Landing in with a thud after being sucked into the portal, Ashton got back on his feets and the first thing he did was to take a look around him so he could grasp the full information he could see lying around him.
The land of the barren was pretty much like a dense forest and he couldn't see any reason why Whelki had said no one had made it out alive from there when everything there seemed to be like the same things that were in the normal world.
"What exactly is here anyway?" He muttered to himself as he began to take slow steps away from where the portal had landed him in.
For a moment, a contrasting feeling of forgetting something struck his mind and after thinking about what he was forgetting for a while, he remembered. Callista!
"Hey!" He called at her hoping to get a response back but to his surprise, Callista did not answer his call. "Are you really gone?" He called her again.
*SIGH!*
"Figures, she warned me not to come in here anyway, why do I even bother?!" Ashton scolded himself.
"So you clearly heard me warn you not to come into this place and yet you ignored my warning?" Callista finally said, appearing before Ashton as she floated effortlessly in front of him.
A small smile ensued on Ashton's face as he finally got to see her after she had pretended to have disappeared since he had got I to the land of the barren.
"You wouldn't want Marcus to die too would you? I have to save his arse at least."
"Well I guess you will be the one dying first as you have let yourself out into the face of danger."
"Oh please! I laugh in the face of danger." Ashton whined walking forward a bit. The moment he had stopped talking, something dropped from the sky unconsciously making him flinch away from the path he had been walking through.
"Well," Callista began, ready to mock him at that moment. "You are not laughing in the face of danger." She teased.
"That was a close call." Ashton said back as he panted a bit due to the fact that his heart had skipped a beat when the strange thing dropped.
He looked around him hastily to make sure everything was okay with that area and he was safe to move on. As he continued his journey, he began to recall everything Whelki had told him concerning the journey.
"The antidote only exists in folklore, Ashton. No one has ever seen what it looks like and those who had tried to get it from the land of the barren did not make it back alive but I have this feeling you will succeed and bring this back with you."
"I trust myself with that too." Ashton confidently appraised himself.
"I want you to also have this in mind that the factors concerning the existence of this antidote might not be in existence according to myth."
"The land of the barren is said to be dangerous right? Does that not ring any bell for a sacred place to keep such exquisite antidote?"
"It does sound true but…"
Ashton cut his words short as he requested to know some important thing he ought to know before he goes into the land of the barren as time was not on their side anymore.
"The journey is going to last for three days which is equivalent to six hours in the real world. No matter how quick you are to get to the antidote in time, you cannot make it in and out before three days elapses."
"And why is that? I have been granted a super speed by my system…why can I not make it in and out before three days elapses? The earlier I get out the better it is for Marcus is it not?" Ashton protested again.
"That is the rule, Ashton." Whelki said, placing his right hand on Ashton's shoulder to initiate a small pat. "Also, you must not touch any other pudding that seems to be like the antidote because the moment you do, the world inside the land of the barren will begin to crumble and it will eventually swallow you up."
"I think it would be better if Ashton stays…he is not strong enough and he can be clumsy at times. I will go in his stead." Ulysses suddenly said, his voice cutting through the damp air.
"You stay down, Ulysses. How strong do you think you are to go in and come back alive?" Alden shushed leaning out of the wall he had reclined in with his arms folded.
"Ashton is not a weak teenager." Whelki voiced out to them all. "He is the best man fit for this journey…he is the only one who has Marcus' well-being etched in his mind like a dagger."
Ashton shrugged as he casted his gaze downwards after letting out a small sigh. He heard Whelki continue to give him the rules he needed to follow up with.
"Inside the land of the barren, you will encounter demons and you must be on alert around them– either to fight them or to make peace with them but I doubt any demon would want to make friends with someone who is there to take something out of their world."
Ashton pulled out his dagger from where he had hid it within his lower cloth and raised it to his face before saying, "I guess I will be needing this as well. I am not going in there to make peace with the demons too if they will not allow me to take that antidote." He said with a look of determination in his eyes.
"You cannot take any food or water into that land as they are foreign elements."
"I pray the elemental gods be with you, Ashton."
*SIGH!*
Ashton continued to walk through the clear path and it seemed to him a thousand people had walked through that path to make it a clear path. He wondered what was waiting for him ahead as he didn't even get the description of what he was to expect except the demons.
Whelki knows nothing about what the antidote looked like as no one who had successfully made it to the antidote came back to the real world alive.
He let out another sigh exasperatedly as he tried to shield his face from the scorching sun that was threatening to burn him into ashes.
He couldn't help but wonder again why the land of the barren seemed pretty much like the normal world. The only slight difference was that everywhere was eerily silent and the only sound he could hear was his feets walking through that path.
"Callista." Ashton eventually called at her after a while of being silent.
"What is it, boy?" Callista asked, still floating effortlessly beside him as he walked.
"Tell me, why are we blessed with a system? For what reason can we not wield magic alone without seeing and knowing what our current status is?"
"That, I do not know either. It is a blessing from the Almighty and you should be happy with that."
"Pfft! How did you become a small being? I heard all spirit guides were once humans. Would you be leaving me too in the end?" Ashton asked, his voice suddenly deranging from being cheerful and rude to a sulky tone.
"Right ahead of you." Callista subtly said to him.
"Is that an answer?" Ashton asked again as he had failed to notice what Callista was referring to.
"We've got company, Ashton." Callista finally said and Ashton looked up to see what she was talking about.
About twelve feets away from where he was standing was a small creature that seemed cute and harmless to him. He watched it for a bit and none of them moved an inch from where they were.
"I guess this one is harmless…I can make peace with it." Ashton said to Callista and he walked towards the creature to give it a small pat before he walked past it.
"I don't think that is a good idea." Callista warned again. "Somethings that seems harmless are the most dangerous beings."
"I will be fine…just watch."
As Ashton stretched his hand towards the creature, it swerved away from his touch abruptly by jumping like a frog and before Ashton could take another blink, the creature began to shapeshift into something enormous.
Ashton's mouth flagged open as he watched the creature promptly. The cute being he had thought he could make peace with had suddenly become a ferocious being.
Ashton without much hesitation pulled out his dagger from behind ready to strike the creature if need be.
"I can take this down in one go. I am not afraid of it at all." He said with a smirk on his lips as if he had fought some entity like that creature before.
"Well, I guess not. It seems it has come with some friends." Callista alerted again as the same kind of creature began to emerge from nowhere.
"Oh shit!" Ashton cursed under his breath as he watched them advance towards him slowly ready to pounce on him at any moment.