NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 23 **Braving the Wilderness**
The big, vast land was scarier than Sahara thought…
The magical beasts roamed freely and throughout the short amount of time that she had seen of this place, she had seen no person in it. Sahara had no idea how people went from capital to capital. That was, of course, assuming that there was more than just one capital on this planet…
She had been told that there were other ‘Haven’s’ but no one seemed to go into details about them. Which seemed somewhat odd…Why don’t they join up? Or were they all stuck like this? Was there some type of magical force shield or something that made Green Haven safe?
What Sahara did find out though, a few months ago, was that before ‘Golden Haven’ became ruins, the capitals were all linked together and were a lot more orderly.
When she had gone to ‘school’ here, she had learnt about writing, poetry, art and needlework. For the most part, Sahara knew off these things already and just got better at them. But what she had tried to do, many times, was getting to know more of the planet, but rarely anything was ever taught in that ‘subject’!
This was why the teacher hadn’t liked her, as Sahara was curious about stuff that he wasn’t there to teach for, but still a good enough student, so he wasn’t able to punish her!
But Sahara honestly didn’t understand why her questions bothered the teacher so much! She guessed she was just too used to knowing whatever she wanted easily, by using the internet on her computer…In her own house…
Here, well it’s like being trapped within and the outside was a total mystery! Who knows what’s out there!
It had gotten so much out of hand for her, that Sahara had started to remember all the alien movies that she had seen in her previous life…Well, at least she was entertained for a while!
…But her questions remained unanswered…
What Sahara pondered more on, back when she lived in the Rolland Estate, was if there were ‘school’s’ that taught cultivation instead. Then, through investigating this, there were quite a few ‘Academies’.
What seems to happen was, till a certain age, children are taught particulars and the growth of their cultivation is depending only on themselves or their families. It seems, with this strategy, they want to knock out all the bludgers and people who are wastes.
So, in other words, if their family doesn’t work hard enough, there was no access into these Academies…
What stunned Sahara, though, was that not only do many rich people get into them easily, as they have access to pills or whatnot, but if commoners end up able to cultivate, they may also enter the Academy…So being able to enter an Academy seemed like it wasn’t based upon the rich and wealthy…Well, it seemed that way but you never know…
There was a problem, a reason why commoners rarely became the rich, and that was because they either had too much work to worry about cultivation or they didn’t have the means to teach their children about it…
Sahara could only sigh to how both her last world and this one had rich and poor and a separation between the two that never seems to disappear…It seems that even a change of world didn’t change things like this…
Anyway, thinking of this information now, Sahara believed it wouldn’t be too long before Samuel might go to one of these Academies…When she had left, he was still only a rank one cultivator, but if he advanced to rank two, he could get in.
It really was a pain in the ass, though!
Sahara wanted to know how to kill magical beasts and how to get their ‘nucleus’ inside them. The ‘nucleus’ seemed to come from them but…Is it in the heart? Is it in the head? Does she have to reach into their flesh with her own hands? Just the thought of that and Sahara made a face! She wanted to know what kinds of beasts there were and how it could help her! Was it only one beast and it didn’t matter or was it like books where there were like level ten beasts with better loot!
It was this type of knowledge that she felt like she lost out on! She would have gladly given up needlework to have learned about this!
…She felt like she had wasted all that time because…In the vast wilderness…One aspect of it being scary was simply because she had no idea on what to expect!
Sahara never really liked school in her previous life either. Yet, in this ‘school’ she felt that it had been totally useless!
Now that I’m out in the vast area, I’m just going to have to learn everything all by myself…
With the lazy side of her not particularly happy, Sahara continued on, making sure that she stayed aware at all times.
She was still poisoned and didn’t have any kind of help. She decided to always make sure, that from now on, she kept half of her spiritual essence for emergencies…Which meant that recuperating from her poison will take longer.
Unknowingly, because of her delay to rid of the poison completely, Sahara gained something from it. Not only has she been slowly becoming immune to the ‘Two Faced Poison’, that no one had ever accomplished before, but there was another…Strange thing that happened to her…
In the last two months, without Sahara knowing, her eyes had started to change color. If someone had known her, they wouldn’t have seen a difference straight away. But by now, a few months later, they would have seen it!
Sahara’s eyes had gone from a brown, to a dull, dark red, at first. Now they have gone more of a blood red color, that would have made her laugh and think of vampires. But…She had no idea, so she missed out on a good chance to be amused at this time of need for it. And since she didn’t care too much about how she looked, being a former bogan, she doesn’t find out for some time…
***
When Sahara hit the spot that she had intended, from way back from her bed in the Rolland estate, she jumped up the tree and found a good place to stay. She didn’t want to stay long in a place still quite opened, even though there were other trees around. It wasn’t a jungle or bush, but it had two hills close by and another patch of trees in seeing distance.
For the time being, I will use my stars to find where I will go to next from here…
As the days went by, Sahara rarely fell into a deep sleep, as she would hear all the beasts that were close by. She kept an eye on the poison that was still in her body, but only tended to it just enough to make sure she could move properly. Spending most of her focus in finding a safe place for her to go, put Sahara up to be a rank three cultivator!
After she had ‘dinged’, Sahara remembered that the first son of her ‘stupid grandfather’, was a rank three cultivator too…
She hadn’t thought about the Rolland Estate until now…But now that she did, she was…She felt the emotion that was slowly creeping up on her…An angry emotion, that seems to be wanting to tip over!
Sahara looked out at the vast land around her and sighed.
She wasn’t a saint, she knew that she felt what she felt for a reason. It wasn’t hard to know that she was angry at so many things, that it was like a drain that was already filled with water and spilling out onto the road.
As Sahara tried to calm herself down her eyes unknowingly were now glowing a bright red to her hidden rage, finishing the change to her eyes…A change that no one had ever seen before.
If one where to seek answers for this change, you would see that nothing changed the eyesight of the bearer, it was just the pigment change that overruled the normal color that one is born with…As the poison is strong in many ways…But the poison had become somewhat a part of her, and her eyes showed a place where the poison can show itself to the outside world. The poison showed a glow when her blood was pumping as it was when she was angry…It was almost like another whole living being inside of another living being…Almost like a parasite…
Sahara missed Talon, the gentlest man she has ever met, in both lifetimes. Sahara also miss Samuel, who was more like a kitten or a little puppy, instead of an elder brother, reminding her very much of her precious daughter…
I guess I miss that man too. He was good company.
She pictured the man in her mind, and realized that she never really got his name…
Or number! Haha!
But then Sahara thought that she’d probably forget his name anyway. His face was better…
Daydreaming was something easily done, and when it come to that unbelievably, good looking man, Sahara could lose an hour just picturing a scene in meeting him, or dating him, in modern day Earth.
One time, in the ‘daydream’, they’d be in an elevator at work, and she didn’t know that he was the CEO. Another daydream was about him getting lost in her small town and she had to give him directions, then he’d follow her home…
Sahara sighed, as she remembered a few romantic novels, as romance was her favorite genre. In this damned place, she hadn’t read one single romance story!
That was the only time Sahara wasn’t a realist! Her imagination was like her own Hollywood! She could pretend that she was sitting on a couch, in a theater, and watching a movie!
Sahara thought of her ‘stupid grandfather’ for a short moment but didn’t think that she missed him. What she didn’t think of, was how things were without her there, back in the Rolland Estate. Her first and only idea on how the Rolland Estate is without her, would be that they were probably happier…
What she did sense, was that she was slowly, already, becoming closer to her ‘bad’ side once again.
In her previous life, she had taken thirty years to accomplish it…
It’s only been fourteen years and she already feel it overcoming her or flowing through her…When she thinks back to how she felt and to the differences between both of her ‘good’ side and ‘bad’ side, it does make one wonder why it happens.
To be in a place like this and wonder why it happens! It has to be because of this kind of era! This kind of era is doom!
Sahara has given it some thought…Other than blaming the era…On why she can change, and the best thing that she can come up with, is that through the times she’s ‘good’, she endures and probably bottles up all the feelings that she has. When things become too much for her and she’s in a position that needs her to become a stronger person, who can go without feelings, her ‘bad’ side comes out.
Sahara wasn’t crazy, nor did she have two personalities, both of these sides were definitely a part of her…Well, that was her point of view anyway…
Sahara guesses that it’s just strange, for a certain time while she’s ‘bad’, a few views of hers change. One is, that human life can mean nothing to her, especially if someone has done something wrong to her or someone that she cherishes.
Another is, she doesn’t hesitate at all to do what she wants to do. Like when she had first shot someone in her past life, Sahara didn’t stop in shock, nor did she feel bad about it. But it doesn’t mean that she didn’t know what she did or haven’t thought about it.
Yet, till this day, Sahara has no regrets and would do everything all over again, knowing full well that she had snuffed out people’s lives.
She knows that their families and friends probably miss them, and that people will get mad or angry over her killing them, but as far as she’s concerned…They were there!
If they didn’t want to die, they shouldn’t have kidnapped her daughter, hurt her, then kill her in front of her!
…Upon thinking this, Sahara suddenly had an idea on why the police, ambulance car might have been in a crash.
Perhaps, someone had come after me, because of what I did…Guess I’ll never find out though…
Over the last few years, Sahara has come to wonder if her instincts also help other people’s lives. And with her ending and how she had failed to save her daughter…And herself…She believed, to a certain degree, that this was just one instance where she may have saved someone else in the future from being taken by the bad guys. Because how could someone die to their hands now that they were all died?
Although, Sahara wasn’t sure with that, but she still hoped for it to be true. She didn’t want other people to go through the same thing as she did, losing a child like that is horrible!
Sahara knows losing a child, in general, isn’t good at all. But she guessed that she was a little biased. Her daughter saw something sinister with her innocent eyes, was taken to a place she didn’t know, didn’t eat, was beaten black and blue, and didn’t shower. Sahara had spent months to find her and when she had seen her like this, Sahara had been mortified…But then, on top of all this, she was suddenly sliced at the neck, right in front of Sahara’s very own eyes!
Sahara had seen her daughter’s lifeless body fall to the floor…After only seeing her for a short moment, and hearing her voice saying ‘mum’, she had gone…
How could she not be biased!?
But since Sahara had failed…To protect her…Then why did her instincts work so hard to keep her alive till the bitter end?
…That’s why I think that sometimes it’s not just for me, but that it could be helping somebody else later.
It’s weird, but after Sahara could move on from her memories, she came up with some other times when she had to do something, because of her instincts, and she got no benefit out of it, whereas somebody else did.
Perhaps, there’s something more to my instincts that I can’t seem to see…
***
Within another week, from staying close to that tree that she had found, Sahara had disappeared.
She had found a place to go, to mumble her sorrows away and fix the poison in her body.
But…That tree had a twig, and that twig was bent, and then there was a few footprints and some left-over fruit scraps…
That was all it took for someone to continue further onto their quest, to find the missing, thirteenth young miss…
End of Volume One