Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

Four paces away, on that same frozen ground, Gus was having a very different experience.

Encrid had started teaching the boy about cultivation during the same week he began practicing himself. It would have been foolish not to, considering that Gus’s natural talent was so incredible that it had literally broken the system.

Encrid had given Gus the same books and taught him the same basic method.

Sit still, breathe slowly, and listen for the glowing coals inside the body.

”I found them, young master,” Gus said on the second night.

Encrid had opened his eyes slightly, hiding his shock.

”All of them?”

”They’re very loud,” Gus replied apologetically.

He sounded as though he had accidentally overheard a conversation that he was not supposed to hear.

From that point onward, Gus sat opposite Encrid every evening. He would sit cross-legged on the frozen ground without moving, his breath appearing as small clouds of steam in the cold air.

At first, Encrid thought nothing of it.

But after watching the boy for several nights, he began to notice something strange.

The air around Gus seemed different.

It was nothing that Encrid could actually see, but there was something happening around him.

The training ground was one of the coldest places on the inner side of the Wall. It was the middle of a northern winter, so there should not have been any moths flying around.

Yet one moth had been circling Gus for three nights.

It moved around him again and again, as if it had somehow become confused and did not know where else to go.

On this night, the twenty-first night, Encrid was once again sitting in meditation and arguing with the Azure Star in his head when something changed.

Gus’s breathing was different.

Encrid immediately opened his eyes.

The boy was still sitting exactly as he had been before, but his expression had changed.

Before, Gus had looked as though he were listening for something.

Now, he looked as though he had found it and was following it.

His head was slightly lowered, and his entire face showed a deep but peaceful concentration.

He looked like a child carefully trying to convince a frightened bird to land on his hand.

”Gus? What is it?”

”It’s warm,” Gus whispered without opening his eyes.

His voice was quiet, almost as if he was afraid that speaking too loudly might scare something away.

”Young master, there’s a door, and it’s warm behind it...”

A moment later, the frost covering the stones around Gus began to melt.

A gentle cloud of steam rose from the ground.

Encrid slowly stood up.

’Oh,’ he thought.

Then he stared at the boy in disbelief.

’Oh, you have got to be kidding me –’

✧ ✧ ✧

The eleventh far watch party found an anomaly on the seventeenth day of their expedition, about an hour after noon.

It was a roamer.

It came through the trees roughly a hundred paces to their left, and every person in the group immediately dropped flat on the ground without needing to be told.

It was a large one, easily a Level Three beast. It was a bull with a broad chest that reached about chest height, and the rack growing from its head was almost as wide as a cartwheel.

Rackhorns were herd animals, so finding one alone was already strange. They were also nervous creatures that usually reacted to the smallest unfamiliar sound, but this one did not look around even once.

It simply kept walking.

The beast passed within forty paces of them.

It did not smell them, it did not hear them, and when Wick’s boot landed on a dry stick hidden beneath the leaves with a loud crack that could probably have been heard in the next valley, the Rackhorn did not even flick an ear.

It continued walking without changing its pace.

It pushed straight through a patch of thorns, allowing the branches to leave a long line of cuts across its flank, and then came out the other side without showing any reaction.

It continued heading north-east.

Wick already had an arrow placed on his bowstring.

He was a skilled archer, the distance was perfect, and the beast had not looked in their direction even once.

”Don’t,” Corr said.

”It’s forty paces away. It hasn’t seen us, and that’s a Level Three roamer. Its core would-”

”Wick.”

Corr did not raise his voice, and he did not take his eyes off the Rackhorn.

”What direction is it walking?”

Wick hesitated before answering.

”...North-east.”

”Book. Page eleven.”

Wick took the book out with one hand while keeping hold of his bow with the other. He quickly turned to the correct page and began reading.

As he went through the entries, Corr watched the boy’s expression slowly change.

There were seventeen entries spread across six days.

A Reever had been seen alone on the eleventh day.

Two Gorehorns had appeared on the twelfth day, walking together even though Gorehorns normally never travelled with one another.

A Talljack had been spotted on the thirteenth day, moving around in broad daylight even though they normally avoided doing so.

There had also been Sumpers wandering far away from water and a pair of Grinners standing out in the open at noon.

Every single one of them had been alone or had been travelling with creatures they normally would not associate with.

Every one of them had been behaving strangely.

None of them had been hunting, feeding or fighting.

And every single one of them had been moving north-east.

Corr had written the direction beside every entry, just as he wrote down the direction beside everything else he observed.

At first, he had not thought anything of it.

Then, on the fourteenth day, he had gone back through his notes and noticed the pattern.

That was when he had felt cold.

Not because of the weather.

”Seventeen,” Corr said. ”That’s the count.”

He slowly looked toward the Rackhorn.

”A dead beast is just a carcass and core. It tells us nothing.”

Corr pushed himself up from the ground and moved into a crouch.

His eyes remained fixed on the Rackhorn as it continued walking through the trees.

”A live one tells us where it’s going.”

✦ ✦ ✦