Chapter 187: Everything and Nothing Can Be a Coincidence
"W-What the heck is this place?" Neena trembled while speaking.
Before, when she was scouting through Mount Craire while her trekking, she had discovered such a tunnel.
Her ability allowed her to manipulate the directions of any creature. And, there was a hidden application in this ability. In that, if she didn't actually manipulate any living creature, but just kept it active, she was able to sense every living creature in her surroundings.
That was also how she was able to accurately manipulate their actions.
So, using this, she strolled through the place, intending to scout for any natural locations that she could use as traps. After all, any human-made traps would be too obvious. And, there was a good chance someone unsuspecting would trigger it.
Besides, she alone wasn't able to make it, not without being spotted by others. There was also too much danger involved.
So, scouting for natural traps was the best bet. And, she was hinted by the System that as long as she created a sound enough plan, the System would loan her with the relevant abilities.
That excited her greatly. Just Directional Misalignment caused her to become tremendously powerful and gain a lot of benefits within a week.
So, if she obtained even more abilities...
Her greed was triggered.
Thanks to that, she figured out three trap locations. The first one had already been used. It was the alternate path where she wished to send Rhizen towards the forest of the nearby mountain and make the leeches prey upon him.
Since that plan failed, she was hoping for the second one to pay off, which was a harsher place.
She had discovered the tunnel by sensing the insects squirming within. Upon judging the curvature of the tunnel that became more and more vertical as it proceeded down, and the cave at the end, it allowed her to understand that this was a sure-fire trap.
After all, there was no way to climb up from the cave, as the walls there didn't have anything to hold on to. The tree roots only spanned closer to the entrance of the tunnel.
So, once Rhizen was trapped there, he would either die of starvation or be devoured by the insects, quite the bunch of which should have been poisonous.
He would definitely die in this place. After all, only with such a sure kill method would she have a guarantee of killing him.
Because, it wasn't her first attempt at his life. When she got the Quest, she tracked down Rhizen thanks to a one-time ability she received from the System.
After that, she tried to cause him to die from traffic accidents when Rhizen coincidentally visited the city that day. But, right when a car was about to ram into him, the driver displayed driving skills surpassing a pro and deftly curved around him like water moving around a rock.
Rhizen survived the accident without a scratch. Though, the driver got down from the car and drowned Rhizen in a bunch of expletives for the next thirty minutes, only returning to drive when his throat felt dry from shouting so long.
And, that wasn't the only time she had tried as such. But every time, something coincidentally would happen that prevented Rhizen from falling victim to the crisis. And most of the time, he was oblivious to such things happening around him.
It made Neena realise that there was a reason Rhizen was given as a target to her by her System. It was because he was a damn lucky guy. His luck was to such an extent that her ability proved useless against him.
Even when she tried to personally influence his body to walk into a truck, the truck driver would slam the brakes, stopping right before him. No matter what she tried, Rhizen never truly suffered a loss.
And sometimes, she would trip on the road when there was nothing to make her trip in the first place. It had started ever since she decided to aim for Rhizen's life and continued to worsen as the days passed.
It caused her to realise that only by killing Rhizen would she be freed from such unfortunate incidents. Of course, the System had offered a couple of words to cement this possibility in her mind.
So, she began to scheme deeper after that, creating three traps on Mount Craire. Since she trekked it all the time, it was easy for her to do so.
She was assured that as long as Rhizen fell into the tunnel, he wouldn't be able to survive. Moreover, it was a natural accident, an unfortunate accident.
No blame would befall her for that. After all, there was no proof. It wasn't like a human could affect nature. That wasn't possible. So, no one would think that she was involved in his death.
But now, her second plan too backfired. Moreover, this time, she too was pulled into it. As she had her Directional Misalignment switched on all along, she had been observing the actions of Compass Carburettor and Rhizen.
And, she watched the ground cave right under Rhizen, causing him to lose balance as he began to fall into the tunnel. As he flailed his hands instinctively, he coincidentally grabbed onto Compass Carburettor's bag, pulling him as a result.
And, thanks to this, Compass Carburettor lost balance, flailing when this happened, coincidentally grabbing hold of Neena's dress, eventually managing to wrap his hands around her as all three were dragged into the tunnel.
Everything happened coincidentally, causing her to feel like she would die from anger. If only she had moved an inch forward, then Compass Carburettor wouldn't have grabbed hold of her dress, and she wouldn't have been pulled into the tunnel, suffering an experience where the insects climbed over her body.
In this situation, even Compass Carburettor hadn't realised that the same situation would have taken place even if he hadn't schemed against Neena. Maybe there might be some changes, like him avoiding the fall while the other two fell into the tunnel.
But, when coincidence and luck were combined, things happened in such an intricate fashion that it was impossible to tell if something happened due to luck, scheme, etc.