-Do not let them escape…chase them, kill them, if you can’t bring me their corpse’s until sunrise do know that I’ll turn your bodies into corpses instead and this doesn’t only apply to you only but also your family…
The earth bending awakened spoke, his tone cold as ice as he menacingly stared deep into the night watching Ivankov making his escape with the car, the feelings he held at the moment were deeply disturbed the glare he had witnessed coming from Ivankov just before he escaped send chills down his spine.
It was as if a prime instinct had been invoked by that glare, the awakened understood what it meant, such glare couldn’t possibly come from any random or weak person, he knew that this man would be a incredible thorn on his side and that if he didn’t remove it quickly, he wouldn’t have a single restful day his entire life and maybe even come to regret not chasing after him to kill him when he had the chance.
The people around the awakened who had heard his orders immediately felt a deep sense of conflict and fear when they heard his threat, the person that had just escaped was their former leader and even though he was a person they owed a lot, they still couldn’t go against the orders of a awakened, they were simply too weak and since nobody wanted to die or wanted their family members to get killed they had no other choice but to follow the orders of the awakened, even if they hated it.
Ivankov’s survivors camp had fallen, by merely 3 awakened combined strength it fell in a matter of hours with everyone changing their allegiance towards the awakened under their powerful strength and ruthless threats.
Ivankov himself while not knowing what was going on understood by the numerous cars chasing after him that the people he once considered comrades had turned coats on him, he felt even more enraged realizing this and even though he felt pain, hatred, grief and anger at the same time he still forced himself to calm down, he may have lost a huge part of himself to the mad beast, but deep down he was still a professional soldier who understood how to think in difficult situations.
With the cries of his daughters Ivankov concentrated and tried to think about numerous escape routes and paths he could take to shake these cars off, because of the natural disasters occurring everywhere a lot of paths that were usually available had long since become completely inaccessible because of heavy damage and while new paths and roads were made most of those were not very safe or good enough to shake off pursuit.
Plus Ivankov had to also think about numerous other points, while he still had a extremely large advantage of distance with his head start over the others, this advantage would slowly start to diminish over time through either depletion of gas or maybe through the numerous firearms those people could use to damage his car and stop him in his tracks.
Even now he could faintly hear from the distance from where the cars were coming from the sounds of gun fire slowly approaching him, while bullets weren’t hitting him at the moment they would soon start to whizz through and maybe even hit his children !
With all of this in mind Ivankov had limited amount of time, and as soon as a plan was formulated in his mind it was quickly erased because of some difficulty and replaced by a new plan which would also get erased for the same reason, this action continued for another few minutes, the cars while not completely closing in on him still slowly started to gain some distance, for Ivankov it seemed as if no matter what kind of plan he thought of, it would still be either too insufficient or impossible to pull off, the stress he felt, the despair creeping into his heart only served to further his fears and the fact that they may die here tonight.
“No, I can’t think like that…Natalie would probably hit me if she knew what I was thinking”
Ivankov momentarily thought to himself, a small amount of grief showing on his face as he remembered his wife momentarily glanced back at his two daughters who had long since stopped crying.
At the current moment neither of them were making any sound at all sitting in the back seat, the sisters were hugging each other while shivering in fear, tears rolling down their once cute little faces, the younger sister was curled up into a ball hiding inside the embrace of the older sister, while the older sister was protectively shielding her younger sister stroking her back in a comforting manner in a attempt to calm her down.
They were both respectively 6 and 8 years old, the younger sister was called Natasha while the older sister was called Masha, both children were incredibly cute and adorable both taking after their mother as it was clear that they would grow up to be just as beautiful as her with striking black hair, red lips and fair skin.
Thinking about the future of his children Ivankov would always feel a bit uneasy about them growing up much more so when he considered the fact that he had to ultimately let go off them and let them pursue their own happiness with another man to form a family, just like any good father he was incredibly protective about his daughters, he wouldn’t just let any random joe chase after his daughters, he had already planned to thoroughly screen every single male around his daughters who desired to chase after them and if they didn’t meet his expectation then…
Heh..
Well then they could only taste Ivankov’s fist before giving up !
Ivankov thought with a faint smirk on his face.
But in the end this was beside the point, none of this would even matter if they couldn’t make it out alive, what was the point of thinking about the future if you couldn’t even live to see it through ?
“There is only one way”
Ivankov muttered under his breath, seeing his daughters and thinking about silly things had cleared his mind somewhat, rage and unending desire for revenge was still present but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep himself in check, to some extend it was also Ivankov’s wife Natalie that caused Ivankov to not give in to his fears, giving up was simply not an option be it through tooth or tail he would make it out alive together with his daughters, at any cost possible.
“Thank you Natalie”
Ivankov prayed in his heart, no longer thinking about any sort of plans as he straight out turned the wheel of his car by 90 degrees and changed directions, his clear with nothing obstructing his way.
His destination.
The Dungeon gate.
…
Now at this point of the story I have to momentarily pause for a second.
The reason for this is because this is the part of the story where things will start to get skipped or either cut.
Why is that you may ask ?
Well its because I simply don’t know what happens after this or more precisely I don’t know what happened when he went through with his decision.
This may be a bit confusing, but the only reason I even know this story to begin with is because I read it from a very popular book telling the tale of the first hunter Ivankov.
I’ve never heard this story from the man himself who had experienced all of this, furthermore it wasn’t even Ivankov who had written the book, instead this piece of literature was written by a fan of the first hunter, a incredible admirer so to say, who had interviewed every person Ivankov had ever talked with or had seen, putting together this story and finally asking the hunter himself Ivankov for permission to publish the book.
And as you may have already figured out he gained this permission and finally even scored a face to face interview with the legend himself the first hunter.
But even then, I am still well aware that not everything in this book may be 100 percent the truth, but even so it also doesn’t mean that it is entirely false as many people before had also investigated Ivankov before and after he became a hunter, most of these investigations yielded about the same results with similar events playing out, many books and tv shows were created from the life of the first hunter but only this book called “The Story Of The First Hunter” was ever really approved by the man himself which is why I liked to believe that there is some truth in this story, this is also the reason why many people prefer this book over any other book regarding the first hunter.
It has a breath of sincerity to it which other books just simply can’t match.
And while I don’t read often or rather I don’t read at all, this book in particular still managed to captivate a person like me who is not very bright to begin with which is what I mean with “Sincerity”.
The part of the story I am particular about to speak of is the part where Ivankov decides that the only way he and his daughters can survive is to enter the dungeon gate.
Up to this point everything seems to be fine it describes Ivankov riding straight to where the nearest gate is, his emotions at the moment very complex and full of doubt but his actions with full resolve and no hesitation.
People were already gathered next to the gate observing it everyday, there were already people who had went in long ago but there were still no one who had ever returned, Ivankov knew very well about these facts regarding the gate but even then he didn’t stop as it was much better to jump into the unknown with a chance of survival then let yourself give into death.
He charged with his car going in full speed he pressed the horn of wheel and let everyone know that he was coming their way at full speed, Ivankov couldn’t afford to stop for them and let him pass even if he had to run over someone he had to get in at that moment as he had noticed that bullets were already flying at him already shatter his back window causing broken glass to fly and whizzing next to his head.
Luckily his effort wasn’t unrewarded the people who had heard the horning sound of the car and saw it coming at high speed warned the others and immediately gave way for the car as they didn’t want to be run over, after moving out of the way Ivankov directly charged into the light the gate was exuding and disappeared into depth not even leaving a single trace.
The cars that were originally pursuing Ivankov soon came to the gate as well but in the end they had no other choice but to end their pursuit without being able to catch Ivankov or kill him, nobody dared to enter the gate knowing the things that were told about the gates everyone already assumed that it was a death trap, at this point they had immediately assumed that Ivankov had died and returned to report back to the earth bending awakened who was incredibly relieved upon hearing the news also assuming that he was already dead since no one had ever come back out of the gate ever since they first appeared which was already a couple of months now.
But if this really was the truth, and if Ivankov had really died, this story wouldn’t be told in the first place don’t you think ?
A Place Of Legends 