Chapter 79 : Chapter 79

Chapter 79. The Roar of the Marmot

The stream murmured on as three figures continued westward along its winding course.

The scenery across the wasteland grew ever more monotonous.

Other than the occasional tumbleweed skittering past and the barren hills undulating along the distant horizon, there was nothing but an endless wash of grayish yellow.

Gulu sprawled across Irene’s shoulder, its little head bobbing sleepily in time with the horse’s gait.

The sun had begun to slope westward, stretching the shadows of the three travelers long across the wasteland.

The ground ahead rose gradually, forming a low earthen ridge.

Just as they were about to cross it, a sudden burst of hurried, chaotic hoofbeats rang out from behind the ridge without warning.

The horses whinnied sharply.

More than a dozen riders burst out from behind the ridge like phantoms and spread out in a fan formation, blocking the path before them.

Amid the flying dust, Eli instantly tightened the reins and drew Irene slightly behind and to his side.

The packhorses snorted uneasily.

Gulu, startled awake on Irene’s shoulder, widened its black bead-like eyes in terror.

“An enemy attack?! So many bad people!”

This cavalry troop was dressed in a haphazard mixture of gear. Their leather armor was old and worn, and their weapons were equally mismatched.

At their head was a vicious-looking officer. Reining in his horse, he swept his gaze over the two of them like a poisonous snake.

And when his eyes landed on Irene’s refined and ethereal face in particular, a naked greed and lust exploded from his muddy gaze without the slightest concealment.

The scar-faced officer raised a hand, signaling his men to halt.

“Stop right there! Which federation’s trash are you from?

Didn’t you know Storm City belongs to our Wanliu, hm?!”

A burst of laughter rose from the riders behind him. Their own eyes roamed over Irene just as brazenly.

“Boss, that girl is really a beauty!”

“Look at that skin. She doesn’t seem like one of ours, does she?”

The officer licked his cracked lips and leered at Irene.

“Pretty little thing, what is the point of sticking with this brat?

You might as well come with me. If you do, I guarantee you will eat and drink well in Storm City. Heh heh...”

Eli’s gaze turned cold as ice.

He swept over them in an instant. More than a dozen men, their auras uneven, their battle aura fluctuations weak.

The strongest among them was that scar-faced officer, and even he was only at the High-Black Iron Tier.

He could handle them.

In the span of that single thought, Eli moved like lightning.

He did not dismount.

His right hand brushed the quiver at his saddle, and three black-feathered arrows were already nocked against the string of the strongbow that had somehow appeared in his left hand.

He drew it to a full moon in one seamless motion.

The bowstring thrummed.

Three black streaks tore through the air, loosed almost at the same instant.

The scar-faced officer instinctively tried to raise a hand to block, but his movement was stiff as a puppet’s.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Three dull impacts rang out almost simultaneously.

The first arrow pierced the scar-faced officer’s throat with perfect accuracy.

The arrowhead burst out through the back of his neck in a spray of blood.

The second and third arrows punched through the throats of the two riders laughing the most wantonly on either side of him.

“Urgh...” Air leaked from the scar-faced officer’s throat in a ghastly rasp.

The greed and savagery in his eyes were replaced by boundless shock and confusion.

His body swayed once, and then, like a rotting log, he crashed from the saddle.

The two corpses beside him rolled into the dust almost at the same moment, their blood swiftly soaking into the dry earth.

Dead silence fell.

Then came an eruption of rage like a volcano exploding.

“Boss!!!”

“Kill him! Avenge the chief!”

The remaining riders’ eyes turned red in an instant as they drew their weapons.

Howling, they drove their horses forward and charged at Eli with reckless abandon.

Eli’s right hand had already seized the hilt of Silver at his waist. He tightened his legs against the horse’s flanks, ready to ride straight into the tide of enemy cavalry.

They were nothing but rabble.

Yet just as he was about to spur his horse forward,

a sigh carrying both amusement and helplessness came from behind him.

It was Irene.

As she looked at Eli standing in front of her, the calm star-filled depths of her eyes stirred with the faintest ripple.

She merely lifted her slender white fingers and gave a casual hook in the direction of the charging riders.

In the next second, a sudden change erupted.

A heavy tremor rolled through the earth.

Beneath the feet of those charging riders, the hard, parched ground of the wasteland split open without warning.

“What is that?!”

“Ahhh! My leg!”

“Help... help!”

The terrified cries of despair instantly replaced the roar of the charge.

Thick vines surged forth with overwhelming force.

They lashed around the riders’ bodies, arms, and legs like lightning, and even coiled directly around the pounding hooves of the horses.

The horses caught by the vines let out pained screams and crashed heavily to the ground, flinging the riders from their backs.

Those riders thrown into the air were not spared either. More vines caught them midflight and tightened violently.

Bones snapped with brittle cracks, and flesh was crushed and torn with sickening, muffled sounds.

In the span of only a few breaths, silence remained once more.

The dozen or so riders who had been so fierce just moments ago, together with their horses, had now been reduced to mangled heaps of flesh crushed out of shape by the monstrous vines.

Eli’s hand, still gripping Silver, stopped in midair.

Even the horse beneath him stamped nervously in place, terrified by the sudden horror before its eyes.

He slowly turned his head and looked at Irene behind him, his eyes filled with shock.

He had known Irene was strong, unfathomably strong.

But he had not imagined she could be so casual, so... cruelly efficient.

She was kind and despised needless slaughter, but that did not mean she would calmly endure threats and insults.

“Let us go,” Irene said, her voice as calm as ever.

Eli drew a deep breath, forced down the shock in his heart, and silently slid Silver back into its sheath.

Then he gave a quiet command, and the three of them rode around that bloody patch of ground and continued onward in silence.

The night over the wasteland gradually spread out around them like a vast curtain covering the land on all sides.

It was not until the following afternoon that the outline of a giant city finally appeared on the distant horizon.

It was a vast city built against the mountains. Even from afar, the height and grandeur of its walls could be seen clearly.

It far surpassed Thorne City, and was even more imposing than the outer walls of Orlandia in Eli’s memory.

Like an ancient dragon crouching across the earth, it radiated a suffocating pressure.

But if those walls were so high and magnificent, how had the people of the Western Federation managed to breach them...?

Could it have been from within?

“Waaah—!” Gulu stood on Irene’s shoulder and shaded its eyes with a little paw as though gazing into the distance.

“So... so tall! It is almost... almost as tall as the great Lord Gulu!”

Eli was still shaken by the majesty of this human-made structure, but at those words, the corner of his mouth twitched violently.

That wall had to be dozens of meters high at the very least, and you are just a marmot...

Irene’s gaze rested upon the towering wall, and a faint look of understanding flashed through her eyes.

“This wall... is not merely stone. There is magic within it.

Very ancient, very resilient... elven earth-warding spellwork.

It has worn down somewhat, but its foundation remains.”

Elven magic?!

Eli instantly thought of Roderick La Roche, the man who had betrayed the elven queen.

Could Storm City be a relic from that era?

Something left behind by the brief cooperation between elves and humans?

As they drew nearer to the wall, that pressure became even more intense.

“Shall we go around and slip in? Or...” Eli asked in a low voice.

Forcing their way in would be suicide, and climbing it would make them easy to spot.

Irene did not answer. She simply raised that hand of hers again, white and smooth as jade, and made a light slicing motion.

A soundless wave of space rippled out and instantly enveloped the three of them.

Eli only felt the scenery before his eyes blur violently.

Then came a brief sensation of weightlessness, and in the next moment his feet were already standing firmly upon solid ground.

Before him was still that towering wall of gray-black stone stretching into the sky.

Yet the three of them were now standing on the far side of it.

Storm City had been passed through just like that, silently and without a trace.

Eli whipped around and stared at the colossal wall behind them, the wall that had cut off the wasteland beyond.

For all his iron will, he still could not help sucking in a sharp breath.

This... this was simply unreasonable.

But as for why she had not used that earlier... the question was a little too presumptuous, so Eli wisely kept his mouth shut. The powerful always had ways that ordinary people could not understand.

And besides, without her, even if he had brought the entire Black Crow Knights here,

they probably could have done nothing but stare helplessly at such a wall and return empty-handed.

Suppressing the shock in his heart, Eli suddenly thought of something.

“Princess Irene... the creature that was in the lake in Nightsong Forest before...

was it a dragon?”

Irene seemed to find his eager thirst for knowledge somewhat amusing, and the corners of her lips curved ever so slightly.

“It was a dragon. However...”

She paused, speaking in a tone that treated it as the most natural thing in the world.

“Valerian’s dragon bloodline is rather thin, and he is only two hundred years old. He is still a child.”

Two hundred years old... and still a child?!

The expression on Eli’s face froze instantly.

He opened his mouth, but in the end he swallowed back all the complaints rising inside him and let out only a helpless sigh.

Fine, then.

Measured against the vast lifespans of elves and dragons, he probably did not even count as an infant. At best, he was an embryo.

Seeing Eli’s frozen expression, Irene’s lips curved a little more.

The three of them did not linger for long. After leaving Storm City behind, the terrain became more rugged.

Huge rocks appeared in increasing numbers, while the vegetation grew ever sparser.

After another full day of arduous travel,

the earth ahead seemed as though it had been split apart by a giant axe that had once cleaved heaven and earth.

At last, an enormous gorge beyond description appeared before them, stretching across the world itself.

The Forgotten Rift.

The cliffs on either side looked as though they had been carved by a god with blade and axe, so steep they were almost vertical.

They soared into the clouds, and even lifting one’s head to look at them made the world spin.

The bottom of the gorge was impossible to see. Gray-white mist billowed through its depths.

The width of the chasm was equally astonishing. Even at its narrowest point, it was clearly several hundred meters across.

A bitter wind howled up from the depths of the Rift, its wail sounding like ghosts crying in torment.

“Wow...” Eli pulled his horse to a halt and sighed from the heart. “It is truly... magnificent.”

Before such a grand geological wonder, human power felt utterly insignificant.

Gulu was stunned by the sight as well. It jumped down from Irene’s shoulder and crept cautiously toward the edge of the Rift.

Stretching out its little head, it peered carefully into the bottomless abyss of fog below.

The frigid wind from the depths ruffled its fur, and it shivered violently, its short little legs unconsciously taking a step back.

But in the next second, the great Lord Gulu seemed to realize that this was far too embarrassing.

It halted at the cliff’s edge, drew in a huge breath, puffed out its round little belly, opened its mouth, and toward that bottomless abyss of the Rift, let out its signature shrill howl with all the strength in its body:

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”

(The inspiration was that screaming marmot meme. Haha.)

The marmot’s shriek echoed over the empty and deathly still edge of the Rift, carrying farther and farther away, briefly overwhelming even the sound of the wind rising from the gorge below.

The cry ricocheted again and again between the steep rock walls, forming a series of bizarre echoes.

It sounded as though countless marmots were all screaming throughout the gorge in answer to one another.

Eli: “...”

Irene: “...”

Expressionless, Eli rubbed his ears, which were still buzzing from the force of the scream.

As he looked at the marmot that had finished “challenging” the abyss and was now standing there proudly with its chest puffed out, the veins at his temple began to throb faintly.