Chapter 40 Disappearance

Hummm!

For one impossible instant, Xia Nan felt as though he had returned to the night before his transmigration.

The impact lifted him clean off the ground.

His body flew through the air like a toy thrown by a child.

Pain exploded through his back.

Then it vanished.

Not because he was unhurt, but because the damage had exceeded what his mind could process.

His consciousness began to blur.

Stars filled his vision.

His organs felt as though someone had picked them up and rearranged them.

The forest disappeared.

In its place, Xia Nan saw the truck from that night.

He heard its horn screaming.

He saw the red-faced truck driver reeking of alcohol.

“Urgh!”

Blood spilled from Xia Nan’s mouth.

The metallic taste and the smell of it in his nose ripped him back into the present.

His body, covered in grass and shredded leaves, spun through the air before slamming into the ground like a torn sack.

He rolled to a stop.

For one brief instant, there was nothing.

Then pain arrived.

All of it.

Dizziness.

Stabbing pain.

Burning pressure.

Soreness.

Numbness.

Every sensation crashed over him at once until Xia Nan could no longer tell which part of his body hurt the most.

He did not know exactly how badly he was injured.

He knew only one thing.

He could not fight.

[Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!]

The situation had gone from bad to hopeless so quickly that Xia Nan could do nothing but curse inside his head.

The healing potion.

There was one in the small pouch at his waist.

Xia Nan knew exactly where it was.

His arm simply refused to move.

It lay uselessly against the meadow no matter how hard he tried to force it.

Worse, the petrification on his fingertips had started spreading again.

As his physical condition deteriorated, gray-white stone crept steadily over his skin.

Within a few breaths, it had reached the first joints of his fingers.

Thud.

A heavy footstep sounded somewhere beyond his field of vision.

Then another.

The Basilisk’s enormous shadow spread over Xia Nan’s body.

[Am I going to die?]

After the panic and anger, an unexpected calm settled over him.

Images flashed through his mind.

The rusty nail buried in the Gnome Elki’s skull.

Gagu hanging upside down from the Bugbear’s hand.

The broken wooden bow in Maji’s arms.

Xia Nan had never seriously imagined how his life as a transmigrator might end.

Yet after seeing what had happened to the Ragtag Party, perhaps some part of him had already accepted that this world could kill him at any time.

Screech!

A sharp wail tore through the air from the top of a nearby tree.

Cold metal flashed.

The surrounding mist twisted.

One of Hai’an’s distinctive white-feathered arrows spun toward the Basilisk so quickly that Xia Nan could barely see more than a blur.

Clang!

The shot was slightly off.

Whether by accident or design, the arrow did not strike the Basilisk’s eye.

It hit one of the thick gray-green scales along the creature’s side instead.

Sparks flew.

The scale, hard enough to rival steel, stopped the arrowhead without effort.

Only a shallow pale scratch remained.

It did not hurt the Basilisk.

But hurting it had never been the point.

Its attention shifted away from Xia Nan.

The Basilisk slowly turned its thick, armored neck toward the direction the arrow had come from.

A faint green light appeared in its eyes.

[Petrifying Gaze].

At that exact moment, the shadows in the Basilisk’s blind spot twisted.

A palm-sized brown clay jar flew through the air.

Smash!

It struck the creature squarely between the crown of its head and the tip of its snout.

Thick black oil and murky powder burst across its face.

A single spark followed.

Boom!

The mixture erupted like a small bomb.

Flames swallowed the Basilisk’s head.

“Raaagh!”

Its agonized roar shook the trees.

Xia Nan had no intention of wasting the chance his companions had risked their lives to create.

The Basilisk’s charge had left him severely injured.

But the strange calm that had come over him when he thought he was about to die had also restored his ability to think.

Almost the moment Hai’an’s arrow cut through the air, Xia Nan clenched his teeth.

He forced his twisted arm to move.

Pain tore through him.

He moved anyway.

His trembling fingers reached the pouch at his waist.

Found the vial.

Pulled it out.

Fluorescent liquid shimmered inside as his hand shook.

Xia Nan gripped the wooden stopper between his teeth and tore it free.

Then he drank.

Half the potion went down in one swallow.

Cool.

Faintly sweet.

A light fragrance followed.

The liquid slid down his throat and reached his stomach.

Then warmth spread through his body.

One stream.

Then another.

The sensation flowed outward with his blood, washing through his limbs.

It felt almost like sinking into a hot spring.

Within a few breaths, the worst of the pain began to recede.

Control returned to his body.

A blue-gray shape burning with fire moved at the edge of his vision.

Xia Nan did not wait for the potion to finish working.

The moment he could move, he planted both hands on the ground and forced himself upright.

Then he ran.

Straight into the deeper forest.

No hesitation.

No looking back.

The arrow.

The incendiary jar.

Hai’an and Wood vanishing again immediately after their attacks.

Xia Nan understood what was happening.

This was not the beginning of a counterattack.

They had not suddenly decided they could kill the Basilisk.

They were buying him time.

Nothing more.

If Xia Nan wanted to live, he had to use every second they had given him to put as much distance as possible between himself and the monster.

And that was exactly what he did.

Behind him, the Basilisk thrashed wildly.

The sudden fire and the burning pain across its sensitive snout drove it into a frenzy.

Its head swung from side to side like an enraged bull’s.

Even the scales on its face, thinner than those covering the rest of its body, were still remarkably tough.

The flames hurt.

They did not do much real damage.

Ten seconds passed.

Maybe twenty.

The Basilisk smashed through enough trees and undergrowth to smother the fire.

Hot air blasted from its nostrils.

The two presences that had attacked from the canopy were already gone.

Only one remained within its senses.

Far ahead, a figure was stumbling through the forest.

Injured.

Unsteady.

But still moving at a decent speed.

The Basilisk’s fury deepened.

A powerful predator had just been mocked by prey far weaker than itself.

“Raaagh!”

It raised its head and roared.

Then its eight legs drove into the ground.

Like a tank smashing through a battlefield, the Basilisk charged after Xia Nan once more.

…

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The heavy footsteps returned.

Each impact sounded like a drumbeat through the forest.

Xia Nan felt the ground trembling beneath him.

Behind him, trees crashed down one after another.

He wanted to move faster.

His body refused.

His pace began to slow.

The soft meadow under his boots felt more and more like a swamp filled with mud, each step harder to pull free than the last.

Half a bottle of healing potion had been enough to drag him back from a severely injured state and restore some mobility.

It was not enough to completely heal him in a matter of minutes.

After all, the potion’s name did not include anything like “Greater” or “Supreme.”

So Xia Nan kept running.

That was all he could do.

The mist around him grew steadily thicker.

Visibility dropped.

The trees became denser.

At some point, he had clearly crossed beyond the outer region of the Misty Forest.

And then Xia Nan noticed something else.

The direction he had chosen in his panic was the same direction he had been staring toward before agreeing to turn back.

The direction the otherworldly objects seemed to be coming from.

Buildings appeared more frequently along the path.

Strange structures of wildly different styles intersected with tree trunks and dense shrubs.

There was not only the towering wooden inn.

Xia Nan saw a ruined temple with half a bronze bell still hanging inside.

A magnificent palace with most of its structure collapsed.

More and more.

As though he were running toward the very center of whatever had scattered these things throughout the forest.

His mind was so focused that he lost track of time.

He had no idea how long he ran.

Only when the warmth of the healing potion finally began to fade did Xia Nan’s exhausted body force him to slow.

“Huff… huff… huff…”

He sucked in air as quickly as he could.

With each breath, some clarity returned to his mind.

[Did I… get away?]

The thought came almost automatically.

That made no sense.

Only moments ago, he had clearly heard the Basilisk behind him.

After being enraged, the creature had been chasing him even faster than before.

At one point, Xia Nan had been almost certain that everything he and the others had done was useless.

So…

[When did it stop?]

When had the Basilisk’s footsteps disappeared?

This was not the sound fading because the monster had fallen behind.

Nor had it slowed gradually while searching for his trail.

The footsteps had simply vanished.

Instantly.

Like someone slamming on the brakes.

Xia Nan stood there gasping, his mind hazy from exertion, and looked around.

The mist was much thicker here.

Even the sunlight filtering through the canopy above seemed dimmer.

Then something felt wrong.

[Where are the buildings?]

The ruins that had been appearing everywhere only moments ago were gone.

Not a collapsed wall.

Not a broken roof tile.

Nothing.

The forest around him was dim.

Still.

Unnaturally quiet.

A strange image suddenly came to Xia Nan’s mind.

A catastrophic hurricane tearing across the earth.

And himself standing at the very center of it.

In the calmest place.

And perhaps the most dangerous.

The eye of the storm.

Xia Nan turned instinctively.

He took one quiet step forward.

Hummm!

Without warning, the space around him twisted.

Blurred.

For one fleeting instant, the world seemed to fold.

Then Xia Nan disappeared into the mist.

…

“Xia Nan? Xia Nan?”

A low voice moved through the dark, silent forest.

Hai’an kept his body lowered as he carefully passed between the trees.

Wood remained beside him, close as a shadow.

The two looked nothing like they had when Xia Nan first met them.

Their clothes were covered in bits of grass and torn leaves.

Sweat had plastered their hair to their foreheads.

Hai’an’s silver-gray eyes gave off a faint glow in the darkness as he searched for any sign of his missing companion.

The Darkvision inherited from his Elven blood allowed him to see clearly within sixty feet even in poor light.

But there was nothing.

Wood said little.

He searched just as carefully.

Part of his attention remained on the surroundings while the rest focused on tiny details along the forest floor.

The two were uniquely suited to moving through terrain like this.

Hai’an possessed Ranger-related combat techniques and the Elven blood of a race often called nature’s favored children.

Wood was a Rogue, a class built around stealth and movement through shadow.

Once they escaped the Basilisk’s direct line of sight, slipping beyond its senses had not been difficult.

That was how they had managed to circle back while the creature was focused elsewhere, attack from hiding, and save Xia Nan from its jaws.

After that, they had taken a wide route around the Basilisk and followed the trail of destruction until they reached this area.

“Young Master, here.”

Wood suddenly crouched.

Hai’an immediately joined him.

A trail of footprints crossed the soft, damp meadow.

The person who made them had clearly been running while exhausted.

The steps were short and tightly spaced.

Plants had been crushed and snapped along the trail.

But then the footprints simply stopped.

One patch of ground.

And nothing beyond it.

No continuing trail.

No sign of where the person had gone.

It was as though the owner of those footprints had vanished from the world.

Hai’an abruptly looked up.

His gaze searched the dense branches overhead.

“Young Master, we’re already in the deeper region of the Misty Forest. We…”

Wood hesitated.

The warning did not need to be finished.

Hai’an’s expression did not change.

He looked at the dimming sky above them.

Then back down at the trail that ended beneath his feet.

When he spoke, his voice was slow and firm.

“We’ll search for another two hours.”

“If we still don’t find him… we’ll withdraw to the outer region for now.”

Wood gave a short nod.

“All right.”

…

Elsewhere.

Crash!

Rough blue-gray scales slammed into an oak tree.

The thick brown bark, tough enough to withstand blades and axes, burst apart.

Wood fibers tore.

The pale heartwood beneath was exposed.

The Basilisk was taking out its fury on the innocent tree.

Mud sprayed across the ground.

Its strength, enough to crush steel, tore the oak’s enormous roots from deep within the soil.

Half the broken trunk came up with them.

The Basilisk roared.

Green light flickered in its eyes like ghost fire.

Scorch marks covered part of the armor around its head and nostrils, along with several of the brown crystalline spines nearby.

The Basilisk could still sense the fading trace of the human somewhere ahead.

It knew that human was weak.

Far weaker than itself.

Even if the prey had somehow endured [Petrifying Gaze], one casual swipe of a claw would be enough.

One bite would be enough.

That irritating little creature should have become its meal.

And yet the Basilisk did not continue forward.

It remained outside the area where the strange buildings had begun to cluster more densely.

Instead, it smashed trees.

Crushed bushes.

Destroyed everything around it in impotent rage.

It was as though an invisible boundary had been drawn between the monster and the ruins.

A line it refused to cross.

Not even by a single step.

The Basilisk continued raging until dozens of towering trees lay broken across the forest floor and countless disturbed creatures had been reduced to cold stone statues.

Only then did it finally stop.

It stared into the distance.

Toward the place where Xia Nan had disappeared.

Hesitation appeared in its posture.

Wariness.

Almost something human.

After a long moment, the Basilisk turned away.

Its bloated body disappeared slowly into the mist and the depths of the forest.