Fate Online: Shadow

Gallop! Gallop! Gallop!

The sound of clothes fluttering through the air along with the sound of horse hooves echoed inside the forest.

As a man and horse are currently having a cat and mouse chase, the former chasing after the latter through the tree branches using his grappling hook, and sometimes on his feet.

"Why is this horse so fast in this kind of terrain?" complained Shadow when he\'s having a hard time catching up to the horse-type monster in front of him.

After all, in reality, horses should be having a hard time traversing a complicated terrain like Snowy Forest, where there\'s a lot of mud, overgrown roots, complicated rock formations and whatnot.

But of course, the horse before his eyes isn\'t just an ordinary horse, but a monster with two horns.

It possesses a coat and mane colored like shiny black armor. Even though its size is a little bit smaller on the side compared to a regular horse, it\'s quite lean and muscular, and would certainly be able to kill Shadow in a couple of moves.

Unfortunately for the horse and fortunate for Shadow, the latter stumbled on the former when he was foraging for food and herbs, and seeing that it was a heavily injured monster.

Shadow quickly decided to take the chance to take it down, and hope for the monster to drop a mount.

The monster\'s name is called Bicorn because it has two horns on its head, unlike its other counterpart that\'s popular among the female users, the Unicorn.

"I\'ll be the first player to kill a Bicorn, and if it drops a mount, then it would be awesome as it would make it easier for me to traverse this place if I have a mount that\'s already used to the terrain of this place"

Looking at how the Bicorn is easily running through the rough and complicated terrain of this forest, Shadow came to that conclusion and his willingness to take down this monster became firmer!

"But dammit! Why is this horse running towards the Orc Territories?"

Shadow was growing worried because he can certainly see that the Bicorn is running to where Orc Tribes are located, which is bad news to him as they are troublesome monsters who would certainly hunt him down like mad dogs.

"Dammit!" cursed Shadow as he quickly stopped in place when he saw that the Bicorn had no intentions of stopping at all and went past inside the Orc Territories.

And Shadow wasn\'t dumb enough to believe that he can go back in there and escape again if he enters that place, so he prompted to cease his chase and just unwillingly looked at the disappearing figure of the Bicorn.

Tsk, I really wanted a new mount...Shadow clicked his tongue at this unsuccessful hunt.

"That damn horse, did you really need to run over there?" Shadow can only sigh helplessly, and just as he turned around, he heard the death throes of a creature in the distance behind him.

Hmm...I think the Bicorn just died...thought Shadow while looking towards where the land where the Orcs had taken over as part of their territory.

"Should I go over and see if it dropped any mount?"

Shadow contemplated if he should go over or not. After all, he and the others had already had a hard time shaking the Orc\'s pursuit before the first time they came here, and if any of the Orcs spotted him, then he\'d be in for a tough situation.

At last, he just placed himself in a tough spot as he kept walking back and forth with his hand on his chin as he couldn\'t come to a firm decision, because if he dies here. Then he had just wasted a lot of effort and time they made into coming here, but if he doesn\'t go and have a look if the Bicorn dropped anything significant, then he\'d become restless because of the nagging curiosity that would plague him.

"Damn, if I die, then I\'ll die, and I\'ll just make my way here again if that happens because if I don\'t, I\'d certainly regret it if I don\'t go over and have a look"

Shadow finally came to a decision after a couple of minutes, which is probably a stupid decision as he wasn\'t even sure if it was right, but in the end, he acted on it and quickly dashed towards the direction of where the sound of the death throes of the Bicorn had come from.

Unlike the Snowy Forest, this Orc Territory is almost bare of any tree. Instead, the place is just like a wasteland, where almost all the things one can see is the bare Earth, where there are only a few trees and shrubs here and there.

Making it particularly quite hard for Shadow to look for a place to conceal his movements. So he opted to move upwards, through the rocky hills so he can overlook if there are monsters he can\'t take on by himself, like the Orcs.

Not even two minutes later, Shadow arrived above the scene where the Bicorn probably died.

How did he know that?

Well, it\'s because the bodies of dead monsters do not disappear if they are killed by the natives of this "world".

Right now, he\'s overlooking a scene before his eyes. Where there\'s a group of ten Orcs surrounding a large campfire, and on the side, is the corpse of the Bicorn earlier and is currently getting skinned and cleaned up by the Orcs.

It just has to be this group of bastards…Shadow couldn\'t help but curse at his luck today, because the monsters that killed the Bicorn just really happened to be this troublesome tribe of Orcs!

"I can\'t deal with them, so I should just look for the place where the Bicorn and the Orcs fought. It shouldn\'t be that far away from where these Orcs are" Shadow murmured to himself, while he started looking at his surroundings, especially a place where there are traces of a battle that recently happened.

There!

Shadow quickly spotted a large boulder that was destroyed in half, along with the remaining parts of the destroyed section of the boulder scattered around it.

Just twenty or so meters away from the group of camping Orcs.

Good thing I don\'t need to move across them...Shadow was relieved as he only needed to circle around this group of Orcs to reach the said place.

Shadow silently got down from the small hill, and carefully made his way towards the place he saw atop the hill earlier and refrained from aggroing other monsters in the vicinity as he didn\'t want to attract the attention of the Orcs just at the other side of the small hill.

Shadow arrived at the place after a couple of minutes.

There\'s nothing? Impossible! Shadow couldn\'t believe what he\'s seeing at the scene, it was because there wasn\'t an item or even a copper coin lying about!

Did I come to the wrong place? But this is the only place that there are recent traces of a battle that took place… Shadow looked around his surroundings, but then he saw something that attracted his attention from the corner of his eyes.

What\'s that?

Shadow quickly walked over and bent down and picked up the thing that he saw.

Tarrasque\'s Bangle

Durability: 173/500

A once-powerful artifact that was once worn by an ancient monster.

It bolsters the bearer\'s fortitude.

Requirement:

None

Effects:

+25 Strength

+250 Health

+1.6% Max HP Health Regen

"This… Did my luck shoot up to the roof just now?\'

Shadow couldn\'t believe what his eyes were seeing as he couldn\'t believe he had actually stumbled upon such a powerful item, and the fact that its effects are what he needs the most right now!

"Graahhh!"

Shadow quickly looked up when he heard the roar of a monster, and saw two Orcs roaring towards him from above the cliff behind him.

"Tsk! I guess I just ran out of it!"

After saying those words, Shadow quickly bolted out of there as he doesn\'t get tangled up with those bunch of troublesome monsters!

But just as he had left, Shadow didn\'t notice a small crystal orb lying behind a small rock debri, and inside of it was a small Bicorn spinning in place.

Serenity Orb

An orb where the soul of Bicorn resides..

Uses: Mount

And just a few seconds after Shadow left, the rumbling sound of a group of Orcs came running over towards the direction of where Shadow had run off to, and because of that, the Serenity Orb rolled over towards a crevice on the cliff, waiting for its destined master who will let it see the light of the day once again.