POV Swap – 3^rd person

Kara and her guild members avoided the griffin’s mate by moving to another area to rest. To prevent any further aggravation of their injuries, the group planned on letting their injured recover before returning to the base camp.

Meanwhile Tobias set up camp near the griffin’s nest and was preparing to journey back to the base camp the next day. The various tracking skills that Tobias had learned were practically useless for finding Kara in these wet marshes. No visible trails were left while traveling through the murky water.

Back at the base camp, however… the situation was not as calm.

The guild leader of Demon Slayers, Damien Stayr, inquired about the situation from Jody. Only to learn from her that Tobias was already gone… more importantly, Tobias had set off into the marshes on his own.

Damien couldn’t believe his ears, “What do you mean ‘He set off on his own?’ This isn’t a kid’s playground, it’s Hard Difficulty.”

When Damien heard from Jody that Tobias had been entered the frontier of the Hard Difficulty zone, he’d allowed her to accommodate any reasonable requests from Tobias due to his forging ability. However, in his mind, reasonable requests mainly included forging material and various crafting necessities.

Traveling out into the marshes alone was committing suicide. It wasn’t a reasonable request. Anyone sane simply wouldn’t have allowed a noncombatant to do that.

“Tobias said he would be fine.” Jody interjected with an embarrassed expression.

Damien was momentarily speechless, “-and you just believed him? He’s a craftsman, not a ranker… What does he know about traveling on the frontier?”

“Well-”

“No excuses… Organize a search party.” Damien interrupted her, he couldn’t stand the random excuses people gave for their idiotic actions. “Find him! Hopefully before he gets himself killed. Even if he wanted to go out into the marshes, you should’ve taken a group to escort him…”

Although Jody disapproved of his scolding of her actions, she merely nodded without further complaint. “Okay.”

“Am I the only sane person in this guild?” Damien muttered to himself as he walked away.

Sadly, while Jody previously had no trouble finding Kara and her associates with her guild’s help, finding Tobias was not as easy. Tobias’ unnoticed ability automatically obstructed their usual tracking methods. Jody could only helplessly travel toward the location she’d sent him, while feeling extremely guilty and regretful. The failure of tracking through their abilities usually meant that the target was dead.

Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t even send a search party if tracking failed. Jody only held a small amount of hope due to Tobias mentioning he had a stealth-type ability and that she had sent him to a specific location. Although finding someone in the marshes without a predefined location was effectively impossible... with a location, it was theoretically possible.

At sunrise the next day, Tobias began the return trip through the marshes from the mini-island that housed the griffins. Mere hours after he left, Jody and her search team arrived on the mini-island.

It could be said that Tobias was quite unlucky.

Had Tobias waited and met the team, their ability to track people would’ve led him straight to Kara and her group. That would’ve saved the time and effort of returning to the base camp. Instead Tobias had returned to the base camp empty-handed without anything to show for his trip beside muddy, soaking wet clothes.

As Jody had been forced out into the wilderness along with the people responsible for tracking, it was impossible for Tobias to launch another expedition attempt into the marshes to search for Kara upon returning to the base.

Thus, Tobias spent the next few days simply waiting around in the base camp.

This delay allowed Kara and her team to recover, which gave Kara precious time to recover from the internal injury that resulted from spying on Tobias.

It could be called a cascade of bad luck… or if someone was more dramatic, it could be called the hindrance of fate.

In Tobias’ previous timeline, Kara had only created the fate of her death several days before entering the Decima game.

However… whether through a series of coincidences or the arrangement of fate, Tobias’ appearance at the griffin’s nest piqued Kara’s interest in the treasures that she’d received there.

As the other two treasures were relatively normal, Kara’s attention had been narrowed down onto the Decima game token with its vague description. As her curiosity rose about what had attracted such a strong person to that location and Kara utilized her ability to create a fate to gain more information about the token.

This could be called a significant misunderstanding.

After getting injured last time, Kara didn’t dare to utilize her ability to search for information about Tobias directly. Thus, to obtain information, Kara started from the objects the man was likely searching for at that location.

…and such a situation caused the creation of fate to play out in a similar manner to last time.

Preordaining her own future fatal injuries.

Normally, Kara was more careful... seeing a few key moments before canceling her ability.

However... upon seeing Rin’s appearance in the fate, Kara couldn’t bring herself to end the fate early and tried to obtain as much information as possible.

Indirectly, by trying to prevent the creation of this fate, Tobias had created its existence.

Not that he knew that… Tobias had taken to waiting inside the King’s Prophet building for their return.

When everyone in Kara’s group had recovered enough to make the trip back to base. Kara returned to their guild building with the ten people and the various loot acquired.

Upon noticing her return, Tobias spoke up. “Kara? A word please.”

“Huh? When did you get back in here scum?!” A man from before noticed his existence upon hearing him speak.

Another shouted from the crowd, “Demon slayer trash! Didn’t we tell you to get out-”

“Quiet!” Kara immediately recognized Tobias from her earlier fate and knew exactly how dangerous he was.

The crowd that had been getting louder and louder fell into silence. Before turning toward their guild leader in confusion.

“Everyone go out.” Kara waved toward the door, “I need to speak with him alone.”

After Kara had watched Tobias destroy the griffin’s mate instantly, before injuring her with a mere gaze, Kara knew exactly how powerful he was. How could she allow her guild to continue angering him? What if he decided to simply kill them all?

“Thank you.” Tobias breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the crowd disperse.

Waited for her guild members to leave before Kara said, “Why are you here?”

The most important question in Kara’s mind was why a powerhouse had invaded their guild territory and wanted to specifically talk with her. Most likely he wanted the Decima game token, but Kara simply couldn’t give it up at this point.

Now that a fate had been created with it, Kara needed the token for more information.  

“Okay…” Tobias opened his mouth before shutting it, breathing deeply and beginning his rambling. “I’m here to warn you… Sorry- I’m not sure how much I should tell you… about- well, everything.”

In silence, Kara narrowed her eyes.

This discussion wasn’t going the way she thought it would. Why would he care about saving or warning her?

“Uhh- Right, I’ll get to the point.” Tobias interpreted her silence as a request to get to the point, “If you’re not careful your ability will kill you. I’m forgetting the exact timeline, but in approximately three months the Decima game will open and using your ability will put you in a life-threatening position.”

Without changing her expression, Kara listened to his explanation and internally scolded him for being slightly too late with delivering his message.

“So… if you could just- not do that.” Tobias stated before concluding, “… my life would get a whole lot easier.”

Kara silently assessed and evaluated the situation, trying to figure out how exactly he knew this information. Foresight didn’t make any sense as she’d seen his ability to petrify creatures. Could people have more than one ability?

Meanwhile, Tobias was lost because Kara’s expression hadn’t changed in the slightest throughout this entire conversion. He’d just told her she might die, and she hadn’t reacted in the slightest.

“Unless you’ve already seen that fate?” Tobias randomly guessed, trying to probe her.

His attempt to probe for information failed of course, Kara’s expression gave zero information. Her focus was on her internal thoughts.

The fate that Kara had foreseen in advance, along with his warning, meant that Kara knew this deadly danger far in advance compared to last time. That only barely reduced the difficulty of avoiding it, though.

After completely failing to get a reaction out of her, Tobias complained to himself, “You two are too bloody similar.”

Hearing his mutter, Kara caught onto this piece of information. “Who am I similar to?”

Tobias froze and internally regretted that he’d apparently muttered that aloud instead of silently. Contemplating the pros and cons, Tobias decided the highest chance of convincing Kara of the upcoming dangers was to be honest with her.

Due to poker face, Tobias misunderstood and had no clue that Kara already took the warning seriously and thought she was merely contemplating whether to believe him.

Tobias barely managed to speak out, “Rin. Your sister.”

Kara’s expression brightened upon hearing the news of her sister.

Before seeing Rin in the fate, Kara had thought she come to strange universe alone. Kara’s ability had been completely unable to find Rin before interacting with the Decima game token.

While Kara didn’t know the exact limitations of her ability, she only knew related objects and information lowered those limitations. Any sort of information about Rin was extremely good news.

“You’ve seen Rin? Where is she?” Kara quickly spoke and stepped toward him for information. Compared to her potential death, this news was far more important to her. Kara’s ability to create a fate already provided enough information about her potential death, the only new information from Tobias was the time period.

“Where else would she be? I imagine you’ve checked everywhere else at this point.” Tobias rolled his eyes.

Thinking about the man’s strength and connection to Rin, Kara immediately arrived at a conclusion. “Hell Difficulty.”

“Ding, ding.” Tobias’ expression loosened, and he shrugged, “You’re right. No extra points for that, though.”

Understanding the key points, Kara immediately bombarded him with questions, “How is she? What’s your relationship to her? Can you take me to her?”

“Uhh-” Tobias found his brain stalling from the question barrage. “Rin’s fine, but I don’t know where she is currently.”

Kara calmed down and backed away from him, “Thank you for the warning.”

“No problem.” Tobias nodded, watching her expression. “Anyway, be careful when you utilize your ability and it should be fine.”

“Your message is already too late.” Kara emotionlessly informed. Clearly, she didn’t like anyone seeing her actual thoughts, normally keeping them to herself if Rin wasn’t around.

“Too late.” Tobias closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’ve already created the fate. Damn.”

“If there’s nothing else…” Gesturing toward the door, Kara indicated for him to leave. She needed time to process the information she’d learned. As he had never indicated having a proper connection with Rin, having a dangerous man like him around was a potentially liability.

Preparing to leave, Tobias shook his head in annoyance at failing and waved, “Goodbye, then.”

“Wait… what’s your name?” Kara realized the man had never introduced himself. While he knew her, she knew barely anything about him.

“Tobias.” He responded by tipping an imaginary hat before waving goodbye.