Pride Online

Chapter 156: The New Test Part I

The time passed by fast like turning a page in a book.

The sky that used to be bright started to get duller as it entered the nighttime. The moonlight was shining upon the cloudless sky with the stars sparkling on the black inked canvas. The cold breeze was blowing against their skin. But the atmosphere around them was cozy and perfect for sleeping in.

The black hair was waving to the wind. His well-shaped lips pressed against each other tightly when he felt the sores on his body. His consciousness started to get back to him slowly. And finally, the golden-brown eyes fluttered up to the dim light that was shining into them. He let out a groan.

“Um...”

“Seems like our hero is waking up now.” A voice came to his ear. It was a deep voice of a man that did not sound familiar to him that much.

“Na, are you awake? How’re you feeling?” Unlike the second one, he knew it so well. The man could hear the worries in the tone clearly. Wisana tried to open his eyes, blinking as he gathered his consciousness and tried to focus on the surroundings.

The sky was dark now?

Since when? Did he get a blackout again?

“Nam?” He asked, while he was sitting up, even though every muscle of his was too sore to make it easy to do so.

“Yes, it’s me.” Wisana felt a soft touch on his arm. “Are you trying to break a new Guinness Book of World Records for fainting, or what? You made me worried to death.”

When the man looked up, he saw the cute face of his sister who was helping him to sit up. Then his eyes moved to another one, he saw Shindanai looking at him from afar as well.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I often fainted when I practiced Taekwondo with my mom, too.” He said, then gave her an odd smile.

“And now you’re still joking about this. Unbelievable.” Waree scolded.

“Where are we?” Wisana asked drowsily. Even though he had looked all around him, he still did not find the place familiar to him at all.

“In front of the castle dungeon of Ouroboros. We’re waiting for you to wake up, so we haven’t gone inside yet.” A clear explanation came from the tall man who was standing nearby.

There was a castle towering there like he was told. Even though it looked grand and majestic, the building’s condition was old and shabby, not looking any different from an abandoned house. The spot where they set up the camp was not quite far from the castle. The party members looked like they had been resting here for a while since they already had the campfire and blankets out.

“How did I get a blackout?”

“You don’t remember anything, Vincent?” Shindanai asked as he sat down on a large rock around there before he got a head shake as the answer.

“That’s why I’m so confused right now. Back then I was... fighting Lord Orc!” After having a flashback, Wisana shouted. His smooth face started looking around like he was trying to find something.

“What’s wrong?” Waree asked, raising her eyebrows. And her voice did not sound less worried.

“Where’s Angie? Is she okay?” Hearing his question, the young woman slipped out a laugh, before shaking her head wearily.

“Calm down. And about that sassy kid, she’s sleeping right there.” She said, then pointed to his waist. And when the questioner’s eyes followed her finger, he jumped in shock.

“Hey! Angie, you also like ducking in my blanket, too?”

The small figure of the mage was curling up to be as small as possible because she was sharing the blanket with him. But the kid looked cute in her sleep and that made the one who got squeezed into shake his head resignedly.

“She wouldn’t stop nagging me when she got the chance, but then decided to get along with me because she was sleepy?” Wisana nagged back, before giving his sister a wry smile. “I doubt that she’s only nice to me when she sleeps, huh.”

“Maybe so,” Waree added with a giggle.

His large hand was stroking the silver hair softly as he thought that he had been saved many times by this little girl today, or else he would have been saying hello to the afterlife world by now. He really needed to thank her a bit when she woke up.

“So, how did I faint again?” He asked the young woman in front of him. She turned to catch eyes with Shindanai for a second, before letting out a long sigh.

“Don’t tell me that you can’t remember anything, just like when we fought that Lycan?” Wisana shook his head with a serious expression.

“Yes, I remember all of the fights.” He spoke. “Every touch, every movement, I did it. Many stories were flooding in my head, so fast that my body reacted before I even thought about it.”

His strange explanation made the two listeners knit their eyebrows even harder.

In this fight, Wisana did not feel like his consciousness blacked out like when he fought the Lycan. He could remember clearly that he was the one who killed Lord Orc with his own hands, with abilities that he had never known about before, even. He remembered back then; his head was so clear. The only thought he had was to eliminate the monster, and then his body just started moving on its own. Then he thought about how he should kill it, and a lot of knowledge flew out of his brain, even though he was so sure that he had never learned about these kinds of things anywhere before.

And there was that woman’s voice, ...the woman named Alice.

“Then can you tell us why you suddenly have such an urge to kill Lord Orแ?” Shindanai’s question brought the young man to present again.

“I don’t know either.” Hearing this kind of answer, even the emotionless one gasped.

“What?”

“I just thought about how I should do it, and my brain just processed all the possibilities out by itself. Then I just moved as the thoughts say.”

“Brain processing by itself?” The young hunter repeated out of confusion. His eyebrows looked like they were about to tie in knots as he thought. Was this man trying to say that everything he had done in the fight today was pure instinct? The human brain was not some kind of computer to be processing things that fast and accurately.

The more he thought about it, the more he got confused. So, finally, Shindanai could only scratch his head, before letting out a tired sigh in giving up. But the young woman next to Wisana was not like that. She was staring at the man with her emerald, green eyes steadily. They looked right into those amber eyes like they were trying to read his mind.

“What’s up, Nam?” Wisana asked, making her flinch and sputter as she denied.

“Nothing.”

“Anyway, can you tell me about how I passed out now? Honestly, the last thing I can remember was when I slashed Lord Orc in half with the scythe. And that’s all.” Waree still did not answer him directly. She just gave him an amused smile, while she was pointing her chin at the third person here, just like that.

“About that, you should ask the one who saved you.”

“Saved me?” The older one raised his eyebrows. He glanced over to the other party mate in the back, but he just shook his head cluelessly, making Wisana confused even more. Finally, Waree gave him the answer by pointing her hand in another direction.

And what he saw almost got his eyes bulging out of the sockets with shock!

“Hi, my dear disciple. I heard you were around Dores, so I guess that you might be hunting the monster around here. And I was right. There were many fun things for me to watch. So gladsome.”

“Mister Sander!”