Chương 213: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirteen

For their defence of the city, they were awarded 15, 000 Silvers. It was much less than they had hoped for, but it was still nothing to scoff at. It would allow them to buy several relics and even some of those affliction curing potions that'd saved them from paralysis.

"Why didn't you agree to lead them to the castle?" Natalia asked Chien.

"Adam has warned us not to fight the Forlorn Shadow multiple times," he replied, and Adam was relieved that his repeated warnings had gotten through to him.

"So? It's clearly beneficial to us if they help us assault the castle," she argued. Chien gave her a disapproving look.

"They are people, Natalia. Not pawns for us to discard at our leisure."

"They're not real," she replied.

"They are as real as us," he stated. Natalia looked to Adam and Seo-Yoon for support, but they both just shrugged.

"Am I seriously the only one who thinks they're not real?" she asked.

"It's complicated," Adam replied.

"It is not," Chien said vehemently.

"They are living beings, protected by the First Light. It has tasked me with eradicating the vile influence of the Forlorn Shadow from these lands. It does not wish to see me sacrifice the lives of this nation's people for short-term gains."

"It tasked you to kill the Shadow?" Adam asked.

"That's not what you said."

"I do not have to kill it," he replied, "but there is a beacon in the castle that I must light with a true flame to finish my quest."

"What about my quest?" Natalia asked. Adam lifted his compass.

"We will try to find it with this. I think that today our focus should be to visit Moonwell Village since it will be overrun by the Shadow tomorrow. Once we've been there, we'll search for the shadow bird, and then we'll go for the forlorn marksman in the hamlet on the other side of the Blue Vein river."

"Are we resting in Gothershall tonight?" Chien asked.

"It should be safe for now, so I think so," Adam said.

"Tomorrow we will go to the castle to take down the forlorn judge, jailer, and twins, and on day six we will take on the Forlorn King."

"I'm glad you have planned this far ahead," Seo-Yoon commented.

"How are we travelling to this village?" Chien asked. Adam grinned. Both Chien and Natalia frowned. Given just how much material Adam had absorbed from the forlorn army, he was able to make a truly massive transport vessel for them, although he did not dare use such a creation within the Shadow's reach, since it could easily be turned against them. Chien and Natalia held on for dear life inside the closed canopy saddle that Adam had placed on the back of the enormous salamander mount he'd sculpted.

With the crown given to him by his patron, Adam was able to wrap his control around the four feet of the large creature, as well as its head, keeping the last control centred on his raiment as usual. Thanks to how he'd sculpted the internal structure of the salamander, simply lifting and moving the feet was enough to shift all the musculature and bones correctly, allowing him to mimic natural movement.

Of course, he was supplementing their speed with a lot of magical pulling, making them much faster than it would otherwise have been. I wonder if it's possible to target a sculpted creature like this with the necromancy skill? Adam considered, while driving the salamander up the side of the Oath Spire mountain to cut across the landscape towards the village nestled against the southern wall of the rectangular stage.

Seo-Yoon squealed excitedly while Chien covered his mouth as they went almost completely vertical for a moment. A few minutes later, after crossing over the mountain but avoiding the summit, they went vertical again as Adam sent the salamander down towards the rolling green hills. Chien gasped and muttered some kind of prayer under his breath. They were rapidly closing in on a decently-sized cluster of human melodies, and in the distance the blue-tinted canopies of a forest were poking up above the hills.

Sensing they were close to their destination, Adam brought the salamander to a stop atop a hill, and turned to look back at the others in the closed-in saddle behind him.

"Hold on," he said. Chien and Natalia both sprang up, protests forming in their throats, but before a single word could be uttered, Adam launched the salamander into the air in a massive leap, aiming for the next hill crest. Seo-Yoon held on as instructed, but Chien and Natalia were slammed back into their seats. Then the salamander leapt again and both of them went momentarily airborne, only to hit their heads on the flexible canopy and crash back down onto the seats.

Since they weren't listening, Adam quickly shaped two tongue-like seatbelts to keep them strapped in as he continued to launch their mount across the hills towards the Moonwell Forest. Instead of trying to push his large creation through the dense treeline, Adam shot them up to the canopies and ran the salamander across, relying mostly on his magical control to stop them from plummeting down through to the forest floor. They saw the distant mountain wall before any of the quaint brick and tile houses appeared.

The blue forest was like a natural barrier hiding the village from the rest of the world, and though there wasn't any sort of agriculture going on, the place gave off a sense of self-sustainability. I suppose that if it was full of vampires, it wouldn't matter if there's no normal food sources available, so long as there are other people for them to feast on.

Adam couldn't sense a single bloodfiend melody within the small settlement, but Beck had warned him that many of them used illusion magic, which he already knew from experience would blunt his detection power.

"Let me know if you see any illusion-based mana," Adam told Seo-Yoon.

"That guy right there," she immediately replied. Adam stopped the salamander atop the treetops to look down at the person she'd indicated. It was just an old potion vendor. He brought the salamander down to the ground and released the seatbelts from Chien and Natalia. Both of them quickly got off of the mount. < < Settlement Discovered > > < Moonwell Village > Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

While Chien remained on his knees, his whole body shaking from the trip, Natalia purged her guts behind one of the nearby trees. Adam and Seo-Yoon moved through the village after he absorbed the mount into his raiment. It looked like a miniature version of Moonport and there was a large well in the middle of the central plaza, which explained the name. The villagers seemed ignorant to what lurked beyond their forest wall and contentedly went about their day.

"Is there only one vendor here?" Natalia asked after catching up to them. Chien was struggling to keep up, his leg muscles reduced to jelly.

"There's a quest to find two missing vendors," Adam told her.

"The vampires that normally live here are the ones who did it."

"Normally?" she asked.

"I eradicated all of them from Moonport, and, if I'm correct, it should mean we won't have any left in the village. It's supposed to be a dangerous settlement to stay in at night because a small coven lives here."

"I can only see mana around the potion seller," Seo-Yoon said. Adam nodded. That means Beck's theory was probably right. With all of the bloodfiends in Moonport eradicated, the coven that would have come here never had the chance.

"Absorb the illusion on him and let's get it over with," Adam said, raising his gauntlet. They walked up to the potion vendor, who greeted them.

"I have a cure for all ailments. Is there anything you're seeking?" he asked. His voice was kind and the melody that emanated from him was calm and normal. Then Seo-Yoon pulled the illusion mana from his body with her aspirant's cowl. The old man grew in size, turning into a tall female bloodfiend with prominent canines, long curved nails, sallow skin, and red eyes.

"Are you the only one here?" Adam asked her in Demonic. Seo-Yoon and Natalia looked surprised at the sounds coming out of his mouth. The language was quite guttural, after all. The bloodfiend stared down at him, easily a head taller than he was. From her melody, he guessed she was a second-generation. He noted a tone of surprise and recognition in her melody. A breeze blew past him and the bloodfiend suddenly collapsed, her head removed from her body.

The wooden stand with potions was likewise sliced in half, and past the dead body and ruined stand was Natalia, wiping off her katana. She had killed the vampire with a single activation of her ' Spring Breeze' skill. [Second Generation Bloodfiend defeated.] Before any of the villagers could notice, Adam swept forward and absorbed the corpse into his raiment.

"She might have given us a clue," he told Natalia.

"Or she might've tried to kill us," she retorted. Adam didn't try to argue with her and instead just brought out his compass and asked it to show him the nearest bloodfiend. The golden needle pointed back at him.

"Very funny… Show other bloodfiends than me." The needle started to spin aimlessly. So, she might have been the only one, unless it's unable to detect them through illusions. He ran through a series of search commands, specifically trying to get around the issue of illusions, but none of them resulted in anything.

"Keep an eye open for other signs of magic," he told Seo-Yoon.

"She had a key on her," she replied, lifting an old metal key in front of her. Adam asked the compass to point them to its matching lock and they got a hit. Chien had finally caught up and asked what was going on. As they chased down the lock the key belonged to, Adam explained what had just happened. Natalia quickly joined them when several of the villagers started to ask about the missing vendor.

After a few minutes of following the compass, they ended up in front of a simple shed on the edge of the village, close to the western treeline. They didn't need to open it to know what was inside, because they could smell it through the door. Adam took the key from Seo-Yoon and floated it to the lock on the shed using his raiment gauntlet. They all backed away as he opened the door. Inside was like a butcher's shop, except it was people hanging from the ceiling on hooks, not animals.

"Foul," Chien muttered. < < Quest Complete > > < Vanished in the Woods > < Discovered the fate of the missing merchants from Moonwell Village >"I didn't realise you could complete quests you hadn't accepted," Natalia remarked. Adam moved into the shed and pulled all of the mutilated bodies into his raiment.

"I hadn't expected to be able to complete the quest. I just wanted to get the settlement discovery bonus, and potentially some vampire kills," he told the others.

"There's nothing else to find here now, so we should leave."

"We must alert the guards," Chien said.

"There are none," Seo-Yoon told him. Chien clearly wanted to argue something about the morality of the whole thing, but he stopped himself when he realised their time was better spent elsewhere. Adam quickly shaped a large bird-like creature and a cage with seats strapped to the underside of its body. His shaping ability had really improved, and since he didn't need to be sparing with materials, he could make some pretty cool things.

"Are you planning on fighting the shadow bird with that?" Natalia asked.

"More importantly, are we getting into those seats?" Chien added.

"I would like to stay near the ground."

"The boss can fly, so it may be necessary," Adam told them.

"I don't know exactly where it goes during the day, so I want to be prepared for anything. Plus, it'll be faster if we move through the air." Natalia sighed.

"Why couldn't it just have been a flying carriage?" Seo-Yoon was already inside the bone cage beneath the large bird creature, eager to take off. Adam gestured for the others to get in. Despite their apprehensions, they knew it was faster than using a horse, and flying would likely be less nauseating than going up and down the hills, or leaping between them.

Once inside, Adam sealed the cage around them and with a big flap of its wings, the bird creature pulled up into the sky, briefly startling the villagers below. As soon as they were about twenty metres up in the air, Adam consulted the compass about the secret boss and it pointed them almost directly east.

"We'll go as far as we can, but once we reach the edge of the Shadow's reach, we'll have to travel by different means," he announced. Since his bird creation just drifted forwards, it was much more bearable for Chien and Natalia, but they still weren't comfortable.

"Could we not have used horses?" Chien asked.

"They may be turned against us," Adam replied.

"I'm okay with just running the entire way," Natalia said.

"You two need to just lean back and enjoy the ride," Seo-Yoon told them. They soared east in a straight line, following the mountainous wall until it started shifting northward and opening up, almost as if to accommodate the Blue Vein river as it split into two on its southern journey through the world.

Like he'd observed when they'd gone to the old church, the rapidly-flowing blue water slowed down the Forlorn Shadow significantly, and since it had been aiming for Gothershall, the southern half of the map on the western side of the river had yet to be invaded by its reach. However, it had already reached the 'mouth' of the Oath Spire mountain wherein the Forgotten Village and Red Rian's camp lay. Fortunately, there were no bodies, nor even people, left in that place for it to reanimate.

"Is that another settlement?" Seo-Yoon asked, pointing to a place on the eastern side of the river that looked a bit like Silt. It had clearly already been overrun by the Shadow, but Adam wondered if it had only happened the day before, or maybe on the second day, since the place had a tributary of the Blue Vein wrapped around it from the north and going along its eastern side, leaving only a southern path for the encroaching Shadow to travel.

He couldn't sense anything from the place though, no melodies of either humans or the forlorn soldiers.

"We can check it out later," Adam said.

"If there were any living people there, they're gone now." Where the mountain wall opened to allow the two prongs of the Blue Vein to move through was a fairly large area between the split river that was untouched by the Shadow, and Adam brought his sculpted bird mount down to the spot, deliberately taking a slow descent to not upset Chien and Natalia too much.

"Is the shadow bird we're hunting inside the castle?" Seo-Yoon asked. Adam shook his head. He'd been watching the compass the entire way, and the golden needle had been pointing straight east from Moonwell, leading him to the conclusion that where the shadow bird was staying during the day was in the southeastern corner of the stage, directly south of the Forlorn Castle. While Chien and Natalia regained their composure, Adam pulled the giant bird into his raiment.

"The easiest way from here is up and over the part of the mountain ahead of us, but I can't sculpt anything too large, since I need to wrap my entire control around it to avoid the Shadow being able to take it over," he told them. Natalia frowned.

"What does that mean for us?"

"It means that I'll carry each of you separately with a smaller construct, which will have less protection. Just to be safe, I'll go as fast as possible until we reach our destination."

"Yay!" Seo-Yoon exclaimed.

"I miss the horses," Chien muttered.

"What he said," Natalia added with a frown. Adam handed each of them a sculpted centipede-like worm. Only Seo-Yoon accepted hers.

"What the fuck is that?" Natalia asked.

"This is your new best friend," he replied.

"Now wrap them around your waists so we can get going."

"I love him!" Seo-Yoon said, nuzzling the construct before doing as instructed.

"Why is it warm…?" Chien asked, shuddering when the worm made a click as its two ends snapped together with a simple locking mechanism made of finger-like prongs. Natalia resisted, refusing to even hold the thing, so Adam had no choice but to direct the creation to wrap around her. Before her protests could spook the boss they were hunting, Adam gave them all a thumbs up and lifted the centipede belts forward and up along the mountain wall, floating behind them by pulling on his raiment.

Seo-Yoon squealed in excitement once again, but she was also trying to pet the construct wrapped around her, which was quite bizarre. Unsurprisingly, Natalia and Chien hated this new means of transportation, but fortunately they weren't making a lot of noise about it, because they both kept passing out from the intense speed. Adam expected to get an earful later.