Chapter 761: Act 115 – Eternity XVI
Just as Brendel and his group began to set off, on the other side, Freya was struggling to make her way through a silver-gray forest. They had joined forces with Brendel’s troops a day and a half ago, but it had changed nothing about their predicament—more and more Pale Sons were now swarming the forest, seemingly endless, forcing them to flee in the northwestern direction.
At dawn, after hastily eating some hard-to-swallow dry rations, scout cavalry reported spotting a white wolf near the forest’s perimeter. As a result, the group was forced to move yet again. Julian, the Earl, and that monstrous creature seemed deeply interested in them, chasing them relentlessly.
But the most terrifying of all was that monster.
Freya checked the stretcher where Alphons and another knight lay, both running high fevers. The wound on Alphons’ neck had already started to turn black—it seemed the ice spears of those white wolves carried some sort of curse, delaying healing and accelerating decay. Freya herself bore many such wounds, and she was fully aware of the never-ending pain but made no expression of it on her face.
As for the other knight, he seemed to be completely dehydrated. He had merely blocked the attack from that silver creature, and it was as if all his bl**d and flesh had been drained away.
Freya herself witnessed that silver, humanoid monster being encircled by around seven or eight Gold-tier Cruzian Knights, its entire body wounded. Yet, it suddenly lunged at one of them, sucked the life out of that individual, and all its wounds were instantly healed.
She had never heard of such a terrifying ability; not even vampires could do that.
Most of those knights involved in that battle were left there. Only the current knight had escaped back. Later, in order to block that monster, the entire group had sacrificed over a dozen knights, even the knight named Peiya perished in that battle.
Freya couldn’t help but glance at Xiao Peiluo; only then did she learn that that knight was his fiancée.
“The wind has stopped,” said Xiao Peiluo, his face betraying no emotion as he watched the gradually stilling treetops. It was almost the only good news in hours, but the bad news was that in windless conditions, visibility was clearer in the forest, and scents lingered for much longer.
“But which direction should we go? Joining up with our noble Earl and Division Commander is now impossible. The enemy clearly isn’t planning to let us through,” said Brendel as he stared at a crude map drawn on the ground last night. In just two days, his cheeks had become sunken, and dark circles had appeared under his eyes.
“Continue to move northward,” replied Nemeses. “If they don’t want us to consolidate, we’ll go along with their wishes.”
Everyone else nodded. Julian probably wanted to weaken Veronika and Brendel’s forces, but everyone present knew how strong Brendel’s group was. It wasn’t as if they made much of a difference. It seemed like most of the main force of the Broken Sword Knights were here, but their strength was even greater on the other side. Freya, Brendel, Nemeses, and Xiao Peiluo all understood this.
Brendel’s leading all the Broken Sword Knights away under Brendan’s orders might well have been to deceive the enemy. If so, they might as well turn the tables on the enemy.
“The Earl is tolerable, but that monster seems insane. I don’t know why it keeps chasing us relentlessly,” said Brendel, looking at Alphons lying on the stretcher, gasping for life, with some irritation.
But everyone in the room shifted their gaze to Freya. While Brendel didn’t know, those who had been with her from the start understood well that the silver monster was evidently after their commander.
Just no one knew what in the world that thing had referred to Freya as the line of the War Goddess.
“Nemeses, do you know anything?” Freya turned and quietly asked the knight beside her. Nemeses shook her head: “I haven’t heard of any legends regarding the War Goddess, but I do know that this lineage is related to you. Brendan should have mentioned it to you as well. However, neither he nor I know how the monster knew all these things. We also don’t know what its connection to you is…”
This wasn’t the first time Nemeses had given such an answer, and Freya couldn’t help but sigh anxiously. She opened her backpack and glanced at the stone tablet quietly laying inside.
Brendel had once said that this stone tablet would answer her questions, but so far, she had still gained nothing from it.
Seeing Freya lost in thought, Nemeses turned back to the others and said: “It’ll soon be dawn. Since we have already detected movements of those white beasts, it means they’ll soon appear in this area. Let’s continue looping northwest through the forest to buy time for our Lord and Division Commander. Any other suggestions?”
No one spoke up. In the previous two days of fighting, Nemeses had already shown exceptional command abilities. Though it wasn’t enough to completely win over these proud young knights, it had at least garnered their respect.
“I have a question,” said Xiao Peiluo after a moment of thought: “What if that silver monster comes after us again?”
This question sent the atmosphere in the camp plummeting to an icy low. Everyone vividly remembered the battle from last night, where the Broken Sword Knights lost nearly one-fifth of their knights just to hold off that terrible creature.
Even Nemeses hesitated. Plans were often powerless against absolute strength. That silver monster was at least at an Essenced-tier level or higher, not something they, at the Gold-tier, could withstand. “We’ll deal with it as it comes,” was all she could say.
But just at that moment, there was a sudden commotion outside the camp.
“Deer!”
“Deer!”
Everyone screamed. “What’s happening?” All the young knights stood up simultaneously, one hand on their swords, looking outward. They saw Freya stand up as if she had been electrocuted.
The future Valkyrie looked up and saw an emerald-blue stag standing majestically not far from the camp, deep in the forest.
This sight seemed to immediately transport her thoughts back to the night of that Flowery and Summery Year.
The blue stag looked at the knights in the camp, swinging its graceful neck as if signaling to everyone. It then turned its body and slowly made its way into the forest.
“Quick, follow it!” Freya seemed as if awakened from a dream and hurriedly told everyone.
“Wait!”
Xiao Peiluo frowned as he looked into the forest, “Commander, that’s the Dormant Saint Temple.”
…
The heavy stone door slowly opened, revealing a pitch-black and deep space behind it. It looked like a black obsidian passage, the cross-section of the entire passage was trapezoidal, and the surface was covered with countless bright red lines. The ground was covered with a thin mist, but it had already been blown away clean by the cold wind rushing in from the outside, exposing a dark ground underneath.
Anlek ascended the frost-covered steps, his eyes first landing on the scattered skeletons on both sides of the passage. These skeletons could be clearly divided into two types, one was a tall humanoid creature, still wearing armor from their lifetimes. The ancient armor bore decorations that were out of step with the aesthetics of the present age.
Most of the weapons used by these skeletons were heavy longswords or battle axes. These dusty weapons still retained the aura of an era past, weighty and substantial, as if each one was a divine weapon. However, the magic in them had disintegrated and scattered with the d*ath of their owners.
Still, some weapons had survived intact. Anlek passed by some of these bodies and casually picked up a longsword. He infused a small amount of magic, chanting a strange syllable. Suddenly, the sword became bright, surrounded by electricity. Anlek flung the sword, which shot out like a streak of lightning, hitting the side wall of the passage with a deafening roar. It then bounced and drew a beautiful blue-white line, colliding with the ground and dragging sparks behind it. In a flash, it disappeared into the distance.
Dejyar moved closer to examine where the sword hit and noticed that not even the finest scratch remained on the wall. He couldn’t help but change color and asked, “What material is this temple built with? That last attack, combined with that weapon’s enhancement, was almost equivalent to my full-force strike. This wall…”
“This is not a building, Dejyar,” Anlek answered. “Milo fell here. Who built this place? The Minren or the Cruz people? Neither could have made it. No, Milo was the subordinate god of the Furious Dragon Alphons, this is his body…”
“A…?”
“Don’t be surprised, why should the gods shape their image according to human imagination? The Minren mythos is marginally reliable, but the Cruz people never experienced the devastating wars of the ancient times, what do they know?”
“They proclaim themselves orthodox in the Everything Returns Society? They’re just clowns claiming the throne by chance. Odin might not mind, but we’re not such fools.”
Anlek’s low voice reverberated through the passage, as he slowly walked past another group of skeletons. These were clearly wolves, but they were much larger than their current descendants alive on the ground. These wolf skeletons each resembled dragon skeletons, with their front limbs robust and having two particularly sharp fangs. Odd-shaped bone plates and horns grew on their heads, which were known as the ancient breeds, the first offspring of Echis.
Anlek appreciated these skeletons as if they were artworks, without any special intent but moved through them. The group proceeded along the passage, followed by the Order of the Dead Knights from the Everything Returns Society. After a while, Anlek turned and asked the wizards of the Everything Returns Society beside him:
“Did you find those things around here?”
“Yes,” the wizard replied humbly: “It is exactly as recorded in the Black Prophecy and some of our books. Milo had a prolonged battle with Echis here, along with the master’s Second Legion.”
“Second Legion? Are they the Crystal Mass?”
“No, the Crystal Mass comes from the Seventh Legion, they attacked the Great Earth Wings on the extreme plains, and couldn’t possibly show up in large numbers in the Inner World.”
“Here should be the Able Ones.”
“The Able Ones, Echis, the name from the Abyss’s bottom, I’m becoming increasingly curious,” Anlek could not help but squint, the beginning of pale patterns could be seen on his face.
“You will be seeing one of them soon.”
The wizard’s words had barely finished when a grand hall appeared in Anlek’s vision. Inside the vast hall, more skeletons appeared. At the center of these skeletons, a breathtaking corpse drew everyone’s attention. It looked like a fox, entirely covered in shockingly beautiful silvery hair, floating in the center of the hall with closed eyes. If it wasn’t for the absence of life, one might think it was merely sleeping.
“This is Dimming Kehua, Echis’s eldest daughter…” Anlek unconsciously murmured, “I didn’t expect her to fall here.”
…
“Lord, you might want to take a look at this.”
After sliding down a layer of grey-white solid ice from the ice sheet above, Brendel heard Medisa calling from below. He maneuvered through a dense network of ice spears and saw Medisa halfway kneeling at the entrance of a dark ice path. Beside the Silver Elf Princess lay a figure who he initially thought was Peiya’s younger brother, but upon closer inspection, realized it was not.
It was a skeleton, at least six or seven meters tall, wearing heavy armor, its head hanging, leaning against the ice wall. Its fatal wound was most likely to its chest, Brendel noticed that there was a fist-sized hole in the heart area of the skeleton’s chest armor, apparently pierced through by something.
“This is a Frost Giant skeleton,” Brendel concluded after a glance at the skeleton’s stature. “It seems Shi Ta didn’t lie to us, this road indeed leads to the Dormant Saint Temple.”
“Are they the temple’s protectors?” Medisa asked softly.
“Once they were.” Brendel replied, “Is this what you want me to see?”
“No, there are more similar skeletons in the front. But not all are Frost Giants, some strange corpses that even Miss Shi Do couldn’t identify,” replied the Silver Elf Princess.
“Is it a wolf?”
Seeing Medisa shake her head, Brendel became curious. As everyone knows, Milo once fought Echis here, but other than frost giant and the offspring from Echis’ corpses, what other kinds of bodies could there be here? Humans? That’s unlikely, Brendel knew the scholar lady would never make such a mistake on this matter.
He motioned for Medisa to lead the way, then followed her inside. Soon, he found the puzzled scholar.
Shi Do was staring at the strange corpse, lost in thought.
Technically, it wasn’t a corpse, nor a skeleton, but a silver-colored, humanoid liquid. This pool of liquid lay among seven or eight frost giant skeletons, and there was a frost-blue longsword embedded in it. If not for this sword, people might have missed this ‘corpse,’ mistaking it for a puddle of ice water.
“What is this…?” Brendel, upon seeing it, couldn’t help but pause in confusion.
…
(PS: After some discussion with Mama Zi, I’ve clarified my thinking, so I’m back. You know what I mean. Well, as for the strong experts who have already set out to k*ll me yesterday… please return.)
