Absolute Shopping Addict 18 Chapter 18

"Behind you!"

Weapons flashed silver in the morning sun, magical attacks played over the clearing on the outskirts of Brino, and arrows flew straight and true to their monstrous targets.

"Be careful!"

The Awakeners trembling from fear during the Werecrocodile battle were no more.

In their stead were teams of Awakeners with complementary skills, impressive synergy and impeccable teamwork, coordinating the defense as a skilled maestro would with an orchestra.

The attacking monsters could do very little but get caught on the buzz saw of action and get ripped to pieces.

"Another wave of monsters is incoming. We carry on like we did with these guys and we're going to be set to finish quickly!" one of the commanders yelled as a group of armored goblins shambled through the meadow.

"Let's. .h.i.t them hard and hit them fast, and finish in time to go back to Brino before lunch!"

"Roger that!"

Thanks to being exposed to the horror that was the Werecrocodile boss monster, and everyone involved gaining ridiculous amounts of experience due to it, the Awakeners didn't seem to perceive the increased difficulty of this attack.

The increased emphasis on teamwork also served to improve the morale of the Awakeners battling at the moment.

Moreover, compared to the second strike, the difficulty level of the monsters did not seem to have gone up significantly.

The fact that Awakeners were able to deal with the monsters without much problem was the evidence of it.

It was around the point where the first groups of Awakeners were intercepting the monsters without much difficulty that the Awakeners in Brino realized that this wasn't a battle – this was a rout.

And throughout the battle, and as the rout continued, the Awakeners were beginning to realize something.

The monsters invading Brino were indeed stronger.

But working together and gaining power together, they were much stronger than antic.i.p.ated.

Judging by the result, where none of the Awakeners in Brino were even moderately injured, the Awakeners of the Brino – the eleventh tutorial area – had outgrown the monsters attacking their town.

It was inevitable, since the unexpected defeat of the Werecrocodile resulted in a windfall for every Awakener in Brino, unlike other tutorial areas.

And even the debacle involving the death of their fellow Awakeners did not stop them from leaving Brino in groups, to find dungeons from which to hunt monsters.

Naturally, they ended up much stronger than their counterparts across different tutorial areas and different regions.

The third attack on Brino ended with quite a bang, as with a careful application of magic into the final monster, it fell still, and exploded a few moments later as Emmanuel turned its back on it and began to walk away.

It was only after the voice from the heavens announced their successful defense of Brino that the cheers began.

"We made it!"

"All in one piece!"

"We're getting better at this!"

"Emmanuel really pulled through for us!"

The Awakeners were in very high spirits, as this auspicious outcome would mean that they were making great progress in getting stronger.

Naturally, Emmanuel, being the one who led the defense, also led the gathered Awakeners to return to Brino.

"It's all because every one of you guys did well. I didn't do anything special."

More cheers.

"Why don't we go back and eat?"

It was after a triumphant return to town that the Awakeners all sat down and ate together, with the otherworldly fruits they obtained right before the battle.

As dinner began, it was only natural that the Awakeners gathered began to talk about various things. It didn't take long for them to start talking about the proverbial elephant in the room.

"He didn't return for this battle – do you think he's the killer?"

"Of course," another Awakener replied, "he is. Why wouldn't he come back?"

"He probably realized that we were on to him so he fled out of guilt."

The elephant in the room was, of course, Jake; and they thought Jake hadn't returned to Brino because he ran away due to his supposed deeds.

"We shouldn't have easily bought his denial."

Because he was away for a long time and their relative ease in repelling this latest attack, what had previously been fear of Jake had now become contempt.

"Do you think we should let a murderer get away… just like that?"

"If you think we should get him, do you have any ideas as to how to nab the guy?"

Even before the latest battle, the Awakeners in Brino also went out of their way to hunt monsters and gain power and confidence in their ability.

It wasn't difficult to make the jump to thinking that they could apprehend Jake for what they think he did.

"Even if the guy is pretty strong, how will he deal with all of us at once?"

"Also, we have become stronger since that time."

"If we want to, we will be able to overcome that guy together… easily."

But despite their confidence and power, they were still a.s.suming someone to be a murderer with only circ.u.mstantial evidence in their hands, and turning Jake's denial into an implied admission of guilt, and his absence as proof that he had somehow escaped their "justice".

The mood at the table was quickly turning the organized Awakeners into a mob howling for justice.

"Let's go get him for real!"

"Right! We shouldn't let a killer like that remain at large!"

Their voices began to rise above what was supposed to be a celebration of their accomplishment.

It was then that Emmanuel, who was only observing quietly, stood up, and raised a hand to silence the Awakeners gathered.

"We're not completely sure whether he is the killer or not," he began, and Emmanuel could make out one or two Awakeners mouthing 'what', "But you're right – him being gone for too long is very suspicious. We should have a talk with him rather than resorting to mindless violence."

***

The Awakening Store's back office thought that Jake would spend at least two months in order to purchase the Cherry Blossom Sword Art Set when they were preparing the package for the shop.

Their calculations had given them a minimum of two months, and they expected him to purchase the item after around three months, due to the Cherry-Sh.e.l.l Snapper's sheer size and power.

They took into account the points Jake gained when helping defeat the Werecrocodile, and also considered his purchase of the Swiftstone Sword and his tremendous increase in strength in order to wield it.

After all, this monster would only appear a long time later, after the Awakeners' narrow escape from the Werecrocodile would goad them into fighting enough battles to get much stronger.

But even then, they will not have an easy time of it battling the Cherry-Sh.e.l.l Snapper – at least, that was how powerful it was made to be.

As a matter of fact, since finding the Cherry-Sh.e.l.l Snapper, Jake had a hard time battling it, to the point where for the first time since his summoning, he turned his back on the giant turtle – and ran off like his behind was on fire.

Then again, what the Awakening Store thought about Jake Smithson was only scratching the surface.

"Would an apology help?" Jake called back facetiously as he was running like his life depended on it.

"Guess it's too late for that! Hey, come on, stop following me!"

"How the heck is that huge thing so fast?" Jake shouted as he barely cleared a large branch in his path, his face an unusual mix of fear and excitement as his feet flew over the ground in his haste.

Jake could feel the ground rumble beneath him as he leaped over a toppled log and continued running. Behind him, the giant turtle's roars echoed across the island.

"You may be huge and you may be fast, but you can't catch me!" Jake taunted the beast while scurrying away.

'Nope, I'm not hallucinating or anything. This guy's trash-can-flipping mad.'

"You mad? You mad bro?" he continued asking, a wooden branch with several pink blossoms was clutched in his hand as he evaded the pursuit.

'Oh yeah. He mad.

I chopped off one of the branches of the cherry tree on the Snapper.

No wonder he mad.

But one's not enough for me. I need to get several of them; I may fail the requirement if I content myself with just one piece – oh, who the h.e.l.l cares, I am never content! Must have all the branches!

Thanks to Jake taking a mental picture of the cherry tree itself, he could remember that there were several cherry blossoms on the branches.'

Having just one branch on him was risky, and if Jake tried to cut it into 16 pieces and fail once, then it would be over.

'Of course I'll train until I can confidently say I can divide a cherry blossom into sixteen pieces, but I have to account for failed attempts.

Risk a.s.sessment is like that. I mean, what if I throw the blossom in the air and suddenly have to take a bathroom break or something?'

"Don't worry about trying to catch up to me, I'm going to get back to you after a bit! You still owe me a f.u.c.king turtle ship!" he yelled while scrambling to higher ground.

Jake was hauling a.s.s like no tomorrow. Despite the Snapper's heavy sh.e.l.l, its size caused it to take huge strides, which made it hard for Jake to elude the beast.
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"Oh, and I'm not leaving this place until I'm dining on turtle soup!"

But despite what it looked like, Jake wasn't running away from the Snapper; he had something else up his sleeve.

Jake was playing a long game with the monster, a game which, if he played correctly, would end in the monster's defeat.

He never bothered to look back to see his turtle ship getting crushed by the Snapper's roots and feet.

It was a life-or-limb decision for Jake, as he couldn't find anyone on Brino who loved his possessions as dearly as he did.

If Jake had the time to think, it would be like if a drunk pedestrian keyed his brand-new sports car.

He never had a sports car but thought the a.n.a.logy was appropriate – if he got his hands on the pedestrian, he would regret doing such a stupid thing.

Obviously; to Jake, messing with his property was the quickest way to gain his ire. If it was something as expensive and beautiful as a sports car? You'd make a lifelong enemy of him, if he didn't take you out where you stood.

"You just signed your own f.u.c.king death warrant by crushing my precious turtle ship!" Jake yelled, and continued his escape. "I swear, this is going to end with me dining on giant turtle soup!"

To Jake, the Cherry-Sh.e.l.l Snapper had crossed that line, and his rage would not be sated with anything but the life of this monster.

'I'm not leaving this place until the Cherry-Sh.e.l.l Snapper is dead meat.'

With Jake providing himself as bait, the game was afoot.

'Guess what? I'm Admiral Yi right now, and you're going to pay for my boat with your life. My turtle ship will only rest in peace as soon as you're resting in pieces.'

***

Thanks to the tutors and other, more experienced of their kind, the Awakeners in Brino organized themselves into teams of seven, and started the task of looking around the village in search of their so-called fugitive.

"How far has he gone, do you think?"

"Pretty far – I can't find anything close by, not a trace of him."

As soon as the teams were organized, morale was high that justice was going to be served by catching the criminal, and tended to their duties with due diligence.

They searched high and low around Brino – mountains, dungeons, caves – taking turns as they did so.

And while one team searched, the other teams trained and hunted down monsters, their power and confidence growing as they believed they could deal with Jake or someone stronger should they appear.

It was also a chance to show off their newly acquired power.

However, all their attempts had so far ended with Jake not being found.

"Maybe he's gone for good," one of the search team leaders said after another failed expedition to the Mount Mushin, "he could have abandoned any plans to return and just went away as far as his feet could take him."

"We've gone through the usual dungeons, but all the trails were old. Jake went elsewhere."

Despite their efforts, they could not find anything they could follow up on, probably because the area they were searching in was quite extensive; not to mention the monsters they had to defend themselves against, every now and then.

"Let's still continue the search. Maybe one day he might suddenly appear."

But after finding traces of Jake leaving Brino south, they turned towards that direction, and through their tireless searching, was able to stumble on a few clues as to Jake's location.

The Awakeners didn't want to admit it to themselves, but the thought of Jake at large, alone in the wilderness outside Brino, made them feel uneasy to the point of near paranoia.

Even when the monster attacks on their village continued, the search teams a.s.sisted when they could, and continued the search as soon as the last monster breathed its last.

The search team's attention to detail finally paid off, as they found an important clue roughly three or four hours' walk away from Brino, in the form of worn-out and shattered golden leopard fragments.

"Whenever we defeat a golden leopard, these golden pieces fall on the ground," the leader of the search team declared. "And look at these splinters of gold. This isn't our work – Jake must have gone through here. "

The rest of the search team nodded their a.s.sent and went to work finding the trail, which they did, thanks to the gold fragments left behind by the leopards when Jake defeated them quite some time ago.

"We're about half a day's walk from Brino."

"The fragments here also show a lot of wear and tear, so it would have been quite a long time – at least two weeks or so – since Jake pa.s.sed by."

"So," the team leader declared, "he was heading south, after all. It seems we caught the trail too late because we were searching the spots on the north end of town. "

The tracker was more or less correct – Jake had indeed pa.s.sed by this place twelve days ago, based on the gouges on the ground his sword left behind.

"Now we know we was going in this direction," the team leader continued, "I say we make base camp here, and have different search teams rotate here as an outpost."

"That's a good idea," the tracker said.

"We're going to continue searching around here, as well."

"South of this spot is a river, but he probably didn't go towards the river, right?"

"There is no ship, and the river is difficult to cross, let alone travel on. We don't need to search near the river."

It was decided to make a base camp on the site close to where they saw the golden leopards, and continued to explore the surrounding area, hunting monsters when they could.

An uneventful seven days pa.s.sed by, and the search team had thought of this spot as a dead end already. However…

"f.u.c.k YEAH!"

A familiar shout roused the search party from their daily preparation, only to see a large turtle ship make its way down the churning river.

"The king of shop, who? The king of shop, what?"

And standing on the prow of the turtle ship, was a man bearing numerous scars, with his sword tied to his waist.

"The Turtle Ship has risen back from h.e.l.l!"

He looked more like a third-rate copy of a Sistine Chapel sculpture with his heavily scarred physique, his sword, and the microphone in his hand melding incongruously with the turtle ship he was on.

"And when I bring the ruckus, suckers duck and then dodge!"

"Where did that ship come from?"

"What is that mic?"

"What the h.e.l.l is that guy doing?"