Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

Fear...

Fear is something inherent in human beings.

Fundamentally, it is an emotion that helps them survive, alerting them to possible dangers and preparing them to react appropriately.

When humans feel fear, their organisms go on alert and their hearts start beating faster, their breathing speeds up as well, and their bodies prepare to attack or flee.

However, there is a select group of humans who are practically incapable of feeling this emotion that is so natural to other people. Let's call the people in this group the fearless.

Even when the fearless are faced with an extremely frightening situation, they don't get scared or intimidated like normal humans. This may be because they are overconfident, or because they have developed a protective mechanism that prevents them from feeling fear. Regardless of the cause, the fact is that these people are able to face the most fearsome things without feeling fear.

Kaizen did not know this yet, but he was fearless. Someone with fears, only with virtually zero ability to feel fear. This was the least that was expected of a Psyker, but it didn't fail to surprise Nairo, who noticed this trait when she led him out of town and yet Kaizen didn't hesitate even for a second to follow her.

Kaizen walked with her head held high, with the right posture and a focused gaze. There was no fear in his mind, only determination and willpower to face any challenge.

Nairo was a hunter of the Order of Dalamyr and a fearless, so she was not afraid of anything either, however, as she looked at Kaizen, she created the fear of one day angering him. She wished she would not be around when this man would one day get too angry.

After they had gone through part of the forest with pine trees, they realized that they had entered a part of the forest that was covered by a creeping mist.

"Do you know what this mist means?" Nairo asked Kaizen, who was watching the mist cover her feet.

Psyker looked at her and denied it with her head.

She smiled with her mouth closed. "Thick fog is the greatest paranormal indication that something is happening in a place. Not all mist is paranormal, but whenever there is some paranormal being around powerful enough to cause what we de call distortions, there will be mist."

Kaizen looked at her with a curious expression. "And how will I know when the mist is paranormal and when it is ordinary mist?"

"Paranormal fog is nothing more and nothing less than a way for the ordinary human mind to interpret the environment distorted by the presence of a powerful paranormal being. The stronger the being in question, the denser and larger the fog will be. There are three ways to differentiate an ordinary mist from a paranormal mist. The first method is instinct, and every hunter should know how to use this to his or her advantage, identifying with perception the aura that the place emanates. The second method is an evolution of instinct, which comes with experience, and is basically when you're already going crazy and your mind starts to become more open to interpreting what the distorted environment really looks like."

As Nairo explained to Psyker, they moved forward through the woods. At the same time, the mist gradually became a little thicker.

"And what is the last method?"

"The last one is something I will never be able to do. It consists of literally being able to see both planes at the same time, the natural and the supernatural. Of all the hunters I've ever met, only one has that ability."

"Linus?"

"No. The hunter's name is Fryft, a talented green mage with impressive supernatural gifts. She was expelled a few months ago from the Order of Dalamyr when she became involved with forbidden magic. Since then, she has completely disappeared off the map."

"So, if she was expelled and disappeared after that, there's no way she could teach me that third method..."

"Don't worry, Kaizen. Yes, we have a lot of expectation on you, because you are Psyker, but no one expects you to know everything there is to know about the paranormal world. You just need to learn it little by little. First, focus on learning the first method."

"All right, but did this Fryft woman ever describe to you how she learned this third method?"

"Well, she never revealed it in great detail to me. However, she did tell me that one day she felt a magical power circulate her left retina when she entered an area of mist, and then she wished very much that she could see what was really happening around her. She didn't just want to feel, she wanted to see everything. It was something like that she said. Then, according to her, when she opened her eyes again, she could see everything that the mist hides. A distorted, unreal world unlike anything she had ever seen in her entire life." Nairo answered nonchalantly.

"I understand. Thank you." Said Kaizen as he looked into the mist.

Nairo and Kaizen moved on, crossing the mist and walking through the trees. With each step, the mist became denser and the air heavier.

Yet Kaizen was calm and serene. He was not frightened, neither when the mist began to become denser, nor when the air became heavier. He knew that Linus thought he was not ready to deal head-on with the imbalance of the supernatural world, so he was determined to prove otherwise.

Soon they finally reached the end point of this long forest trail.

At the end of the trail was a small abandoned village with less than ten houses. The place was completely enveloped in a thick fog.

Kaizen wasn't officially a hunter, except that didn't stop him from unconsciously using the first method of paranormal perception that Nairo introduced to him, his instinct.

'There's something really powerful here.' He thought, looking at the fourth house in the village, which was also the largest among them all.

...

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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