Chapter Forty-One

She debated between kidnapping and thievery. As an experiment she lifted the paralyzed woman, finding her fairly easy to lift showing her strength attribute helped a ton. Before the system, she’d probably struggle to drag her if she could even pull that off. She was all leg strength from running no upper body.

Still, despite the ease of lifting her, the awkwardness of carrying a body presented a challenge. There was no way she could escape, at least not fast while carrying her.

Mind made up, Elysia reached for the watch to try to take that instead, but upon flipping the woman’s wrist, she found a solid band with no buckle. Confused, she tried pulling off, assuming it was an elastic band, but as soon as she touched the watch face, the watch sparked to life than exploded upward in a blinding bright flare.

Elysia’s eyes widened as she shot off into the jungle, telling Ione to pick her up. They needed to escape, quick. If the watch wasn’t bad enough, that flare probably alerted everyone within a dozen kilometers, including any surviving monsters. At that thought, a pang of guilt shot through her realizing she left the team defenseless, but even if she didn’t set off the trap, the other teams would have arrived before they recovered. She just had to hope they reached them before something else did.

As soon as Ione appeared, Elysia hopped on, finding her feet a few centimeters further from the ground, but she put her bond’s continued growth out of her mind in favor of holding on as Ione climbed the nearest tree.

Her tense muscles released when they were a couple kilometers away from the flare, which still burned just above the forest canopy. The only saving grace with that flare was the dense jungle. Now that she was higher up, she doubted anyone could see it from far away.

Still like the watches, it probably did something else, like maybe it displayed the exact location on everyone else’s watches. Best to play on the cautious side until she knew more.

The problem was, how did she learn more? Simply incapacitating a team didn’t work. Unless she found a particularly isolated group but with how many Changed she noticed combing the jungle, she doubted that would happen. She also couldn’t steal the watch, at least not the way she tried to do it.

To make it worse, she couldn’t even continue to dodge the teams because they reached her to quick. What was the point of being on a dungeon island when she couldn’t run any dungeons? If she didn’t find a way to deal with the watches, she was better off leaving.

Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? What was the point of wanting her? They seem to want her to join them, but why would they want a hostile member? Unless they had a way to enforce her compliance. No matter what, she wasn’t going to put herself in that situation. She should be able to escape as long as she didn’t put herself at risk, like trying to clear a dungeon.

Dammit, it’s becoming more and more likely she would abandon Mezo. Really only option she had left was to ambush another isolated team but this time try to talk to them instead of going lightning first but if word of her previous ambushes spread, that was doomed to fail. It was risky but with no other option other than leaving left to her she had to at least try it. Between her and Ione, she should be able to handle a regular Changed team even if they didn’t sneak attack. At least, she hoped.

With a new plan of action set, they circled the flare, increasing the radius of their search with each rotation. Like last time most Changed lumped together in large groups, leaving very few low hanging fruits to pluck. Still, she didn’t give up hope.

Another worrying development she noticed was the utter lack of Chrotile since the arrival of the Changed. There was no way they were all in dungeons, yet she had yet to see a single team. At least she hadn’t found any dead bodies either, aside from piles of monsters. At this point, she doubted there were many creatures left outside of dungeons. She wished she had means of contacting her old team to find out what was going on. That thought drew her gaze down to her wrist, only to frown when she found no wristband.

Her mind flashed back to the bird dungeon, vaguely remembering her blowing up her right arm. Did she lose her wristband when she did that? Crap, maybe everyone else received an evacuation order or something, but she missed out. Was she trapped here with the Changed? Why didn’t her former team tell her she lost her wristband? Maybe that was part of the reason they were so willing to part ways. If she lost her wristband, she probably wasn’t counted as part of the team anymore.

Elysia shook her head despite a shiver running up her spine. From the little she knew about them, she knew they wouldn’t hide something like that from her. They probably didn’t notice just like her, though maybe the extraction team did, and that was why he treated her so rudely.

No use dwelling on it. She needed to focus on her current issues. If she found a way to get the Changed of her back, she would search for the Chrotile. Worst case, she would leave the dungeon island and find her way back. It couldn’t be hard to find a massive turtle. Actually, she didn’t need to find the massive turtle when she had a bond with Umbra, which was hopefully still on Urus’s shell.

As a test, she prodded her bond with her ship and found it a couple dozen kilometers to the south, causing a sigh of relief. Ione and her could make that if they had to, especially if she rode Ione.

With the discovery of Umbra being near, Elysia refocused on the current objective with peace of mind, knowing she had a path of escape. Though if she didn’t solve this tracking watch issue she would always have to look over her shoulder expecting a team of Changed to ambush her.

Finally, after scouring most of the island, Elysia came upon a group of three sitting near the shore while tending to injuries. The look of despair and the low number clued Elysia in to what probably happened, causing another pang of guilt, but she needed to worry about herself.

Instead of releasing a lighting attack from above, Elysia dismounted from Ione descended to the ground before walking out onto the rocky beach. The sound of her boots stepping on stones caused all three Changed to stiffen and jump to their feet, elements swirling.

Elysia raised her hand placatingly. “I mean no harm. I just want to ask some questions, and I’ll be on my way.”

Her eyes sharpened as a twenty something girl tried to stealthily reach for her watch. “Don’t. There isn’t a team within a kilometer of us. Besides, I could easily kill all three of you and leave well before help arrives.” Upon catching their terrified looks, Elysia’s expression softened. “Not that I want to hurt any of you. I just want some answers.”

The woman bearing the watch and presumably their leader clutched her hands in front of her stomach nervously as she looked at Elysia. “What do you want to know?”

“Why are you on Mezo?”

After a momentary delay, the woman responded, “we don’t know. A few days ago, President Burns mobilized all of us and sent us here. The higher-ups said it was a training mission, but it’s obvious it wasn’t.”

Elysia gestured to the watch. “What’s up with those? How are you tracking me?”

She nervously fidgeted with her fingers, afraid to even touch the watch in fear of the obviously powerful person hurting her. Like their leader, her to teammates also squirmed, looking about ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

From their reactions, Elysia knew they knew something. “Well?”

All three of them trembled in terror, but the leader forced herself to answer. “After we arrived, our leader, Donaron Burns, sent a message through the watches to track the arrow. He said a dangerous rogue needed to be captured.”

“The president?”

“No, his son.”

Of course, he would appoint his son to an important position. No corruption at all, for sure. Not sure why he would call himself a president. He sure didn’t seem like one. More like a king or dictator. She hadn’t heard anything good about him, though to be fair, she hadn’t spent much time in human society.

From the way they acted, she doubted they knew anymore about the subject, prompting her to ask the next question. “Do you know what happened to the Chrotile?”

The woman almost sighed in relief, appearing terrified of speaking about this Donaron guy. “If you mean the lizard people, no, we heard several reports of sightings, but none for the last couple of hours.”

Despite their willingness to answer her questions, probably out of fear, Elysia’s frustration only grew. As she expected, they barely knew anything. She doubted anyone allowed to travel in smaller groups knew much. If she wanted to learn more, she would have to target larger groups, but that was too much of a risk.

As a last resort, figuring they wouldn’t know, Elysia pointed at the watch. “how do you remove those? I tried earlier, and I set off a flare.”

All three stiffened at the mention of setting off a flare, causing Elysia to add, “I didn’t kill them. I stunned them with my lightning. There were at least a dozen Changed minutes away when I left, so they should be fine.”

The three changed relaxed slightly, though they remained on the defensive, more so than before.

At least she hoped they would be okay. Her lightning did a number on them. If she wanted to stun things of similar strength in the future, she would have to weaken her lightning further.

While eying Elysia suspiciously, but keeping her hand away from her watch in case the powerful being attacked, the woman broke the silence. “Only our platoon leader can remove them. He didn’t explain why, but most of us assumed it was to ensure they could track us. The flare was to alert nearby teams to a team in need of rescue.”

An idea popped into her head at that. It was risky, but what if she triggered the flare on every watch? The flare seemed to destroy the watch so it could be a solution to her problems. No watch, no tracking. At least she hoped that was the case. Did she even have enough charge to force the watch to trigger on everyone? There had to be at least a hundred of them or more.

With how weak they were, maybe even a normal lightning bolt costed 100 charge. Even if she had max charge, she could only use ninety of them, and that was the best-case scenario. Currently, she could only use about eighty.

Elysia’s gaze landed on the watch. Curiosity sparked unless she didn’t need to use even a lightning bolt for every watch. She didn’t even have to destroy every watch because once it became hard to find a team with a watch, it would be hard for them to hunt her down.

Their primary advantage was their spread out numbers giving them the ability to swarm her, but if only a few watches remained, she could probably put enough distance between them and her to do some hunting. Still risky, but better than trying to hunt down every single watch while blindly wandering the island.

If her watch hunting failed, it would probably cause enough ruckus to lure out some bigger players. She had yet to see even the changed teams from Port Alberni, after all. They were probably some elite team. Even back then, they seemed stronger than most of the teams she had encountered so far.

With an apologetic smile, Elysia flashed forward and grabbed the woman’s watch clad wrist while feeding a few strands of lightning into it.

In an instant, the watch exploded upward, releasing a blinding flare.

The trio scrambled back, elements swirling, ready to fight only for Elysia to give them a friendly wave. “Thanks for the answers, and sorry about that.”

Elysia dashed into the jungle and hopped on Ione, who had already warned her of several teams nearing the location even before she set off the flare.

Instead of running, they climbed a tree just inside the jungle and waited.