This meant that Kalla had been nearby all along, but not she was in trouble. Had she been following them secretly, or had she caught up recently?
Vaien just shook his head with worry and exasperation.
Whichever was the answer, it didn't come as a surprise. The first days of travel between Vaien and Zhang Han had been incredibly slow because of Zhang Han's physical limits, so it was possible for Kalla to search them out and then follow their trail. It was stranger that she got herself into trouble, usually she wasn't careless.
Zhang Han said, "You should go." he knew he couldn't run there as fast as Vaien.
Vaien had a slight frown, reluctance painted all over his face. He didn't like that idea, but Kalla was his little sister...the tribe was one matter he wouldn't budge on, and sure they'd also had a SMALL argument back in the basin. A violent and destructive one at that, but in the end it was just a mere sibling's squabble, something that could happen any day of the week. He couldn't leave her to die knowing that she was in peril so close to him.
He glanced at Zhang Han, then furrowed his brow further.
"Stay hunkered down here. I'll be back soon."
Zhang Han nodded.
Vaien didn't waste another moment. He burst off into the forest as a blur of speed, disappearing behind a carpet of trees in an instant.
Minutes passed without another large boom going off in the forest like before. It was quiet. There was no telling sign of movement from the trees there or dust floating up like before, either. But not all fights were explosive and loud, perhaps Vaien already defeated that animal in one fell swoop.
Zhang Han just sat down on a log, anxiety weighing on his mind. He tried to keep calm despite his lack of knowledge over the entire situation, but it was exactly the fact he was lacking information that put him on edge. Ignorance was the worst to uncover. Not knowing something was going horribly wrong until it was too late...like floating through the outskirts of space waiting for your ship to fail you.
He knew, however, that it could take some time to sort matters out. Maybe Vaien was even talking with Kalla again, and then they'd start to fight like before.
Several more minutes passed.
Zhang Han paced next to Russel the entire time, which, the snoufle was only calming eating. It cares not about human affairs of life or death.
In any case, it was now taking much longer than Zhang Han expected. It had added up to close to 20 minutes of silence and absence. It seemed like so little, and yet was so much when it came to fights. Fights could conclude with one swipe, within seconds, rarely more than a few minutes.
Zhang Han stared at the ground in silence, although the snoufles ate happily, he could only tunnel focus his mind on worries. Why wasn't he back yet? How long would it take?
What if something happened to him?
Or Kalla? Could he not find her? Or what if something horrible happened to her.
Maybe he should...go look for him. He shook his head, raising a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, and saw that his hand was trembling.
He shouldn't. That's a crazy idea. Wouldn't he just be a burden if any battle was going on?
But...Zhang Han also believed that he wasn't useless. He had weapons, he could easily analyze situations, he could shoot and hit a target. He wouldn't dare overestimate himself, but he didn't want to underestimate himself either.
Sure, it made sense for him to wait here when Vaien was gone for but a few minutes, but now that the situation was so unclear, he wished he'd insisted on going with him.
No, he was just being paranoid and crazy. Zhang Han ran a hand through his hair, combing out a few tangles that he quickly ruffled up into knots again.
Who was he kidding? He was too anxious to sit around anymore. He was a person who did things! Not someone who waited for others to do them. Otherwise, he'd never be waking up at dawn every day to do something or another.
He hated being passive.
If he rode Russel, he probably wouldn't be attacked by any smaller creatures in the forest.
Zhang Han stood up, he grabbed his laser bow, slung it over his shoulder, and put on his wrist guards made of Yiritanium metal. He packed a few other items onto himself like rope, making sure to tie Fatty onto a tree so it wouldn't wander off, then jumped onto Russel and went in the direction that Vaien had gone.
A thin layer of brown dust still hovered in the air from the clash before, however unknown the cause was, so Zhang Han could pinpoint the area he needed to go.
The nice thing about the snoufles was that they could plow through bushes and vegetation, making the trip easier. It wasn't too long before he reached the site of destruction.
...it was empty.
A broken tree was on the ground, the dust still settling, but there was nothing else. No Vaien, no Kalla. Yet, if Vaien was going to travel farther to find her, he surely would have come back to Zhang Han and informed him.
What had happened?
All of Zhang Han's nerves were coiled up, he was on edge to the point that he needed to remind himself to breathe properly and not lapse into a panic attack. He did not dare call their names in case it attracted whatever creature was here to begin with.
He needed to search for clues on where they went.
Besides one fallen tree and the slightest dent in the earth, the area was untouched. Nothing seemed to have disturbed it. When Zhang Han went through the forest just now, there had already been a slight trail of broken plants and footprints from Vaien earlier, but they went to the edge of the trees a few feet away, then stopped. Another pair of footprints, smaller and likely Kalla's, suffered a similar fate. Fortunately, there were no signs of blood, so at the very least the brother and sister pair had not been torn to pieces.
But it was as though they both disappeared out of thin air.
Perhaps what attacked was a sly animal. The noise of the tree falling was from Kalla's retaliation, and not the creature itself. And this quiet ambushing creature could do something that caught others off guard or made them immobile.
If so...would there be some sign…
Shifting slightly on Russel's saddle, Zhang Han saw a glimmer on a nearby branch. Something that caught the sunlight.
Approaching it, Zhang Han found a silky and translucent thread that was hanging loosely as though broken recently, something like a spider web. There was more of it on the ground. Actually, spider thread was something Zhang Han only recently learned of, there had been no spiders on Gaojun.
Taking a deep breath, he pressed Russel onward to follow the strand, but they only went around a few patches of forest before stopping.
The area that the silk went through grew dense with thorny trees so it was impossible for Russel to go through. He raised his head and snorted as though saying 'You want me to go through there, dream on, fool', then tried to eat more plants instead.
"Hey…" Zhang Han whispered exasperatedly. But he knew he'd have to go on foot now.
He tied Russel's rope as well, then trudged into the forest.
The lighting turned darker and gloomy from the cover of trees. Luckily it was still daytime, though, so plenty of filtered light made it through the silken threads. It was enough for him to see pretty well without any torch or light.
It was just that the scenario was damn creepy.
Spider web turned more numerous the farther in he went, covering the last rays of sunlight and laying the ground.
Zhang Han obviously felt the danger of this. He was walking straight into something's lair.
All the smaller spiders he'd observed on this planet would sit on a web, waiting for vibrations of caught prey, then approach to paralyze them with a bite and liquefy their insides. Zhang Han tried to step on places with no threads, even burning some away with his instalight at times.
He really hoped that Kalla and Vaien weren't casually chatting somewhere else while he was putting himself into mortal danger like an idiot.
But then he saw something familiar on the ground; Vaien's lucky cat necklace.