Chapter 134
Chapter 134
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: The Abandoned Stronghold
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[Chapter 133 - Parasite (2)]
Before heading south, Arsen gathered the executives and briefly explained the plan.
“As we head up there, we’ll probably come across people afflicted with the same disease. We’ll use them to create the antidote.”
Taking inspiration from Arsen’s previous idea, Luden had devised a spell that generated a substance toxic to specific organisms.
To be precise, it wasn’t a spell created from scratch but rather a combination of two existing ones—but who cared about that?
It wasn’t a particularly potent poison; it wouldn’t even affect something as small as a rabbit. But it should be enough to kill parasites.
Eloise could also use this spell, thanks to Luden’s teachings.
However, there was one condition to the spell.
It required a clear grasp of the target organism.
In other words, they needed a specimen of the parasite.
And it had to be a fresh, living one at that.
“Couldn’t we just ask one of the people up there to hand someone over?”
“Estate lords don’t often hand over their subjects to unheard-of outsiders on a whim.”
That went double for a group traveling with a bunch of mages.
Of course, in the most optimistic scenario, they’d say, “Here’s one person,” fix them up quick as a flash, and be done with it. That would be ideal.
But,
“If we grab someone, slice open their belly, and it fails, we won’t get off with mere trouble. They’ll brand us con artists whether the person lives or dies. If things go south, we might end up fighting sky-flying beasts. You don’t want that, right?”
“Of course not...”
According to Barkran’s “broad but shallow” knowledge, cryosalt worms couldn’t survive long inside a human body.
They had evolved to parasitize other creatures, not humans, apparently.
When you thought about it, parasites latched on to reproduce continuously in the first place. Killing their host outright wasn’t normal behavior.
It was simply because they weren’t meant for human bodies.
In any case, once inside a human, these things slowly died while spewing all sorts of toxins that wrecked the body.
By the time the host was on the verge of death, the parasites inside were already dead too. So they couldn’t extract live ones from corpses.
That meant slicing open a living person. Healing spells existed, of course, but there was no guarantee they’d save someone weakened by the parasites.
On top of that, this was their first direct encounter with the parasites, so they couldn’t be certain Luden’s spell would even kill them—or that everything would work out.
If they cut open a living person, failed to find the parasites, or the solution proved ineffective, they’d be labeled frauds and barred from ever passing through Valtres.
“But wouldn’t that be the same anywhere else?”
When Anun asked, Arsen shook his head.
“For a proper estate, sure.”
Arsen gazed quietly upstream along the river.
His target was a fortress somewhere down south that drew its water from the Eldarin River’s source.
To put it bluntly, he was off to find a weak target he could intimidate into handing over a living infected person—one where any fallout wouldn’t bite them too hard.
* * *
During the march, Arsen overheard Maroon muttering as he eyed the river stretching to the right.
“If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was the sea.”
“What’s a sea?”
Bazkal, who’d been listening nearby, asked. Maroon excitedly described the ocean from his homeland.
The frigid northern sea, where ice floated about and froze solid come winter.
Maroon was already wearing the relic mask, which muted his usual overpowering presence. Thanks to that, not only Bazkal but Anun, Rino, and the other soldiers crowded around, listening with keen interest.
‘Come to think of it, they’re all adapting in their own ways, huh?’
Back in Belluan, Luden and Eloise had always kept apart from the others. No one dared approach the mages due to their inherent disdain.
Early in the journey, the soldiers had shunned the mages too, and the mages had kept their distance. But the long road had narrowed that gap within the group.
Perhaps it was the bonds forged from fighting side by side, stakes on the line. A positive change, at any rate.
Though when asked directly, the knights and soldiers claimed they were just toughing it out with grit—which suggested the root issue remained.
As Arsen watched their conversation, a scout returned from ahead and shouted.
“Captain! Large magic beast on the right bank ahead! It’s drinking water!”
“How big?”
“Huge!”
“Get ready to fight. Weapons up.”
Before the march, Arsen had issued prior orders.
All scouts were to stay at least several dozen meters from the Eldarin River’s main channel—ideally near a hundred meters.
To prevent accidents from careless behavior.
Thanks to that, they could watch the massive magic beast the scout had warned about from the safe vantage of spectators—without having to fight it themselves.
Watch it pay the price for that carelessness.
■■■■■■----!
“Whoa.”
“That’s gotta hurt.”
The four-eyed bull—likely the one the scout had spotted—let out a mighty roar.
But the emotion in that roar was far from savage bloodlust. More like a pathetic plea for mercy.
The reason? Another magic beast had burst from the water, clamped onto the bull’s lower body, and was dragging it into the river.
Arsen tentatively classified the creature as a serpent type, given its long, slender body.
Without the porcupine-like spines covering its entire exterior, it might have looked even more serpentine.
It had eight thin legs underneath and a horn on its forehead, giving it a vaguely eastern dragon vibe.
Though if that was a dragon, it’d be the ugliest one in existence.
The hideous aquatic magic beast—what he might dub a “spiny sea serpent”—seemed dozens of meters long.
In its jaws, the bull (shoulder height 3m, head-to-tail 5m) looked like a helpless calf.
Evidently, the river’s vast size meant its inhabitants grew to absurd proportions too.
Though there were land giants like the Desert King.
Suddenly, Arsen recalled his earlier hypothesis: creatures that ventured onto land for food were likely smaller specimens pushed out by competition.
If that held true, what sorts of monsters lurked within?
This was just a river, yet it teemed with such horrors. What unimaginable beasts dwelled in the distant ocean, the abyssal depths?
Land wasn’t fully humanity’s domain, but in this world, the water truly wasn’t.
A cosmic dread crept in, and Arsen halted his musings.
“So stuff like that comes out by the water’s edge? World’s a scary place.”
“Bet fighting it’d be fun.”
“Don’t joke— that thing could match that lord beast...”
Anun and Bazkal traded awed remarks.
And in a voice only Arsen could hear, another chimed in with shocked mutterings.
[Whoa, straight out of a movie. What even is that?]
‘You’d have pissed yourself seeing the Desert King. No place to do it, though.’
Hearing Barkran’s astounded tone brought to mind how he’d mocked the knights for freaking out over the flying Jin.
Back then, Arsen had wanted to chide him for acting like a country bumpkin. But he held back.
First, it felt too childish. Second—and more importantly—he couldn’t talk to himself in front of others.
“Still, we took down something on par with that.”
“Yeah, the captain finished it off!”
Rino fervently praised Arsen’s wit and courage.
He recounted how Arsen’s desperate self-amputation gambit to charge the lord was peak valor, and how the evil yet dim-witted raider lord only realized it when its heart was ripped out—like reciting an epic war ballad.
Arsen wasn’t utterly detached from fame and praise, but such overt adulation embarrassed him.
Rino hadn’t even been a knight then and hadn’t witnessed the fight up close, yet his description was so vivid it sounded firsthand.
‘How many times did he grill people for details...?’
As Arsen inwardly marveled, Barkran practically yelled.
[For real?! You took down something like that mega-beast? With just that outdated ride and an axe?]
“We all pulled together. Bazkal kept its attention, and without Knight Maroon’s arrows, it would’ve countered before we finished it.”
Arsen replied to Rino’s praise while simultaneously explaining to Barkran.
Of course, he’d wielded a reinforced black star-iron longsword back then, not this axe, and hadn’t ridden the Black Lion either. Explaining that without awkwardness was tough, so he glossed over it.
Barkran whistled in disbelief.
[Thought you guys just hunted regular beasts, but you’re seriously strong. Wonder how you’d fare against our era’s spec-ops.]
Hearing that, Arsen briefly pictured elite special forces armed with cutting-edge magic gear.
Knights—or combat puppets—pierced by antimagic rifles that shattered their frames, zipping about in near-sonic flyers like monsters.
He hadn’t asked if such magic rifles existed, but they probably did.
‘A single squad of those could conquer the world.’
Even a mighty raider lord would be helpless against them.
Hundreds of knights in a ruin city would fall like flies.
Just then, the bull vanished fully into the water, its pitiful cries fading.
The river flowed on majestically, as if nothing had happened.
“Keep moving. Good report. Stay vigilant on the right flank.”
“Got it!”
Having witnessed that spectacle, the scout’s reply brimmed with sincerity.
No one wanted to be ambushed by a dozens-of-meters-long behemoth.
* * *
“Oh...”
A single word—gasp or groan, who could say?—spoke for the whole group.
They had arrived at a stronghold fed by a small tributary branching from the Eldarin River.
The wall they now gazed up at was a masterful blend of timber and stone, densely constructed with evident care.
But that meticulousness was heartbreakingly wasted; signs of neglect were plain.
By rough estimate, maintenance had lapsed for months at least.
No signs of life stirred from above.
“Anyone there—!”
Bazkal bellowed, but silence answered.
In the deathly quiet, a few crows cawed mockingly, taunting the living.
Bazkal craned his neck side to side, then turned to Arsen.
“No answer, bro. We going in?”
“Just a few of us. Everyone else, wait here in case.”
Arsen donned the mask he’d ordered made during the journey to cover nose and mouth.
He instructed the others entering to do the same.
Cryosalt worms spread through water, so masks wouldn’t stop infection—but corpses were breeding grounds for plagues, weren’t they?
If the place was packed with victims’ bodies, new diseases feasting on those remains were all too possible.
Arsen, Anun, Eloise, and Maroon—four in masks—would enter.
The other knights and soldiers donned masks too, ready to charge in at need.
“Alright, let’s go.”
Arsen took point, urging his Jin forward.
At a pace the others could match, the Black Lion raced toward the wall—then, on cue, exploded into a graceful leap.
Its power was immense; no pathetic claw-scrambling like lesser Jins.
With one elegant bound, it crested the wall. Arsen sighed at the vista of the stronghold sprawling below.
“Ha...”
In his mind, Barkran made a retching noise like he might hurl.
Despite having no stomach or mouth left to do it.
Moments later, amid scraping sounds, Bazkal—the first to summit—spat.
“What a damn mess. Gonna give me nightmares.”