Chapter 1079: Wailing Dirge I
Nighttime in the Nexus was a surreal thing. The sky darkened as it did on Aeterna, with the Origin Spark itself dimming from the luminescence of a sun to only that of a moon. Leon thought that might’ve made it easier to see the other side of the Nexus millions of miles away, but the sky remained dark, only a few flickers here and there denoting from the brightest and most built-up places on the plane cutting through the magic creating the strange night.
With grim determination, Leon stared up at the sky, so strangely devoid of stars that it prickled his mind, triggering some primal disgust that he couldn’t put into words. After a moment, he lowered his gaze to the mustering ground in front of him.
It was hastily built, consisting of no more than a field that had been sufficiently cleared for several thousand soldiers to assemble. Only about one thousand had formed up after Leon’s order to muster a force for this purpose.
Three days had passed since his discovery of the formerly inhabited cave. He’d initially explored it, but hadn’t found much aside from the remaining buildings and the bodies. Some showed signs of violent death, but given their age, Leon couldn’t be sure if those signs were real or a result of damage over however many long eons they had lain there.
Most disturbing was the tunnel that continued on the opposite side of the cave’s entrance that extended deep into the earth of the Nexus. The tracks that Leon had been following continued down that tunnel, and it seemed that whatever technique it was using to disguise itself was dropped, for the darkness that he sensed in its tracks grew more powerful and noticeable at that point.
It wasn’t strong enough for Leon to guess the power or nature of the creature that made those tracks, but it was enough that he knew it posed some amount of danger to his people. On top of that, his magic senses didn’t manage to travel that far down the tunnel before running into an enchantment that scattered them. Unwilling to lead his small party into a possible trap or unknown and dangerous situation, Leon ordered the fissure leading into the village heavily guarded by powerful mages and then fell back to Artorion.
Once there, he arranged for the honored burials of Ioan and his team and then began to arrange a proper expedition into the tunnels. Over the next couple of days, however, additional survey teams were attacked in a similar manner to Ioan’s, and not once did the monster leave survivors, giving his preparations more urgency. In the last attack, even a sixth-tier mage had been killed. It seemed clear that this mysterious creature wasn’t going to stop, and that there were other entrances to this tunnel system.
Fortunately, Leon’s survey teams had done a good job of mapping out the area despite the attacks, revealing to him more than a dozen caves that had small villages in them and long tunnels leading down below. Now angry and motivated to find this creature and kill it, he’d assembled a thousand warriors from the Tribes and his Tempest Knights to storm these tunnels. The Jaguar, Alix, and Alcander were staying behind to coordinate the expedition, but Anastasios and Eva had volunteered to join the expedition. Valeria, Cassandra, Red, Marcus, Gaius, and Lucianus were joining Leon’s group.
Standing upon a hastily erected stone stage in front of the assembled mass of people, Leon inhaled and then said in a voice like booming thunder that reached every ear on that field, “Over the past four days, twenty-three of our people have given their lives to secure this land! The creature responsible moves about through the caves we’ve marked! We’re going to find this thing, whatever it is, and kill it! Our fallen brothers and sisters will be honored with the blood of our first enemy since arriving in the Nexus!”