Chapter 30: The Sandstorm That Gets In The Way
Making Acquaintance with Yimi
They saw a distinct difference in each other’s eyes as they got to know Yimi.
Compared to the Orcs’ territory, the Werewolves’ habitat was indeed a fertile land. There were woods and rivers, and occasionally, you could spot a few little rabbits hopping between the trees.
But apart from that, there was no other wildlife. Besides the rabbits, a second type of animal could not be found in the jungle.
“Ouch!” Wenfu, walking behind, tripped over something and fell flat on her back, only to be pulled up by Princess Filisia just in time.
“Meow!” Wenfu was scared stiff as she was yanked back just inches from the ground.
“Ow, ow, it hurts meow…” Wenfu massaged her ankle, pulling down her white short cotton socks. The tender, snow-white ankle was swollen and red, standing out against her pale skin.
Her vertical pupils were brimming with tears. Perhaps due to her well-developed tear ducts, they kept flowing uncontrollably.
“It’s swollen. Did you bump into something sharp?” Princess Filisia bent down and held Wenfu’s ankle, her dark eyebrows furrowing as she moved the grass aside and touched a rough, hard object.
“This, is this a bone?” Princess Filisia observed the skull of some horned creature she was holding.
“It’s the skull of a Reindeer,” Aistride recognized it immediately. “This kind of animal is quite common in the Elf Forest.”
“Based on the remaining aura and shape of the skull, this reindeer should have been in its prime when it died, likely due to unnatural causes,” Tillysha added.
“Eh? Can you really tell how old it was before it died just by looking at the bone?” Wenfu tilted her head, unable to discern anything suspicious and, a bit afraid, avoided looking at it. Although those were reindeer bones, Wenfu had a natural fear of such dead things.
Princess Filisia continued rummaging through the grass and pulled out a complete reindeer skeleton from the pile of grass underfoot.
“Ouch, ouch meow meow!”
“Don’t move~ Moving might make it hurt more,” Tillysha took out her portable alchemical ointment for external wounds, using a grass stick to dab a little on and wiping Wenfu’s wound, causing the little kitty to meow in pain.
Wenfu was the delicate type, and getting hit by such a rough, hard object made her bruise easily.
“The right leg bone of this reindeer has obvious damage, almost completely broken,” Princess Filisia said. “This degree of damage likely happened while it was running and stepped on a trap. The sharp trap broke the reindeer’s leg.”
“Trap? Who set it?” Wenfu asked but then closed her mouth immediately.
It was obviously set by the local residents.
“Can these werewolves make and use such tools?” Princess Filisia realized she had underestimated these werewolves’ intelligence before.
They were definitely smarter than the tribal warriors.
Judging by the current situation, the werewolves live on hunting, pure and simple carnivores.
“With so few animals in this forest, is it because the werewolves have over-hunted?” Aistride thought briefly.
“It’s possible, or it might be that due to the werewolves’ long-term hunting, the animals here have been forced to migrate to other places.”
It’s impossible that the forest’s animals have been eaten down to just a few rabbits by the werewolves, surely?
After applying some ointment and treating Wenfu’s wound with the shell of the Crispy Fragrance, Princess Filisia asked, “How does it feel now?”
“It feels cool.” Wenfu moved her ankle, and the pain was covered by a minty coolness.
“If it doesn’t hurt anymore, then it’s fine.” Tillysha tied a little bow with gauze around Wenfu’s ankle.
With the ankle not hurting anymore and her mobility restored, Wenfu could barely move with the support of Princess Filisia as the team continued walking through the forest.
“Danger!” A glint of metal in the grass caught Princess Filisia’s eye, and she quickly pulled Wenfu up.
“Hmm?” Wenfu tilted her head, still unaware of what happened before her foot stepped down.
This time, she felt as if she stepped on something box-like but was lifted up by Princess Filisia just under half a second.
“Snap!” The next instant, a clear, loud sound was heard, and a shiny silver animal trap suddenly sprang open in mid-air, narrowly missing Wenfu as it flew past her face.
Wenfu’s face turned pale.
“It’s a werewolf’s animal trap,” Princess Filisia said seriously. “Activate your Divine Princess Domain. These traps are everywhere in this forest.”
Seeing the metal trap hit the ground with force, Wenfu swallowed a big lump in her throat. Just now, if she had been caught by this thing, with her delicate limbs, breaking a leg would have been only the beginning; there’s a good chance she’d have bled out.
Without delay, Wenfu activated the Divine Princess Domain, her tail raised high, taking three steps for every one to make sure she wasn’t trapped, fearing that her little tail or legs might get caught.
This jungle was eerily silent. After probing it with her senses, Tillysha confirmed that there were very few living creatures in this forest. Besides plants that couldn’t move, there were hardly any mobile lives left.
The Su Mu on her wrist attached to her palm, and a life-sized long bow appeared amidst a flurry of falling leaves, growing from a young bud into a towering tree. She drew the bow and fitted the arrow, and four light arrows magically appeared, shooting upwards and hitting four animal traps hidden in the piles of grass.
“There are still so many traps that haven’t been removed,” Princess Filisia, leaning on her sword, said.
“There are hardly any wild animals left in this forest, and yet there are still so many traps lying around. Don’t the werewolves fear catching their own kind?”
“I think they probably don’t mind,” Tillysha seemed to have a new discovery, lowering herself, her hand placed on the pile of white bones on the ground, as if she was investigating how the bones looked like when they were alive.
“Their kind also becomes the sacrifice to fill their bellies.”
“Not only animals, but werewolves themselves lie exposed in this wilderness.”
“Is this skeleton a werewolf?”
“The skeleton of this two-legged standing animal with a head like a beast bone obviously does not belong to animals or humans.”
“This is a werewolf skeleton, and it is also a non-natural d*ath. There are many bite marks on the bones, which match this skeleton’s fangs. It’s highly likely that it was cannibalism among the same kind.”
“Are the werewolves even eating their own?”
“I roughly understand why the werewolves and orcs have been having tit-for-tat conflicts and evenly matched battles,” Tillysha thought aloud. “There’s an issue within the werewolves, and it’s more severe than with the orcs.”
“Before long, they exited the jungle.”
There were a great number of jungles within the werewolves’ territory, almost one after another.
After continuously traversing several jungles, and seeing the mountains of white bones piled up in the woods, bones of all kinds of animals that had not been sorted at all, unable to distinguish their species, it seemed like a mass burial site.
Tillysha’s hypothesis found a definite corroboration.
“These forests, despite being vast, have one common point: there are almost no wild animals left, and in each dense forest, bones are piled up like mountains. There have been quite a few skeletons of werewolf kindred found as well.”
“There might already be a famine issue within the werewolf territory.” Tillysha looked up. “Because of the rapidly expanding population, excessive killing of prey, and over-fishing, these animals did not have time to propagate to the next generation before being slain.”
“There’s no issue of revolt within the werewolf territory like there is within the orc territory, but perhaps the infighting among werewolves is much worse than within the orcs.”
“Due to the food shortage, the werewolves lack food and are forced to resort to cannibalism, killing each other.”
“Based on the bones in the jungle, the werewolves have been short of food for quite some time. At first, they fought with each other, but then they added their kindred to their diet.”
“The internal competition among werewolves is more brutal and bloody than among orcs.”
“The werewolves attacking the orcs probably don’t even belong to the same organization. They each fight for themselves, following their instinctual desires to satisfy their hunger and continuously invade others, killing each other.”
“If these monsters were to invade Caleburn, it would definitely be a disaster,” Princess Filisia remembered the bones she saw in the jungle. In Caleburn’s case, it would surely result in a sea of corpses and rivers of bl**d.
Thankfully, the demons are restrained by Ruglien, and since they fight among themselves, even if they infiltrate the Light Race territories, how many lives would they end up harming?
“But these demons, they were once part of the Light Race,” Tillysha recalled the experiences and observations from the Imperial Furnace City, a hint of complexity flickering in her eyes.
Resentment gave birth to the demons, and the demons, in turn, brought calamities to the entire continent; it’s always the majority of the common people who suffer while the original culprits escape unscathed.
Being inside the werewolf territory, the map of the orc territory is of no use. But without a map, they would be like a group of headless flies, aimlessly colliding and stumbling.
“Tillysha?” Seeing Tillysha standing still, pondering something, Aistride called out.
“I’m thinking, could there be a barrier inside the werewolf territory that separates the werewolves from the higher demons?”
“Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense why only werewolves and no other demons exist in the deeper parts of Ruglien.”
“If we want to head deeper into Ruglien, we have to find the barrier because it’s the only entrance to the deeper parts.”
“It’s very likely, but since we don’t have a map of the werewolf territory, even if we know there’s a barrier, we won’t have a clue where to find it,” Aistride said coldly.
“Perhaps, our experiences in the orc territory can give us some valuable references?” Tillysha said uncertainly, touching a nondescript tree sapling in the forest, slightly closing her eyes.
Streams of consciousness flowed through her delicate hands into the sapling, taking root in it, like water flowing through the leaf veins.
In her field of perception, the forest’s outline became clear and transparent to Tillysha. However, she was not searching for anything in the forest, but rather for the forest’s border.
Finally, she found a vast wilderness at a certain spot in the neighboring forest.
After confirming the route, Tillysha opened her eyes, softly treading on the swirling fallen leaves, moving gently through the forest like a cat.
The rest of the group didn’t doubt anything and followed behind Tillysha.
Amidst the lush forest, they could only hear the chirping of insects and rustling leaves, with no sight of birds or wild animals darting through the trees, making the forest seem eerier.
Since this was Ruglien, things that defy common sense happening were normal.
Skirting around green vines wrapping around the tree branches, bushes growing thickly, some muted glow filtered through the leaves and spilled into the woods.
Tall trees spread out their thick and dense branches, blocking the sky, blocking the direction of the sun, the dense and irregularly arranged forest made it extremely easy to get lost and potentially d*e trapped within.
This was different from the cultivated lush woods that had trails; it was a standard no-man’s land.
The elves, as the beloved protectors of all living beings, would ensure safe passage through the jungle.
The Brilliant Sun and Moon walked to the edge of the forest, and suddenly, the view opened up. Princess Filisia shaded her eyes, as the bright sun in the sky became glaring without the branches to obstruct the view.
In their field of vision, the endless dense forest had reached its edge, replaced by a barren wilderness and blowing sand in front of them.
The long wind swept, carrying the yellow sand on the ground, creating clouds of flying sand and rolling stones.
“Where is this?”
“The orcs live on a barren wilderness, and at the end of the wilderness is a forest, which separates them from being just another forest,” Tillysha calmly guessed. “Werewolves live among the woods, and at the end is the desert. Therefore, what separates them must naturally be this desert.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, almost certainly.” Tillysha trusted her intuition.
“But, even so, how are we going to breach the desert covered by this sandstorm?” Even Princess Filisia was at a loss.
If it weren’t for this protective forest barrier, the nearby sandstorm would have overturned the werewolves’ stronghold from far away.
The yellow sands raged, like a ceaselessly flowing river, and apart from the dull yellow, there was no other color to be seen. It was hard to imagine anything living behind this desert.
“This sandstorm has lasted for centuries without ever subsiding,” Tillysha mused aloud. “There’s no way it will naturally dissipate.”
“Then what should we do?” Princess Filisia took a small step forward, glanced at a large rock by her feet, lifted it into the air with her giant sword, and then slapped it right into the sandstorm.
The moment it touched this layer of yellow sand, less than half a second later, the rock was riddled with holes and turned to dust.
“…You say this is divine authority, and I believe it,” Princess Filisia complained.
This blowing yellow sand was coarse and sharp, along with a wind so fierce it could cut through a person. Even a slight touch of it might be pierced with thousands of holes by the sand particles, making one’s life miserable.
Even Princess Filisia with her Divine Princess Domain wasn’t sure if she could stand firm in such a terrifying sandstorm, let alone the fragile members like Yimi and Wenfu in the team.
There was one solution — destroy this sandstorm. Otherwise, there would be no way for them to move forward.
Tillysha took a step forward, looking thoughtfully at her palm.
Should I use 【that】?
Indeed, there’s no other option but 【that】?
A flicker of hesitation passed through her chest. Although she lacked the memory from before, she could still hear a vague voice reminding her not to overly rely on 【Holy Oblivion】.
But so far, she had no better solution.
What they were looking for was right in front of them. There was no way they were going back, was there?
