Chapter 18: Expedition

After reluctantly ’agreeing’ to join Dido’s expedition with the War beasts, Nick followed them out of the Sanctuary with a weary look plastered on his face.

He was calculating his chances of being able to escape from them now that he was at the back of the group, but all of the scenarios he came up with just ended up with him either being recaptured and forced back into the expedition, or straight up dead.

Sure, the Federation claimed to have brought peace to the Sanctuaries, but was that really the case? Nick didn’t think so, at least not openly.

And as the strongest force in the entirety of War Beast Sanctuary, Nick was certain that if anyone could get away with murder in this place, it would be them.

He wasn’t willing to test that theory out.

Unfortunately for him, he would just have to brave this expedition out and hope that he would still be alive to make it back in time to wake Luna up the next morning.

Dido and the War Beasts had already informed him of the kind of beast they were heading out to hunt.

In fact, they had also explained more thoroughly about his role in the whole operation, which was why he hadn’t just said fuck it and attempted to escape regardless of the risk of death or recapture.

To summarise, the War Beasts were heading out to hunt a Radiant Beast, which quite frankly in Nick’s eyes, was suicidal, but that was just him. Deep down, he knew that the War Beasts did in fact have the capacity to take down those mighty beasts, but it took their whole expeditionary force to do so.

Not to mention that in the end, only one person would be able to consume the Beast Core, and subsequently the Soul Seeds one can earn from it.

As their leader, this would naturally fall upon Dido herself. In fact, although nobody except her most trusted aides, such as the annoying Meylin, knew the exact number of Radiant Soul Seeds Dido had, it was speculated to be over 200 at least.

That was the same as consuming four Radiant Beast Cores, and receiving the maximum points from every single one of them! Obviously nobody was this lucky, so the number that Dido had to consume to receive this many was even higher than that.

Besides, that was the speculated figure…

For all anyone knew, it could be even higher than that!

All people knew for certain was that it wasn’t 500, as Dido would have long ascended to the next level of the Beast Domain after reaching such an astonishing figure.

She wouldn’t stay in the first level as an Altered otherwise, not even to help her aides attain their own Radiant Soul Seeds.

She was an elite, most definitely holding two or more Radiant Beast Armaments, which made her an entirely different class of human than everyone else in the Sanctuary, except for Beast Slayer, as he was of the same class as her, being an elite himself.

This was just the way the world worked.

Of course, after hearing of all of this, Nick was just a hair’s width away from making a run for the teleporter. Why wouldn’t he!? Being bait for a Radiant Beast? Yeah, Nick would rather they just kill him then and there than be beast shit the following morning. But Dido was quite convincing in keeping him stay put to listen on — since her inhumanly strong fists did all the talking for her…

It turned out that the reason they had strung him along to be bait for the Radiant Beast was because… of his unfortunate amount of luck?

Yes, you heard that right.

Nick thought that since he was so unassuming, nobody would take notice of a weakling like him, but ever since he had killed the Awakened White Ox, the War Beasts had been keeping watch on him.

Of course, sweat nearly pooled on Nick’s brow when he heard this, since this meant they obviously saw what happened with the Sabertooth wolf. But they showed no interest in it when describing it back to him, which showed they held no suspicion towards its rank.

This massively relieved Nick, to say the bare minimum.

But the conclusion the War Beasts had come to after observing him was one thing: he was the unluckiest guy they had ever seen.

So unlucky, in fact, that he seemed to attract calamity wherever he went.

Don’t believe them?

Well, the previous day, he was sitting peacefully eating the spoils of his battles after a long and tiring day. And out of his frustration, punched a tree.

To a normal person, this would cause… absolutely nothing.

Nothing would happen from such an innocent action.

But for Nick, it invited the anger of an Awakened White Ox that happened to be nearby.

Then, the next day he sets out to hunt a Sabertooth Wolf or two, and happens to come across an Awakened Sabertooth Wolf and barely escapes with his life intact, which wasn’t even thought to exist until that point.

The War Beasts didn’t know of its rank, but they did notice its peculiar attribute of stealthily stalking its prey. For Nick to happen across a variation in beast behaviour like this on his first hunt was… unlucky.

Once is a coincidence, twice… could also be called a coincidence.

But it wasn’t just once or twice that his lack of luck had shown itself.

Earlier on the way to the teleporter, his bus got into a crash. Now this was too small of an incident compared to the other events. But the crash itself wasn’t the problem.

It was the fact that it brought to his attention that Beast Slayer also lived on Planet Terminus.

This… was perhaps the most calamitous event of all. Nick would rather face another hundred Awakened Sabertooth Wolves all at once than even be in the same Star System as Beast Slayer, let alone the same fucking planet.

Sure, once or twice might be a coincidence, but three times? All within 48 hours? Yeah, that wasn’t a coincidence.

Either the gods were laughing behind the scenes as they toyed with him, or his luck had to be so abysmally low.

Of course, the War Beasts didn’t know of the third incident, but the first two was enough for them to come to the same conclusion.

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