Nick took a deep breath and looked at the Rock Cow Chieftain. It was not that he was scared but more like he was impressed and shocked; he was in awe. The tribe leader that he was, how could the Rock Cow Chieftain not understand the look in Nick’s eyes.
He smiled at Nick and asked.
“What is your name, stranger?”
Nick also smiled and answered.
“My name is Epsilon, Chieftain”
The Chieftain nodded, and then start talking.
“I am Arol, the Chieftain of the Rock Cow Tribe. I heard from my underlings that you wanted to trade a map of the Grey Stone Island in return for some stones that could be useful to my race?”
Nick continued to engage the Chieftain respectfully.
“Yes, please take a look.”
Nick shook his hands and 10 Ether Stones manifested in Arol’s hands. Arol smelled the rocks. He carefully put one Ether Stone in his mouth and then swallowed it.
As he consumed the Ether Stone, he felt power and energy in his body regenerate much faster than usual.
He sighed with satisfaction and asked.
“These 10 Ether Stones are enough for me to trade the map of Grey Stone Island. However, I will supply you with more information about the island if you give me 10 more of these.”
Nick did not think he was on the losing end of this bargain and agreed.
After he gave Arol 10 more Ether Stones, he could see that Arol was very happy with the deal.
Arol immediately began providing information about Grey Stone Island.
“Grey Stone Island is a big island built completely of rocks as you can see. The area, end-to-end, is about 1000 KM.”
“There are five different tribes that live on this island. These are us, the Rock Cow Tribe, the Night Eagle Tribe, Sound Dog Tribe, Orange Lizard Tribe and lastly, the most powerful, Black Stone Bear Tribe.”
“I will put markings on your map and indicate the territories of these tribes.”
“The common payment used is valuable stones and mines. You can give meat too if you want.”
“Other than this, I don’t know much about the kind of creatures that live outside the Grey Stone Island.”
Nick listened very attentively, trying his hardest to not miss any point. Every piece of information would be useful to him, and might even prove useful in a life or death situation.
After this, Arol handed over the Grey Stone Island map to Nick.
Nick inspected the map and noticed that the map was very detailed. It was drawn on a stone tablet but still had thorough information that he did not expect.
The borders of each tribe were marked clearly. It seemed that the dog-like creatures he killed earlier belonged to the Sound Dog Tribe. It would, hence, not be wrong to say that he had a bad start with this tribe already.
Nick had no regret on this matter though. He wanted to talk but the Sound Dogs attacked him directly without any attempt at communication whatsoever.
He just protected himself and he did not feel bad about what he did to the Sound Dogs.
Nick digested all this, saluted Arol and then left the Rock Cows Tribe.
He also learned that there was not just one tribe settlement for each race, but more than 40-50 tribes like these that he could encounter. This meant that there should be more than 1500 to 3000 tribes across the different races. This was not a low amount at all.
In all, Nick was happy with his meeting with the Rock Cow Tribe and with all the information he had now. This would be very helpful in his journey forward.
Nick put a distance between himself and the Rock Cows and then activated Portal Teleportation to arrive at the first place where he had opened his eyes.
The reasons for this were two-fold.
First, he wanted some kind of confirmation that his teleportation ability worked here in the manner that he was accustomed to. The second reason was that the first place where he opened his eyes was close to the next tribe. He wanted to visit each tribe to see if there was anything new that he could learn from them.
It was important to gather more information before going back to find Rabial and the others.
Nick had discovered something important when he was testing the Portal Teleportation.
In exactly the same way that he could teleport to a place if he remembered its details, he could also connect and teleport close to a magical being, if he remembered enough about that person.
This meant that with just one thought, Nick could teleport to Rabial’s location whenever he needed.
With this in mind, Nick went over his plan again and started walking towards the Night Eagle Tribe.
His Portal Teleportation ability would enable him to reach one of the Tribes of the Night Eagle Tribe in just a minute if he wanted. But he chose not to take this option because he wanted to explore and find out more about the Island itself. He used teleportation only in some instances to save time and energy.
As he was looking around, he finally noticed something that was not on the map but was still very interesting.
Nick could see a large black-stone pyramid with a visible entrance. From a rough estimate, the pyramid’s size should be around 200 meters in height and more than 1KM in width. He looked at the entrance and teleported there.
At this time, Nick noticed that his Wave Radar was unable to sense anything that might be inside the pyramid. This made him uneasy. If his wave ability was blocked just at the entrance, what would happen if there was something that could block his teleportation ability in and out of the pyramid. What if the pyramid itself possessed the ability to block his teleportation or even to attack him?
That would be an extremely dangerous situation then.
These danger signs were not enough for him to give up his quest but he still wanted to build a little more confidence before he entered the pyramid. Hence, Nick decided to visit the Night Eagle Tribe before he came back to inspect the pyramid.
