Chapter 3: Plunge

James tore through the forest, heart beating at a million beats per second.  The pines remained ever present around him, however, the silence of the forest had been disturbed.  The sound of his footsteps on the forest floor.  The sound of his heart beating loudly in his ears.  And the sound of a wolf yipping in glee as it chased James through the forest.  Obviously it was having the time of its life chasing its prey.  

On the other hand, James was not enjoying the chase one bit.  After deciding to give the Tower’s first floors a try, James had started walking in a random direction, as the forest all looked the same to him.  However, after only five minutes he had come face to face with the wolf who was currently chasing him.  The wolf had been massive, its fur was a dark grayish-blue, and its drool filled maw was full of razor sharp looking teeth.  Obviously, James had made the only reasonable decision.  He had booked it in the opposite direction. 

James had now been running for a fair amount of time, and he was starting to get fatigued.  His legs were cramping, and he felt like he was about to throw up.  He forced himself to try and think of a way to get out of the situation. He could climb a tree, but by the time he started climbing, the wolf would have easily caught up to him, and pulled him down. He could try and fight but… James risked a peek over his shoulder.  ‘Nope definitely not happening,’ he thought looking at the wolf’s massive size.  The only other option he could think of was to continue running.  By weaving in and out of the trees, he was somehow able to keep the wolf a few steps behind him, but he knew that he could probably only last for a few more minutes before his body collapsed due to overstraining his body.

Just as James thought the situation could not get worse he heard a howl in the distance, followed by a few more. ‘Are you shitting me,’ James screamed in his mind, ‘there’s more?  Isn’t this supposed to be the first floor where I fight some weak crap like slimes, not a whole pack of unnaturally large wolves!’

James started pushing himself to run even faster, breaking limits he didn’t even know he had as adrenaline coursed through his body.  He knew that if the rest of the wolves surrounded him, he would be toast, so he pushed on, desperately searching for anything that could save him from this seemingly hopeless situation.

But nothing could be found, and all James could do was continue running.  However, all of a second his ears perked up.  He could hear a roaring sound in the distance.  ‘Maybe that’s  a river, and if I could just make it there, hopefully I can swim across faster than the wolves, and gain some ground on the wolves. And using that time I can find a place to hide or climb a tree or something.’  And with thought, an extra surge of energy surged through James.  He ran like he never had before, all for the gamble that he would be able to swim across the river faster than the wolves.

The roaring noise was getting louder.  James took a quick glance behind, and saw two of the wolves a few feet behind him.  But that is not what worried him the most. To his right he could see another wolf running to his side by a dozen or so feet, trying to flank him. James turned his head away from the wolf to his side, and faced his head forward again putting all his focus into running as fast as he physically could.

Suddenly James could see it.  A break in the trees ahead.  James rushed forward, the wolves hot on his heels.  He could hear the wolves start yipping more and more in excitement as they pulled closer to their prey, but James ignored them.

He broke out of the trees.  But his eyes widened as what he hoped would be before him wasn’t.  Instead he was running toward a deep canyon.  He looked around, and saw that about two-hundred yards to his right was a river, which then formed a waterfall and ended up in the canyon below.  But James didn’t have the time to run another two-hundred yards to his right.  The wolves were right on his heels, and they were much faster than him on open ground.  So he took the only option he had left.  He jumped.

---

When James was eleven years old, his parents had managed to save enough money to bring him on a vacation to Firage City: the capital city of the nation Firage, the country from which James was from.  That was the first time that James had been more than one-hundred miles away from Cidmont, where he was born and raised.  Thus, this trip had been very exciting for him.

And the trip lived up to his expectations, and was quite fun.  James was very close to his parents, so it had been an absolute joy to go and visit all the famous tourist attractions in Firage City.  That was until that one fateful night.

It was the last day of their five day stay in Firage City, and they went to the world famous Firage Concert Hall to see a ballet his parents had been really excited about.

However, on that Night, disaster struck.  A member of foreign royalty happened to also be in attendancet.  A group who were planning to kidnap the foreign royal family member for unknown reasons had attacked the concert hall.  While the kidnappers were there, they had brutally murdered everyone in attendance in order to limit the number of loose variables while they pulled off the kidnapping.

Ultimately the police had arrived ten minutes after the kidnapping and found a terrified James buried under the bodies of his dead parents.  Luckily James was physically healthy when they found him, but that was the limit to the good news.  His parents death had left him with no known family members, leaving him to finish up his adolescence alone in the apartment of the government's Minors Security Program.  But that damage paled in comparison to the mental harm James was dealt that day.  The terror of seeing hundreds of people including his parents be brutally murdered right in front of him, and seeing the terror and anguish on those peoples faces as they died, had left James with an unnaturaly large fear of death.  A fear meaning he would do absolutely anything to avoid his own death. 

Over time, James was able to move on from his parent’s deaths.  However, the fear of death that was instilled into him on that horrible night would never disappear.  Even if he never realized that fear himself, it lay within himself, dormant until a life-threatening situation forced that instinct to come out. 

---

Time did not slow down as he plunged towards the river down below.  In fact it seemed to speed up as the river seemed to rush up to meet him at unimaginable speeds.

[User has avoided Phantom Wolves for 12.34662 minutes. Calculating points and experience gained…]

[User has avoided succumbing to despair in front of Phantom Wolves.  User has been awarded title {fearless}]

[Total points and experience calculated, user has been awarded 12,02--]

[Error detected, System recalculating…]

James heard some system messages as he tumbled towards the river, but he couldn’t be bothered to focus on those messages at that exact moment.  As James was about to hit the river, he closed his eyes, and braced for impact.