Chapter 10 : Chapter 10
Chapter 10: I Want Meat
Five quiet minutes were enough for Cyril to steady himself after the series of sudden crises.
He heard no sound at all from outside, but when he pushed open the door and stepped onto the streets of Talin Town, he found that the War Fog at the center of town had already dissipated.
It seemed Sandru the Lich had indeed been driven out of Talin Town by the three witches, perhaps even straight out of La Rochelle’s borders. But Cyril did not believe they had been able to kill Sandru, even with Iris, whose strength clearly surpassed the others, taking action herself.
Of course, Iris’s intervention must have left Sandru gravely wounded. To lose half one’s life in a single blow was a devastating matter for a newly born Lich.
Cyril tried to recall everything he knew about the Keltir Alliance. At the beginning, the forces attacking La Rochelle had been only several major undead factions. After swiftly clearing out the small towns along the border, their advance had been halted by two fortress cities—Lovisa and Alderney.
In fact, the undead’s assault on the Northern Frontier really had been delayed for a long time by those two heavy strongholds. Yet just as La Rochelle had begun rejoicing, convinced that the undead had run out of strength, disastrous news arrived—
The newly ascended Lich Sandru established the Half-Moon Council, forcibly unified the undead factions with thunderous efficiency, and single-handedly brought about the formation of the Keltir Alliance.
This time, however, Iris and the other two witches had joined forces to wound Sandru. No matter how serious the injury actually was, it would still delay the speed of the undead unification.
During those five minutes, it was not only Sandru who had been removed. The villagers corrupted by him had also disappeared without a trace.
Cyril wandered through the town for a while, entering and leaving several empty houses in succession to confirm that the outside was safe. Only then did he return to the little house.
The moment he pushed the door open, he saw Caroline sitting by the table, sipping from a bowl of water in tiny mouthfuls.
“Mr. Adrien, when are we leaving?” She looked up at Cyril. Her voice was still weak, yet her spirit had clearly recovered, and there was even a trace of expectation in her tone.
“There’s no rush.” Cyril shook his head. “We’ll rest for one night and leave at dawn tomorrow.”
Both physically and mentally, Caroline was far tougher than he had expected. Only moments ago she had still been crying out in fear at those villagers who were no longer entirely human, and now she already seemed to have forgotten the whole affair.
If the Caroline of the game had never been taken away by the undead, and if La Rochelle had remained peaceful, then perhaps she might have left this little town in the Northern Frontier and joined an adventuring party.
Cyril forced himself not to think further.
For now, Caroline was in his hands. At least in the short term, however her life developed would depend on him.
He packed away some cured meat he had gathered from the villagers’ homes, found Caroline a more comfortable change of clothes, and finally spread a map out across the table.
Iris had been right. This was the peak season of magical beast activity. Starving magical beasts were even more dangerous than usual.
The map showed the terrain and resource distribution of the stretch between Talin Town, the Pineleaf Forest, and the Northwind Tower. A diagonal line running from northeast to southwest cut across it like a spear, thrusting from near the northern border of La Rochelle all the way to the outer edge of the Northern Frontier’s inner circle.
The positions of Talin Town and the Pineleaf Forest matched up with the ruins and the Cursed Forest in Cyril’s memory. The Pineleaf Forest itself was somewhat smaller in area than the Cursed Forest.
Cyril remembered that in the game, riding through the Cursed Forest had taken them a little over two and a half days, not counting time spent fighting. On foot, they would need to remain inside the Pineleaf Forest for at least four days.
And even more important than that was the fighting that might break out along the way.
He was still holding on to those two character levels and had not assigned them to the knight class. But trying to cross a forest full of awakening magical beasts as a pure Level 2 novice with no attribute boosts at all was clearly wishful thinking.
The finest Rogues were the boldest adventurers, but at the same time, they were also selfish to the core. For the sake of their own interests, they would always choose the boldest option only where it was also the safest—the one with the highest chance of success.
Sitting at the table, Cyril closed his eyes and simulated the route ahead.
Large forests were ideal habitats for magical beasts, but this was still within La Rochelle’s borders, and the military had swept through the area several times in the past. Truly powerful magical beasts generally did not appear here.
So long as there was no overwhelmingly superior force in play, then whether he was dealing with ordinary solitary large magical beasts or small pack-dwelling ones, there would always be patterns to follow.
The two levels he had nearly spent on the knight class were saved.
They left the already deserted Talin Town in the middle of the night. So many lives had vanished before his eyes, and Cyril was surprised to discover that he felt almost no emotional disturbance at all.
Caroline, on the other hand, merely blinked and asked worriedly where all the villagers had gone. Cyril brushed it aside with a simple lie, telling her that the older sister from earlier had taken them inland.
To his surprise, that was enough to fool her.
When dawn rose, they saw the Pineleaf Forest ahead of them, still green even in winter.
Set against the pale white vastness of the frozen plains, the forest looked strangely out of place, like a long green worm coiled across a sheet of stone. Yet once they actually entered it, they found it was no different from the outside world.
The same cold.
The same loneliness.
At some point, the light from outside vanished completely. Cyril had originally assumed that such fine pine needles could never block out all the light, but when he looked up now, he found that the clustered layers of needles overhead overlapped like storm clouds, trembling in the faint wind and rustling with a sound like low sobbing.
Caroline had originally been following a short distance behind him with her little bundle in her arms, but now she had already hurried forward. Her small hand clutched tightly at his sleeve, as though she wanted to hang from his arm altogether.
“Mr. Adrien, Mr. Adrien...”
She spoke in something very close to a plea. Her voice was trembling, and she truly did seem frightened out of her wits.
Cyril let out a sigh. To him, this level of darkness was nothing. Even without a Rogue’s enhanced dark vision, his experience alone was enough to let him move through an environment like this without difficulty.
But for Caroline, this darkness was more than enough to inspire fear.
And on top of that, there were the occasional accidental brushes against the undergrowth. Those tiny, rustling sounds were no different from the wailing of phantom spirits in the imagination, enough to leave anyone’s nerves stretched to the breaking point.
Just as he was thinking that, he heard the girl continue:
“If possible... could we catch a rabbit later? I want to eat meat...”
Silently, Cyril pried the hand clutching his arm loose, then took two pieces from the pack he was carrying and stuffed them into Caroline’s arms.
The girl’s face immediately crumpled into a bitter little pout.
But in the next instant, when she saw the two fingers Cyril raised, and heard the words he spoke, her eyes curved into smiling crescents.
“Two rabbits.”