After a few hours Rio woke up from his coma, it was already early morning when he woke up. The first thing he noticed upon waking was that, Lia was sleeping on the sofa nearby his bed. He got up from his bed and covered her with a blanket. Then he walked out of the room. The sky was still dark and the red sun can be seen rising at the horizon.
As always, the air of this world is extremely pure and clean bringing a freshness unique to this world. He made himself tea and continued to enjoy this small moment of peace.
'The ship should be returning to the shore soon, it's already time a new event will take place. I should also get ready.'
In order for me to maintain my head-start over Fade I will need to get more of his chances which will not alter the main story too much. Thinking this far it has been a while since I resumed the stealing sessions. Well it will have to wait a bit, until I reach the shore again.
Stormwalker continued to move forward with its usual might and after a few hours the shore was already visible to all. Students got really excited seeing the land again. They have been on their guard throughout this whole journey in fear of any more attacks and thus all of them were exhausted. Some of them has already collapsed due to releasing all the pent-up stress and relaxing their nerves after seeing the shore.
The ship stopped on the same port and the students got down from the ship with their luggage and finally a relaxed sigh escaped from their mouth.
Rio looked back at the Stormwalker and remembered the long adventure he has been facing on this ship. A complicated feeling rose from his heart. If that day he had not acquired true immunity then he would have already been killed by that giant octopus becoming a living corpse with no soul and will.
'In the end, I was able to make it back alive.'
The students boarded the bus and rode back to the academy. In the evening Rio was already in front of his dorm room. Ms. Anna has declared that they will be given a holiday of a week and will have to return to their classes at the start of the next week. Everyone was happy from this news, finally they will be able to relax for a while.
Rio opened the door and walked inside after taking a bath he laid down on his bed and started to sort out all the things that happened during this trip.
'That octopus was an anomaly to all the things; I knew about the novel. Or it is possible that it was created because the anomaly is me myself.'
Anyway, it doesn't really matter what is the reason but one thing is for sure that I should always take in consideration that always everything will not go according to what I know, there can be some oddities every once in a while. Afterall this is a real world not a novel where only things happen during a set plot. Here things happen everywhere without the knowledge the people.
'It's around time I go to steal some of Fade's chances again, its been a while since I did so.'
After confirming his thoughts and deciding his next plan of actions, Rio fell asleep. At morning he did his daily exercise routine and then left the academy by a bus. No one's going to say anything to him or ask him why he is leaving, because the students are free to do anything when it's a holiday.
This time it took him a long time to reach his destination and it was already evening when got to the location. So, he just booked a room to stay for the night and then slept there. Next day he left his room and walked towards the most famous lake of this city. The Lake of Sean, it is the most beautiful and biggest lake in this city.
Due to its natural beauty this lake is extremely beautiful and have clear water in it. This lake is a tourist spot for several people and it is always crowded due to its popularity among the people for fulfilling wishes. Yeah, its just a legend but people believe that if you wish something when standing in front of this lake it will come true.
This legend drives people to come here and try their luck but obviously this is just a legend if it was true then the protagonist did not need to go through so many life and death situations, he would have directly gotten what he wanted just by wishing for it. Even heaven defying luck can't fulfill such conditions, not to mention a lake with no concept of luck bound to it. But since people believes it, then no one really goes against it to stop it.
Talking of belief and all, there was a concept of belief in humans too at the starting of the time when dungeon gates first appeared in this world. It is said that some people had awakened some skill that were capable of collecting the power of belief at that time, but in the end those people all disappeared and now there's no concept of the belief or simply saying there's no concept of divine power, only mana is dominating this world. No one knows why that is.
'Let's get to the thing I came here for, now.'
After reaching the lake, Rio crossed the bridge which is right on the middle of the Lake. After crossing the bridge, Rio walked straight in the forest and never looked back. After he walked for a few minutes, he was in front of an empty space in the middle of the trees. It was as if the trees are not growing at this place due to some unknown reason.
Rio walked to the middle of the place and sat down there completely relaxing his body as if he did not care about anything in the world. No danger means anything to him. Basically, he pretended that he had relaxed his vigilance completely.
And as he had already expected, after about half an hour all of his surrounding started to be covered in fog. The fog continued to increase and finally stopped increasing when his was restricted to only 1m. Rio then got up and walked towards the direction where the sun was before the thickened. After walking for about 2 hours non-stop, he found that he was still standing on the same spot.
'So, this is the endless path of perseverance! Really something interesting.'
In the novel Fade came to the Lake of Sean with Kira on a date. They wanted a quiet place to spend time for a while since it was really crowdy around the lake. So, they looked around for a place in the forest. At that time, they found this place by luck. I mean they found this place by the help of the heavenly luck. They camped here and just when they were about to leave, they noticed that the whole area around them is covered in thick fog.
Not to mention the fog was still increasing, they tried to walk towards the direction of the way from where they came, but every time both of them found themselves standing on the same stop after a few minutes of walking. Then Kira proposed walking towards the sun's direction because she knew that there was an office of here father's guild in that direction so she noticed it at that time.
And by sheer luck they got the treasure walking in that direction continuously.
Rio also did the same he continued to walk in that direction, even though he found himself standing on the same spot every time, he still walked because he knew this is just a test to get that treasure. After who knows how long he finally noticed some difference in the area around him. He immediately fastened his pace and continued to walk forward with all his might.
"WHO ARE YOU HUMAN, YOU HAVE SOME GREAT PERSEVERANCE, I AM IMPRESSED FROM YOUR BOLDNESS!"
A giant snake appeared in Rio's vision, all the fog around him faded away as if it did not exist in the first place. When he carefully saw the body of this snake, Rio was extremely shocked. Although he knew that there would be such a scene from the description of the novel but he was still extremely shocked.
The size of this snake was so huge that Rio wasn't able to see the end of the snake's tale with his eyes at all. The diameter of the snake's eyes was already twice the size of Rio's body. From this you can imagine the might of this giant snake. Even the octopus from before looks like a small baby in front of this snake. The snake's body is black in colour and its pupil are red in colour.
Rio could feel an unfathomable deep pressure being released from this snake's body unconsciously, just by its mere presence.
'So, this is how powerful the presence of a SS rank monster looks like, Wonderful'
"My Name is Rio Flash"
"WHY HAS YOU COME HERE TO DISTURB ME?"
"I have lost my way and was looking for a way out of the fog, I didn't know that, your excellency was resting here, please forgive me." (Rio)
"HMM, YOU HAVE A GREAT CONFIDENCE TO STILL BE TALKING SO CALMLY WITH ME, YOU ARE A STRANGE KID."
"I am just talking the truth, your excellency. I will really be grateful if you can tell me the right way, your excellency 'Marik', The great Illusionary holy beast." (Rio)
"OH! I AM SURPRISED THAT YOU KNOW ME! I WILL TELL YOU THE RIGHT WAY IF YOU ANSWER HOW YOU KNOW ABOUT ME?" (Marik)
"Of course, how can I not about the legend of you trapping the army of the fourth demon general with your illusionary magic in an infinite time illusion. It is all written in the history books of the humans. I just appreciate reading history books, so I know of it." (Rio)
"YEAH! COME TO THINK OF IT, YOU HUMANS DO RECORD THESE THINGS IN YOUR TEXTS. HMM, YOU HAVE IMPRESSED ME, AS PROMISED LET ME SHOW YOU THE WAY TOWARDS YOUR DESTINATION." (Marik)
Marik opened a portal out of thin air and signaled Rio to enter it. Rio entered the portal without hesitation.
After Rio walked out of the portal at the other end, he waited for the portal to close. When the portal closed, he immediately heaved a sigh of relief. Looking at himself, he found that he was already covered in sweat, it was really taxing to stand in front of that monster for so long. Although it only has been few minutes but these few minutes were already like eternity when standing in the presence of that snake.
One wrong word and Rio's life would have been ended by that snake in a matter of a mere seconds. But in the end, he survived that ordeal and successfully reached the place he wanted to.
Right in front of him was and old looking tomb. Seeing this place, a smile appeared on his face and he started to walk inside the tomb.
'Now only half of the journey is left'