Chapter 39: After This Is All Over, I Never Want to Go Camping, Again
Near the edge of the gold and orange forest, Mina sniffed the air, her face scrunching in disgust. Pine, damp earth, animal fur, and the faint stench of feces tangled together in her senses. Too many scents to separate, but she was sure this was where Elias had been taken.
Not long after the statewide Amber Alert went out, her phone buzzed with a text from Elias's sister, Eve—stuffed with details, including that the culprit's vehicle hadn't been spotted entering any nearby cities. So the nearby national forest seemed the most obvious location.
Mina stepped off the roadside, boots crunching over twigs and dead leaves. She'd barely spoken to Eve before. The girl almost never reached out to anyone outside her family and maintained a distant attitude even towards Elias's friends. Mina wasn't one to press a warm face to a cold cheek, not even for the sister of her best friend. She hadn't even had her number until now. So why the sudden contact? Could the message have been hacked? Or… did Eve somehow know she was an Awakener?
She ducked under a branch, thinking of Principal Kim and Aegis's recent efforts to recruit Elias's twin. Maybe the principal had told her.
'Damn, nosy woman,' Mina thought, picturing the beautiful woman with golden lenses.
Her phone rang, shattering the forest's silence. No registered number. A scam? But before she could decline, the call connected on its own and switched to speaker.
The voice of the very woman she'd been thinking about filled the air.
"Miss Takayama," Miss Kim's cold voice boomed, "I think you've been doing things outside of protocol. Need I remind you? You're currently only an independent Awakener, not a member of the Takayama family."
"Heh. Are you telling me to stop searching for my friend because of some minor rules set by Aegis?" Mina sneered, slicing a branch in half with a burst of energy. "Don't worry. It's not like I've left any clues for the regular police to know I've been running my own investigation."
"If you wanted to join the official investigation, you should have gone through the proper procedures. If something happens because of you later, Aegis might have to take the brunt of the legal action," Miss Kim replied, her tone steady.
"Please. You can't even control the person you're trying to recruit. Pretty sure she's broken more rules than I have," Mina scoffed, hand on her hip, ridicule flashing in her eyes.
"I'll discipline her later," Miss Kim said after a pause. "Look, I'll handle the paperwork for you. But don't do anything drastic that could cause legal issues later, okay?"
Mina snorted and ended the call. She popped open the back of her phone, removed the battery, and slipped both pieces into her pocket.
"Let's see you try forcing a call through my phone again, damn old lady," she muttered with a satisfied smirk.
She pushed deeper into the trees, the forest closing in around her.
Aegis and the prestigious Awakener families had always kept a fragile balance—families enjoying higher status than ordinary humans, yet bound by Aegis laws: no harming civilians, no revealing Awakeners to the public. Both sides bent lesser laws when it suited them, but avoided crossing those lines.
Their philosophies, however, couldn't have been more different. Aegis dreamed of peace, believing Awakener powers should serve all of humanity. Families looked inward, protecting their bloodlines above all else. Aegis welcomed lone Awakeners; families often dismissed them as untrained and lacking the strength heritage provided. Outsiders could still find work, but only if they met exacting standards—and while the pay was high, so was the expendability.
Mina had seen it firsthand: a dead subordinate replaced overnight by her family, their grieving kin handed a token payout. Sure, Aegis might treat outsiders better on the surface, but she doubted their motives were any purer than those of the major families.
She pursed her lips and blasted the spiderweb aside. She'd walk her own path, even if she had to carve it herself. She'd never be a pawn to either side.
Leaving the Takayama family didn't mean stepping into the arms of another beast.
The families and Aegis weren't enemies, but they walked parallel paths, circling each other with caution—two predators in uneasy coexistence, each waiting for the other to slip. She had no intention of being at the mercy of either if blood was shed or things fell apart.
She stepped over a mossy log, eyes scanning for human-made trails. Even with her thoughts elsewhere, her senses drank in every detail: the rustle of leaves, the faint scurry of animals in the undergrowth.
And then her thoughts returned to that woman.
Miss Kim was the perfect example of why Mina remained skeptical. To some, the principal might appear kind, but Mina saw someone who ignored anything outside her own interests and stayed passive when there was nothing to gain. Even now, she was only helping because of Eve. If Elias had been just another regular student, she wouldn't have lifted a finger.
Mina snorted, brushing a stray branch aside. Awakener families weren't utopias. Plenty of their members were selfish, dangerous, or worse. But at least they didn't pretend to be otherwise. Aegis? They didn't actually care about the average person, just their potential to produce other awakeners. They hid behind the mask of the world's savior…a guise that was easy to keep when you wrote the laws of the world.
She'd be damned if she let an organization like that decide whether she could save her friend.
Mina paused. A sharp, metallic tang filled her nose—blood, and not just any kind. A bear's.
In this forest, bears sat at the top of the food chain. What could cause such a strong beast to spill so much blood? The most likely answer was the only creature that ranked higher than a bear: humans. Her head snapped toward the source, drawing in a deep breath. Faint but distinct, the scent carried over the forest, about twenty miles away.
"Elias better not be hurt," she growled as she dashed towards the source of the blood.
'Elias, your bestie is on her way! Be safe until then!'
—---
Several miles away in the same forest, Elias sneezed. Snot dripped down his nose as he shivered from the breeze. He observed the sunset with a grim expression, wiping mucous away with the back of his sleeve. The forest got a lot colder at night than in the city. He only had a thin jacket, and thanks to his fight with Chameleon, some parts were sliced through, allowing the frigid autumn air to breach inside.
"It's freaking cold," Elias complained, his teeth chattering, as he rubbed his hands along his arms for warmth. "Should have stolen his sleeping bag." He grumbled, but it was useless griping now.
Although he still hadn't found anything that even resembled a phone or another human being—and he really didn't want to stop—he knew he needed to start a fire. Otherwise, he might die as a popsicle before Chameleon ever got the chance to kill him.
Elias scanned the ground for dry wood and leaves—autumn had scattered plenty, so even without an axe, he wasn't worried about starting a fire. Once he had a decent pile, a metal case engraved with an 8 appeared in his hand. He flipped it open, grabbed the flint and steel, and struck. Bright sparks flew.
He'd practiced this countless times in his capsule space. Apparently, the system didn't count it as a skill, since it never appeared on his panel; maybe it was just too simple to be considered one. The fire grew quickly as he fed it larger chunks of wood and blew on the flames until they rose to about half his height. Heat surged into his numb hands, thawing them, and the stiffness in his fingers eased as he warmed them by the fire.
He found a dry log, set it near the fire, and sat on it with a sigh. Glancing down at the holes in his jacket, he wondered if he should try to mend them. He had a sewing kit in his survival toolkit, but he didn't know the first thing about sewing—another oversight from his time in the capsule space. His clothes never got damaged while inside, so there was never a need to learn sewing or stitching.
His panel popped up in front of him.
[LP: 301]
Should he use his LP? But what if the rewards didn't match his current needs? Wouldn't that just be a waste of points?
"It'd be nice if the system just had a store, instead, so I didn't have to rely on luck for everything," he muttered, eyes shifting between the different lucky draws.
A different screen appeared.
[System store is currently unavailable.]
Elias cursed and flipped the screen off with his middle finger. "Screw you, system! Give me some actual useful information!"
After a minute, Elias finally calmed himself.
"So, another feature that's 'unavailable,'" he muttered, remembering the minimap getting the same response earlier.
If that was the case, the functions he could use now were likely only a fraction of what the system could do. The trouble was, he had no idea how to unlock the rest, and the system never gave straight answers.
Maybe it required certain conditions—like saving LP or reaching iron-tier awakening—but without knowing how to become an awakener, guessing was pointless. He also disliked the idea of saving LP, unsure if it would just waste time. He wasn't about to delay claiming rewards from the system if he didn't have to.
Elias shook his head. It was pointless to dwell on it now; he was still in danger and couldn't relax.In an instant, his body tensed. His sensitive ears caught light footsteps crunching through the leaves a few yards behind him. The atom knife appeared in his hand before he even turned toward the sound. His breath hitched as his gaze met a pair of black eyes.
He exhaled sharply. "You nearly gave me a heart attack." It was only a deer, its innocent eyes watching him with mild curiosity before it darted back into the foliage.
Elias chuckled at his own paranoia—then, in the next instant, he dove aside as a loud bang split the air. The log he'd been about to sit on splintered, wood shards exploding outward. He froze, trembling as he processed what had happened. A gun? A shiver ran up his spine. If he hadn't had the title Ghost in the Crosshairs or the trait Danger Reflex, that log would've been him.
An eerie chuckle drifted from the darkness of the trees, followed by footsteps—ones he knew he could hear only because their owner allowed him to.
"That's quite surprising," a familiar voice said. Chameleon stepped out of the forest shadows, his signature cheery smile in place and a gun raised toward the sky. But unlike before, his eyes were like pure venom. "I actually missed? You're faster than I gave you credit for, kid."
"You… please, Chameleon. I don't want trouble. I just want to go home," Elias pleaded, keeping his eyes on the gun as he backed away. Whatever faint fondness Chameleon might have once had for him was gone.
Chameleon sneered, his beautiful face twisted into something almost demonic in the campfire light. "Heh, you were never going to be able to go home. And you don't want trouble? Isn't it a bit late for that? You should've behaved while I was being nice."
In one swift motion, he aimed at Elias's leg and fired. Elias blurred to the side, the bullet grazing his pants.
Chameleon was aiming to cripple him, so Elias couldn't afford to overthink things.
'System, put all my unallocated points into Agility!' his mind screamed. His unallocated points dropped to zero.
[AGI: 23 → 33]
His body felt lighter. Chameleon cocked the gun and fired again, this time aiming for his arm. Elias moved without thinking, dodging the shot with ease. Ten more Agility really did make a difference.
Chameleon's brow arched. 'Did he get faster?' He frowned. Missing wasn't an option—he couldn't afford it. Switching tactics, he leveled the gun at Elias's chest.
Elias's eyes widened. He dove aside, but the bullet still tore into his left arm. A searing pain shot through his bicep as blood soaked his jacket. He hissed, clutching the wound with his other hand, his fingers quickly dyed red.
'It hurts.' He struggled to breathe, trying to block out the pain—it was the worst he'd ever felt in his entire life.
"Hmm, it was risky, but I had faith you'd at least dodge the fatal blow," Chameleon said, blowing smoke from his gun as if this were nothing more than a game.
Hot tears stung Elias's eyes as he trembled beneath that casual gaze. If he hadn't moved in time, the bullet would have struck his heart. Whatever sympathy or humanization he'd once felt for Chameleon was gone; he was nothing more than a monster in human skin. Anger burned inside himself for ever being naive enough to pity this man.
"Aww, look at you with that glare. I should be the one angry, okay? You heard something you weren't supposed to", Chameleon scoffed with a shrug. "Just consider this the cost of your actions."
He aimed at Elias's leg and blasted. The bullet grazed him, pain ripping through his calf. It wasn't as bad as his arm, but it still made him stumble.
Was this it? Would he be dragged away to die? Dread choked his thoughts—
[The system senses the Host's tumultuous state. Emergency Override: Activating title (UR) The Calm Warrior. Activating title (MYTH) Bringer of Disaster.]
[For the next 5 minutes, Host will be immune to all negative mental status effects.]
[Cooldown: 24 hours]
[Chosen Individual: Chameleon's LUK will decrease by 50% for the next 72 hours.]
[Cooldown: 30 days]
—and in an instant, the fear was gone. His mind went cold, empty.
At that same exact moment, Chameleon jerked with a sharp hiss, clutching his chest. Smoke curled from the luck talisman around his neck before it erupted into flame. "What the hell—?!" He tore it off and flung it away, but it disintegrated into ash before it hit the ground, dispersing into the wind.
He shivered as he watched his life saving charm scatter and disappear. 'What just happened?' His head snapped back to Elias. "You—" Did the kid do this? But how?
Chameleon froze as their eyes met. He knew that look; the same cold, calculating gaze he'd seen in himself and other killers like him. But on this kid, it was wrong, unnatural. That expression didn't just feel out of place on a high schooler; it was the kind of look that belonged only to someone who'd already bathed their hands in blood.
An uneasy feeling flared in his instincts. Something was different, though he couldn't quite grasp what.
Elias didn't care what Chameleon was thinking, at the moment.
'Interesting', he thought, glancing down at his wound. It still hurt, but unlike before, he was no longer flustered over it.
Sensing something was wrong, Chameleon raised his gun and fired.
"Not happening," Elias said, deflecting the bullet with the atom knife.
"You… actually deflected it?" Chameleon blurted, stepping back in shock. His pupils trembled as his body instinctively shifted into a defensive stance.
Elias adjusted his stance, as well. He was no longer the cornered deer, but the panther ready to strike. The emotionless version of himself understood something crucial the normal him hadn't: this was kill or be killed. Staying defensive would only allow Chameleon to wear him down. The man was too determined to stop, so mercy was no longer an option he could afford.
"Let's make the most of these next five minutes, then," Elias said, his blade flashing in the light.