Chapter 3657 State 3657 State I finished the lunch and laid back on the chair, watching the small forest from the garden. I have been doing this, more than I used before the incident of Asear Vajaras. It has been a month and seven days since it happened, and I am still in the organization. I have not done any mission and have been unfocused, lethargic. Not working on anything. It seemed like I had lost interest in anything. I wish Marina had been here, I miss her a lot. Her presence alone would have been enough to make me feel better. I had looked through the thousands of missions, but nothing seemed to interest me. Even those that would have been enticing to me a month ago, felt uninteresting. This won't do, I have to go out. I have seen too many people fall in such a state and lose their drive. When they finally came out of the shell, years would have passed, and it would become too late. I didn't want that to happen to me, but I didn't feel like doing anything. "I am going to select the first mission, I see," I said to myself suddenly. It didn't matter how lame it was, how uninteresting it felt. I will select the mission and will do it, no matter how I feel about it. I need to get out of the house. So, I opened the mission portal and selected the Earth Sovereign icon, before tapping on agree, without even reading about it. 'Mission Selected,' flashed in front of me and I read the mission details. Immediately, my hand went toward the 'Decline'. It was the most boring mission I saw, and I nearly touched the decline before I stopped myself and closed the window. The mission is to find the source of strange energies in the Ekulu forest. Since the morning, strange energies have started coming out of the forest. The lord of the nearby city informed the organization, and they posted the mission a few minutes ago after verifying the information. It is a single-person mission, and it is so boring, I am the only one, who has opened it after reading the line. Most people had just scrolled through it. This mission wouldn't last long; it might have something come out and start releasing energies. It might be an artifact or some crystal or something else. These kinds of things are quite common and rarely do something interesting come out of it, but since I selected it, I will go check it out and hope it will be something interesting that will help me get out of my current state. I had three hours to leave, but I decided to leave immediately. There is no need to give my mind a chance to think about a thousand ways to refuse this mission. I didn't even change my face, which I usually do, even when the mission doesn't require it. Click! I walked out of my house, and a minute later, appeared in an enormous hall with a disc. Where people appear on it every second and disappear. Hun! I was waiting for my turn when my clone sent the familiar aura and turned toward the person for a moment. It is the man with whom; I had done my first mission. He is with a team of five, all unknown to me. I didn't go and greet him, not because I didn't feel like it, which is also the reason, but also because I was wearing a different skin during that mission, and I was feeling too lazy to introduce myself. Soon it was my turn, and I appeared above the disc. Buzz! It buzzed and everything in front of me turned dark and it remained dark for a couple of seconds before it had cleared. I found myself near a small lake. I looked at the map and could see the closest city in the north. It was close enough, that I could see the silhouette of it, but my destination was west. With my speed, it shouldn't take me more than half an hour to reach it. The formations on my armor lit up, and I shot toward my destination. I usually didn't move this fast during the mission, but I am in no mood to be cautious. Though I may not be feeling cautious, I like to be informed of the mission and begin to go through the details. Ekulu forest came into the domain misble city. It is a medium- sized forest and resource-rich. It is mostly Primary-III's and Sovereign and the deepest part of the forest, seemed to have an Earth Sovereign monster. The source of energy seemed to be coming from the eastern side of the forest, near the center of it. I reached the forest and looked around and soon, I saw the people, I was searching for. Thud! I landed in front of the two people, both Sovereigns of mid- level. Both of them are women, one is human, and the other is tern, a humanoid race with long ears and dark purple skin; they are common in the area. "Earth Sovereign," they greeted. "The information said, the pulses of energies coming out of the forest?" I asked. I am not sensing any pulse of energies, not even their residue, in a few miles of area around me. "The pulses would come for a minute or two for every hour; they are sharp and powerful but didn't do any harm, as far as we could see," replied the Tern woman. "Anything else?" I asked them, to which they shook their head. "I will check it and to be safe. Stay back a few hundred miles, in case there is something dangerous," I said to them. They nodded and flew away. While I walked into the forest, with my soul sense spread. I wanted to fly in that direction, but I controlled my impulsive thoughts. This is not a place for impulsiveness; it didn't matter how much the mission seemed normal. Though, I still moved faster than usual, with my soul sense spread further. I avoided the monsters and people; most people had already run away from the forest sensing the energies, but I could see some daredevils were moving toward it. A small smile couldn't help but appear on my face when I saw those people. I am, or rather, I was, one of them. When I would sense such a thing, I would move toward it, rather than run away like the most. Still, I did a sensible thing and sensed the warning with my soul sense, telling them. Whatever the thing, it could be potentially dangerous, even fatal, and they shouldn't go too close to it, but barely anyone heeded the warning. The only thing they did was slow down a little, making their pace cautious. Hun! A few minutes passed when something entered my soul sense. A Sovereign, running at his full speed, with a group of monsters chasing him. My soul sense covered the monsters, and a moment later, all of them fell to the surprise of the man. I didn't kill the monsters, just stun them for a few minutes. The man thanked in the air, before running away. I helped him deal with a few more monsters that were in his way, till he moved out of my rage. The monsters are agitated by the energies. They are hiding, but when they see people, many would run away, but some would attack them. I had seen the signs of and even the dead bodies of people who died at the hands of monsters. I had collected their bodies; I will hand them over to the two when I get out of the forest. I had reached close to the destination; in ten to fifteen minutes, I would reach it, but till now, I had not seen anything. I will need to reach there to see it. Hun! I had just thought that when I sensed the person. An Earth Sovereign. For a moment, I thought it was an ordinary Earth Sovereign, but no, he was far from ordinary. I slowed down my speed and pulled back my soul sense. I had been lucky. It is waves that sensed him and not the soul sense or, given his power, he might have detected me. I shouldn't have to slow down. We are in the territory of Tor and I don't know if he is a member or citizen. Even if he is hostile, I do not need to fear him; he might be stronger than me, but won't be able to kill me. If we fought long enough, I might be able to kill him. I pushed that thought away. He might not be hostile and until he shows the hostility, I will shelve the thought of killing him. Until then, I would follow him quietly, to see whether he was just a bystander, who had sensed the energies and came to check it out, or someone who knows something. It won't be long before I find that out.