Code Collector

Chapter 70: Gazelle Moss

Allen was still having a hard time digesting the fact that he was friends with Jeremy before. It was all in his memories that shows everything that had happened before.

Jeremy was in his memories along with the headless girl. They were there, talking to him and were interacting with him.

The only questions left unanswered now was when did these events took place? And how come Allen forgot all of them in the first place?

Allen had to recover himself. He stood and took a deep breath. The pain from the splitting headache had already subsided, and he was now feeling much better compared to how he was feeling before.

"I have to go back to the camp," Allen said to himself. He looked around and realized that he was lost in the middle of the woods.

When he had the headache as the memories resurfaced, he kept on running without any direction. All he wanted was for the pain to stop, so he aimlessly sprinted along the woods until he arrived at a small clearing where he emptied his lungs out.

He looked around again, trying to figure out how to get out. There should be small roads that Hunters use to roam the woods. These roads were the paths back to camp, but Allen don't see any road at the moment.

The boy leaped on a nearby tree and looked for the tallest tree around. When he spotted it, he immediately went to the top of that tree so he could have a much better view of the forest. Maybe he could spot the next camp from there.

Allen reached the top of the tallest tree but he was disappointed when he couldn't spot the camp. There were only trees as far as the eye can see, and Camp Twyla was located in a planes. The camp wasn't nearby after all.

"Where is North?" Allen asked himself. There were stars above him, but they don't really tell him anything. They were new to humans and unlike the ones in Earth's universe, the stars here move along with the planets.

What Allen has to do now was to look for the Gazelle moss. It was a kind of moss that gazelle-looking beasts favors to eat over anything, hence the name. The moss was a direction pointer for the Hunters since they only grow on the south part of the trees.

The moss would usually grow on wetter trees, so Allen had to look for those. He searched for trees that had a wet bark. Not a minute later, he found one.

No one can lie if they saw Allen and mistaken him for a pervert. He was hugging the tree, tapping all the different parts until he found the soft, wet moss.

"Gotcha," Allen whispered. He further touched the moss and found it all over one side of the tree. The gazelle moss was almost taking over the tree, making the part slowly rot. "I was running up ahead and didn't took any turns.

"If I were to return back to camp, I should head south since the path out of camp was heading north," Allen analyzed. His body started to twitch, agreeing with his analysis when he faced south.

After he ate the fruit that enhanced his instincts by a lot, his body had an innate enhanced instincts. Every small decision that he makes, he has to wait for his body to repond so he can make sure to himself that he was making the right decision.

The boy nodded and proceeded to walk south. He was heading back to camp and he was planning on resting when he gets there. Tomorrow, he will finish his deal with Jeremy and the following week, he will meet up with Jake Summers.

He can barely believe that it was already a month since he started his deal with Jake. Time went by so fast, and he was just swallowing the fact on how much change his life had undergone. The plans of revenge to his former group had long since vanished, and now he just wants answers.

He had all these resurfacing memories, and the only way to confirm if these were real was to talk to his previous group mates and let them give the answers he wanted.

"Stop," Allen said to himself. "I gotta head home first."

The boy shelved all his thoughts to the back of his mind. He walked back to camp where the guard asked for his ID and the reason why he left so late.

"I realized I left my weapon there," Allen said, raising a random sword from his Inventory. He also had the alibi before coming to the entrance. He will pretend that he had left his sword in the forest, and then just remembered it a few hours ago.

"Which Hunter would leave their weapons in the middle of the forest?" the guard sighed. "It's a good thing no one stole it. Do you know how hard it is to forge weapons? Items can be easily crafted by random materials that somehow relate to each other, but weapons are different."

To be honest, Allen also had no idea how to forge weapons. When he put something in his Crafting Table, the final product provided would be an item. Never would it give him a weapon even when he used it a couple of times already.

"I'm sorry," Allen said. "But this sword was just given to me by my past lover. This sword was my lover's blood and soul."

The guard's eyebrow quirked up and his ears looked perkier. He was listening intently as Allen continued with his impromptu drama to get close to the guard.

"You see," Allen said with a sad voice. "My lover was a good Hunter. But then a flaming lizard attacked and"

"The Fire Dragon Incident," the guard said that made a loud ringing bell sound in Allen's ear. He stopped from his drama and looked at the guard who had a stoic look on his face. "That beast killed a lot of people, even my lover."

'Now things are getting interesting.' Allen thought. He hid his grin and let the guard continue with his words. 

"It looked any normal day after all," the guard said. "But the lizard it just attacked the nearby Hunters, killing everything in its path."

"The lizard was indeed a foe to be reckoned with," Allen fake agreed. "It was so sudden for us to. We were in the forest trying to do a special exercises in the middle of the woods when the beast came."

The guard scrunched his face after hearing Allen, "You you were doing it? In the middle of the woods?"

Allen nodded. "We did it all the time. The woods is a thrilling place to do it."

"Too much information, man," the guard groaned. "You're disgusting. Get inside or else I'll smack you in the back of your head."

Allen pursed his lips but did as was told. He was slightly disappointed that things didn't go as planned. It was always a good idea to add an embarrassing detail when you lie. He had found a study that you were more likely to be believable when you do this method.

The lie seemed to have worked on the guard and the man had believed Allen. What didn't work was the fact that the guard dismissed the topic instead if indulging in it for a longer period of time. Allen still has to study how to perfectly lie and get the other person to talk about the topic.

But on the positive side, he now has another source of information about what happened in the Fire Dragon Incident. The man was another witness, and Allen can slowly milk him out of information since he can't rely on the others that he saw in his memory.

This guard was his information cow, and he was going to win him over. The next project was this guard, and he will find a way to milk him.

Back in his room, Allen saw a familiar figure outside. Gary was standing there, aimlessly looking around, waiting for Allen.

"You're back," Gary cheered. "You seem to be taking your time touring the camp and the forest. Three people saw you leave three hours ago."

"It was that long?" Allen thought. "I left something there, so I had to go back. Wait, why are you here anyway?"

Gary sighed and walked over to the front of his room. "Come over here. We have a little problem."

"Problem?" Allen asked. "What problem?"

"Just come with me," Gary groaned and entered his room. Allen looked around, trying to see if anyone was in the hallway before he followed the man.

Allen entered Gary's room and there he saw Gwen sitting on the living room, bawling her eyes out as she cried loudly.

"What happened?" Allen asked. "Why are you here? And why are you crying like crazy? Did your boyfriend broke up with you or something?"

"Jeremy was attacked," Gwen said, making Allen's world stop turning. "He was attacked by the Phantom Cunt, and he's now in a critical condition!"