The hunt went on.
The mundane reality of it stood in contrast to the cool-sounding name.
Rather than chasing after monsters or solving great puzzles, I had to just… walk.
And that was the hidden, nefarious aspect of this hunt.
All I had to do was walk at a steady pace, down the obvious trail left behind by the group I've chased. But the same aspect that made this hunt so simple, was also what made it so terrifying.
Because walking was all that I was actually going to do.
'It's been like what, five hours?' I thought, snacking on a stick of dried meat that I looted off the camp prior to the start of my chase.
The trail couldn't be any more obvious, the path any simpler. And so, all I did was walk. For five hours I continued to push ahead at a steady pace, focused on nothing but making this next step happen.
It wasn't like my body couldn't handle this kind of excursion, even if it was physically strenuous to maintain such a high level of focus and precision at all times. Putting the goddess' voice aside, all the changes it announced surely did come in handy.
That is, with the sole expression of my inquisitive talent.
'To think that it would be so easy to level up,' I sighed, watching as the numbers continued to grow whenever I took a short stop to closer check the trail. The number by the talent's name in the notifications grew, but their result remained the same as in the last five hours.
[Old trail: Small group]
This damned message refused to buckle no matter how long I've kept going!
'I guess that's as useful as all those talents can be,' I thought, conveniently ignoring the fact that my movement talent was likely the only thing that allowed me to keep going for hours upon end.
Still… As pointless as it could be, the numbers for this talent in particular continued to grow… Just like it was the case for my mobility set of talents.
'Still, it all feels rather…' I thought, comparing the current set of notifications to the ones I saw swarming before, 'underwhelming.'
Those new sets of talents of mine felt… weak.
Just a few of the early talents I got appeared to be more powerful, and more useful than what I have now.
'What is this situation, a self-deteriorating system or something?'
I felt like puking.
Bit by bit, the exhaustion was getting to me. As easy as it sounded, walking for five hours in such a weak body put quite a strain on my head.
And this damned message refused to…
[Recent trail: Small group]
[Talent: Inspired observer: Novice(123)>Practicioner(286/999 999)]
[[Bonus: Can see up to 2nd tier of information. This talent can grow in two dimensions]
As great as it sounds, this second tier of information was hardly of any use. It merely revealed how much more experience I needed to reach the talent's next level.
And from relatively limited numbers early on, the moment this talent reached just one level higher…
"The gap between the novice and the practitioner…" I muttered to myself before shaking my head and turning my eyes away from the notification and back to the trail.
After five hours, it turned from an old to a recent trail. After five damned hours, this second level of information proved to be of any use.
What I found quite strange, however, was just how quickly this experience grew.
At this rate, just by inspecting stuff around me, I could overcome the next step in a matter of days, weeks at most! Or maybe there were quite a lot of steps beyond practitioner? A realm of ability that I didn't yet know about? Maybe I was merely at the bottom of the ladder?
For now, that question had to go without an answer. Because when it came to the things I absolutely prioritized, I didn't really have much to fear.
'Since you escaped from those bandits, you should be at least a bit weaker than them.'
This simple thought pushed me to follow my prey with a little caution, confident in my ability to match them.
I wasn't the survivor of ten thousand battlefields for nothing! And talents or not, even with a body as weak as my current one, I just knew I could manage.
Still, all of those troughs went away when I took a deep breath, filling my lungs all the way to their brim. Then, as I exhaled, I fixed the position of my weapons before refocusing on the trail.
Now that it was finally hot, I had no intention of letting it go cold again!
'Now that I think about it, maybe it's not my observer talent that's useless,' I suddenly got a thought. 'Maybe those guys simply… did the same thing I did?'
The trail never showed any signs of rest or a camp. Meaning, for as long as I walked, so did they.
Regardless, now that the trail was recent, the likelihood of finally finding their night camp only grew higher.
In the time that's passed since I woke and then traveled, all the traces of the sun had vanished, the old, wise star replaced by its lighter, silvery cousin. And while it would still be some time before the deepest hour of the night, it couldn't be all that far into the future either.
Judging by how long it took me to go from the "old" trial to the "recent" one, I expected at least an hour or two more of my steady stroll to find myself anywhere close to my target.
With this thought at the forefront of my mind, I moved just a little bit further… Only to step out from the last set of trees and see a vast, open yet strangely cloudy plateau. The path splitting the forest and the plain came to the edge of the open space… Only to then go a meter down into the ground.
Standing ahead, I could see that the entire path was somehow… carved into the ground?
But for what purpose? Was one supposed to crawl to fit?
Or, much more thrilling, what kind of civilization could carve out a perfectly even, wide road that, from the looks of things, stretched straight across this entire plateau?
'This is…'
It was likely at this moment that it finally struck me.
Everything was too damn easy. I could manage with just the resources at hand, not yet pressed to use any of the extreme measures. I was a god-damn, lauded war hero!
And with that in mind, wasn't this yapping girl quite… mild?
'That's so unlike her…' A single thought flashed before my eyes.
For better or worse, I underestimated the value of at least one of my talents.
Just by looking at the open yet strangely diseased field ahead, I could… feel it. Not by some high understanding of its patterns… but by sensing the minute changes and somehow reading them.
The overwhelming, ancient might of this place. The thousand or so various connections that all, in one way or another, drew from what I could only describe as a massive lake of mana.
A further two thousand lesser disturbances likely represented the locals roaming through the open space of the plateau.
'I guess that's what those roads are for,' I thought, gritting my teeth as I had no other choice but to admit the sudden usefulness of my inspired talent.
By now, with this sensation-based observation, my experience points for the talent shoot up… Quickly reaching far higher than I would ever expect to get so early!
[Talent: Inspired observer: Practicioner(286/999 999)>Practicioner(27 412/999 999]
The change, in the scale of the goal, was barely noticeable. But strangely enough, I went from gaining the experience points by tens and hundreds to farming it at a rate of thousands!
And there was just one scary thing about it.
Whenever one of my talents moved up the ladder, I could feel a sort of change in my flesh. Be it my inspired observer or mobility collection, my actual, hard-earned abilities grew along the my talents. And that allowed me to further study the sensation of becoming a practitioner.
Moving up a rank was like… Opening another dimension to it, widening the pool of force one could act with on it. Using a bigger bucket capable of storing more water… Or, in this case, mana.
Outside of the pool of potential for the ability to grow, though, everything stayed more or less the same.
Meaning, this growth that my observation ability grew as much when I gained the first hundred points of experience… as much as it grew when I crossed by twenty-five thousand mark.
In other words, at least in terms of an increase in my talent's potential… It was linear.
And now, with my talents still growing at a rather worrying rate, I peered down upon the path ahead.
It went as straight ahead as one could imagine, a madly inefficient manner of construction any manner of infrastructure. Still, with how the road was built… below the ground level, excessiveness was already an established trait of whoever built the damn thing.
Then once again, it wasn't even the scary part yet.
With my improved… No, constantly improving senses, I peered down the road, only to see everything connected to it at once. It felt like… a sort of optical illusion allowing me to stare at a dozen different surroundings at once. As if I was somewhere near all of the cities, villages, and posts connected to the road.
It was merely a vague feeling… But as I peered deeper into this enlightenment, this sense of connection seemingly imprinted itself directly on my consciousness, granting me awareness of the general state of the entire thing.
A clashing group roughly five klicks ahead and another one, eleven klicks out, moving at a constant but relatively slow pace.
And then, the strange state of my mind dispersed as if it was all but an illusion in the first place.
That is, deep down my head, I still could feel the distant echo of the very same thing I just saw.
Taking a breath and looking towards a specific point of the magical path… I saw it.
The first group of three… No, four, three of which fought with each other.
I forced my eyes to close, taking a break from this exhausting sense of overwhelming vision.
When I opened my eyes again, I dared not to look at the world through the eyes of an observer. I needed time to get myself used to this growth. Because contrary to all the idiot main characters of some stupid, impotent mangas, I could see the value of an overwhelmingly perfect vision.
The difference in strength hardly ever mattered if I could get a read on my opponent.
Still, a powerful talent or not, it gave me one benefit.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as if to refill my lungs with fresh fuel.
Then again, to everyone's surprise, I did what I did best.
I started walking.