Chương 124: The Mystery of the Flaw

At last, the final island Lloyd had visited that day drifted up alongside the one where the Guild stood, and he hopped down onto its rocky surface, feeling his overworked legs ache with exhaustion, his shoulders sore from hours of tension.

He exchanged only a few words with his rescuers, along with a brief handshake at the end, promising Rowen he'd definitely cross paths with their group again sometime — then headed back toward the city, leaving behind the clearing with its motionless lake, the abandoned Dungeon, and the smell of blue blood still lingering somewhere at the back of his mind.

He had absolutely no strength left to keep hunting, and dusk was already beginning to fall, painting the sky above in deep, dark gray shades, while the scattered islands drifting in the distance lost their sharp outlines, blurring into dark, indistinct silhouettes. Lloyd let out a tired click of his tongue as he pulled the quest flyer from his pocket, its edges considerably crumpled after the day's events.

"So, four total. I failed the quest again." He'd killed three Mushroom Wolves before running into that strange, unusual team, and then one more on the way back, one that had strayed from a small pack — four out of five in total. He'd almost closed out that cursed fifth kill, so close, but there wasn't really much to complain about — it was his best result in the whole week he'd spent in this world, and that thought alone made the latest, if incomplete, failure a little easier to swallow.

"Well, better to make slow progress than risk everything and end up dead." Mushroom Wolves often traveled in packs, which meant Lloyd constantly had to skirt around such groups, hunting instead for stragglers that had wandered off from the rest, ducking behind boulders and low shrubs until he was sure the coast was clear.

Even a single one of them gave him plenty of trouble, demanding total focus and precise, practiced movements, and an entire pack of the things would have left him without a single chance of survival — a thought he didn't even want to entertain after today's run-in with the Whirlrunners.

On the way back to the city, he kept thinking about that coordinated, close-knit team he'd met on the island — how smoothly and confidently they'd worked together, without a single wasted word, without the slightest hesitation, as though they'd long since grown used to watching each other's backs in the most desperate of situations.

It was obvious they'd known each other for far longer than a couple of days, that they had dozens, if not hundreds, of similar battles behind them, battles that had honed their teamwork to something close to perfection, some invisible, wordless understanding between them.

"I could really use some teammates too. Otherwise I really will end up stuck at rock bottom — or worse, dead."

By the time he reached the city, already sinking into blurry evening twilight, dimly lit by scattered streetlamps, he went through his usual routine — turned in the flyer at the Guild, collected his hard-earned two copper coins, listened to another rehearsed line from the smiling clerk at the counter, exchanged the coins for credits through that same worn-out device — and headed for his shabby but by now almost familiar hotel, passing through the familiar alleys and the shops that had gone quiet for the evening.

Along the way, he paused briefly in front of one of the already-closed shops, catching his own reflection in the cloudy glass of the storefront — an exhausted, pale face, a dusty outfit stained here and there with dried blue blood — and quickly moved on, not wanting to linger on that particular sight for too long. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Some time later, he lay in his familiar room, changed into soft, comfortable clothes, staring up at that same crack in the ceiling, tracing its uneven, winding line across the entire room before it disappeared into the shadow above the nightstand. The blanket, as usual, scratched faintly through the thin fabric of his shirt, and from somewhere beyond the wall came the muffled, by-now-familiar sound of his neighbor's snoring.

His mind was fully occupied by a single question that had refused to leave him the whole way back — the very question that stubbornly kept him from falling asleep, no matter how much he tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable spot on the sunken, creaky mattress.

"A Flaw. As far as I know, everyone has one. If it weren't for Scarlet, I probably would've forgotten they even existed."

He recalled how easily the girl had gone limp right there in Rowen's arms, how casually the whole team had reacted to that sudden, strange sleep — as though it had happened to her more times than he could count, as though it were simply an inseparable, familiar part of their life together, one they'd long since adapted to, developing an entire practiced ritual around it involving a sleeping bag and one very attentive, enormous dog.

He summoned the System, and the familiar, translucent purple window immediately unfolded before him, flickering softly in the near-total darkness of the room, lit only by the dim, dying glow of the candle stub on the nightstand, its faint, trembling light barely reaching the far corners of the room.

"Looks like X doesn't give any information about the Flaw. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right place." He scrolled through the whole window from top to bottom once more, carefully studying every entry in his stats — name, level, race, class, skills, relics — and clicked his tongue in irritation, having found nothing useful — not a single mention, not a single hint that might shed any light on the question.

The lines of text simply listed facts he'd known for a while now, without adding anything new no matter how closely he examined every letter.

"I'm sure I've got some kind of Flaw myself too. I just don't know anything about it yet," an unpleasant, unsettling thought crossed his mind, sending a faint shiver crawling across his skin, an uncomfortable tightness settling in his chest.

He closed the window with a short, familiar gesture and lay still for a while, staring at the ceiling and listening to the room's silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of the dying candle and the distant, muffled hum of the night city outside the window, cut through now and then by some far-off voice or the creak of a passing cart.

"Guess it's time." And then, quietly, almost in a whisper, he murmured into the darkness of the room, feeling a faint flutter of nerves at his own words, as though speaking some kind of incantation meant to summon something important, something he'd been putting off for far too long. — Mippo.