บท 52: Chapter 50
With at least some idea what to look for, Anthony went off to do his job with Sarah tagging along. Meanwhile, Rose was tasked with supervising the three boys left at the camp. There wasn't too much for her to do. Manda found some solid ground and was working out, while Drake and Peter tried to spar with each other which resulted in limited success.
They couldn't properly fight each other due to Peter having an overwhelming superiority in just about every attribute. Instead they tried to develop their styles of combat independently. For Drake this meant using his only combat related ability he earned recently.
[Forged Feathers LV1: The user's feathers harden, making them unusable for flight but granting them durability equal to the combined value of the user's END and MGC attributes.]
[Current durability: 1.10]
It was probably meant to be a defensive ability and it would be useful some time in the future, but that still required a lot of work. On a positive note he could detach his feathers and throw them around.
He could do that even before getting the ability, there just wasn't much of a point to it. Even now it was the equivalent of throwing moderately heavy pebbles, but it was certainly an improvement.
The other side of the coin was Peter, who was stronger than Drake but still not strong enough to properly lift his own weapon. He found success in using it two handed but he would have preferred to use it with only one.
Aside from practicing how to move with the lamp he also tried out its ability.
[Night Star LV 1: The Asteri absorbs light around it, creating an artificial night and feeding its own flame. The artificial night activates Heart of Night. The flame of Asteri can be moved outside of the lantern.]
The night effect wasn't the strongest and it barely had a six-meter diameter but it did result in him getting a five percent attribute bonus and the flame inside was gradually getting bigger and hotter. He even managed to move it with his thought which made him so happy that he lost concentration and burned his own hands.
While that was going on, Rose approached Manda. She still didn't know her new companions too much, especially the tattooed boy who didn't even live with them. So she thought this was the perfect opportunity to get to know him better.
"Whenever I see you, you are always training. I get that you guys get a lot out of it but you seem to be a lot more enthusiastic about it. Is there any reason why that is?"
Manda was in the middle of doing upside down sit-up hanging from the side of the van and kept doing so while answering.
"Believe it or not, I get benefits from both my strengthening ability and my path. They did tell you what those are right?"
"Yes they did. So you do it just for more strength like the others?"
"In the beginning yes, that was the case. Over time however, I actually started to enjoy it. I don't know how to explain it accurately, but it feels good to be tired. Now that you mentioned it..."
He suddenly got off of the vehicle and went over to the other two.
"Hey Peter. Wanna fight with me?"
"Sure. I don't see why not."
[Health: 63%]
[Stamina: 42%]
I took little less than five minutes for Peter to get beaten. Because Manda didn't want to seriously injure his friend he only damaged Peter superficially. This was a good thing as otherwise Peter would have ended up in a hospital, similar to how his fight with Gregory ended.
"And now train!"
Came the command from the still unharmed boy. Peter couldn't really protest so he painfully got up and did as he was told for another fifteen minutes. After which he passed out.
[Health: 61%]
[Stamina: 19%]
[Achievement unlocked: Get below 25% stamina.]
[Reward: STA +0.15]
[Achievement unlocked: Endurance training 1/3]
[Reward: END +0.1]
Even though the two onlookers knew what Manda's goal was with the rather extreme training session, they still felt that it was a bit too much. Especially Drake who started to train by himself just so he wouldn't meet the same fate.
[Achievement unlocked: Get below 50% stamina.]
[Reward: STA +0.1]
With half of the team passed out in the sand there were even fewer things to do, so Manda went back to his routine and Rose just sat down, thinking about stuff. Eventually she asked a question, directed at no one in particular.
"I wonder how the investigation is going?"
As it turned out, not too great. Finding the claws wasn't even as much of a blessing as they thought because there were actually a bunch of them all over the place, mostly in trash cans. After a few hours of asking around they managed to get some information about the past attacks.
The first one happened around the end of last summer and they have been increasing in frequency ever since. Nowadays there was someone disappearing every other day. Whatever was the cause behind this could be repelled by open flames but the most recent incident was the first time it didn't work.
That last statement was actually false. The entire village was littered with standing torches which would be lit for the night. On closer inspection they noticed that the one closest to the night's attack was slightly wet. Someone either put it out by accident or someone wanted more attacks to happen and extinguished it deliberately.
Finding any more evidence proved to be a challenge as the mysterious attacker was incredibly good at covering its tracks. Aside from the blood stains and the occasional claw, it never left any evidence behind. With the help of some past weather reports, it turned out that the frequency of the attacks was correlated to the increasingly powerful winds in the area, meaning that the trails of blood being obscured by sand was very much intentional.
They also learned that no one powerful has been attacked before. A trend which didn't seem to break as the most recent victim was most likely drunk and not in the best condition to fight back.
After some more walking, Sarah suddenly stopped. Anthony didn't pay much attention at first as she had a habit of wandering off, mainly to look at some roadkill. But his attitude immediately changed when she made it very clear what caught her attention.
"I think I found him."
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