The valley had gone quiet again.
After Roman successfully destroyed the Shredding Ground, he decided to rest by a tree and think about whether to keep hunting or just head back to the outpost for his own good.
His eyes were still scanning the surrounding darkness, the Blade Queen's Mandible Shard sitting in his possession stat and his nerves still not fully settled from the silhouette that had vanished without answering him.
He waited and watched, hoping he could catch another sign and make sure to run without looking back this time.
But nothing.
Nothing was in sight for a considerable while, and after repeated observations of the area where he had spotted the silhouette, he had finally convinced himself that it was gone.
'Must be afraid of me, hehe.'
But then, just when he clicked his tongue and attempted to leave, a voice came from directly behind him.
Almost familiar. Like he had heard a tone like that somewhere before.
"You know you almost got yourself killed just now."
Roman stopped, frozen.
He turned slowly, and there she was. A red haired girl dressed in a fitted combat robe.
He recognised her immediately. It was the girl from the restaurant, standing a few metres away with her arms folded and an expression on her face that said she had zero interest in being friendly about any of this.
Roman looked at her for a moment.
"Were you watching me?"
"Unfortunately," she said flatly.
Roman stared at her a second longer, then turned back around and continued walking.
"Cool."
She fell into step beside him, not because she wanted to walk with him, it seemed, but because she happened to be heading in the same direction and neither of them was willing to be the one to adjust.
"You are the last guy," she said. It wasn't a question.
"And you are the girl that told that guy to get lost at the restaurant," Roman replied. "Glad we know each other."
"I don't know you."
"Good. I don't know you either."
A short silence stretched between them, filled only by the sound of their footsteps on the valley floor as they moved.
"You were advised not to hunt at night," she said.
"So were you."
"I do what I want."
"Funny," Roman said with a short chuckle, glancing sideways at her briefly. "So do I."
She made a small sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, except with none of the warmth a laugh usually carries.
"You are a Mage," she then said.
"You were definitely watching me."
"I was passing through. You were hard to miss, throwing fireballs at an ant tower like it owed you money."
Roman only nodded and said nothing to that. But he would be lying if he said he wasn't embarrassed to find out that someone had been watching him the whole time.
"Fourth Class," she added after a pause, and the way she said it was not cruel exactly, but it was not gentle either. Just a fact she was laying on the table.
Roman's jaw tightened slightly, and he was already getting irritated. It seemed like she was simply here to let him know that she had all his information and wasn't afraid to use it.
"That bother you?" Roman asked with a glare.
"No," she said. "Just noting that you have no business being out here at night. Or at all, honestly."
"And yet here I am," Roman said. "Alive. With a Queen kill and a level up. So...?"
She glanced at him and shook her head slightly, but said nothing. Well, she wouldn't want to respond to that, because he was clearly proud of his result and it would be hard to knock someone off that kind of confidence.
They kept walking, and it turned out that neither of them was heading anywhere near the outpost. They were going deeper into the valley, and surprisingly, not a trace of nervousness showed on either face.
"You should go back," she said after watching him for a while.
"You should mind your business," Roman replied.
"I'm trying to," she said. "You keep existing near me."
"Walk faster then."
"Maybe you walk slower," she fired back.
Roman stopped walking.
She stopped a step after him and turned, and they looked at each other in the dark with the kind of mutual irritation that two people share when they have decided, independently and simultaneously, that the other one is a problem.
"What's your name," Roman just had to ask.
"Why?"
"So I know what to call you when I'm telling this story later."
She held his gaze for a moment and rolled her eyes like she couldn't care less.
"Rena," she said.
Roman nodded once, like the information was barely useful to him.
"Roman."
"I didn't ask," Rena said.
"I know."
Another silence settled between them, and they both exchanged a brief odd glance before Roman decided to break it.
"The Rot Flats are that way," Roman said, gesturing loosely to the left. "If that's where you are headed."
"I know where the Rot Flats are."
"Just trying to be helpful," he muttered.
"Don't," she said simply, eyeing him.
Roman raised both hands briefly in a gesture of surrender, then dropped them and turned right, heading down a different path without looking back.
"Watch your sorry self out here," Rena called after him, and there was something in her voice that was almost genuine beneath all the frost.
Roman didn't stop walking, and he refused to take those words to heart.
"You are dying before me," he called back. "Statistically."
"Thirty-six percent," she said flatly. "You are not in a position to talk about statistics."
Roman had absolutely no response to that, because yes, she clearly knew everything about him, and it was getting embarrassing to keep trading words with someone like that.
He just kept walking, hoping he wouldn't have to see her again. Because people like her would be a serious pain.
...
Roman was not happy with himself for not noticing her when she had come up from behind him. He knew it would have ended in complete disaster if it had been a hostile figure, because Entrants could kill Entrants.
However, a moral regulation had been placed by the World Government stating that an Entrant could not kill another Entrant without vital justification.
It was either through self-defence, or as an authorised punishment for a deadly crime.
Killing a fellow Entrant was said to deliver great benefits comparable to a Boss or high-rank monster kill, and a lot of Entrants had been consumed by greed, willing to do anything just to rise.
And now, it would be difficult to say that the Badlands was still fully abiding by that regulation.
Roman knew he needed to increase his Perception to have a better chance of surviving an encounter like that next time.
Checking his BSP, he noticed that the Blade Ant Queen's death had rewarded him with five Attribute Points, so he thought it through carefully and decided to spend almost all of them on Perception.
"Four on Perception. One on Agility."
[PER: 6.0.]
[AGI: 5.0.]
He wouldn't say he was satisfied, but he was better than before. Noticeably better.
He decided he would work on the rest once he had more Attribute Points, and ideally before he returned to the outpost.
He believed that if he could manage that, then coming out here in the dark was clearly not a waste of time.
And so he continued walking, covering what felt like a three hundred metre stretch, until he reached a point that made him stop dead.
What stood before him was a massive castle built from grey stone and pale bone, rising out of the dark valley floor like something the earth had pushed up and refused to take back.
Its walls were thick and uneven, constructed from slabs of rough stone mortared together with what appeared to be packed bone and dried mud, giving the surface a jagged, patchwork texture that caught the moonlight in broken fragments.
Several towers rose from the walls, their tops crudely fortified with more bone and scavenged debris. Skulls of various sizes had been mounted along the battlements, arranged in deliberate rows like decorations, or warnings. At the base of each tower, crude torches burned a faint sickly blue, casting shifting shadows over the figures moving on top.
The figures observing and safeguarding was lies inside those walls.
It was a proper definition of a Monster Territory, and Roman was standing there alone, far from ready to approach it.
[Location: Stone and Bone Castle.]
[Inhabitants: Blue Goblins.]
[Chances of Survival: 36%.]
Roman shook his head at the notification, already thinking about turning back. He had no idea what was lurking inside that castle, and his survival chances were not doing anything to encourage him.
He figured it would be better to visit another territory or just head back to the outpost.
But then, just as he started to move...
"Hey, Mage! I am surprised you are still alive!"
A familiar voice cut through the silence from the near distance, and when Roman turned, it was the same red haired girl who had already torn through his patience once tonight.
Rena.
Roman stared for a second and looked away, not wanting to engage, but she didn't seem to care either way.
"I'm not begging you to come with me. I can easily do it on my own," she said, and that pulled Roman's attention back immediately.
"There are over two hundred goblins in that castle. I think it would be far better to go back with a Stone and Bone Castle clear than just the Shredding Ground."
She said it with a sharp sideways glance, and then pushed forward, heading straight toward the castle without waiting for a response.
Roman thought about it, and figured that with two of them, the risk would drop considerably and the chance of surviving was much higher.
Even though she was well and truly a troublemaker, he would just have to endure it. At least for this one last time.
"Crap..."
With a long sigh, Roman quickly followed.