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Once Weed finished his business in Rosenheim Kingdom, he headed into the Plains of Despair again.
Though, this time he was riding a horse. It was a cheap common breed, known for its short stature, short and muscular legs and good endurance.
People, who wanted to make an impression, were usually picking a horse of pure black or white color. But Weed certainly wasn’t one of them, so he chose a simple brown one.
“Okay. Let’s go. Come on, run!”
Loudly hitting the ground with its hooves, the horse broke into a gallop.
In rocky or swampy areas it wouldn’t be the best means of transportation, but on the plains, across which Weed was traveling, it was unrivaled.
“Yeah. It’s worth the money.”
He was enjoying the fast and comfortable journey.
Now Weed could understand why other people were buying horses. But he still was bitter about spending those money! So he had to constantly comfort himself about it.
“Right investments is the only way to success.”
Though he only spent 3 gold on it, he had to constantly praise his new purchase to not feel regret. He was doing everything to suppress his greedy nature.
But whatever was his reasons for praise, the horse really was a worth investment, as it allowed him to travel a lot faster than even when he was using Quadruped Run skill.
In a single day he reached the border and passed into the Plains of Despair, then he changed direction and started to move in a strange pattern. Plains had passable terrain and great visibility in every direction, but Weed was riding to south-east for an hour, then making a sharp turn and riding another hour to north-east.
Making such zigzags, he was gradually making his way to the east, towards the fortress of Dark Elves, though he had to spend his valuable time on meaningless wandering.
A few hours later Weed encountered a party, that was hunting on the Plains again. Oberon and his companions just finished another fight and were resting. Of course they were alert and noticed the approaching rider first.
“What in the world…”
“There’re solo players, who come here!”
Everyone in Oberon’s party turned around and looked at Weed in surprise.
When they entered the Plains of Despair, they had to fight monsters almost non-stop. If in Rosenheim Kingdom they could brag that they can deal with any monster, here it was different. They’ve got to feel what real battle is the hard way.
Abyss Knights, Lightning Casters, Poison Lords, Dark Dancers, Night Lords! And many other monsters of level 350, that were setting traps, making ambushes, casting deadly spells and summoning minions to aid them in battle.
These lands were a real challenge for their party. A couple times when they encountered monsters of level over 400 it was only by their tremendous effort that their hunt didn’t end at that moment. With every day the mood in the party was getting gloomier and gloomier.
So it was no wonder, that the moment Oberon saw Weed, his eyes took a perfectly round shape.
“It is dangerous here. This is Plains of Despair… Hurry up, turn around and get away from here as fast as you can! Or no, we better escort you back.”
Oberon was a really noble man. He was ready to defend others even when he was being attacked himself. The warrior profession was often picked by such open, good-mannered and kind people.
But Weed wasn’t anywhere near that kind of guy. It could be said, that he was an exact opposite.
Weed just rode past them. He totally ignored the players, but not the items, left by them, like on their previous meeting!
He didn’t even get off the horse to pick them up, he just bent over to gather them into his saddlebag, holding on the horse only by his legs.
‘I must gather everything.’
Having picked up the items, Weed continued his way to the east.
“Huh? He just left?”
“Does he not value his life?”
Players from the hunting party were watching him ride away.
“Everyone is free to choose his own way to die.”
“Really, there are people who like to travel alone everywhere.”
However Pluto, Oberon, Haisyns and a couple other veterans weren’t so quick with conclusions. Weed’s behaviour wasn’t that of a person, who was going to die in near future.
A few thoughts flashed in Oberon’s mind. He remembered how they encountered Soulless Wolves right after passing the border, and how they saw a strange Orc, that picked up all the items, left after the fight.
“Could it be…”
Pluto looked at Oberon.
“That Orc!”
“So it was a player?”
“If that was a player, then…”
They nodded to each other.
“The player, who can turn into an Orc… Only one person comes to mind.”
Now others understood as well what exactly Oberon was implying. After all this hunting party consisted of high level players, very passionate about Royal Road.
“Hall of Fame!”
“The Orc from that video!”
“He looked different this time, but that’s him! The same terrible face.”
“Right. There are no Orcs in the game as ugly as this one!”
“So that event is going to happen in Plains of Despair!”
***
Though this time Weed was traveling on a horse, his mood wasn’t quite as good as it should have been. On his way he was noticing traces of the hunting party, or, to be precise, items, left by them.
Weed could see them clearly, but couldn’t come close enough to pick them up. There were strong monsters living in those areas, that would be hard to deal with alone. Besides, hunting party was coming through the middle of such areas, where the number of monsters was the greatest.
At first glance plains looked like they were empty, but that was a misleading first impression. Every kind of monsters had its own territory, by walking into which players were forcing all of the monsters inhabiting it to attack. These territories were scattered around the plains, forming a complex labyrinth.
Weed had a copy of the map, therefore he was able to avoid all the dangerous areas. But even with that map and a horse, he had to follow a tortuous path, which was really slowing him down.
After a day of constant gallop the horse started to foam at the corners of its mouth. It was getting exhausted. Especially since Weed was carrying a pretty weighty Orc statue in one of his bags.
Usually horse owners were taking care of their rides: stroking, comforting, feeding carrots to them, and of course letting them rest when they were tired.
Weed was rushing his horse instead.
“Come on, run. You can do it. You belong to a species of runners after all, aren’t you disappointed, that you never actually reached your limit?”
After that he suddenly started to thump out a tempo on the horse’s back. And it did start running a bit faster, expending the little power it still had. But after some time the speed started to drop again.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? Hold on a bit more. When we arrive you’ll be able to rest as much as you want.”
The horse believed those words, stopped slowing down and put some more effort into it.
Weed’s kind voice and his hich charisma and leadership attributes were helping him to convince the poor horse to run ahead in hopes of reaching their destination.
But however long it was running, there was no sign of their destination and Weed wasn’t letting it to slow down.
“Come on, a little further.”
The horse was running.
“Almost there.”
It was still believing.
“Just a bit left.”
Weed’s attitude towards his mount went beyond horrible. He was squeezing every last drop from his horse.
In the end it couldn’t stand such a treatment any longer, made last few steps and fell to the ground, completely exhausted.
After examining the heavily breathing horse and realizing, that he won’t be able to ride it any further, Weed took his bags off it and said:
“You’re free now. Go wherever you want. Good luck.”
He took out the small Orc statue. He didn’t have time to wait for the horse to recover, so he switched to his original way of traveling.
“Sculpture transformation!”
The journey to Rosenheim Kingdom took him 7 days. But now, that he covered a significant part of his way on the horse and saved his strength, this time was going to reduce by half.
“Chwiik! Chwik!”
The small Orc headed to the east.
He still was terribly short on time. last time he visited all the villages of exiles in the center of the plains, now he had to visit as many of the remote ones as possible.
Taking into account the way back to the fortress of Dark Elves, it was going to take about 12 days.
“And I have 15 days until the battle starts.”
Having concluded, that he has just enough time, Weed was continuing to run, when all of a sudden, he noticed someone standing on a hill. The person was standing with his back to Weed and looking at something out of Weed’s field of view.
“A player? How… It’s not easy to get here. That must be some villager. Chwiit!”
Villages of exiles were scattered all around the plains. And despite the abundance of monsters, they were full of life, villagers were hunting and going out of villages for other business. It was not unusual to meet one of them here.
“Chwiik, is there a village nearby?”
As he was coming closer he was noticing more details about the person on the hill. Graceful posture, waist-long hair.
‘That must be a woman.’
Though he could only see her back, his sculptor’s senses were telling him, that she must be very beautiful. A woman watching the sunset. No, a young lady.
Deciding that it was not his business, Weed continued to run. The girl could obviously hear him, but wasn’t paying him any attention, so he decided to simply run past her.
While running up the hill, Weed noticed something at the edge of his field of view. A huge bull-like monster was running in the same direction.
“Hunter of Plains!”
That was one of the few kinds of monsters, that didn’t live on some set territory. Hunters of Plains were roaming all over the Plains of Despair, hunting people or even occasional monsters.
Villager
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