NOVEL WEB Chapter 30 - Traces
Congratulations! The skill Rage has leveled up.
Rage Lv 1 ➞ Lv 2
Effect: Sacrifices temporarily two percent of your mana, intelligence, control, mentality, and willpower to increase your health, stamina, strength, endurance, and speed temporarily by the same amount.
You obtained 01 status point.
Ryan was fully aware that getting angry at monsters were a waste of time. Killing humans and eating them was their nature, after all. Getting angry at that was the same as getting angry at a cat for chasing rats. When humans weren't the dominant species of the planet, they were forced to run away from predators, and when that wasn't possible, they probably ended up suffering such fates. Still… Ryan could be logical only for so long. He was a human being, after all. Getting angry was like their second nature.
"I have to keep moving…" Ryan said and then sighed while he wished that the two humans who died there could find peace in the afterlife.
Ryan decided to hid for a while and then wait for his mana and stamina to get full again. However, he didn't have to do that more than a few times because he didn't find many monsters on the road, and that was very weird since many places were burning. However, Ryan's tension increased the more he approached Shreveport because he could see a massive smokescreen rising to the sky.
"My goodness…" Ryan said while sweating cold. "Can a human even obtain the power to survive a single dragon when just a few of them can cause so much destruction in just a few hours?"
Something was off, so Ryan stopped thinking about dragons for a second. He was just twenty kilometers away from Shreveport, but Ryan didn't see a single vehicle coming from there. Although he could imagine dragons destroying massive buildings in seconds, Ryan couldn't imagine them destroying every single escape route.
Ryan didn't know if he would find the cause of that since his sole goal was to find a dungeon, but he couldn't but ponder about such things. It wouldn't be weird if dragons had some level of intelligence, but how could they destroy all escape routes without knowing the city's layout? Besides, they were fantasy monsters… it would definitely be weird if they could understand just by seeing the places or the things they needed to destroy in order to lock the humans in that city.
Such thoughts disappeared from Ryan's head when he saw a group of goblins in the distance dragging a corpse outside the high road. He couldn't see any mountain nearby, but there was a chance that dungeons could appear in other places, as well.
"I have to investigate…" Ryan muttered.
There were some trees on both sides of the road, and the grass was relatively tall. So, Ryan would be able to hide the motorcycle. Just in case, he also let the vehicle lying down on the ground and then covered it with some grass that he cut using the two kitchen knives that he had. After that, Ryan headed in the same direction the goblins went.
Although Ryan was born in that region, he didn't know things outside the city very well. His father took him to hunt several times, but only in places where that was legal. Besides, finding something to hunt so close to the city was close to impossible, so they never tried it.
In any case, it didn't take long before Ryan could find their trail and find something else… a group of humans following them. That surprised Ryan. He thought only he was crazy enough to follow monsters to their nest.
"They must be crazy… why are they following the goblins as if they were taking a walk in the park?" Ryan frowned.
Ryan could see those humans armed with firearms and two swords, so they had some experience in fighting monsters, but they were walking while exposing half of their bodies. Ryan's father taught him to erase his presence while hunting. He actually couldn't do that, but he could hide in the tall grass of the area, and as long as he doesn't move so suddenly, a flying monster looking at him would only see something like a rock in the middle of the grass.
"Oh, well… they might be useful," Ryan muttered. "If something happens, they will be the perfect bait."
Ryan wondered if treating fellow humans like that was the right thing to do. Those people were probably trying to rescue the human who got kidnapped by the goblins, so they weren't bad people. They were just ordinary people who didn't know a single thing about hunting, and that was perfectly normal.
"It is too late to notice that, but I'm involuntarily trying not to involve myself with others…" Ryan said and then massaged his eyebrows. "Even though they don't look like them, every single person I see, my body and mind treat them as if they are Mia and Daniel. This is so messed up…"
Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Stalk.
Effect: Nullifies the level of the enemies' tracking skills by one point per level.
Cost: 0.2 mana per second.
You obtained 01 status point.
Although Ryan felt thankful for learning a new skill, he couldn't help but feel conflicted about such a dubious one. The cost was a bit high, and since he didn't have much mana, Ryan wouldn't be able to keep it active for long. Still, he was confident that he could follow that group without being noticed.
"I don't think many goblins have been killed since the monsters appeared," Ryan muttered. "So, if they can spawn like slimes, they must be pretty numerous considering that nine hours passed since the monsters appeared."
In the worst-case scenario, Ryan and that group would be heading to a dungeon where they would find more than three hundred goblins. Even if Ryan could kill all of them using a single arrow, he didn't have nearly enough arrows to do it. So, he began to create more of them.