"It's set then."
On Eline's left hand lay a coin, the surface depicting a mountain. She had won the throw.
"...Best of three?"
Jokingly asked Alwyn.
"No. We go right."
And just like that, she made her first step on the road and resumed walking, without giving him a chance to retort.
"I hope we find a couple houses to loot at least…"
The two had started their exploration late in the morning, ran for forty minutes, then slowed down and eventually stopped to search for clues at the scene of the crime. After that first part of the journey, they ran at a more moderate pace with high alert for about an hour.
Since the start of the quest, approximately 2 or more hours had already passed, and the sun was now at its highest point in the sky. Traveling on the road, they could enjoy its tepid rays, as the foliage was less dense over their head.
"How much do you want to keep going?"
If they really wanted to look for the lake before returning to the carriage, they would soon have to turn back and halt their current search.
It would have to wait until tomorrow.
"Until we find clues. We are so close to discovering something, we can't return empty-handed."
"Increase the pace a bit then, it's useless to be vigilant right now, we are not going to find anything here. Let's see where this road leads us."
"Sure."
Eline started accelerating bit by bit until her speed couldn't be compared to that of a horse anymore. She was obviously slower than a lizard, but still…
"F-For how long can you keep this up?"
"Probably half an hour or less."
Alwyn was left speechless.
'What a monster…'
***
When the girl eventually came to a stop to catch her breath, she carefully lowered Alwyn on the ground and released him from her tight grip. She put him against the rundown wooden fence, extending his legs on the uneven stones that paved the road, while also making sure that his wounds would not reopen as they came in contact with them.
The black rock he had in his pocket, the Proof of Faith, had a better performance at night, since it was correlated to how slow the heartbeat of the user was, but in that first half of the day it had still managed to slightly improve his overall conditions. Nothing substantial, but also nothing that should be completely dismissed.
Alwyn reassured her.
"The legs will probably be immaculate by tomorrow morning. That is if things don't suddenly go awry. We've been really lucky so far."
"Now that you mention it, the lack of Revenants in this region is quite unusual. We should have encountered at least a dozen by now."
Eline's expression suddenly shifted to a somber one, having realized something.
Such an environment should have been highly populated by those monsters, infested even. The lack of them could only mean two things, the first being impossible, as there had been no available Reapers in that wild area of the Empire. The immortal abominations hadn't been slain by them.
The second one though, implied something far worse.
It meant that there was a predator lurking in the Whispering Woods, a Revenant so strong that it fed on the souls of other Revenants. But for that to be possible it meant that either it had eaten a Reaper, or it had undergone an evolution.
The two of them had no way to beat a beast of that caliber.
Alwyn decided to voice out his doubts.
"...Shouldn't we turn back?"
"No... We've already gone this far, we might as well search for another hour."
"Are you crazy?! The sun will soon start to set, we have to return before it's too late! Facing such a powerful Revenant is the worst choice we can make right now."
"If you want to return so badly, do it with your own feet."
"You are not making any sense, why are you so eager to die?!"
Eline suddenly bursted out loud.
"If the situation is that serious we can't postpone any longer! My comrades might already be dead! And that's not even the worst part, the cargo is a fucking giagantic Shard! If we let the Revenant evolve further we are dead! And the Empire will soon follow!"
Now everything made sense.