Aika had already taken the last sip from her canteen as she continued down the path. First her throat just felt dry, and now she felt like there were pins forming in it.
She remembered hearing that someone could last three days without drinking. She would've reached another town by that time, but she didn't want it to take that long. What if a heatwave were to break through the crisp temperatures? What if something got her completely off-course? She had plans for reaching Yuki and then Hunter, but the immediate future remained uncertain.
The path she was on went through a forest. The flowers grew and the leaves were in bloom. It provided a beautiful spring sight, but made it harder to see surroundings than bare trees did. Aika used her large ears to listen around her and stay observant of her surroundings, even when vision was obscured. As she kept listening, she eventually heard something: gently flowing water.
Opening her eyes and moving in the direction, she was able to find a stream. Not quite large enough to be a river, but the flow of water was constant. She pulled out her empty canteen and stepped down to see the stream, observing its mostly clear water.
"Is this safe for me to be drinking? This isn't exactly purified." Aika momentarily thought to herself. "Well, pokemon have been around for thousands of years and water purification hasn't always been a thing. Surely they've had to drink something."
She sipped a bit directly at first. It was slightly bitter and not nearly as good as the water she'd normally have, but it was better than the pins in her throat. She took more sips of it to quench her immediate thirst, and then filled her canteen up. After putting the cap back on, she was ready to return to the path.
Aika checked what she had in her backpack again. She still had some food, but it wouldn't be enough for the entire journey. The coins she had on her were simultaneously the most and least valuable thing she had. If she got to another town then she could use it to purchase all sorts of resources, but when she was in the wild it was just extra weight. Aika was wishing she had something she could flavor water with, she wished had something more to entertain herself with, she wished she had something sweet to eat. There were a lot of logistics to an adventure, and she was quickly realizing that.
She looked around the forest again, and she saw a bush with berries. The berries were still small and mostly green, blatantly not ripe yet. Even if they weren't in the prime, she figured they must surely still be edible. Aika began walking up to the berries, looking forward to being able to eat something different and be able to ration the food she had with her more. But once she got close to it, she hesitated. "What if they're poisonous?" she pondered.
If she were to eat something which poisoned her, then that would be it. She didn't have a Pecha berry with her, or anyone else that could carry her to safety. For all she knew, those berries could mark a very unceremonious end for her. That dread made her head feel fuzzy and she turned away from them.
There wasn't much else for her in that forest, so she kept moving forward.
The further she went, the more unnerved she felt. First it was just a tiny worm in the back of her mind, but that feeling just amplified the further she went. She kept checking her surroundings for anything lying in wait. The flat path itself also seemed to be unusual, becoming both thinner and keeping an unnaturally consistent width.
Eventually, a thought crossed Aika's mind: "Is this a mystery dungeon?"
The thought seemed like a ludicrous notion at first, yet the more she looked around, the more the details seemed to fall into place. She thought about the path she'd been going for the last few minutes, and how it didn't seem to match the map she had. She should've been out of the forest by now. She also casted her mind back to the story of how her parents first met: with Tamin saying she'd entered a mystery dungeon without realizing it.
Aika lowered her head and took another glance around her, looking more carefully for if anything was camouflaged. "If this is a mystery dungeon, when did I enter one? I hope I didn't drink water from one," she thought. "There was a very sharp turn the path took a bit ago, that might've been the entrance to this place. That was after I drank from the stream, so that's reassuring.
Why didn't my map warn me about this? Well I suppose that book was a few years old."
She began skulking around the the forest, checking around the trees with careful movement. Her soft minccino feet served her well in letting her avoid making too much noise. Rather than moving deeper in, she began backtracking to go back to where she had come from.
Aika felt her fears being confirmed when she heard something she wished she hadn't: the sound of skittering, and the occasional crowing. It wasn't a voice or speaking, it was just crowing. Aika had been alone not long ago, but she wasn't anymore.
She stopped in place, softly breathed in, then softly exhaled to ease her own tension somewhat. Listening carefully, she could estimate where the pokemon were in relation to each other. She couldn't pinpoint their exact locations and had no idea which direction they were facing, but it was still valuable information to have.
"Seems like they're in the path I took to get into this place. I can't just backtrack without running into them," Aika thought to herself. "If I run into them I could just try running out of here. But I don't know how long I'll have to be running for, and this dungeon might just have false paths which lead me to dead ends."
Aika took a turn to head back a side back, being sure to keep her sense of direction. She walked slowly and quietly, not creating a noise more than she needed to. Find a way back while avoiding confrontation: that was the objective.
After a minute, Aika came onto another sharp turn in the constrained forest path. She peeked around the corner before advancing, and saw something she wished she hadn't: a yungoos.
Aika quickly pulled backwards before she was seen. She checked behind her, and she kept listening. The yungoos was walking closer to her.
Aika ducked down to hide in the underbrush. She took off her green backpack and placed it in front of her, giving her slightly more camouflage in the foliage.
She kept waiting and listening. The pokemon was getting closer. Its shadow became visible, and it was closing in. Aika placed her paw over her mouth and curled up further behind her backpack, still waiting.
The yungoos stepped even closer, becoming visible again. It seemed to stop, sniff around and-
Aika leapt out at the yungoos at full speed, immediately attacking with her tail and paws. She connected attacks to the pokemon's neck as it was surprised. It stammered backwards and she quickly continued her attacks, not relenting until it stopped moving.
Aika breathed through her teeth. Her surprise attack was successful and not much noise was created from it, but she knew she didn't have time to waste. Aika quickly grabbed her backpack again, and then continued in the direction she was going.
She kept going in the general direction she had come from. It was impossible for her to gauge how vast the mystery dungeon was in any direction, but she knew she had to keep going forward. She slowed her pace. Running out was an instinctual response, but she knew she'd be better off walking to preserve her energy and keep the noise down.
Eventually, she turned another corner, and a dead end revealed itself to her. It was frustrating, but the area wouldn't warp just because he complained about it. She turned around and backtracked so she could take another path to find a way back out. But as she walked forward, she heard noises approaching. It wasn't just one pokemon this time, it was several.
Aika couldn't just run back, she was cornered. She could try to fight, but the odds weren't in her favor. Aika thought quickly, and she found a third option. She grabbed the bark of the trees beside her and quickly climbed upwards, getting up in the branches. There she waited.
Three dungeon pokemon, a ratatta, an aipom, and an yongoos entered the pathway and looked around. They seemingly heard some noises, and were searching for the cause. From above, Aika looked down at them. "Please don't look up, please don't look up," she thought to herself.
She watched the pokemon look to their sides and sniff the ground. Aika stood perfectly still as her muscles tensed up. It wasn't even a full minute, but it seemed to extend on forever as Aika's mind darted around, thinking up contingency plans for if they noticed her. But after those few seconds, the three pokemon began moving again. Aika watched as they left the area, and listened as they continued to walk away.
"I don't need to play by this place's rules," Aika thought to herself. "All I need to do is get out of here in one piece.
I am the daughter of the legendary human slayer. I am not going down to something like this."
When the coast was clear, Aika quietly climbed down from the tree branches and continued quietly skulking around the mystery dungeon.
She was getting closer to the entrance, she could feel it. She'd traveled some distance, and was confident that she kept her direction straight (the dungeon's tendency for sharp corners helped with that). Even still, she was reluctant to sprint the rest of the way out in case she were to hit another dead end.
As Aika continued walking forward, she came onto a clearing. It was wider than what else she had seen from that mystery dungeon. She only peeked one eye out to view it, limiting how visible she was. The clearing had multiple paths out, but it also had multiple dungeon pokemon in it.
She thought carefully on how to proceed. Aika was confident in her fighting skills, but not foolish enough to gamble on that alone. She looked around her feet, and found a stone that wasn't far from her. She went and picked it up, and then looked carefully at the clearing again.
She waited. She didn't need them to leave, she only needed them all to look away for one moment. Once that moment came, she chucked the stone across the room to another one of the paths out, where it loudly hit against the bark of a tree. The heads of the pokemon turned to it in surprise, then approached it in curiosity.
That distraction was her chance. She dashed across the room while continuing to minimize her noise, getting to one of the clearing's exits again. She continued the path and rounded another corner, where she then quickly climbed up another tree. She paused for another moment, both to cool her nerves and to see if any pokemon was pursuing her. She could feel she was even closer to the way out.
From there, she continued to climb from branch to branch, staying above the ground. "If any pokemon sees me, I can ambush them like I did with that first one," she reassured herself.
Aika kept moving and moving. Eventually, she felt that the atmosphere was different. She looked around herself: the paths no longer formed sharp corners and straight corridors, the foliage didn't seem to be redundant anymore, and the lighting was varied. Things made sense again, Aika was out of the mystery dungeon.
She breathed a sigh of relief to herself. The immediate danger was done, but she knew she'd wasted quite a bit of time on her journey. She checked her maps again. The forest she was in was supposed to not be that large, though it was directly along her path to her destination. Instead of taking another path in the forest and trying her luck again, Aika decided it would be better to abandon the forest altogether. She picked another route to Evelyn Forest that was longer, but safer.
She signed again. Not to ease her nerves, but in annoyance. This journey was going to become even longer. She took another swig from her canteen, tasting the water that was only pure enough to be healthy. Complaining wouldn't make the path shorter, the only thing she could do was keep on moving forward.
Being in a life-risking scenario in a mystery dungeon certainly made boring walks seem better by comparison.
The day was a long one. After making it out of the normal forest, Aika stepped off the beaten path by leaving the cleared out road. She walked across the grassy plains, following alongside the side of the forest as she planned for another town.
It was past noon by the time she was out of the forest, it then moved to dusk, and then sun began dipping below the horizon. Aika didn't have much to allow her to comfortably camp out, so she continued walking onwards in spite of her increasing tiredness.
In the darkness of the night, even small towns produced light pollution that made them visible from a distance. It was faint, but it was enough to be a beacon for Aika to follow. It was midnight by that time, but she arrived at her second town.
Her eyes were half-closed from tiredness at that point, but with a bit of effort she could make them look like they were half-closed because she was focused instead. As she walked into the town, she watched as one of the houses turned their lights off for the night. She couldn't see a soul walking, so the lights were the only sign that this wasn't a ghost town at that hour. She still had coins on her, so she only needed to find a place to stay the night.
All the lights blurred her eyes, everytime she moved her head it took her a second to properly make out the new things she saw. But in the blurry town, she was able to make out a sign with the words "Twilight My Light Motel". The building was still open, so rest was finally in reach.
End of chapter 8.