, and just that memory alone made something inside him a little warmer, his stride growing a bit lighter on its own.

But a second later, that smile gave way to his usual, thoughtful expression, his gaze lingering for a moment above the tops of the low shrubs, where, through the sparse gaps, the same gray, swirling mass of the Vortex remained visible, endlessly churning somewhere up above.

"Well, no matter how many times I reread it, the text isn't going to change on its own. Looks like Mippo's the only one who can actually answer any of this." He scratched his chin, mentally trying to work out how long it had been since he'd last used that option, and couldn't help wincing slightly at his own carelessness.

"I've been here over a week now, and I still haven't summoned him once. I definitely need to fix that tonight." Walking on a bit farther into the island, past a few low, gentle hills covered in the same monotonous shrubbery, he still hadn't run into a single monster, even though the island itself turned out to be fairly large, considerably bigger than the last one, dotted here and there with sparse clearings scattered among the brush.

Here and there small boulders poked up through the grass, coated in dry, brittle lichen, and at one point he thought he heard the distant splash of water, though it faded the moment he tried listening more closely. The silence here felt almost as thick as it had on the previous island, broken only occasionally by the rustle of leaves or the faint, distant drone of the Vortex itself, which never fully quieted down, like some colossal beast breathing somewhere far above.

But then he suddenly felt a sharp gust of wind sweep past him out of nowhere — something about that wind struck him as genuinely wrong, off in some way he couldn't quite place, and Lloyd froze in place at once, his whole body tensing, fingers tightening instinctively around the sword's hilt.

Something about that sudden, inexplicable gust unsettled him deeply, as though nature itself had shuddered for a moment around him, warning of something he couldn't yet see or fully understand — this wind hadn't come in sideways, the way it usually did, but seemed to have dropped straight down from above, pressing briefly against the top of his head in a cool, heavy wave of air.

He slowly scanned his surroundings, straining to listen through the silence and trying to breathe as quietly as possible, but noticed nothing out of place — no movement in the bushes, no unfamiliar shape among the trees, just the island's usual, monotonous scenery, frozen in its silence, and a few stray specks of dust drifting slowly through the air wherever the thin, scattered light happened to catch them.

"Something's not right here," an uncertain, faintly anxious thought crossed his mind as he kept scanning the greenery around him with tense focus, turning slowly in a full circle so as not to miss a potential threat from any direction. His heart began beating a little faster, and a chill of bad premonition ran down his spine — a feeling he'd known since his very first days in this merciless world, one that had never once let him down.

And then something soft, almost silent, dropped down from above and touched the ground, as if something weightless and careful had landed gently nearby, somewhere in the thick grass, flattening a few thin blades with an almost soundless motion.