"Let me see that map…" Dion leaned forward impatiently, bringing Ino's hand which held the map closer to him. When he saw our exact location and how far away we were to our destination, he frowned even deeper and complained. "Gosh… how is it that we are so near yet so far?"

Ino instantly yanked her hand back and continued moving. She then shrugged and said, "Maybe we would have gotten there already, if you didn't stop every ten minutes just to check how far we were."

Dion sighed and picked up pace, following after her.

The rest of us trudged wearily behind the two of them.

To be frank, we could all share in Dion's frustration. After all, it had already been a week since we began this journey northwest, and we were exhausted and desperate to leave this territory.

The travel was made unbearable not only by the ever-present, pervasive stench of decay which made every breath difficult but also because every creature here was rotten, making them unfit to eat.

Consequently, the entire party had been surviving on a single meal a day for the whole week, with all rations sourced entirely from my inventory. Truth be told, if I did not have the inventory or meal rations in them, everyone here would have probably completely starved by now.

For now, it was not a problem as I had enough food in the inventory to last a few more weeks, if not days. However, if we did not get out of here to a territory where we could hunt, we would eventually run out of supplies, and this problem would become impossible to ignore.

The only good thing about this was the positive karma points I gained every time I gave a meal from my inventory without requesting anything back. However, the amount of positive karma I earned was different each day, which allowed me to learn a few things about how karma accumulation truly worked.

On the first night of our trip, after we found a cave to rest, I gave out a meal to each of the six party members, but I made them all owe me a favor in return. As a result, I earned zero positive karma points.

On the second night, I provided a meal to everyone, but this time, I didn't ask for any favors. This act of genuine generosity resulted in me gaining fifty positive karma points for each meal, totaling three hundred karma points.

When I saw this huge return, I grew a bit happy and decided to be a karma farmer, thinking I could accumulate as many positive points as possible.

However, the reward dropped immediately. When I gave out meals on the third day without asking for anything in return, I earned only twenty-five karma points for each person. On the fourth day, it dropped even more, to only ten karma points per person. By the fifth day, I received nothing at all.

This led me to understand that accumulating karma was far more complex than I initially thought. When I considered this strange pattern, I came up with a few hypotheses about how the system of karma accumulation worked.

It looked like intention played a role in accumulating karma points.

For negative karma points, I figured that it didn't matter if I lied a hundred times; the amount gained would be the same each time because the intent was simply to do bad to gain something for myself. However, for positive karma points, the moment my intention changed from doing good purely to help others to doing it in order to gain something for myself, the amount of karma points would drop significantly or might not be earned at all.

In other words, in order to gain a significant amount of positive karma, I needed to be completely altruistic, or even self-sacrificing.

But then again, being completely altruistic especially in a world like this felt like a recipe for disaster.

To be honest, if you ask me, I think I'd prefer being selfish to gain negative Karma than altruistic to gain positive. After all, the path to negative karma was straight forward and would keep me alive which at the end of all things, was my only real priority.

Setting the topic of karma points aside, I glanced up to see that it was currently almost sunset.

The party had been walking briskly since morning in an attempt to reach our destination before nightfall, as there was no other cave in front of us to where we could take shelter.

"We need to pick up pace!" Ino called out, her voice muffled as she covered her nose with the crook of her elbow, stepping quickly across the massive body of a two-meter Grave Hound.

The party tiredly picked up pace following behind her.

Almost fifty minutes later, the sun finally slipped entirely below the jagged horizon, and the entire territory was plunged into the rapid, deep gloom of nautical twilight.

At this point, it was Dion who spun around to face us and spoke:

"Uhm… guys, I think we might need to run to make it."

We all slowed, exchanged a single, urgent glance, nodded sharply in mutual agreement, and immediately broke into a sprint.

Luckily, we couldn't see any monster bodies on the floor in front of us. It seemed we had already bypassed the main concentration of them in the rear, which probably meant we were close to the crossing territory.

However, after barely five minutes of running, we heard the first howl in the distance.

Panicked, we immediately picked up speed, racing even faster, until we finally came to the end of the dying forest of the Merdini's Burial Ground.

What met us immediately was the beginning of a vast territory that was a sea of green grasses taller than us, stretching as far as we could see in all directions.

Without pausing for a breath, I struck a matchstick, then lit up my makeshift torch. It quickly caught on fire as it had been dipped in oil from my oil lamp earlier today.

"Quick, light the torches!" I yelled, immediately reaching over to ignite the torch held by the person closest to me, which was Celeste.

As Celeste's torch flared to life, she instantly turned to help light Evelyn's.

At the same moment, Aika smoothly produced a long rope from the inventory. She secured one end around her own wrist, then tied the other end onto mine, and moved swiftly to secure it onto the others as well.

By the time she finished, everyone had lit their torches. She then picked up her own and lit it directly against mine.

But just then, a closer howl caused us to snap our attention back, and that was when we spotted two massive Grave Hounds lunging towards us.

I quickly turned to the party members, who were staring at me with wide eyes full of fear, then spoke quickly. "Remember, no matter what, do not let the flame from your torches go out, and please, stay really close to each other."

Before they could even respond, I turned back toward the grass, then yelled, "Run!"

Immediately, all of us quickly spun and plunged into the tall grass.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.