Chapter 173 Isn’t He Cute ?

========================Sarah’s P.O.V===============================

The wind blew strong this night,making me more then anything cold and uncomfortable for what was about to come,but all of it quickly went out of the window as I stared at gary in front of me slightly shocked and stunned at the same time not expecting him to say those words he had just said to me.

-Now,before you say anything I want you to first listen to me and then decide

He started,and in fact I wanted to rebut him and tell him to stay here and keep guard,but at the same time for some reason I felt that listening to him was better then cutting him off.

Generally I can’t say that I liked gary that much not because of his character or because he is a guy,but because he has that sneaky and avoiding attitude to him that makes him invisible at times,he also never talks much either when participating in group activities and his class is a <Lux Thief> after all so him being invisible and hard to notice was a given with the way his class worked.

Gary looked a bit serious this time it didn’t look like he had any second motives nor did he strike me as a guy who would intentionally try to harm anyone,he was more of a runaway type of guy who lets his fears get the better of him which is why I was mostly surprised by his proposal to come along.

In either case,I didn’t say anything after hearing his sentence and simply gave him a nod to continue,I was itching to go into the forest and search for those two,but just as gary started talking I realized something in my head.

How do I find them inside this dark forest ?

And just as that thought occurred to me gary answered my question.

-I can track those two with my <Tracking> skill,I am also very familiar with the forest and with my other skills I can also help us avoid any other creatures to get to them if we go together we are more likely to get to them faster if isn’t already too late…

He said,and while I found his skills to be useful and his intentions to be good,I also had another thought in my mind that slightly bothered me.

-If you really could do this from the beginning why didn’t you do it yourself ?

My question was on point making gary’s eyes go wide for a moment as he stared at me lost for words as if he didn’t think I would be smart enough to figure it out so fast and while I admit that I am a bit slow to figuring out someones thoughts,I am still not completely retarded.

After speaking my part gary had a hard time finding an answered as he stuttered in front of me not sure what to say or how to say it,seeing him struggle like this my opinion of him just got more and more suspicious until he finally sighed heavily and faced me with a embarrassed look on his face,he momentarily stopped for a second glancing behind looking at lily for a moment before speaking.

-I…I was scared alright ?! I didn’t have the guts to go alone,I also figured that the others wouldn’t go either and while I did want to go and find those two myself because of guilt.I just didn’t have the strength to leave on my own…I hate the dark and I hate these monsters,but what I hate even more than that is being alone…

Gary said,the hurt in his voice almost crystal clear to my ears as I picked up some amount of emotion to it especially the last part about being alone and even though I couldn’t completely see the expression on his face,I still realized that he had his own share of issues than I assumed he had.

He may be a coward,but at least he was a thoughtful coward.

The initial suspicion also quickly vanished as I made my way towards the exit holding my sword tight in my right hand.

-Lets go,we already wasted too much time

Upon hearing my words gary was surprised,but nonetheless he didn’t loiter anymore and also followed me behind with a grim look on his face,before leaving he told lily to tell the others that we left to get sophia and terry,seeing him say his goodbyes with lily so thoroughly with care and passion made me more the anything stunned giving me also a better understand of gary this time and another reason as to why he may be doing this other then fear or guilt.

Either way,I kept my thoughts to myself keeping myself from grinning and together with gary we marched through the forest steadily while using gary’s <Tracking> skill to pick up on sophia’s and terries footsteps that would inevitably lead us to them as we walked through this horrifying and dark forest full of monsters.

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-I think we are getting close…man why did they bother to go that far aren’t they scared or something ? What do you think why did they go this far ?

Gary asked,his voice a bit ragged and his face more then a bit fatigued as we walked through this harsh terrain of a forest,avoiding monsters and other vile animals.

Hearing his question I myself got momentarily lost considering it,but as much as I thought about it,I had no idea as why they would leave in the middle of the night like this risking their lives together.

-I don’t know,but if we catch up I guess we find out.

We had been walking for about 15 minutes now,Gary’s <Tracking> skill proofed to be more then anything,but useful his unique skill <Intuition> was also very helpful as it helped us avoiding the danger that laid on our paths and let those monsters walk by so we wouldn’t get killed.

Everyone in our camp already knew about their skills and classes,but because majority of the people in our camp were girls,me included,we didn’t know about video games or these “game mechanics” that much since we don’t dwell on them.

On the other hand the boys,janet and a few other girls were familiar with this system and knew how to use it more naturally and as far as I can tell everyone here had at least a few skills in their disposition depending on their class some useful while some not so much some even had similar skills to one another,but what seemed to be unique about this system or the menu was the row above the row that indicated the normals skills called “Unique skills”.

And while I myself do posses one of those “Unique skills” called <Seal Of Command> I still don’t really know what it does because of its vague explanation when I tap on it and because its not a skill that I can evoke,but rather a skill that is constantly active…a passive skill I have no clue how to control it or use it to my advantage.

Janet who is the leader of our group firmly believes that these “unique skills” will be the core factor for our survival and our way to live in this world.

But compared to the other skills like gary’s <Intuition> that allows him to sense danger and janet’s <Phantasma> that allows her to make copies of herself to fight with,my skill seemed just too useless.

“Authority will be given to your stature, voice and appearance”

The explanation while explaining the point of the skill,didn’t really tell me how to use it like my other skills do.

But since these kinds of skills don’t seem to be something that anyone can learn and are unique in what they do,it is still better to have them then not having them,and to top it off I am not the only one who has a bizarre skill with a vague explanation.

Many in our group still didn’t understand how to use their skills properly nor how their unique skills worked,majority were still at level.1 learning to properly utilize their strength and understand how to learn and use other skills such as <Appraisal>,training our skills and raising our levels was important,but to raise skills you had to use them on something to gain practice and to raise your levels you had to kill creatures for experience.

All of these things,I avoided very much and while I am not against killing animals in general I am still not very keen on slaughtering them myself other then maybe injure them so they wouldn’t move anymore,it is the same just as it was that day when I fought that green human sized monster that swung that rusted sword.

I couldn’t kill it.

And because I couldn’t kill it,I was almost killed myself was it not for sorron who interrupted and killed it instead.

Going out into this forest was only making me more anxious and while I knew that going out on my own will would do something like this forcing me to react,I still rather preferred to stay out of way and not bother anyone…

I thought,glancing at gary for a moment as I watched him inspect our surroundings left and right with his skills while also following the tracks of our companions.

Watching him i felt slightly envious of his class that allowed him to do these things and thought about my own class which was basically described to me as a meat shield by janet and valera who had a look at it.

Valera and I once talked about these classes and how we could have possibly gotten here,when we talked I had gotten loads of information from her theories most notably about the topic of being assigned a class that you are the most suitable with after all…

On the topic I thought of speaking with sorron about this in more depth and ask him if he knew something about all of this,but because he usually blocked me from speaking to him and only spoke to me when it was important,I never got around to ask him anything useful.

I shared my thoughts with janet about this once,but she also said that asking him wouldn’t help us at all because she somehow assumed that he was also most likely in the same situation as us and most probably arrived at the same time as us,she also said that the only reason why he was better off then us was because he worked alone and had minions to do his work for him while we only had ourselves and if you think about it,thats true I never saw him without those slimes or those dark skinned beautiful woman and while on the topic of his woman…

No,I better stop here,its not my deal what he does to those woman and having seen them I also don’t think that they dislike him rather they seem to be like him more then anything,but simple companionship…

I thought for a second,my cheeks lightly flushed with red without me noticing in result of getting too deep into other people’s business as I got back on track remember what valera said and about her theories.

Valera said something about us being assigned the most suitable class to your character and if that was really so…

Then why am I a meat shield ?

I grumbled,getting more then a bit irritated by this then I probably should be while also following gary’s back and as we continued walking gary suddenly stopped dead in his tracks,he had done this kind of action numerous times when detecting some kind of danger from an animal,but this time it seemed different.

I gripped my sword.

-There is something in front of us,but it doesn’t seem to dangerous…

He whispered a bit confused and while it wasn’t visible to me what it was,I was still very careful and followed gary’s instructions as he gestured towards one of the trees so we could hide and see what was going on a head of us.

Leaning closely towards the tree,I heard the cries of numerous monsters that echoed throughout this forest like always,the cold sweat that came off my forehead never stopped dripping going all the way down my sword arm my fencing skills weren’t at a expert level,but I was still the strongest in my entire school earning me more then a few medals in tournaments.

And while I did have confidence in my fencing skills,that confidence only held up towards humans or at least humanoid creatures whose moves I was familiar with,against monsters on the other hand my confidence was lackluster,but that still didn’t hold me from using me sword.

It was I who made this decision after all,I was already prepared for this to happen running away now was not an option to me not when we are this close.

I thought to myself,keeping my morals high and hopes up as I awaited gary’s judgment on the situation,gary took longer then anticipated to check this time he usual would give a solid 2 to 3 minutes time staring at one spot and then tell me if its safe or not,but this time it took him double the time 6 minutes in fact to finally say.

-Their not moving away…but they don’t seem to be a threat either since my <Intuition> skill isn’t going off thats for sure…how strange…

He said,making me also a bit lost for what to do as we both stared at the darkness up ahead of us,the moonlight was bright,but even that light couldn’t completely shine us the way ahead and while my eyes were getting familiar with the darkness I still could see two small shadows far away wiggle around not making any sound,but rather standing in place crouched doing something.

The idea of confronting those shadows wasn’t very keen on my mind,I even considered just taking a detour around those two to continue our path,but because gary said that the track was leading directly towards those two shadows I felt another more dark idea pop inside my head and I could tell by the look on gary’s face that the idea also came through his skull.

What if…those shadows were consuming something…what if they were eating sophia and terry ?

A cold shiver ran down my heart making me feel more then anything scared at the moment,gore wasn’t my area of expertise neither did gary look like he could stand blood as I,but because those shadows weren’t moving away and because we needed to confirm before moving on we had no other choice,but to get closer and get a better look.

Gary and I only exchanged looks at the moment,swallowing we nodded to each other and went closer brushing through the wild grass and passing by trees masking our presence,my heart beat like a drum my hands holding the sword so tight that the veins on my hand swelled up as I stared towards those two shadows expecting the worst possible image in mind…

Ironically…

That wasn’t what actually happened.

-Ahh your so cute look terry isn’t he cute  ?!

-Sophia ! Put him down we have to go back we have been here way too long they are probably already wondering where we went !

And just like this we found Sophia and Terry next to a little white bear cub underneath a hollow tree.