[NR] Chapter 358 - A Couple Bears (Patreon)

While it would delay him, Jason wasn’t exactly planning on speed running his trip in the first place. So with great care, he backtracked to determine the exact start of this strange area. Even just that though isn’t without trouble.

His guess that everything was fighting hadn’t been wrong as groups of small animals threw themselves at him twice before finding the end. Jason felt it odd that he hadn’t experienced this on his way in but could only assume nothing had been along the path. More disturbing though was how abrupt the end of the chaos was. Even the Wasteland wasn’t some sort of perfect circle, one side desolate and the other grassland.

That wasn’t the case here. One tree half in and half out was the perfect example. The side outside of the area was perfectly normal. The other side? All scratched up and battered.

Then it hits him. Why it took so long for him to notice and the creatures to notice him. There had to be some form of enchantment or illusion going on. Though that was just the start as there was no way that normal animals and monsters would be able to so totally savage the land.

Jason approaches the tree that was half in the area and takes a closer look at the marks. The scratches at first appeared to be from all kinds of things as the size varied wildly. Too wildly now that he thinks about it. Then he spots it, some of the scratches stop right on the boundary.

This causes him to look deeper and the marks all start to look the same. Sure, some of them are clearly just animals having scratched the tree. Most of them though? No, despite the difference in size the closer he looked, the more they seemed to have been made by the same thing.

Thing because Jason was beginning to doubt any actual entity caused these marks. Some sort of magical aura was ripping up the area and causing all the animals within it to go wild. All the while also hiding this from outside observers. This all led him to believe someone had purposefully set this up.

Which instantly tanked Jason’s desire to figure it out. Sure, it sounded like an interesting secret of some sort. On the other hand? While this did affect travelers, it didn’t target them. Whoever was going it might not have even intended this effect. He had heard stories in his past life of people who ended up comprehending more violent elements causing danger zones by accident. This could be something similar.

Still, that didn’t mean Jason was going to put up with this nonsense. Nevermind the fact that whoever caused this might be camping on the road itself. That would make sense if this was an accidental breakthrough of some sort. The only thing saying this wasn’t an accident would be the illusion barrier thing, but that could be explained away by a travel companion.

So instead of continuing on the road, Jason starts to follow the edge of the area. Easy enough now that he can see where the effect starts. This wasn’t peaceful of course. Even though the effect abruptly ended, monsters and animals didn’t magically become peaceful beings just because they left it. That doesn’t even count the normal rate of encounters from wandering through a forest.

Animals of all kinds with the occasional monster would attack him over the coming days as he follows the edge of the area. Overall he didn’t mind this too much. The curve of the edge wasn’t too crazy so wasn’t too large, otherwise Jason would have cut through it. All that aside, this little forest trek was enjoyable.

While the previous forest was just as nice it had that underlying sense of danger. Of course there was sufficient danger here to keep Jason on his toes but a threat of instant death wasn’t hanging over his head. At least not so oppressively as the danger at the center of the previous forest had.

This led to what Jason would later call a fun romp through a nice forest. He even got to ride a bear! Mind you, the bear wasn’t too happy about it, but being a relatively young one did not get to have a say in the matter. Though the fact it survived the experience put it ahead of the earlier bear Jason had found.

In the end though, all things generally have an end and soon enough Jason arrived at the continuation of the road. He was almost sad about this as if he was to be honest, it was some of the more carefree traveling that he had done. While it definitely took at least three times the time and a lot more effort from the lack of the road buff, the experience had been refreshing.

While technically following the road was safer, in theory. That wasn’t quite true. Sure, it was safer than heading off into the wilds like the group had done in the last forest. The safest way to travel was parallel to the roads and not actually on them.

The roads suffered from their own success. Their buff was too convenient, allowing beings to travel farther and faster with less effort. So every road became not only an easy way for people to move about, but animals and monsters as well. This in turn meant that for a good distance around, the road is where everything focuses.

If a being was in any way above an animal, they would make use of it and thus why there are so many dangerous encounters along it. So yeah, as long as you move out of sight of the road, things get peaceful enough. Except you lose the road buff. Jason had heard of at least three traveller based companies that tried doing just that to move valuables. In the end it just took too long and anyone capable of going faster would generally be strong enough to just take the road and go even faster.