Chapter 65: [Weekly Bonus - 2/2] Minotaur’s Bane (1)
The forest was pitch black at night, making it hard even to see one’s fingers. Wolves howled in the distance. Red had been walking for almost an hour, but the edge of the forest was nowhere in sight.
"Fucking hell. I can’t see a thing here," Red mumbled as he walked through the shadows of the trees looming overhead. "I need to find a Nexarian camp before one of the tribes finds me..."
Having taken his revenge, Red had no other reason to stay in the land of barbarians. He had heard about the vicious punishments the tribals gave to those who ventured into their lands, and Red had no interest in suffering at the hands of vicious morons.
That’s why he was looking for a Nexarian outpost. In his current state, stripped and covered in grime, pretending to be one of the tribes’ runaway slaves was a simple way to seek help from them and find his way back to Nexaria.
"I might have to play it cool and hope nobody spots me, but yeah, I’ll be safe once I locate an outpost," Red murmured as he climbed a tree to figure out his direction. "It’s a shame they don’t share outpost info openly now. But what’s someone like me can do about it?"
In the beginning, when the tribals and Nexarians got along, details about outposts, like where they were and what facilities they had, were shared openly as the sovereign of Nexaria hoped to attract tourists to the region.
However, things went wrong when war erupted between the Nexarians and the tribals. As the tribals captured more and more Nexarians, the citizens spilt the beans about the outposts in exchange for their lives.
The leak was the prominent reason why most of the bases were wiped out within days, and it was decided the locations of the outposts were never revealed to the public.
In other words, if someone accidentally stumbled into the forests, they were on their own to try and find an outpost.
As Red climbed down, he heard the rustle of the leaves and stopped. It felt like someone was watching him. He turned, his eyes scanning the trees around, but saw nothing.
’... I’m being paranoid.’