The first thing that Luke noticed on his journey through the sparse forest was the luxury it had once been to wear any type of footwear.
Despite his best efforts to ignore the pain of accidentally stepping on sharp, jagged rocks, it was simply a pain due to his untrained feet.
By now, it had been almost an hour since he had begun walking parallel from the pile of corpses.
Other than just not having to meet up with the bug monsters he had heard of, he wanted to find a water source that could hopefully sustain him for a while.
[Deep inside the Queen's territory there lies an inheritance to the secrets of Cultivation.]
There it was again, that whisper of opportunity. Luke could hardly contain the excitement in his chest. Just how long had it been since he had heard that type of whisper again.
It reminded him of the first time he had heard that type of whisper back on earth, back when he was just a broke college freshman.
He remembered hesitating on applying to the frat house the whisper had told him to join. He took a while to weigh out the pros and cons, carefully considering if it was worth using what little money he had.
In the end, he did follow the whisper's advice, using the connections he made from that first year alone to build a foundation for his future.
Now, presented with the same whisper, he'd be a fool to ignore it. As for the water source he'd been looking for? He could go thirsty for a day or so.
Having been accustomed to his gift for years by now, Luke had a pretty good understanding of its inner mechanisms.
Usually, the more vague a whisper was, the more serious or important its matter contained.
Another thing was that while the whispers informed him, it never coerced him to follow. At the end of the day, it was up to him how he dealt with the information at hand.
As he began walking deeper into what he perceived to be the Queen's territory, he began to notice an almost shift in nature.
The surrounding vegetation was much greener, the trees more densely packed, and even the air itself felt almost sweet.
It was both a refreshing feeling and an unnerving one. He didn't understand just what it was that caused the difference, but the terrain between where he was now and where he had been before was simply jarring.
Becoming a little more wary, he slowed down his pace, making sure to take notice of his surroundings.
Judging from the two sun's position in the sky, an hour or so passed by before the ominous feeling eventually subsided.
Despite having no clue as to the actual location of whatever inheritance he was aiming for, he felt he was close to stumbling upon the area.
He didn't know if this intuition was something enhanced by his gift or something he had trained from his long use of his gift, but he trusted in it.
Eventually, upon reaching a hillier area inside the dense forest, he smelled that same sweet scent he had picked up on.
Tracking it down, he pinpointed that smell to a small opening inside one of the hills nearby.
It was enticing, as if it were hypnotizing him to enter within its confines. It was for that reason alone that he had to be more careful than ever.
Something deep down in his intuition told him that something special was contained with that small crevice.
He didn't know if it was the inheritance the whisper had spoken of, but it was something he wasn't willing to miss.
For all he knew, there could be a bear or another talking creature similar to the ones he had heard earlier dwelling inside.
What he needed now was to gather information and create a plan for actually entering the cave.
3 days, he gave himself 3 days to find out the contents in that cave.
For now, though, he started heading back to what he assumed was the border of the Queen's territory.
The longer he stayed inside the Queen's territory, the better the chance he'd be caught by one of her citizens.
Seeing that the two suns were approaching the horizon, he decided to continue his search for a water source.
Thankfully, before the sunset, he managed to find a small creek that flowed with clean running water.
Scooping it up with his hands, he filled his stomach to the brim with the creek's water. It was a hasty decision but the satisfaction of satiating his thirst relieved him to no end.
He just hoped that the next day he wouldn't be aching in pain from the possibly contaminated water.
As night began to fall, he lay there under the foliage of a nearby tree. The ground was rocky, cold to the touch, and extremely uncomfortable.
Even with what little he gathered under him, the ground still managed to suck out good portions of his warmth.
He was going to sleep terribly, he could tell. But at the same time, it wasn't something he was completely unused to.
The cold concrete and funky smell of a city were much worse than the sweet forest he had found himself in.
It truly felt like he had returned to his roots. Albeit a much more magical one.