Chapter 60: Directions
"What?!" Fox shouted. "You expect us to sit here and wait for something we don’t even know?"
"That is exactly why we have to wait," I replied calmly. "Because we don’t know what will happen in this loop."
Tch.
Hearing me, Fox clicked her tongue. Both she and Tan were clearly irritated. Neither of them liked sitting still inside a Gate, waiting for unknown danger.
Black, however, was different. Without questioning me, he also walked toward a nearby tree and sat down.
Seeing him do that, Fox looked like she wanted to complain more. But after glancing between Black and me, she eventually gave up and sat on a fallen trunk.
Tan followed soon after. But that didn’t mean they were comfortable with waiting. They just didn’t want to speak up in front of Black after what he had done earlier.
Among the silence, a soft breeze passed through, carrying a few red leaves from the trees we had left behind.
It gave me a bit of an idea. We had only walked in one direction, but we never walked left or right.
Phew...
After letting out a slow breath, I picked up a small stone from the ground and tossed it toward the direction where we hadn’t gone with all my strength.
It flew several meters before vanishing behind a tree and, as I had expected, a second later the same exact stone came from behind me as it rolled across the ground.
Fox’s eyes widened and Tan immediately stood up.
"No way. It looped."
I nodded faintly and began.
"The space itself is folded. That means moving forward won’t necessarily take us anywhere."
Black remained silent and his eyes were fixed on the stone. Meanwhile, Fox frowned. "Then, how do we escape?"
"I... don’t know." I leaned my head against the tree and my answer made Tan’s and Fox’s expressions change as their eyes widened.
"But, I know one thing."
All of them looked at me and expected an answer that could satisfy them. So, to continue, I pointed upward.
"The Gate wants something."
Another hot breeze swept through the air and I grabbed a red leaf floating in the air.
"Normally, a Gate wants you to clear it," I continued. "Kill monsters, destroy a Core, or defeat a boss monster."
Tan nodded at my words and added, "Yeah. That is common knowledge."
"But, as we know, this isn’t a normal Gate." I raised the red leaf and let them take a look. "You see, we left these red-leaf trees behind us, but their leaves are coming from ahead of us. It is just like the stone."
Fox narrowed her eyes and stabbed her dagger into the tree trunk. "Why are you telling us the same thing again?"
"Hear him out," Black said and, without stopping, I kept explaining what I knew.
"You don’t get the point. If everything comes back to the same spot, then what will happen if we each go in a different direction?"
"Different directions?" Tan repeated slowly, like he was testing whether the words made sense or not, and Fox’s eyes also shifted slightly. "That is still just splitting up in a loop. We’d all come back anyway."
"That is the assumption," I replied. "But we don’t actually know how the loop behaves when multiple variables change at once. If this is a loop, then it’s not just repeating distance or places. It’s repeating conditions."
Fox looked straight at my masked face and said, "That sounds like you are guessing."
"I am," I admitted without hesitation. Of course it was just a guess, but it was a well-thought-out guess. "But it’s a structured guess."
A brief silence followed afterward.
Black didn’t speak, but I could feel his calm and analyzing gaze on me. I stood up from the ground and brushed the dust off my clothes.
Another red leaf drifted between us, spinning slowly before landing in front of Fox. She stared at it, then exhaled sharply.
"Alright, we get that guess of yours, but I don’t understand why you told us to wait."
Hearing her, I scratched the back of my neck and, by closing my eyes, replied, "That... I just needed some time to think."
Tan and Fox were completely baffled by my response and Black finally stood up. "Interesting," he said calmly.
That single word made Tan stiffen. Fox clicked her tongue again, clearly unhappy, but she didn’t interrupt this time.
"Three directions. North, east, and west or whatever you want to call them. We split up. And keep walking until we reach this exact place. Then wait for the others..."
I paused for a moment.
"...then we’ll see variation. And variation means weakness."
Fox slowly pulled her dagger from the tree trunk. "You are saying the loop might break unevenly?"
"Maybe."
Black smiled faintly, "Alright," he said. "We try it."
In response, Fox looked at him sharply. "You’re agreeing to this that easily?"
Black shrugged. "If it is interesting, it is worth seeing."
That answer didn’t reassure anyone. Still, he started walking first toward one direction without hesitation.
Just like him, we also chose the directions we wanted to go and went our separate ways.
Both Black and I were going toward new directions while Fox and Tan went toward the remaining old ones.
As I walked, a few thoughts kept appearing in my mind.
’Why was this happening?’
’Why couldn’t the low-rank Gates be normal ones instead of being a helping Gate and another one a Transmuted Gate?’
’But, still thanks to this Gate I was able to get three strong traits for Viora.’
Soon, after walking for quite a bit of time, I was able to reach the place where I had started.
After arriving, I noticed I was the only one who had returned yet. None of the others were here.
’I think I should just wait here.’
I thought that, but I didn’t have the luxury to wait when I noticed that the goblin corpses weren’t here.
Except for the black blood and the signs of them being there, nothing remained on the ground.
"What is this?"