Chapter 142: Isnt it strange? (1/2)

”Which mark does it make?” Al asked while watching Irea nail the pin-like brick into the ground.

”Roughly fiftieth?”  Irea replied before taking a quick look at the marks she made on one of her wooden pieces. ”Fifty-third one,” she added after making sure her calculations were correct.

”I think we should turn around at this point,” Al proposed, turning around and looking to the south where they came from. ”Traveling in a straight line might not be the best way to look for useful stuff, but we already moved far enough. There is nothing of interest here,” he added with a slight note of disappointment.

”At least we got some herbs,” Irea countered, patting a small bag attached to her belt. ”While not much for two days worth of walking, it's still something.” She looked up at the setting sun before drowning in her thoughts for a moment.

”Are you okay?” Al inquired, sending the girl a slightly worried look. While the two days they spent together were far from enough to make them like each other, at least they managed to bury the hatchet and get on neutral terms.

”Yeah, sorry for that,” Irea shook her head as she came back to reality only to look around. ”Hey, how about we go one mark sideways each? You would go east. I would go east. Looking at the time,” she looked up to the sun again, ”I think we should be able to converge back on this mark before the sun fully sets.”

”And what for?” Al bit his lips. ”It's not like we are likely to find anything of interest in this desolate land,” he stated his opinion, yet still reached out to the girl.

”What?” Irea asked, looking at the man's extended hand.

”If you want to go one mark away, shouldn't we mark it as well? Give me a stick, please,” Al explained his intentions. Even though he wasn't happy with the idea of going sideways from the set path, he still decided to go with the girl's idea. 'In the end, two thousand steps is all it will take to prove myself right. It's just not worth arguing about it,' he thought while accepting the bricky nail.

”Well, see you in a few moments then,” Irea nodded her head in gratitude before taking yet another look at the sun above her.

On the endless open plain like the one they were at, the sun's position during the day was the only reliable feature allowing them to navigate through the sea of grass.

With everything confirmed, Irea made sure to move away from the sun while Al moved in the opposite direction. Without the assurance of the other person to count the steps, Irea didn't dare to split her attention to anything else.

”One hundred,” she spoke softly to herself as soon as she reached the first significant number. She then placed a small mark on her wooden plank before looking around, searching for anything of interest. Sadly, just like for the last two days, there was nothing notably different about this patch of the grass.

”Two hundred.” Irea placed another mark once she counted to twice the number of the steps before.

”Three hundred,”

”Four hundred,”

”Nine hundred,” she placed the ninth mark on her board. At this point, she could already see the place she would reach by the last point of her journey. But even though nothing of interest there, she pursed her lips in determination and continued to diligently count her steps.

”Huh?” Just as Irea was about to hide her plank and pull out the bricky nail, she finally noticed something.

But rather than jumping in joy, she slowly lowered herself on her knees all the way to the point where the grass hid her entire body. Once she stopped moving, only a tiny part of her head stuck above the blades of grass, still staring in the very same direction as before.

It wasn't something particular that she noticed but a movement. Something far easier to detect yet far more challenging to see the details off.

”Could it be?” she whispered to herself as the blood in her veins boiled up. Right at the edge of how far she could see, there was a hint of a treasure that everyone in the camp was looking forward to.

It wasn't a tree which would mean there was a forest nearby. It wasn't a seagull that would indicate a presence of a sea.

It was a wolf.

Or at least, something pretty similar to one. While it was possible that what she saw was just a stray, abandoned specimen, chased away from its pack, the chances of it were just too small.

For Irea, stranded far away into the nothingness of grass, the sight of a wolf was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it meant its habitat was somewhere nearby. And a curse, because when compared to the usual monsters, the animal breed of magical beasts was far more dangerous even to the most outstanding cultivators that she knew off.