"This mist isn't natural."
The Continental Magic Association's investigation team — based in the Central Lands themselves, unlike Nanoda's group, who'd set out from the Northern territories — had reached the ruins of the Kingdom of Ert first.
Lernen, his hair fully white by now, gripped his staff with a calm face. His Mana Perception had already gone dead like a broken radar, and the young investigators traveling with him had drifted apart from him without anyone quite noticing.
In the vast white mist, he was the only one left.
Solitude didn't frighten him. If anything, it sharpened his fighting spirit.
He took a bottle hanging at his waist and smashed it. The clump of earth sealed inside swelled rapidly, and a stone man nearly two meters tall took shape before him.
Thud, thud, thud — the stone man charged off in one direction and vanished into the mist.
Some unknown span of time passed.
Lernen's brow furrowed slightly. His magic puppet had been destroyed — the thin Mana Link to it had snapped.
"Just as I thought. Something's hiding in this mist."
Meanwhile, elsewhere —
"Whew, what in the world is that thing? My sword nearly snapped clean in half."
Timmy stared at the stone hulk before him. The stone man that had come charging out of the fog had given him a genuine scare — if he hadn't defended in time, with Rolwen's help, he'd have been smashed to pieces.
"Impressive. That punch — second-rate, no... it might rival a first-rate warrior. Damn, its strength is beyond anything I imagined."
Rolwen gave his assessment, then turned to ask for opinions.
"What do you think? Should we go in? This mist isn't something ordinary."
Walking at the rear, Nanoda tried probing with her Mana Perception, only to find her senses could penetrate just a thin layer of the fog — barely a few meters.
"Of course. What about you two?"
"I need to see the kingdom's state with my own eyes — and my brothers in Squad Three. I'm the one who left them behind. I have to go back for them. That's my responsibility as their captain."
Whether they were truly alive or dead, Rolwen added silently to himself. Only when he was dead serious did he forget to curse.
"I'm still Squad Three's vice-captain too, whatever that's worth." Timmy thumped his own chest.
Nanoda glanced at the two of them, her voice flat and emotionless. "That's a shame, given where you two stand.
We'll split up from here. I won't give you two any more trouble. I'm going to find my enemy — do as you like."
Without waiting for either of them to answer, Nanoda walked straight into the mist.
Silent and light-footed, she moved so fast that even Rolwen didn't have time to react — all he caught was the black hem of her coat vanishing into the fog.
"Damn it. I'm actually glad now Tutesi screwed us over back then, and we never went through with the plan to make an enemy of Gaderia.
A warrior's instincts are always sharp." Rolwen let out a breath of relief.
"Let's go."
Her vision dissolved into a wash of white. Nanoda held her two broken horns in hand, advancing at an unhurried pace.
She'd first thought to try dispelling the mist with Paradox Magic, but in the end abandoned the idea. Honestly, she'd only scratched the surface of that magic.
Try using her Mana-absorbing body to drain the surrounding Mana and unravel the spell that way? Instinct told her it could work.
A trap. Nanoda had already sensed one coming, ever since setting out from the North toward the Kingdom of Ert in the Central Lands.
Just like the last time, after her return through time and space, when she'd been lured onto a battlefield while searching for Yuna.
Something calling itself a devil? Or perhaps some unknown mastermind pulling strings from the shadows.
In the end, Nanoda chose to hold her strength in reserve, and see what tricks the other side had in store.
"Rolwen, I think I hear a river — and I'm smelling something."
What Timmy meant, of course, was the smell of blood. For a Demon Hunter used to handling bloody cases, it wasn't exactly shocking — but it was still a warning bell.
The two of them had only walked forward a few minutes after entering the mist when, to their surprise, they found it gradually thinning around them.
As the mist cleared, the smell grew steadily stronger too, now laced with a thick stench of decay.
"Ngh." The instant Timmy made out what surrounded them, he nearly gagged.
"Damn it." Rolwen felt his foot strike something. Looking down, he found a blackened arm and a half-rotted head, maggots writhing across it.
"I've been waiting a good long while. Someone to test my blade on, at last."
The four-armed Demon sat on a rock by the riverbank, his four sharp longswords reflecting the corpses scattered across the ground. His murderous aura was so thick that even the insects swarming everywhere dared not draw near — like some wrathful war-demon given flesh!
"Captain... they're..."
"Yeah. Damn it. I'm going to kill that Demon."
Rolwen had never been this furious before. The mangled, rotting corpses were unrecognizable, but the hems of their clothes all bore the mark that identified them as Demon Hunters.
Squad Four — his own brothers — all dead. Every one of them killed by that devil!
"You look stronger than the average warrior. Good."
Revolte rose to his feet, his four longswords slowly unfurling.
"Let me ask first — did you kill everyone here?"
"That's right." Facing the handsome man's question, the Demon General answered with a swing of his blades!
"Please, save me." Lernen, feeling his way forward step by step, came to a stop. A faint, almost imperceptible voice drifted out from within the mist.
The voice was very young, as though it belonged to a child.
Someone? Or it could be the Demon Race that had destroyed this place.
With his Mana Perception gone and his sight blocked by the thick fog, Lernen moved toward where the voice had come from.
At the same time, he gave his staff a slight motion. A pale blue light of gathered Mana kindled, just barely enough to illuminate a thin outer layer of the mist.
"Please, save me." The child's voice grew clearer, and Lernen grew all the more cautious.
A small figure appeared ahead, wrapped in a black cloak, small hands wiping again and again at her face — like some helpless child crying after getting lost.
As if hearing the footsteps approaching through the fog, the child lowered her hands. A pair of eyes beneath the cloak's hood fixed on Lernen.
"Child, can you tell me what happened?"
Lernen kept his voice as gentle as he could manage, the way he might speak to a newborn granddaughter.
Before his eyes, the little girl said nothing more — she simply threw her arms open and ran straight at Lernen.
As if some instinct had seized him, Lernen cast a Defensive Magic barrier!
The little girl slammed straight into it with a wet smack.
"Grandpa, please save me."
The girl's pale hands groped over the surface of the Defensive Magic, as if baffled by this wall that had come from nowhere to block her.
"Uh, I'm not quite that old — only in my fifties." Lernen studied the child from a wary distance.
A kingdom reported destroyed, an eerie mist, and now a child suddenly calling for help from within it — any sane person would sense something was off.
Lernen wasn't a man prone to overflowing sympathy. Quite the opposite — he was decisive.
"Would you take that hood off? I'd like to see what you look like."
He offered a warm, easy smile — with no intention whatsoever of dropping the barrier.
____
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