My aim is speed. Speed, and speed alone. I utilize my wind manipulation methods to propel myself along, dreaming of the time which had occurred and shall hopefully occur again, the time in which I could fly as fast as I pleased.
Isn't it somewhat amusing? At that time, I had full control over my position in all three dimensions, yet I was bound by the power of that a master holds over his slave. And now, I am free to travel wherever I please, yet I am impeded by the prisons of my flesh and of my name, one of which limits me to motion in only two dimensions and the other of which leaves me compelled to escape its forceful and fearful grasp. Though, I suppose, that is little better than slavery; if Lector so pleased, he could take me as a name slave, however, it only benefits him more to see me dead.
Of course, that is why he would return to me in the first place. Not because my powers are really all that tempting; all he ever really wanted were my proficiencies, and now I am lacking those and still lack a good portion of my powers. No, he would return exclusively to see me weakened, in the hopes that some random monster of no might would be able to defeat me.
These thoughts propel me forward ever faster, intent on bringing the moment at which I may be free of Lector's shadow closer, if only by a handful of seconds.
Now, some may question whether Lector was being honest with me when he explained the situation. After all, what would he benefit from being truthful with me? Perhaps he only wanted to instill a crushing sense of despair in me at the thought that I would never have any chance to regain my ability?
Perhaps. However, that seems a rather silly thing to be hopeful for. And even if it is not the case that he may take my skills and levels again, he still has my name, he may use me as a slave. And, whatever the case regarding whether he may again take my powers may be, it is a certain fact that he could return at any moment and force me into his service; and it is to avoid such a fate that I must find a cure of this ailment that is my name.
Through the forest, and the sun falls beneath the horizon, sure to wash the lands in its golden orange hue before it goes, such that it is all the more missed in its absence. Not that I miss it; I had always preferred the night.
The sound of crickets grows, and grows further, till it is nearly as loud as the cool wind rustling and whipping to the trees as it alternates between its steady blowing and harsh bursts that send the needles rattling. By these two sounds – crickets and the wind – my steady breathing, even heartbeat, and gentle pounding upon the ground with every step are eclipsed.
As for my vision, it is little impeded by the darkness, even if it is not nearly so powerful as it had once been; with it, I see the spruce and pines bend backwards during the strongest gusts of wind, illuminated by the rising crescent moon.
A peaceful sight, perfect for a silent, moonlit, walk.
Heh. Hardly. As if I would waste my time with such a thing, my appreciation for nature knows bounds, and they aren't [that] unrestricted, at least to an extent that I would impede my goals to enjoy it.
No, I continuously cast spells so as to raise my magical exhaustion resistance and elemental manipulation skills. And as for my speed, I don't ever slow, pushing my body to the maximum, boosting my speed with the power of wind elemental manipulation time and time again.
The mission had come with a map pointing out the location of my mission. It was a few hundred miles away, some distance into the monster territories, a distance that I calculate to take a couple days to travel.
As for why it is so far away, why the guild didn't give the mission to an adventurer close to the border? Well, there were none. Despite the capital city of that one kingdom being over a hundred miles from the nation's border, it held the closest guild hall to the area of interest; such is the size of the empire, I suppose. And thus, the task fell on me… apparently.
The sun rises without incident, again bringing light to this world. By my estimations, I should be nearing the border within a few hours; though, considering the nature of this journey, that shall only mark a fraction of completion.
Even after sprinting through the night, under the light of day my speed is redoubled as I push my body to the greatest extent which it may handle. Where my breathing was once unhurried and my heart beat calmly, now my gasps of air are joined by a pounding of my pulse which resounds so loudly in my head as to be comparable with the impact of my feet upon the ground.
To push myself ever faster, especially after running without rest for the whole of the night, such should show my resolve; so, too, is this resolve shown as I ignore my mounting magical exhaustion to maintain this breakneck pace of mine. Resolve, I say, hardly persistent stubbornness or a willing abuse of my body; with every step I take, I remain painfully aware that I may, at any moment, lose all of the power I have so struggled to reacquire – and, in this case, perhaps more importantly, all that wealth which I had recently accrued.
Of course, if I were to fall unconscious, or, perhaps, even die as a result of the backlash of my magical exhaustion, my aims would be overruled and the benefits of my exertion would be undone. So, I work to maintain my speed while carefully watching over my physical state so that such an unfortunate occurrence will not fall suddenly upon me.
This balance between speed and exhaustion management persists for much of the day, until, by my calculations, my speed reduction is set to become so severe that I would be better off sleeping now and running harder later, that I would overtake whatever ground I may take in my ever more exhausted self should I not take this opportunity to sleep.
Without bothering to even dig a hole to rest in, deciding that such a measure would be an unnecessary waste of time, that I am unlikely to face an attack while sleeping during the day, I lie down where I stand.
Perhaps even in my dreams, I recognize my current urgency; it is not more than a few hours later, with the moon only partway into the sky that I again awake.
Of course, it is also possible that I have slept for over a day, but I feel none of that grogginess associated with oversleeping.
It is not even fifteen seconds after returning to my wakeful state that I again have returned to my hurried pace, racing along through the pine forest with the aid of regular speed boosts at the hands of wind elemental manipulation.
On and on I run, at every thought of taking a break I remind myself of the consequences of doing so; with enough of these reminders, I have almost fully managed to convince myself that even a single second delay spread across this entire mission will be the difference between being free of this name so cruelly gifted to me by that dastardly Lector and the case of him stopping by to take everything from me once again.
And why should I put a stop to such nightmarish fantasies? Even if they are perhaps not fully likely, they are certainly in the same vein as the truth in this regard; and besides, if they are effective in hurrying me along, why should I resent them? Mounting, unmitigated stress is, from another perspective, merely motivation to accomplish what hangs over one's head; and, in this case, an increase in speed shall at least bring forward my release from the threat hanging over my head by some time, even if perhaps only slight.
It is well past midnight that I encounter the first monster of this hurried journey of mine. It stands squarely in my path, staring at me with some look of surprise upon its face as I barrel down towards it. Before it may take any action, before I can even pin down exactly what it is, I have formed a hemisphere of wrathful flames before me; the beast is burned so quickly on contact that I only have his ashes to contend with as I move through the space he had previously occupied.
Another monster appears in this night, and another still; for neither do I dedicate any more time than I had to the first, dealing with them with methods that require no halt to my travels, no inhibition of my speed.
Of course, these are only the monsters that I actually encounter, which is to say, those in my direct path; numerous more are visible to my sides, passed by so quickly that I have not even the time to profile them, nor them me; as for these monsters, I don't bother to deal with them; for why should I?
Considering this drastic increase in number, it would seem likely that I have encountered the near edge of the swarm of monsters which has been supposedly spilling forth of that lone mountain for over a week already; and if this is the case, I have orders not to initiate conflict with them, why should I kill them merely for the sin of being near my path? In my path is one thing, simply being near it is not a capital offense. Of course, every one of these monsters, merely by virtue of being inhabitants of this twisted world, is deserving of death; but I have no such time to mete out justice at the moment, that is an aspect of goal two while removing this name from my soul is a primary task of goal one, it must take priority.
Something of note is that this is only the near edge, and the monsters have already grown rather dense; I can hardly cross a space of a quarter mile without detecting one within a couple hundred yards of my heading. While those numbers are bearable, I am still well over a hundred miles out from that mountain which marks my destination; how dense may the monster become by that point?
[Heh. They tell me not to engage these monsters, only to investigate, but with monsters so dense, how may I only pass them by without conflict? They will be sure to encounter me, to see me to some extent, and other than running away, into the paths of ever more beasts, how may I then avoid conflict?
[While conflict with these monsters would hardly be much of a challenge, what about those monsters the mission request had warned about, A-rank monsters in quantities that may very well require the intercession of an S-class adventurer? I had imagined that I would be able to sneak in, observe the source of the monsters and the variety present, perhaps poke around a bit to find out why they are so strangely fleeing the mountain of their origin, and get out of there; but if the quantity, and thus density, is already so high at this location, how extensive may it be at the target location of interest? How may I sneak past them then?
[Well, no use worrying about it at the moment, for now I have to get to the mountain; one problem at a time, and all that. That said, I cannot help but feel that even the guild's understanding of the quantity was somewhat off, and why wouldn't it be? They had to receive and process a report from beyond the edge of the empire and then relay it to me; furthermore, I then have had to travel to the location, it has already been over a day.
[It is quite likely that the information the guild possesses is already over a week old, and the information implies that the issue started at least a few days earlier. Interestingly enough, that is around the time that I first passed through this area, I must have moved through just before the monsters started spilling out of that mysterious mountain…]
Suddenly, I remember something. [Wait, didn't I pass by a single, lone mountain while previously moving through these woods on the way to the Empire? Yes, I considered approaching it, but I decided that that would be a silly waste of time… perhaps if I had, this current situation wouldn't be occurring?
[Well, perhaps. Though it is even more likely that I would simply be dead now, or I would have seen nothing there, or that I wouldn't have known to gather information. Yeah, no point in criticizing myself of the past based upon the information of the present, even if I had known that there would have been benefits in investigating that mountain, I may still not have found anything or at least not known what to look for, especially on the assumption that the monsters had not yet emerged.
[And if they had emerged, only recently enough to not reach me (for one must remember, the mountain was still some miles away when I saw it) I may well have died upon that little sightseeing adventurer, now wouldn't that have made me look like a fool?
[Yes, no point in criticizing my former self with the knowledge of the modern, especially when the modern is so prone to ignoring the knowledge and thoughts of the former.]
The sun rises again, unveiling a world where monsters continue to grow ever denser, to such an extent that I begin to question how so many managed to fit, and, more importantly, live, inside a single mountain; the only answer which I can manage to construe is that the mountain was both much larger and farther away than it had seemed when I had first seen it.
By this time, I begin to feel that I must again rest. Unfortunately, the monsters have grown dense enough that I don't trust my luck that none will stumble across me while I sleep. Thus, I am left with the rather inelegant solution of digging a hole into the bedrock to sleep in, a task which consumes my meager remaining reserves of magical energy.
Still, my exhaustion is alleviated while I sleep, I awake well rested and magically energized. I exit my underground shelter carefully, making sure that I don't come out at the feet of some A-grade monsters.
The moon is high above, and I estimate that I have slept for about twelve hours. Not the most ideal of circumstances considering my hurry, but I can hardly be blamed in a world without alarm clocks to wake me. Besides, not even the sunlight could reach me underground, who could blame me for not waking earlier?
As I had on my previous awakening, I immediately begin to run towards my destination. It is my hope to reach the mountain before the sun passes its zenith, but only time will tell if that is a reasonable goal or not.
It would seem that I was rather fortunate to even be able to emerge from my hole at all, the monsters quickly grow so dense as to provide me with issues with making my way through them. In fact, they are so dense that, in the span of about half an hour, no less than fifteen are incinerated by my wrath due to being directly on my path, not to mention the countless hundreds that are within my sight during the same time period.
When the monsters began to thicken, I had initially worried about confrontation; after all, how could I move through such a swarm without having at least some large conflict? Yet, besides those that I run into myself, none of the monsters seem to have any problem with me; rather, they ignore me, running in the opposite direction of myself as fast as their legs will carry them, as if fleeing some great threat.
[Hmm… Now, what could have them so riled that they would flee their mountain dwelling in such panic? Why, they seem nearly as desperate to escape the mountain as I do to reach it, surely whatever it is that frightened them is quite a menace. Also, on a side note, why are there still so many? Presumably they fled the mountain from all directions, based on the distance between here and there, there may well be as many as a million monsters! And that is only with what I have seen thus far, multiplying the angle of the sector I may see by the number that would fit in a circle, I have no estimations for the number that there may be if this increase in density continues all the way to the mountain…]
It is not half an hour after thinking this, a time when the lowering moon has begun to surrender its illuminating power to the sun, that, after one last increase in the monster density, the monstrous horde abruptly comes to a stop.
I have run perhaps an entire mile by the time I notice that the rotten sounds of the living creatures have ceased and that nature has fallen into its ideal state, silent except for a gentle breeze.
[I had half expected the monster density to increase all the way to the mountain, at which point I would find a gaping maw from which they poured, yet, they have already stopped; and by my calculations, I still have about one hundred miles to go. It would seem that the monsters have finally emptied the mountain; either that, or something is blocking their escape. Honestly, I would quite prefer the former, that even this many monsters could live in a single peak is quite amazing.]
Once the sun has fully risen, I see the mountain marking my destination looming tall on the horizon. Where it had once seemed rather small, it now towers up towards the sky, a pillar upon which the heavens stand. At once, I am certain that such a number of monsters could have lived in it; such is its size.
For the duration of my travels, I do not encounter any more monsters; and, only a short while behind schedule, I reach the mountain. Let it not be thought that this means the mountain was at all nearby; it is simply that, at my speed, my approach was rather rapid.
This explains why I had not seen it previously, I suppose; I had approached at night, even my night vision doesn't allow me to see such a structure, it was a mere shadow against the shadow of the void of space. And, before that, I had simply been too tired to search for haze on the horizon. Otherwise, had I been on the lookout, such a mountain probably would have been visible before even my second sleep; again, such is its size.
So, at about half past noon, I have come to the base of the mountain. A quick glance along its surface finds nothing out of the ordinary; rather, it appears to be nothing more than a monolith of stone, standing proud, not bound by any other range.
I spend some time examining its surface, looking for any place from which the monsters could have emerged; however, such an activity feels like little more than a waste of time. When considering the size of the peak, the odds of stumbling across any cave, especially one large enough for all those monsters to squeeze through, is a task that may well take several weeks.
Abandoning the mountain for a moment, I instead look for the tracks of the monsters around its base, which are numerous. Yet, in their quantity, I quickly find myself wandering in circles, losing track of one trail for another.
It is only when I remember that these monsters were supposedly fleeing something, do I realize my error. With the knowledge that each set of tracks is likely talking whichever path from the mountain that best allows it to move quickly without being blocked by other monsters, I am eventually able to follow all of the tracks back to a single cave, large but hidden in the foliage of the mountain's base. From this hole, countless prints emerge, explaining why I had had such difficulty with tracing any one set; they are so jumbled and mixed together, and so generally numerous, that any effort to follow anything but the general trends of their direction would be a lost cause.
In the mouth of the cave lie countless squashed monster corpses, some looking quite fresh and others looking some days old. Honestly, I am rather amazed that such a stampede was limited in its casualties to where walls bound the creatures in; looking at the chaotic density of the prints, I would have expected numerous crushed corpses spread throughout this whole area.
For a moment, I consider fully resting up before entering; I had exerted myself quite extensively these last few days, and some lingering tiredness remains even after my long rest the night before.
However, in the interest of my precious, limited time, I squash these foolish considerations.
Another consideration is, however, far more appealing. And that is simply to leave the mountain and announce to the guild that the flow had ceased before my arrival and that no monsters were to be seen.
However, such an idea may well get me sent back to perform a proper investigation, I don't want that. And besides, I [am] a bit curious as to what is inside this mountain, it would be a shame to not at least poke around a bit, considering the distance I have traveled….
[Okay, I'm convinced, I'm heading in.] With that announcement to myself, I march confidently into the dark cave, callously treading monsters underfoot.