Chương 122: Chapter 120: A Griffon's flight

"So we're back on the chase then," Vincent asks as we leave the town. He's floating again. I'm at this point a bit surprised that he bothers wearing shoes at all. But I guess the boots still give him the bonus to his speed even when he's floating.

"We got a clue!" El says.

"And wasn't that what we were looking for?"

"What do you think the impossible dream is?" Gigi asks.

"Probably referring to becoming a god," Ash says. I shake my head.

"It's more than that. The impossible dream is, I think, a reference to Don Quixote. It's about the ideals of a knightly life, about a better world and about doing what can't be done. So yeah, I think it's about becoming a god. But I also think it's about helping the world."

"What sort of thing qualifies as the impossible dream?" Ash asks me. Suddenly, I'm the expert. I've never read Don Quixote. I know the story because my mother took me to see Man of LaMancha when I was a kid, and I loved it. I used to listen to the cast recording album over and over again. I memorized so many of the songs. I used to sing them – off key, of course – whenever I was alone. But for the life of me, the words that I used to know so well have escaped my mind. They've fallen out of my memory.

"To climb the unclimbable peak, that sort of thing," I say.

"To beat the unbeatable foe. To right the unrightable wrong."

"So to make things better, things that shouldn't be possible to fix." Ash runs her tongue over her sharp teeth, thinking.

"Sounds like she's looking for something amazing to do. Something that shouldn't be possible. Kind of reminds me of the dragons."

"How does that remind you of the dragons?" Vincent asks.

"The way that the dragons have to die in a very specific battle in order to become gods," she says.

"That's what Balak told us. They have to die fighting, and have to die fighting a much more powerful foe, or something like that. Maybe that's what the god slayer is looking for. She might be looking for someone who can defeat her in a fair fight."

"So then we're trying to be that someone?" El asks.

"We're chasing her down so that we can kill her and she can become a god?"

"Maybe," Ash says.

"I don't think it's that simple," I say.

"I think she's just trying to make the world a better place, finding goals that are out of reach just so that she can always strive to reach them. That's the whole point of the impossible dream. It's not about succeeding; it's about fighting. It's about trying to make the world better, and never stopping." We move along in silence after that, for a few minutes. I try to figure out if there's something specific that the god slayer is trying to do, if there's a goal that looks to be unachievable that I can think of.

It seems like those sorts of things are always dreams of a utopian world. A world where no one is hungry or poor, where everyone is happy and where there is peace and safety for everyone. The problem with a utopia is that they are almost always just facades for dystopias. There's always something under the surface that makes what appears to be a perfect world actually insidious and terrible, something worth fighting against, rather than for. That's why it's an impossible dream.

You can't make a utopia, because they're impossible. They can't be maintained. But maybe, if you became a god, you could maintain it. Gods do impossible things; that's kind of the point. Maybe that's her goal. It's a lofty goal, but it's an appealing one. If it is possible, if she can really make this a better world for everyone, then shouldn't we be helping her? But can we help her, so many levels below her, with so much less of a benefit from the death cycle? We've been through the death cycle a handful of times.

Enough that we're head and shoulders above most other players and just about anything at our level, but not enough to be equal to the god slayer. How many times did she go through the tutorial before she killed the god? How many times did she level up, just to have her levels stripped away but her skills, abilities, and spells maintained? How many times did she pay back the deficit of stat points and expand beyond it? I've been working on the assumption that she has 300 in every one of her stats.

But she might have more. She might have less, too, but that's not the point. So can we even help her? Do we matter, in the grand scheme of things, to her plan?

"I don't know if we're going to make a difference to her," I say. Everyone looks at me. I've been having this conversation in my head for the last twenty or so minutes, so that makes sense.

"We've followed in her footsteps at least a little bit," I say.

"Ash, El, and I have been through the death cycle more than half a dozen times. But how many times has she been through it? We have no idea."

"We have some idea," Vincent says.

"Didn't you say that she had at most a year's time to get through it?"

"Yeah," I say.

"A year of tutorials. So a hundred and four times. She could have done that. That's the maximum. But we don't know the minimum. She might have only gone through it ten times, or she might have gone through it over a hundred. It makes it impossible to guess at her capabilities."

"What's your point?" Vincent asks.

"My point is that just because we've been through it a few times, just because we know the trick that she's used to become powerful, doesn't mean that we're anywhere near as powerful as she is. She might see us as no different from anyone else who came through the tutorial after one time through and just never died. We might not be all that different, in comparison." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"So?" El asks.

"So what can we really offer her? Can we even help her?"

"Are you saying we should get more levels first?" Ash asks.

"Or are you asking if we should go through the death cycle more?" I think about how far away Wrax is at this point. We're talking hundreds of miles. I shake my head.

"No, I don't think going through the cycle more is a good idea."

"Good," El says.

"Because I don't think so either. I don't like the side effects." We really haven't talked enough about those.

"So you are saying we should get more levels," Ash says.

"For that, we probably need to leave the road."

"The road doesn't go due west," Gigi says.

"It's kind of veering to a north west kind of situation. Maybe we should just go due west. Towards the setting sun, the way the god slayer is heading."

"We'll go through fewer towns doing that," I point out.

"But if the god slayer is following the direction rather than the road, we won't find anything else about her in towns," Gigi says.

"Because she'll have left the road too. If we want to really pick up her trail, maybe we need to do that."

"And maybe that way we can find a dungeon or something like that," Vincent says.

"Something worth delving into." So we leave the road. It slows us down significantly. Where before we were making a steady five mile an hour pace, now we're down to just barely four. But we're heading back into the wilderness, which means monsters, which means experience. Which means levels, especially for Gigi. When we stop to camp that night, I take first watch. El and Vincent both insist on sleeping the whole night through, which is acceptable.

I still don't seem to need more than four hours of sleep, and Gigi doesn't mind taking the middle watch. El still snores, which is kind of cute. But at least the tent doesn't smell of sex this time. I take Gigi's bed when I get her up for her turn to watch, and so I go to sleep wrapped in her scent. She smells like a cat, but also like armor, metallic and oiled. It's a strangely comforting scent. When Gigi finishes her watch, she doesn't take Ash's bed.

She snuggles up with me in her bed roll, pressing her body against mine. It briefly wakes me up, but the feeling is pleasant, and I soon drift back to sleep. It's not until the morning that I realize that she just spooned with me for the last two hours of the night. And that I definitely enjoyed it. I've had a lot of trouble being intimate with my friends. Not just because they're my friends, and I don't want to change what we all have.

But there's something else that's blocking my ability to be truly physically intimate. I'm scared of it. I don't know entirely why I'm scared or even what it is that I'm exactly scared of, but I know that fear is playing a big role. And having a night pass with Gigi spooning me, letting me be the little spoon, has definitely helped with that fear. It's like she was teaching me that we can be intimate without having to have sex.

Like she was telling me that it was okay to be physically intimate and it wouldn't ruin anything. She's showing me that it's safe. I don't know how to put into words just how much I appreciate that. So I stupidly don't mention it at all when we strike camp, and just give her a few furtive looks and nervous smiles. I feel like a child. As we put more and more distance between us and the road, I start to see more trails of monsters and beasts. Some of them we've seen before, some we have not.

I'm pretty sure those right there are griffon tracks. I've never seen a griffon before. Front body of an eagle, back body of a lion. That explains the tracks, though I suppose it's possible that there's a lion out there on its hind legs chasing after an eagle that is for some reason just waddling through the grass rather than flying. I still don't spot any tracks that might belong to the god slayer. That's what I'm hoping to see. I really want to see signs that we're on her trail, that we're catching up to her.

I'm still not entirely sure why. Maybe it's a fan service thing. Am I just a big fan of the god slayer? Do I want her autograph or something? I feel this deep need to talk to her, but I'm not sure what I'd even say to her. I'd confirm that she slew a god, and I'm sure I'd want to know what the story behind that was. But then what? I'm not sure what I want from her. I just know I need to find her. I need to catch up. She has secrets, and I need to know what they are.

She knows something about this world, and I want to know what that something is. I roll over possibilities in my mind. What if it turns out that humans can become dragons, but only if they're outworlders? What if there's a reason why we all ended up here when we did, and she somehow knows it? What if she's truly incapable of harming any dragons or of making the world a worse place?

If she can only work on the side of good and progress, maybe we want to share the secret of the death cycle and encourage other people to do it. The world could always use more protectors. But what if she was lying to Balak? Or what if Balak was lying to us? There's just so many different possibilities. It's a mystery that I don't have nearly enough clues to solve. The only way to get more clues is to keep chasing her, to catch up to her, and to have a conversation.

But what that conversation will entail is as much a mystery as she herself is. We do spot the griffon after a few hours of traveling. It sees us shortly after we see it, shortly after I'm able to identify it. Griffon. Legendary rare elite creature, level 40. HP: 200, 000/200, 000. It spots us, and there's a bit of a moment. The world seems to slow down for a few seconds, like all the motion in the universe suddenly stopped.

It's like a sudden and unexpected lull in conversation, when a huge group of people all take that same instant to take a breath or to pause in their talking, and suddenly a silence drops on the whole area. Then the griffon squawks at us, lifting itself on its hind legs as it splays its wings out behind it. It waves at us with its front claws in a manner that might be threatening or might just be demonstrative of something. Then it flaps its wings and takes off.

I probably could've shot it in that time, in that window of stillness and silence. I could maybe even have wounded its wing enough that it wouldn't be able to fly anymore. It could've been forced to stay on the ground, and could have been forced to fight us as it was. But I didn't draw back the arrow I had nocked in my bow. I didn't even think to attack. It was so majestic, so beautiful, that I just couldn't bring myself to interrupt the beauty of it.

"What was that all about?" Vincent asks me after the griffon has flown well out of our range.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"We were within range of your bow," he says.

"You had plenty of opportunity to shoot it. Why didn't you?" I shrug.

"I just couldn't," I say.

"It was too beautiful."

"Is that the death cycles talking?" he asks me.

"Is that what Balak was talking about with the god slayer being unable to attack a dragon?"

"That wasn't a dragon," I point out.

"Maybe it doesn't just apply to dragons." I shake my head.

"If that were true, I probably would've hesitated with the giants, or even with the oni. But I didn't. I attacked them with no problem."

"But you couldn't with the griffon. I wonder what the difference was." I wonder what the difference was too. Are there some monsters, some creatures, out there that I just can't attack anymore? That I would rather let go than fight, even though that one griffon meant another forty thousand experience points for each one of us? Am I a victim of the same thing that stops the god slayer from attacking the gods?