Chapter 135: Edinmer's Account
Another day passed, bringing their journey to two full days now. They'd encountered a handful of beasts along the way, though nothing serious enough to slow them down. Even Xiaoshuang had grown bored with the endless walking.
Evan came to a sudden stop mid-stride. He sensed someone nearby — not a beast this time. The students tensed at once, spells at the ready. Evan waved a hand, and a group of three moved forward to scout cautiously ahead. Before long, welcome news came back: they'd found someone — a Hollingburton student, unconscious.
Evan ordered the search radius widened, and the three groups fanned out at 120-degree angles to cover more ground. He knelt beside the unconscious man and let out a breath of relief. Injured, yes, with plenty of bruising and a few fractures, but the man had likely collapsed from a combination of exhaustion, hunger, and hurt rather than anything worse.
Evan, well versed in human anatomy, set the fractured bones back into place. Emma murmured an incantation, a shower of light settling over the man's body, and he gasped awake with a start. His eyes found the three figures above him, and recognizing the Hollingburton robes, he let out a long breath.
Seeing him conscious, Evan pulled bread and water from his ring. The man snatched them at once, stuffing bread into his mouth. "Slow down," Evan said, "no need to rush. Tell us what's happened these past few days. Hollingburton sent us to bring you back. What exactly happened out here?"
He was too busy eating to answer at first, finishing off a full loaf and half a waterskin before he finally slowed down. The scouting group returned around then, reporting nothing further found. Evan waved them off, and they settled quietly nearby, loosely encircling the group, keeping watch in three directions.
Only then did the man begin his account. His name was Edinmer, a sixth-tier water mage, considered one of the sharper students in his class — less than a year from graduation. He'd come along with Professor Damire's expedition, a group of thirty-six students in total, sent to survey the Barbarian Continent. Before graduation, the school often sent students out on distant expeditions like this — to the Black Forest, to the Lea Woodlands, places with plenty of magical beasts, both to broaden the students' experience and to fill in gaps in the school's records. A useful arrangement for everyone involved.
Professor Damire had led the group deep into the rainforest, and somewhere along the way, they'd drawn the attention of a hostile party. Five nights ago, just as everyone had settled down to sleep, the attack came. Damire had been careful — layers of protective arrays surrounded the camp — but even so, several had been dismantled without a sound. Whether through carelessness on the attackers' part or simple bad luck, one warning ward triggered, alerting Damire in time, and the two sides clashed in the dark.
Damire had sent off owls calling for help, though no one knew how many had actually made it out. The attackers included mage-archers, mages, and thieves. The students had no choice but to fight their way clear, and by the time they'd counted heads afterward, six were missing.
"Do you know who they were?" Evan asked.
"No idea. We still don't know, even now," Edinmer said.
Evan nodded. "Go on."
Edinmer continued. They'd fled blind through the jungle with no sense of direction, until dawn broke. Their tents were lost, but most of their gear survived, thanks to everyone carrying storage rings. They'd stumbled onto a small rise — one they hadn't noticed the day before, strange as that seemed.
They hadn't realized the ground there actually sat lower than it appeared, and had unwittingly found the entrance to a half-plane. With pursuers closing in behind them, they'd pushed through.
Treants guarded the entrance, but between the students and Professor Damire working together, they'd beaten the guardians back and slipped inside. Their pursuers followed close behind, apparently more familiar with the terrain, and caught up with the group quickly. Thirty or forty of them in total, fewer mages among them but plenty of mage-archers, thieves, and knights. The moment the two sides clashed, one of their own fell, and one of the enemy's as well.
Then, without warning, a creature none of them had ever seen appeared in the sky — enormous, radiating overwhelming pressure, poised as though about to dive down roaring. Both sides scattered in panic. They'd run for it, and fortunately the creature never gave chase — likely too busy pursuing the other side instead.
At this point Evan said mildly, "The creature never chased either side, really. It was nothing more than scattered divine power taking shape out of your own fear — no true beast at all. You should be grateful to something that never existed. It's what split the two parties apart."
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Edinmer stared at him, clearly not following, faintly grasping that Evan was calling the terrifying creature they'd faced nothing but a bluff. When Edinmer paused, puzzled, Evan simply said, "Go on."
Edinmer continued. After that clash, plenty of them had been wounded, though they'd come prepared with a good supply of healing potions, so they'd suffered no further losses — though their pace slowed considerably. Four days later, they'd run into another group entirely.
This group could barely be called human at all — true beastmen, not the sort found outside this place. Each one carried distinct features: some with horns on their heads, some with tails, others with wings sprouting from their backs, some with a single eye, some with hooves instead of feet. They seemed to wield magic of their own, though unlike ordinary spellcraft — something closer to Druidic magic, every casting wreathed in green light.
Caught off guard, the students had cast what spells they could, but the moment the beastmen answered, the trees across the whole hillside seemed to come alive, coiling around the group. Damire had lashed out with Lightning Strike, wounding two or three of them, but with several more beastmen bearing down at once, the group had been swallowed up in their trap regardless.
Edinmer, standing near the edge of the slope during the fight, had lost his footing and tumbled down the hillside, blacking out. He'd lain there unconscious for a full day and night without realizing it.
By the time he finished his account, his injuries — serious as they'd been — had already been reduced to nearly nothing under Evan's and the others' care. He could walk again, close enough to full health that he could run and jump if he needed to. Magic worked wonders on injuries, so long as the wounded party hadn't run out of life to draw on — the cost simply came out of the healer's own vitality, something none of the injured particularly cared about.
Everyone looked to Evan, waiting on his decision. He sat with it a moment before turning to Edinmer. "Do you have any idea what these beastmen wanted with your people?"
Edinmer shook his head. "No idea. It was a chance encounter — we couldn't even understand their language. They attacked us, but carefully, it seemed. From what I saw, they never went for a killing blow. It looked more like they wanted us alive."
"Do you know where their den is?" Evan pressed.
"No. We ran straight into them by accident," Edinmer said.
"We'll head up the hill first," Evan said. "The first thing we need is to find their den. We can decide the rest from there."
Xiaoshuang lifted into the air. "I'll go take a look ahead."
"Be careful," Evan said, a note of concern in his voice.
"I'll be fine. I'm small enough that most people never even notice me. I'll go scout it out." She flew off into the trees. Evan turned to Jessica. "Stay with Edinmer. We're heading up."
It took the group a full hour to climb the hill ahead of them — not that it stood especially tall, but there was hardly a proper path, and caution demanded care at every step. Evan and the others didn't let their guard down simply because no beasts had shown themselves on the slope. They kept to the formation Evan had drilled into them, moving slowly rather than breaking discipline, staying composed even in the middle of a rescue. Evan found real satisfaction in that — without realizing it, the principle he'd taught them lined up perfectly with an old saying from his past life: an even mind is the way.
Xiaoshuang had grown restless waiting at the summit and flew over the moment Evan reached the top. "Find anything?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Nothing major. See those broken branches over there? Looks like they went that direction. But I noticed something strange up here — these trees have been touched by life-aligned divine power. There's still traces of it lingering. They're growing noticeably better than the trees around them."
Evan looked and confirmed it himself, his brow furrowing. "You're saying whoever did this wasn't using magic at all — but divine art? Some kind of life-based divine art?"
Xiaoshuang nodded. Magic and divine art, in the narrow sense the group used the terms here, weren't quite the same thing — though in the broader sense, divine art was simply another form of magic.
The words settled heavily over the group. If this was divine art, then these beastmen had to be connected to the goddess of life somehow. As Hollingburton students, they all knew something of false gods — the term the Creationist Church used for beings who'd cultivated their way to something resembling divinity.
That included the old gods of ancient Xilun, all branded false gods by the Church. Only the Creator held true omniscience and omnipotence, the sole and highest source of all creation — no mortal could ever hope to reach that height. Evan held nothing but contempt for the doctrine himself, but he recognized how deeply it had settled into the minds of everyone across Tyrenese, mages included, whether they realized it or not.
Emma spoke, her tone grave. "If that's true, we're in real trouble. This must be where the goddess of life's temple actually sits. If these beastmen live here, we're the outsiders. We hold none of the home advantage."
Xiaoshuang said, "The goddess of life is a good one, though. She wouldn't let harm come to them."
She said it because she'd actually met the goddess herself, but Evan wasn't nearly so optimistic. A principle had settled into him without his quite noticing it: assume the worst of anyone in your own thinking, but act with the best intentions you can manage.
"Whatever the case, we still need to find their den first. Hm — a full day and night's passed, but there should still be something left to find," Evan said, catching himself mid-thought. The last part slipped out almost involuntarily — he'd already drifted, for just an instant, into that particular state of focus. What he didn't realize was that it counted, in its own right, as a kind of divine gift — the ability to track someone by scent alone.