Capítulo 88: Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see (I)
<Kiyro>
Kiyro stopped to enjoy the nice summer breeze that lazily blew across his face. The aromatic evergreen scent could be smelled heavily from the small forest on his right. He enjoyed the calm feel the trees gave him whenever he walked near them. Especially the nature around where he lived felt more alive than in certain places.
He couldn't explain exactly why, but if he were to 'feel' the energy around the areas, he could tell if the energy around the area was plentiful, brimming with pure, peaceful energy, or stale, dark and had an uneasy feeling. It was something he naturally was able to sense.
If he thought back, the times when he used this ability were quite often. He could remember certain places where he instinctively sensed that something was wrong or that a specific place felt safe. His little talent kicked in off and on, so he did not have total control over it. Usually, he would listen to his instincts, but at times he would carefully observe his surroundings to discover why he was nervous.
With a quick stretch, he began to walk towards his destination, which was one mile away from his home. It was a small park that was luckily only a fifteen-minute walk from his apartment.
Raising his hand, Kiyro adjusted his falling Alive gear from the bridge of his nose. He walked down the silent walkway. No cars sped by, nor any sound of people could be heard. He found it eerily quiet in the rural area. Every step he took, he felt like the air was becoming denser, making it difficult to breathe.
It was a bit strange throughout his walk. Usually, he would see children playing in the park or groups of people walking by on days like today. He thought, Maybe because it was getting dark, there weren't any people around. His mind came up with different excuses and ideas, but something in the back of his mind bothered him.
The orangish-red light of the setting sun was slowly turning bluish-black, making the surrounding area dark. The street light buzzes and then flickers on. No bugs sang their usual chorus of songs; instead, there was complete silence. Kiyro could even hear himself breathing throughout his walk. The wind that blew a moment ago stopped.
"Is it me, or is it dead silent?" Slyph chirped, breaking the silence. "Any quieter than this, and I will be able to even hear my own thoughts out loud."
"It's strange," said Kiyro. He was not sure what to make of this.
"What? The silence or you coming out to do this quest. Either way, I find the whole thing odd. Especially you humans doing this quest."
"So?"
"Why do you do it? It's just too mind-boggling?" Sylph fluttered around on his shoulder, trying to better look at his face. He cocked his head to his side, waiting for Kiyro's answer.
"Money, curiosity, and the experience. Especially the experience, without it, we wouldn't be called alive, would we?"
"Experience…..hm….."
"Everything we do, we do it for the moment, to feel, to see, to smell, to live. That is called being alive. We want to know what life could offer us, but sometimes it becomes an unquenchable thirst that can not be satisfied because we don't know what we want."
"It seems you humans are fickle creatures."
"You could say that, but it always depends on what one wants."
"So, what is it that you want?" Sylph curiously peered towards him, waiting for an answer.
For a moment, Kiyro thought about the question. "I want to find my brother and punch him in the face."
"Really? Is that what humans tend to want? Violence?"
Kiyro lip curled into a smile, almost breaking out into laughter. "No. It's really just to make me sane again."
"Then you're saying that you are temporarily insane at the moment? Do you need me to call a psychologist, or should you be going to a mental hospital?" Sylph slowly moved away from him. Kiyro couldn't help but smirk at Sylph's behavior. He wondered if all artificial intelligence had a quirky attitude.
"I do not need one, nor do I need to go to a mental hospital. Think of it as human behavior that needs to release pent-up anger towards an idiotic brother who ran away."
"This brother must have given you a headache. But, on the other hand, hasn't your older sister been there for you?"
"That's a matter of opinion. I have not seen my sister in a very long time. She's been too busy with work that it's nearly impossible to see her. So I'm stunned that she is living with me now."
"Really? If you say so, I wouldn't mind living with her." Sylph snickered like a dirty old man.
Kiyro shook his head in disbelief.
"We're here." Sylph suddenly said out loud. "I recommend you take out the pouch and get ready to place them around the designated location. You need to do this quickly and efficiently.
Then, I'll show you the locations using the shortest routes."
A digital map appeared before him in his Alive Gear and zoomed in towards the location he had to go to. Then, five new red dots appear before him, each blinking slowly red, designating where to place the runes.
"I suggest you go to the one on the left from where we are located. It's closer to us." Sylph pointed out with his wings towards where they needed to go.
Moving forward, he slowly walked past the creaking swings. Not too far from him, the red blinking lights overlapped with a couple of small bushes entwined together like two lovers.
"Here?" He stepped over a broken, large wooden branch from a tree to which the shrub was next.
"Yeah. Just drop it into the bush"
"That's it?" Kiyro was baffled at how easy it was. "Are you sure this is all we got to do?"
"That's it."
"You're kidding me, right? This is a walk in the park. I can get this done in less than ten minutes. So where's the next one?" Kiyro flipped over his hand and let the stone tumble onto the ground and into the bush.
"Next, you see that tree over there?" Sylph hopped over to the edge of his shoulder and pointed his beak toward the tree.
Kiyro turned towards the direction that Sylph was pointing. It was a small tree compared to the rest of the other trees. It looked sickly and almost barren, without many leaves growing around it. Even the land around the tree was void of other plants except for dirt.
"You want me to place it there by the tree?"
Sylph shook his head side-to-side. "No. You're going to have to place it in it."
"Wait, what?" He held out his hands to stop him from talking any further. "You expect me to claw my hand into it or something? That's a tree, for crying out loud."
"It's a simple objective. Let's move it. We've got four more to go."
"You're kidding me." Kiyro placed his hands in his pockets and went forward, making his way towards the tree. Kicking wood chips off the ground, he haphazardly made his way over. He glanced around, looking for a place to put the rune stone without falling out. Finally, he raised his hands onto the thick tree trunk and began to pull himself up. With one strenuous pull after another, he quickly scaled up from branch to branch and found a tightly V-shaped wedge in one of the thick branches.
Pulling out a small throwing knife from his pocket that he always carried around with him, he began to cut into the branch, trying to make a deep cut. With steady hands, he put his stone into the V-shaped wedge and pushed down, tearing a bit of the branch of the tree with it. Then, testing it out, he tried to keep the stone wedged deeply into the tree without falling out.
"How about now?" Kiyro stated toward Sylph. "It shouldn't fall out so easily."
"It's good enough." Sylph peered towards the embedded rune stone. "It's a one-time thing, so it's not going to matter when we're done."
"The next one?" Kiyro jumped off and rolled onto the ground, dampening his fall.
"Towards the monkey bars five feet away from it. Same thing, okay?"
"Gotcha." Kiyro jogged towards his next goal and dropped it down at Sylph's specified location.
"Next." He waited impatiently for the next location to appear on his Alive gear.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder