Chapter 57 : Chapter 57

Chapter 57. The Homage of Ten Thousand Beasts

Eli silently pushed open the back door of the lord’s keep, and the cold night wind, laden with the forest’s dampness, surged in.

He tightened the black leather armor on his body and rested a hand on the hilt of “Silver” at his waist.

Go deep into it alone?

He was not acting recklessly. He understood very well what that core region, now shrouded in an unknown shadow, truly meant.

Bring Buck and the Black Crow Knights with him? That would create too much commotion and easily alert the enemy.

Moreover, when facing an unknown force that might exist within, numbers were not necessarily an advantage.

Just as he was about to step into the darkness, a figure suddenly flashed through his mind—Sebastian.

That unfathomable old steward!

How had he forgotten about him?

Although it seemed somewhat presumptuous to disturb and direct a figure of such ancient, patriarch-like stature—

At this moment, he was the most suitable companion, and perhaps the only real safeguard.

Eli immediately turned around and strode toward Sebastian’s room.

He drew a deep breath and raised his hand to knock on the heavy wooden door.

“Come in.” Sebastian’s flat, emotionless voice came from within.

Eli pushed the door open and entered. The old steward was sitting on a hardwood chair, reading a thick leather ledger by candlelight.

The gaze behind his gold-rimmed glasses lifted and settled calmly on Eli.

“Steward,” Eli said without exchanging pleasantries, going straight to the point. “I need to go deeper into Nightsong Forest and have a look.”

“I want to confirm with my own eyes what exactly is happening... I know this is not a wise choice. But rather than wait passively for disaster to fall, I would rather investigate proactively. So I need you to come with me.”

Sebastian listened in silence, then closed the ledger in his hands.

The candlelight flickered once in his ancient, still eyes.

He remained silent for several seconds, as though weighing something, or perhaps recalling some distant fragment of the past.

“To venture deep into the forest core in its present state is indeed... not a wise course of action,” he said in the same calm voice.

“However, it is good that you thought of me, Young Master...” He paused, his gaze passing through Eli as though looking into an even deeper void.

“Sometimes, when facing trouble that cannot be understood, or that is too powerful, temporary retreat and waiting are also a choice.

That is not cowardice, but a way to gather strength and see through the truth hidden behind the mist.”

Eli keenly caught the fleeting sorrow in Sebastian’s words, as if he had gone through far too many similar choices in his life.

But the fire in Eli’s blue eyes did not dim because of it. “Steward, I understand what you mean. But the Obsidian Territory is my responsibility, and Lucerne City is my responsibility.

Every single person here is my responsibility.

I cannot and will not run from it.”

Sebastian wanted to argue that this was precisely why he should not go.

But he quietly looked at Eli’s young yet incomparably resolute face, and at that head of snow-white hair. In the end, he let it go. There probably would not be any problem.

A moment later, he gave a slight nod.

“I understand.” He slowly rose to his feet, his movements smooth and silent. “Then let us depart.”

The two figures slipped into Nightsong Forest like ghosts merging with the night.

The moment they entered the forest’s edge, the eerie deathly silence Wolfgang had described enveloped them like a tangible tide.

There was no rustling of wind through leaves, no cry of night owls, no whisper of insects, not even the faint sound of fallen leaves being crushed beneath their feet.

There was only the extremely faint sound of their own footsteps, and...

an absolute, suffocating silence, as though everything beyond them had been sealed away by an invisible barrier.

Even the air itself seemed frozen.

“Steward,” Eli said in a low voice, breaking the unsettling silence.

“Do you think... this looks like a sign of a beast disaster?”

Perhaps this living fossil had enough experience to judge.

Sebastian’s pace did not slow in the slightest. His gray-white hair was almost invisible in the gloom.

He continued forward in silence for several steps before finally answering in that flat tone, “Perhaps.”

The answer was maddeningly ambiguous.

Eli refused to give up. “Then have you... seen anything like this before? Or rather... a beast disaster?”

This time Sebastian paused a little longer, as if searching through fragments buried in the depths of a long life, before finally giving a two-word reply.

“Perhaps... I have.”

Eli: “...”

He felt a vein throb at his temple.

This old steward was always like this, speaking in riddles that ultimately explained nothing!

The two of them advanced through the oppressive stillness for who knew how long. The trees around them grew taller and thicker, their branches and leaves blotting out the sky and completely shutting away the already feeble starlight.

Darkness, like spilled ink, wrapped tightly around them.

The decaying leaf mold beneath their feet grew thicker and thicker, muffling nearly every step.

And within this perfect extremity of darkness and silence, the gloomy aura that always seemed to cling to Sebastian appeared to... lighten somewhat.

He even began taking the initiative to introduce some of the strange plants they encountered along the way, plants that emitted a faint glow in the darkness or released peculiar scents.

“Young Master, look at that fern. The star-shaped luminous spots along the edges of its leaves are clearest in complete darkness. They serve as natural markers for nocturnal beasts...

The sap of this ancient tree has a numbing effect. Applied to a weapon...

Ah, and that patch of moss—if startled in extreme humidity, it releases hallucinogenic spores. It should be avoided.”

While keeping a wary eye on his surroundings and listening to Sebastian’s murmured explanations, as if he were reciting treasures from memory, an absurd but increasingly powerful thought rose in Eli’s mind.

This old steward... always liked to stay in the shadows, and he was so familiar with darkness that he seemed to even enjoy it.

Could it be... that he was one of those legendary... vampires?

If that were the case, it would make sense.

Wait... no, that still did not make sense. He had never once seen this old steward drink blood.

The moment that thought arose, Sebastian, who was walking ahead, suddenly came to a halt.

The flat expression he had maintained all this time vanished in an instant, replaced by a gravity Eli had never seen before.

The eyes hidden behind his lenses abruptly sharpened like knives, as though piercing through layer upon layer of darkness to lock onto some distant point.

The next instant, Eli’s vision blurred.

An irresistible force yanked him into a cold, hard embrace.

Sebastian’s gloved hand clamped tightly over Eli’s mouth and nose.

Caught completely off guard, Eli’s body tensed instinctively, struggling in surprise.

Their bodies were pressed tightly together in a posture that was exceedingly... intimate.

Eli could even feel the faint heartbeat beneath that cold chest, so weak it scarcely seemed human.

The old face beneath his snow-white hair flushed red, and he struggled, trying to make a sound.

“Silence, Young Master!” Sebastian’s voice was pressed so low that it seemed to sound directly inside Eli’s eardrums.

“I sense... a massive concentration of life directly ahead, very close.”

Before his words had even fully fallen, Sebastian’s arms, still holding Eli, suddenly exerted force.

Eli felt his body grow weightless, and the solid ground instantly dropped away beneath him!

Sebastian moved like a weightless phantom, tapping several times against the trunk of a towering tree. His motions were so fast that they left behind only faint afterimages.

In the span of just a few breaths, the two of them had ascended soundlessly to the crown of the tallest ancient tree nearby, concealing themselves within the dense canopy.

Sebastian released the hand covering Eli’s mouth and nose, but still gripped his arm firmly, signaling for him to look ahead.

Suppressing the awkwardness of having been hauled into a tree and the violent pounding of his heart, Eli followed Sebastian’s indication.

Carefully pushing aside the thick branches before him, his gaze passed through the gaps in the canopy—

and turned downward.

The sight before him made it feel as though every drop of blood in his body froze solid in an instant.

His pupils contracted to pinpoints from shock.

Not far ahead, in a forest clearing encircled by colossal ancient trees, beneath the faint, miserable moonlight filtering down through impossibly high gaps in the canopy—

Eli saw a terrifying scene beyond anything he had ever imagined in his life, a sight enough to overturn everything he thought he knew.

Beasts. Countless beasts!

Massive forest bears, sleek-furred Nightblade Panthers, herds of Iron-Maned Boars, agile Rock Deer—

and even several Thorn Earth Drakes, ferocious creatures whose presence he had only ever heard of in legend...

Predators and herbivores that were normally hunter and prey, filled with savage conflict, now coexisted in eerie peace.

They packed that not-so-small clearing so densely that they looked like worshippers on a pilgrimage.

But what shook Eli to the very core of his soul even more was this— these ferocious beasts, normally wild, untamed, and brimming with primal power, were all prostrating themselves on the ground.

Huge bear paws pressed flat to the earth, savage leopard heads bowed low, vicious boar tusks touching the dirt, powerful rock deer kneeling...

Every beast, no matter its size or strength, held an incomparably humble, incomparably devout posture of worship.

Without exception, all of their heads were directed toward the darkest part of the clearing’s center, a place so profoundly black that not even the faint moonlight could penetrate it.

As though there, in that darkness, there existed a supreme being worthy of their reverence— a god!