Chapter 1643: A Small Scare
Ning tried to find sleep, but with the constant lurching of the carriage with the horses dragging it through uneven dirt roads, his sleep evaded him.
He simply lay there with his eyes closed for a while, trying to get some rest still.
Shara had begun small conversations with the woman and the young child who sat next to her, talking about how she and her brother were on their way to meet their grandparents.
The couple there suspected not a single thing. The others were busy with their own small talk, no one bothering Ning.
This would've been a great time to sleep if he could find it at all.
He spent nearly an hour doing nothing when the carriage came to a sudden halt. Ning wondered why they had stopped and quickly opened his eyes. He reached for the spear that was lay flat within the carriage and was ready to use it.
"We've come to river Loral. The carriage is too heavy to go across the bridge, so you will have to get off for a few minutes," the owner of the carriage said.
Ning got off the carriage and helped Shara off. They were near some sort of sparse wood and he saw the river that the carriage driver was talking about. It was barely a river at all. More like a stream.
But, the area was quite rocky and the bridge atop it was made up of wood. Heavy carriages could in fact break it.
"When are they going to fix this damn bridge?" one of the men said with a rather angry tone to his voice. "The road from Payland to Ternia is so much better than this, and the bridge is wide enough that it can allow up to 3 carriages at once. Meanwhile, this one barely allows a single one and we have to get off it too."
There were other complainers as well.
Ning simply listened to those complaints, taking it in. At the same time, he looked around, watching the woods for bandits. He could never be too careful.
As he was watching, he noticed something glinting atop the trees. It flashed for a split second before zipping far away. No one seemed to notice it. Only him.
'Was that... a Spirit?' Ning thought. He got a little worried.
There were two types of Spirits in this world. Since each Spirit had a specific reason why they remained behind, they were categorized into two.
The first was the spirits that were there because they wanted something from either the place they were in or the people they left behind.
They were considered Bound Spirit.
Most of the Spirits that Ning had communicated with until now were Bound Spirits, and most of the time, they were harmless.
Bound Spirits were bound to a place or a person thanks to their connection to that place or person. Without that, they could not remain bound to the place.
If they were not bound, they became the second type of Spirit whose reason for staying behind was never as specific. These were called Unbound Spirits.
Because of this specific reason, these Spirits could wander around aimlessly until their wishes were fulfilled. These wishes could be anything from wanting to see a different country that they had never seen before or to trying to find one's old love from a long time ago.
However, in some specific cases, where the person who died was just scared and angry, then when they died, their Spirits became scared and angry as well. In these moments, the reasons for the Unbound Spirit's presence became nothing more than an excuse to continue to be angry.
These specific types of Spirits were called Vengeful Spirits, usually originating from deaths that were a result of violence.
And Vengeful Spirits were scary according to the information Ning had in his memories. Ning hoped that the Spirit he had just seen was not a Vengeful Spirit, as the only people who could deal with a Vengeful Spirit were either Exorcists or Overtakers.
Necromancers could maybe create an undead out of their body if the corpse was nearby and a Spirit Channeler could channel them into their body to trap them there for a while. But a Spirit Detective had absolutely nothing they could do in the presence of a Vengeful Spirit.
Ning watched around for a few minutes, making sure to catch any and all glimpses. He didn't see anymore.
'Ok, I was mistaken,' he thought. He was glad to be mistaken.
The carriage moved past the bridge and people walked atop it a few at a time until they were on the other side. They got back onto the carriage and the horses snorted as they began pulling on it.
The carriage began moving and things returned to normal.
Ning couldn't go back to sleep, so he opened up his status page on a whim. The Quest at the bottom caught his eyes immediately and the 20 points that it offered.
He truly wondered what it was about Shara that the system was ready to dump so many points on her. He needed to search for books when they arrived at the next city over.
He was about to close the page when he noticed his points.
'10?' he thought, surprised for a moment. Then he remembered what had happened.
'Right, Tima's quest,' Ning thought. He had gotten a point from helping Tima move on and hadn't bothered to check what he got from it.
He quickly glanced over the points shop for the first dozen or so items to see if anything new was added. There wasn't.
Then, he arrived at the new ones.
To Ning's surprise, quite a few new items had been added. More than any he had seen in a while for just 2 more points.
[POINTS SHOP
.
.
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Unbreakable Undergarment (Male): 9 points
Scroll of Fireball (3): 9 points
Scroll of Minor Teleportation: 9 points
Minor Scroll of Strength: 10 points
Minor Scroll of Agility: 10 points
Minor Scroll of Constitution: 10 points Minor Scroll of Self-Healing: 10 points
]