After killing Charon's Beast, the Corrilário, Kaizen was full of questions on his mind. However, Klank didn't seem to have the answers, and the Psyker had no way to answer them being in the middle of the forest, so he decided to focus on the current mission.
Since the carriage had overturned near the road, Yokoso and Rismar Ferris had been missing. The trail that led Kaizen and Klank to the creek, and consequently to the Corrilary meeting, undoubtedly belonged to Yokoso or Rismar, but the question now was where they might be.
To make the two players' mission more difficult, unfortunately thanks to the ice wave created by the Snowy Limbo the entire creek area was covered by a layer of ice and snow.
Ignoring the rain, which was getting weaker and weaker, Klank stooped down, put his hand on the ice and asked:
"Is there no way you can absorb all the ice with your super-fucking sword? Like you did in the fight against Taznaar. Maybe the tracks of who we are looking for are still down here, you know? Like fossils after the ice age."
Psyker denied with his head, while taking a potato out of his inventory to use to recover his HP.
"There is a limit to how much cold I can absorb and release with that sword. I can choose to use my mana as fuel to generate more cold, I just can't do the opposite of this. Besides, I doubt that any footprints could have withstood the rain from before."
The green-haired boy placed his right hand on his chin and nodded continuously. "So, the best plan we have is to give up the mission or search this entire forest for them without any clues?" he asked, expecting Kaizen to suddenly propose a miracle plan.
"Yes!" Kaizen replied with a smile.
Inevitably, Klank sighed. "Well, if there's nothing to do, let's search through the forest.... In the meantime, don't even think about getting too far away from me, I only fight things I can see!"
Rewarding the two players' determination to finish the mission, they were both surprised when a small creature emerged from behind Kaizen's leg.
[Hellround was summoned].
Kaizen heard the message resonate in his head and was not even surprised. In the weeks that he had been practicing in the forge and going to the Library of the Magi, this had happened a few times. Mostly when Kaizen was eating something, little Hellround would show up to bother him and ask for some.
"Ow!" The little dog barked, as it usually did to ask Kaizen for food.
Kaizen looked at the dog with discomfort because the animal only ate and did nothing else of note when summoned. Just looking at this little creature, Kaizen already remembered the disappointment he felt when he saw that the Hellround summon he earned was nothing like the great legendary dogs. Still, the Psyker had the hope that the little pup would one day grow up, so he found himself obliged to feed it again and again.
"What an opportune time you were to show up..." Kaizen sneered as he got on his knees to get closer to the animal.
Hellround's eyes were shining just from seeing the piece of baked potato in his master's hand.
"Easy, stay calm... Now, sit down. Good boy."
"K-kaizen? Wh-What is that thing? A monster?" inquired Klank, in shock.
Without giving much thought to it, Kaizen replied as he split his potato to give a piece to Hellround:
"It's an invocation."
At that moment, Klank's face changed from surprise to disbelief.
'He didn't even hesitate to answer that, so... is it true? No, of course it's true. That's Kaizen... And he didn't even say it bragging about what he has. Does he not know how rare and expensive an invocation is? Or is he so rich and powerful that he doesn't care about these things? It wouldn't be surprising... Ah, as expected from Kaizen, he's amazing indeed!'
"Hey, stop looking at me like that." Kaizen said to Klank. "Are you hungry too? Humph! All right, get a potato yourself." He opened his inventory, picked up a boiled potato and gave it to Klank, who had no choice but to accept.
As Kaizen, Klank and Hellround ate some of the potato, Klank himself looked at this scene and laughed internally. After all, when he woke up in the morning in his bed and looked up at the skyline of Boston's tallest skyscraper, he didn't imagine that he would later be eating a potato in the middle of the forest covered partially over ice.
"Um... I had an idea!" Klank said with a mouthful of potato and it made him choke because the potato was so dry, but it was enough for him to hit his own chest twice to manage to swallow the potato. "Cof! Cof!... How about we use that invocation of yours to track the NPCs?"
"I don't know if that sounds like a good idea. That idiot isn't usually very cooperative."
At that moment, Hellround, who was satisfactorily eating his potato, heard Psyker call him an idiot and felt a stubbornness he had never felt before. He needed to prove his master wrong. So Hellround stewed his chest, looked out into the forest, and his eyes glowed the color of fire. Before he left, however, he turned his attention to the potato, swallowed it in one gulp, and then began to run.
Klank saw Hellround running into the woods to the left, pointed with his chin at the animal and said to Kaizen:
"Either he was offended by what you said now and is trying to run away from you, or he is running into who we are looking for."
"Running away he won't get away no, I'm going to feed this dog until he gets big and I get at least a good fur coat!" stated Kaizen, starting to run after Hellround, who heard this and started to run even more.
As the animal entered the woods, it became harder to find him, but when Kaizen finally found him, he got a surprise, Hellround did indeed manage to track down Yokoso and Resmir.
The two NPCs were sheltering from the rain together inside a small cave.
The little summoner was barking non-stop at Yokoso, who was not sure how to react, as he could not tell whether this small animal was a street dog, a monster, or a wild animal. Still, he and his grandfather seemed to have only a few scratches from the accident with the carriage.
...
Edited by: DrHitsuji
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