Chapter 13 The Awakening

The clanking noise grew louder and louder, causing Suzuka to slowly wake up. She opened one eye but was blinded by the sunlight shining down on her face from the left side of the forest. It was just past morning.

She heard more clanks and someone speaking in a foreign language. She opened both her eyes and peered above the tall grass, looking for the source of the noise. She spotted several Goblins surrounding a broken four-wheeler. Still groggy from just waking up, she lay back down and covered her eyes with one arm before falling asleep again. The loud noise of breaking metal startled her awake. She opened her eyes and saw that the sun was high in the sky, shining directly on her face. She raised her head again to see what was happening and observed seven Goblins dismantling a broken four-wheeler.

She tried to sleep, but her head was still weak from waking up and she couldn't fully understand the situation. Before she could fall asleep, the goblins began making a lot of noise by screaming and shouting. She looked up and saw that they were being attacked by a huge, fierce, and muscular wolf.

There were two of them and Goblins got eaten one by one, they couldn't even put up a fight. After having their feast, wolfs walked toward the forest leaving her line of sight.

Suzuka recognized them from reading Monsterpedia Jacob gave her, they were Bloody Wolfs. After getting sight of such a horrifying beast, Suzuka's sleepiness goes away and she starts to come to her senses of what's happening. After having a better look around her eyesight gets stuck on a werewolf that was impaled on iron spikes, when she was done looking at him Suzuka looked at her clothes, all ripped and covered in already dry and hardened blood.

"W-what?! Why are my clothes all in tatters? And bloody?!"

She wiped her face with her hands and noticed that her skin had changed from an almost white tan to a sun-kissed color. Her muscles were more defined as if she had very little body fat, and her hair had changed from dark brown to jet black, with the tips having a dark purple tint.

"What? Why I am so sunburned? How long was I passed out in the sun? Huh? I don't understand... my hands... huh?... My legs... all my body is muscle! Muscles are showing! What happened? Did I sleep for a week and starved to death?! Don't mind that! Why is my hair black?! How long was I out?"

As she spoke to herself, she tasted blood in her mouth. Upon opening her mouth to speak again, she noticed her gums were bleeding. Spitting the blood on the ground, she attempted to stand and checked her surroundings for any lurking monsters. Her hand, leg, and shoulder began to ache slightly and her body felt stiff, but after doing some light stretching, she felt better. After stretching, she took a few steps and noticed her body felt light.

"Okay! At least I'm not tired... ignoring the pain in my arm, shoulder, leg, and blood coming from my gums... I feel great, my body is so light. It feels like I could jump into the sky."

As she walked, she noticed that she had grown taller by a few inches.

"Seriously! What happened to me? How did I get here? Why I'm in the middle of nowhere? Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!... Why do I feel taller?! I am taller!"

She approached the beast to get a closer look, but it appeared to have been deceased for some time. Its wounds were infested with worms, and swarms of flies covered its body.

"Oh my god! What is this beast?! Good thing it's dead... and it was for some time... by the looks of it."

After examining the beast, she turned to the side where many crumbled rock blocks and columns were lying on the ground and noticed a body lying there.

"Oh! What's that? Wait... that's... a... a... body?"

Slowly walked to it and almost recognized that it was Alex's body, he was in bad shape.

"Alex... I think his name was Alex, an adventurer. What happened to him? Did he fight that best impaled on spikes?"

The body was lying in a pool of rotten blood filled with worms and flies, already turned blue with white dead fish-like eyes. He looked like he was dead for a week or more and he was holding a crystal in his arm.

"It looks like he died from a cut on his neck, bleeding to death. Hmm? What's that in his hand he's holding?"

Suzuka retrieved the crystal from Alex's cold and lifeless hand and cleaned it to determine its type. She recognized it as a rare crystal, having learned about different types of crystals in school. This particular crystal had the ability to heal any wound, but could only be used once before breaking. Healing magic box mages made a fortune by selling them; one crystal cost ten gold coins, on a good day.

"Oh! What! He had something so expensive on him... this mission... sure was important to them... can't remember what we were doing here. Ahh, my memories are clouded, like looking through fog."

Suzuka scanned the area around Alex and noticed a sword stuck in the ground next to a puddle of rotting blood. She also saw a piece of bone with flesh and broken ribs lying on the ground close to the sword. This was where Jacob's body was supposed to be.

"Oh! A sword! Could come in handy! Huh? Jacob? Why do I remember that name when I look at this sword, right next to this piece of bone laying in rotten blood?"

She was about to take a sword when her belly started to make a noise. "Ah!... I'm hungry!... forget the sword... is their food around! Maybe there's still food in a four-wheeler. I just hope I won't run into these Bloody Wolfs... or Goblins."

She looked around for monsters and decided to go check on a four-wheeler. Along the way close to where the four-wheeler was. Suzuka found Derrick's body face down on the ground with a hole in the right side of his rib cage.

"This is just cruel... who killed them all... I'm scared... mom? Dad? Where are you?"

She saw Derrick had a utility belt and a small backpack. 

"Well! No time to be scared Suzu... as my dad would say, "Don't panic, better check for something useful."

She grabbed a utility belt and backpack, and after a few minutes, she reached the location of the crashed MPFW. However, only one was there, almost taken apart by goblins earlier. The other one was already gone, somewhere.

"Oh! I... vaguely remember riding them... there were three... of them? Well... probably Goblins got them by now, took them apart, and are almost done with this one."

She walked up to the broken wheeler and began to search.

"Ah! No! No! The storage box is broken and empty."

It was likely that monsters had taken or eaten Kane's body, as he was a big man. After searching for about five minutes, she found Jacob's bag inside the flipped wheeler, and inside it, she found some apples, bread, dry-smoked meat, and a few bottles of water.

"Yes! Food and water! I'm so thirsty and hungry... a good thing they are still edible. The goblins probably missed it. Or didn't have time because of these Bloody Wolfs."

She took one sip of water and washed the blood taste from her mouth and spit bloody water on the ground.

"Dam it! How long do my gums gonna bleed?"

As she sat cowering on one side of the wheeler, she began to eat. She had two days' worth of food, which she could stretch to last five days, but since Suzuka was hungry from sleeping for an unknown amount of time, she decided to eat a day's worth of food, leaving her with mostly one day's worth of food. Right when she finished eating, the crystal on her necklace cracked and shattered in the dust. She knew what this meant.

"Oh no! No! Not now, please... I need to hurry and find another."

Suzuka opened Derrick's backpack and searched for an anti-corrupted magic stone, commonly known by its code name "ACMS." However, all she found were some documents and two maps with red locations marked on them. Suzuka began to panic slightly.

"Oh, come on! There should be spare ones if we go on a mission like this! Where are they?"

Despite turning her backpack inside out, she couldn't find any utility crystals. She completely forgot that she had Derrick's utility belt where he stored all his utility crystals, which she was unaware of. She quickly stood up and ran to the closest body, which was Derrick. She lay him on his back and searched him, finding the ACMS utility crystals right away.

"Oh! Melwyn bless you! It looks like it's still good to use for some time."

She replaced the old, shattered crystal on her necklace with a new one. After a sigh of relief, she looked at Derrick's face for a few seconds and remembered.

"He... his name... Derrick... from MIS? Was it? Something about beast..."

As she tried to remember more, she returned to the four-wheeler and collected all the documents she had taken out of her backpack. After putting them back in the backpack, she decided to construct a small shelter for the night, as it was getting dark in a few hours. After searching for a few minutes, the best option she found was to construct a small shelter using crumbled rock blocks and broken columns. There were still no monsters in sight or any noise indicating their presence. Twenty minutes had passed since she ate, and Suzuka noticed that her arm, leg, and shoulder no longer hurt, but her gums were bleeding a little, making her want to bite something.

"Ahh... I don't feel pain anymore... well at least some good news since I woke up. Would be feeling good if not pain in my gums and teeth... ahh! I want to bite something, this stinging pain is annoying."

She went from the four-wheeler to the pile of rocks and looked at them thinking about what she could make from them.

"What could I use here?... ahh! Anything I could use is so big, no way I can lift them. It would be nice to make a small room."

Disappointed she picked a small block from the ground and placed it on even ground so she could sit down on it.

"Wait for a second! Why does this block feel so light? Is it hollow or something? it's light like a feather."

She inspects the block closely, but it appears to be solid. She then tries lifting a block twice the size, but there is not much difference in the effort required. Believing it to be a light-mass rock, she attempts to lift the other broken side of a lid that Jacob had made to trap the werewolf under the ground. 

The plate is one meter thick, approximately six meters wide, and three meters long, weighing approximately 14 tons. However, she was unaware of this and thought it to be a light pumice stone. She squats down, bending her knees and placing her fingers on the edge of the stone beneath it, and tries to lift it without much effort. However, the stone does not move.

"Oh! Ho! Ho! Well, I guess it's too heavy for me. This thing not even moving, maybe I should try putting some back into it."

After stretching, she tried again. She squatted, grabbed the edge, and this time, she tried to lift with all her strength. Her legs sunk an inch into the ground, and her teeth began to bleed again from the tight bite as she strained to lift. Her eyes focused on the task at hand. Her heart began to race as she bent down, her fingers wrapping tightly around the edges of the object. 

She took a deep breath and pulled with all her might. Her muscles bulged as she struggled to lift. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she gritted her teeth. The weight seemed to be too much for her, but she refused to give up. She pulled again, this time with a renewed sense of strength. 

Her arms trembled as she lifted the object higher and higher. Finally, with a triumphant cry, she succeeded in lifting one side of the heavy object, her muscles bulging with the effort. She let out a deep breath and looked at her accomplishment.

Finally, the stone budged from the ground. Suzuka lifted a stone to her knee height when suddenly, from behind, a bloody wolf jumped towards her from the top of the pile. The big, bold, and buff wolf didn't land on Suzuka only because a rock slipped out of his feet when he jumped, sending himself sideways and falling on the rock plate Suzuka was lifting, knocking it out of her hands and almost crushing her feet, scaring her senseless. Since her feet were sunk in dirt from lifting such a heavy weight, she avoided getting her feet flattened when the rock plate fell to the ground.

"Kyaa! What... this is... I better run!"

She quickly pulled her feet out of the dirt and ran in the opposite direction of the beast. The bloody wolf stumbled on the edge of a rock plate, injuring his side and falling off the plate, landing on some sharp rocks, cutting and bruising himself. Taking advantage of the wolf's pain, Suzuka quickly hid behind a column after running some distance. Peeking out from behind the column, she saw the beast slowly limping toward the forest.

Suzuka was frightened, her breathing became heavy and her heart was beating rapidly as if it would pop out of her chest. After the sudden scare, adrenaline rushed through her veins. Her senses heightened, but after seeing the beast leaving, she calmed down.

"No... no... I can't stay here... these monsters keep on showing up, I need to go... I need to get out of here, but where? Which way do I go?"