Chapter 32.1 The Promised Land
Sergey ran for his life through the forest. The huge bear behind him gave a terrifying roar. He had never seen such a tall black bear before. It obviously no longer belonged to the category of living things. Could he escape by himself? Sergey didn’t know. He had experienced too many such things, and each time he narrowly escaped death. Being able to get out alive was like a miracle given by the Lord. He didn’t know if a miracle would happen this time, but he would do his best to save his life before the miracle happened.
Irina was his partner, a beautiful Russian girl. Like most people, she did this job just because she lacked money. Yes, if it weren’t for lack of money, who would risk their lives to do such a dangerous job? No one knew what kind of terrifying heretical thing they would encounter next, and no one knew whether they could successfully seal it. Everything was unknown, full of danger, and yet made people feel unprecedented excitement.
Sergey was different from most people. He only found excitement in doing this job. He saw all kinds of items that defied scientific common sense and experienced all kinds of horrific events. Sergey’s family was wealthy, but he was addicted to this job and could not extricate himself. Working on the edge of death made him experience the meaning of life.
Sergey listened to the roar of the monster behind him, and his blood pumped with adrenaline. He ran with all his strength and did not dare to stop for a moment. When he was exhausted, he gasped and collapsed on the ground. There was no trace of his companions around. Sergey lay on the ground and laughed. He laughed for a while, then stopped, hummed a song, and got up from the ground. He straightened his appearance, turned around and went back along the original path.
On the way back, he saw a lot of signs of damage to trees, but there were no corpses or bloodstains as he had imagined. It seemed that everyone had escaped. Sergey took out his notebook and took notes as he walked. In the notes, he detailed the appearance of the monster and the frightened expressions of everyone. He clearly remembered that he seemed to have heard a gunshot, but he didn’t know which unlucky guy fired the gun and attracted the bear.
After finishing the record, Sergey began to plan the next trip. All his equipment was still with him, and he could last for more than half a month with the water and food. However, some people were not as lucky as him. On the way back, he saw Irina’s equipment. The equipment contained all of the supplies, water, food, flint and steel, and a series of other items necessary for survival in the forest. It seemed that Irina threw these things away in order to reduce the weight when she was running for her life.
Sergey made a general inspection and felt that the situation was not good. He had better find the missing Irina as soon as possible, otherwise she would have almost no hope of surviving. However, was it possible? In this strange forest, Sergey was really unsure.
According to the stipulated rules, everyone would gather in the direction of the water source after losing their way in the forest. The same was true for Sergey, but he was still a little worried about his partner, so he circled the radius of the group a few times, but unfortunately, he didn’t find any teammates.
The forest was so dense that searching for people in it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sergey wandered around in it for two or three days before finally giving up and starting to walk towards the water source.
This forest was obviously abnormal. There were no traces of insects. The leaves didn’t seem to wither. They were all green and shiny. It was fine during the day, but at night, the empty silence made Sergey uncomfortable. It was a subtle discomfort. He was clearly in a wide-open forest, but he had a strange illusion of being trapped in a narrow, dark, confined space.
As a recorder, Sergey recorded all his true feelings in a black notebook. He knew that if he was unfortunately killed, then this black notebook would be a black box-like existence that could help others to unlock his true feelings and the mystery of his death.
This was a fascinating approach. Sergey wrote with gusto by the flickering light of the campfire. When the tip of his pen drew the last full stop on it, there was a sound of a voice. The sound was so harsh in the dead forest that Sergei could hardly ignore it. Upon hearing this voice, Sergey immediately stopped writing, stuffed his notebook into his pocket, and then held the shotgun in his backpack.
“Who? Who’s there??” Sergey asked warily.
After a noise in the grass, a figure that Sergey didn’t expect slowly walked out. His eyes widened and he said in shock: “Irina, is that you? Irina?”
“It’s me, Sergey.” Irina replied in embarrassment. She walked out of the woods crying, wiping her tears, and sobbing, “I finally found someone. I thought I would die in the forest.”
“Are you okay? I searched for you for two days and couldn’t find you.” Sergey and Irina have been partners for almost two years, and they have been on many missions during this period. He had a very good relationship with this beautiful girl, and he also liked her. Irina could endure hardship and being frightened, much better than some men who scream when frightened.
“I’m fine,” Irina said, “I was just really hungry.”
Sergey was about to ask her how she survived these days, after all, there was neither water nor food around her, but before he could ask the question, he noticed that Irina was carrying a huge pink backpack behind her…
“Damn it, I don’t know which bastard took away all the food in my backpack.” Irina’s next words completely silenced Sergey and he no longer dared to speak. She said, “Fortunately, I took this with me.” There’s some food in the bag I’m carrying, otherwise I’d really starve to death.”
Sergey was a little confused and didn’t dare to say anything. He did not touch Irina’s backpack at that time, although he did not expect that Irina could be found again… Sergey muttered a few times in his heart but did not hesitate a lot on this matter and said: “Come on, I still have a lot of water and biscuits, you can eat some.”
“No, I’m full.” Irina actually refused Sergey’s invitation.
She walked to Sergey’s side, sat down, and put her backpack behind her: “I just ate a lot, and I’m not hungry yet.”
Sergey said: “Where did you find the food?”
Irina said: “I found it in the forest. There is a lot of food here.”
Sergey stared, not sure whether Irina was joking, but seeing that she really had no intention of asking for food, he thought to himself that maybe he was too careless and missed something to eat?
Irina said: “Where do we go next? I couldn’t find anyone else.”
“Go to the river.” Sergey said, “They will definitely gather there. Do you want to rest first?”
“Okay, I’ll keep watch for the rest of the night.” Irina yawned and fell asleep leaning on her backpack unceremoniously. Sergey looked at her bulging backpack and felt a little strange. It had been several days, so why was the backpack still bulging. However, he didn’t have the nerve to ask, so he simply focused his attention elsewhere.
Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye it was three o’clock in the morning. Irina woke up in a daze, rubbing her eyes and let Sergey rest while she kept vigil.
“How about you sleep a little longer?” Sergey said gentlemanly, “I’m not too sleepy yet.”
“No need.” Irina rejected his kindness. She took out her notebook and said that she had not recorded today’s situation and asked Sergey to rest.
After hearing this, Sergey stopped being polite and fell asleep next to the campfire. With someone keeping watch, he naturally slept much more soundly than he had in the past few days, but in his sleep, he heard an uncomfortable chewing sound, as if someone was chewing raw meat or something next to him. He was always alert and woke up from his sleep in an instant. He carefully opened his eyes a little and saw Irina with her head lowered and her back to him.
Sergey straightened up to see what she was doing, but Irina heard the sound of him getting up. She stopped for a moment, turned her head, and smiled at Sergey: “You’re awake.”
Sergey looked at her smile and felt a chill down his back for some reason. He whispered: “Irina, are you okay? What are you eating?”
“I’m eating a hare.” Irina said, “I caught it from the woods before.” She said, holding up a bloody piece of meat with her hand. Sergey felt his stomach churn when he saw the meat. He hesitated, “Shouldn’t you cook it?”
“Ah! That’s right!” Irina suddenly realized, “I would have forgotten about the fire if you didn’t tell me.”
Sergey stopped talking. It was impossible for him to ignore such an obvious difference in Irina. He thought for a moment and asked tentatively: “Irina, have you met other teammates in the past few days?”
“Other teammates?” Irina thought for a while, “No, I didn’t meet other teammates.” She grinned and showed a bright smile, but the blood stains on her white teeth made him feel… It was extremely creepy.
She said, “From beginning to end, I was the only one.”
Sergey sighed and his eyes stayed on Irina, as if he was judging whether she was lying. Irina said indifferently: “How would I have been so hungry if I met other teammates.”
Sergey said: “Also…”
“It’s dawn, let’s keep walking.” Irina looked at the morning light on the horizon. Her voice was particularly gentle as she said, “I still prefer the daytime, at least at this time, I can catch more hares.”
Sergey was silent. He didn’t know if the hare that Irina was talking about was a real rabbit, but he was already curious about what exactly Irina was carrying in that pink backpack that looked particularly heavy. Obviously, the current Irina would not answer his question. Sergey licked his lips and uttered two words dryly: “Let’s go.”
The one-person team turned into two people, which should have made the trip easier. However, Irina’s abnormality made it impossible for Sergey to relax. At noon, Irina still refused to eat. Instead, she just sat and watched him eat a few compressed biscuits.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Sergey asked carefully.
“I’m not hungry.” Irina answered so calmly, “I ate a lot last night so I’m not hungry at all.”
Sergey said: “But…”
Irina looked at him: “But what?”
“Forget it, it’s nothing.” Sergey stopped trying to communicate with her. After several missions, he naturally saw various infected recorders. Some of them survived, some died, but without exception, some incomprehensible abnormalities appeared on their bodies. Being in a strange place and doing strange things, it was difficult for Sergey to tell what happened to Irina. He grasped the pistol placed close to his body and stayed alert.
Except when eating, Irina was normal most of the time, and even occasionally reminded Sergey to take notes.
“Have you encountered anything strange since you were separated from the team?” Irina asked curiously.
“No,” Sergey said, “I’ve been alone and haven’t met anything else.”
“Really, that’s a pity.” Irina smiled, “I know you do this job for excitement, but I’m different from you, I just do it for the money.”
She suddenly mentioned this, which made Sergey feel a little uncomfortable. He said, “What do you want to say?”
“I actually have a little secret that I have never dared to tell. I’m afraid that if I tell them, I will lose my job.” Irina said.
“What secret?” Sergey asked.
Translator’s comments:
Hey guys. As mentioned, my life has been a bit crazy for the last two weeks and will be into the foreseeable future. So, I have to make a decision about the release times and frequency of the chapters for the novels I translate.
Since nobody commented their opinion on this decision, I have decided to continue with what I feel would work best. So, I have decided to cut all longer chapters in half. This means that the chapters will be shorter but I will still be updating every day. If this doesn’t work I will have to change to only posting new chapters a few times a week.
If possible please consider supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi. I will be working on a stockpile for Patreon where you can read advanced chapters for as little as $3 a month. Alternatively, I will release an extra chapter for every Ko-fi donation I receive. It might not be on that exact day, but it will be released within the week.
