CH 38

Ah, as expected of his goddess. The mere sight of her face sent QiLeren’s mind spiralling into nothingness, face aflame as he stuttered out a frankly pathetic “Hello”. His goddess merely looked down at him with familiar iciness. Her bird, having returned to his perch on her shoulder, tilted its head cutely at QiLeren. “Good food, good food!”

It was not without great reluctance that QiLeren complied. His rations were for life-threatening situations, damn it, wasting it to curry favour with a bird…well…since it was his goddess’ bird…

Feeling the last of his principles crumble under the temptation of beauty, QiLeren offered up a portion of what little was left in the palm of his hand and watched in quiet despair as the black bird pecked at it eagerly. His goddess made no move to stop it, nor did she make any sound at all as she fixed her gaze upon QiLeren. At such a close distance, her eyes, shining between two rows of thick eyelashes, shone beautifully like pure, polished sapphires.

A spark of something akin to suspicion flared in QiLeren’s mind; could she be of mixed blood? SuHe had mentioned that there had never been a single foreign player in the game before, but almost all NPCs looked distinctly non-Asian, which made the difference between players and NPCs quite telling.

The black bird eventually finished its meal and affectionately rubbed its head in QiLeren’s hand before flapping up to a tree branch with a flurry. Seeing his goddess’ gaze drift to the torn pieces of the sacrificial gown, QiLeren hurried to explain, “I saw it floating down the river earlier…hey, it looks like we’re wearing the same thing.”

At this, he pulled open the coat that had fallen onto him earlier to compare it to his own (still dripping) gown. Before he could uncover anything more than his collarbone, however, his goddess stopped his hand and packed him tightly back into the coat draped around his shoulders.

What the heck was she doing???

The black bird squawked twice from its perch on the tree and finally said its first semi-presentable sentence: “Public indecency.”

What? What on earth was happening?? Public indecency??? All he did was expose some collarbone! His clothes were indeed soaked through and sticking quite close to his skin, but they were both girls so what did it matter… Oh, wait, he was male. That was close.

Could his goddess have realised what his true gender was? QiLeren flinched at the thought and sneaked a peek at her, but she had long since turned away to dazedly stare at the clothes on the ground. Upon further inspection, QiLeren was alarmed to find that her ear had turned red.

…!

She was embarrassed? Good lord, how could she be this cute?!

Fears laid to rest, QiLeren could focus on nothing else but the adorable shyness of his normally aloof goddess. To test the theory, he calculatingly shifted the coat and hiked up a corner of his gown over his thigh to reveal the creamy expanse of skin underneath. “I accidentally scraped my knee on the rocks when I came out of the river…”

His goddess’s gaze swept over the bruised and bleeding skin of his knee for a split second before she…swiftly pulled his gown back down, shoved something cold into his hands and leaped to the other side of the river before he could snap out of his confusion. QiLeren stared at the opposite riverbank, slack-jawed, but there was no trace of his goddess. The river was at least three or four metres wide; had she just jumped over it in one leap?

The black bird let out a strange chuckle, as if mocking him for his failed seduction attempt, before taking flight after its owner, but not without leaving behind an “I can fly, dumbass”.

QiLeren felt as if something inside of him had exploded. His goddess ran away! That’s not what he had meant to do; he had just wanted to see her being embarrassed, not force her to look at his thigh!

Alas, she had left. Left standing on the riverbank, still dripping wet but now armed with his goddess’ gift of a coat and ointment, he had no words to express his anguish.

Unfortunately, the quest wasn’t going to complete itself. Opening the alarmingly high-quality looking ointment, QiLeren rubbed some onto his knee and watched as it healed almost immediately before promptly deciding to save it for the future. When he took off and examined the coat around his shoulders, the silver crosses adorning its upper sleeves did nothing to distract from the fact that no matter how he looked, it was unmistakably a man’s jacket.

Wait, could his goddess have a boyfriend?

All the colour drained from QiLeren’s face as he dwelled on this fact. No, he couldn’t accept this. Her boyfriend must have atrocious taste to have chosen such a plain black jacket and is therefore completely undeserving of his icy and unbelievably cool goddess.

No no no, maybe his goddess just liked male clothing? It wouldn’t be strange at all for a beauty so far out of everyone’s league like her to wear male clothing! Having convinced himself, QiLeren reluctantly shrugged on his newly attained jacket and made his way upstream, finally arriving around sunset. Vision brought by the thinning forest and elevated ground brought with it a strange odour, he noted with unease as he opened the map to check his position; he was not too far from Cave Tower.

A smidgen of browning blood caught QiLeren’s eye. Walking closer to investigate and swiping a hand through the stain, it seemed that the blood was likely fresh and spilt not long ago. Surrounding it were similar splotches of blood and…some traces of bloodstained clothing.

QiLeren swallowed, mouth suddenly feeling dry as his heart thumped in his ears. The bloody gown was most likely from here, but where was the body? How did she die?

The surrounding area was made up of sparse trees and a dense cushion of tall grass that covered the ground completely, making it difficult to make out bloodstains on the ground. Following the trail with some difficulty, QiLeren noticed that along the trail were traces of bark that had been ripped off in large chunks, some branches even broken, almost as if they were snapped by…rough trauma of some sort. The sort that seemed too violent to have been done by wild animals.

If not an animal, then who…then what could have caused the wreckage before him?

The woods around him were deathly silent, devoid of even the birdcalls that had chirped incessantly before. An unpleasant odour wafted through the darkening sky. QiLeren could hardly hear over his own heartbeat, each step feeling as if he was on the edge of a cliff.

There was danger ahead.

An unspeakable intuition urged QiLeren to flee, but with Cave Tower at his fingertips and all his items on hand to fight, he couldn’t justify running any longer. Rather than hiding in a corner and waiting for death, he might as well give his all; nothing ventured, nothing gained. Forcing himself to press onwards, he reached the hill’s peak at last and surveyed the area.

No more than a few hundred metres away from him was an open area of gravel, next to which was a looming cave surrounded by a haphazard barrier of stone around one metre tall. Within the barrier was a hulking giant stirring a huge cauldron with a thick wooden stick.

Beside it, a pack of wolves happily feasted on a mutilated corpse.

The giant reached out a clumsy hand to pull out a macabre bone from the wolves’ dinner and threw it, still dripping with torn flesh and blood, into the cauldron. Bubbles gurgled out of the green-brown liquid. The wolves dragged the corpse slightly away, whimpering softly but not daring to resist, before continuing their meal.

A gust of wind carried a peculiar scent from the woods. The wolves, following the scent, paused in their feast and raised their heads to growl to QiLeren, who was situated upwind from them.

A pair of giant, blood-red eyes met QiLeren’s own.

With a roar of excitement, the giant jumped to its feet and thundered towards to him on strong and solid legs. The wolves howled in unison at the sound of the clarion call, advancing as one behind the giant with their eyes set on QiLeren!