Chapter 9 (2/2)

Just like skin after an acid splash, the land looked decayed and rotting. The vast expanse of rock and soil were charred black, with large cracks shot crookedly all over the earth. the vegetation on the ground had long been putrefied, the remaining trunks twisted as though they had been demonized into the claws of the devil. Further on, they could see collapsed walls, razed homes, and the Cecil Clan’s castle cloaked in smoke.

Giant-like aberrations roamed the devastated soil.

The fields and crops had long since been buried indistinguishably in the waves of monsters that ravaged their land.

“The clan’s territory…” Rebecca knelt on the hill, gritting her teeth with a death-like force. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and tears from fury or sorrow circled in them. She had just become the head of the clan, but had lost seemingly everything before she could even get used to being its leader.

“This is how the land looks like after it has been ruined by monsters,” Gawain sighed. “The Gondor Empire back then was devastated like this within and without. I’d predicted that the decay would have remained in the wasteland of the old empire—instead, new decay appeared in the realm of civilization again.”

Amber broke out in cold sweat. “By the God of Shadows… we’ve been surrounded by those things?”

Herti pondered the clan’s chances of recovery. “Can it still be saved?”

“No.” Gawain shook his head. “You didn’t block the advance of the monsters. They have already formed group resonance, and the elemental contamination caused by the demonic tide is irreversible. Even if all of the aberrations are destroyed, the pollution entrenched in the land will remain for quite a long while.”

“How long will it last?” Herti seemed to refuse to lose hope.

“Has civilization returned to the Gondor Empire?” Gawain asked a seemingly unrelated question.

“… It is still devoid of life. No one dares to tread on the land on the other side of the great barrier.”

Gawain shrugged. “Then it looks like the decay of the Cecil territory would continue for at least seven hundred years as well.”

Rebecca and Herti stared at this ancestor, a little stunned. they could not understand how this great figure, the pioneer of the Cecil Clan, could be so composed in the face of monsters destroying the last of the family’s land—he was neither furious nor sorrowful, as though he was watching something that had nothing to do with him. This attitude scared them a little.

However, Gawain quickly noticed the gazes of the pair and volunteered, “What’s the matter?”

“Lord Ancestor, are you not… angry?” Rebecca asked timidly. “This is the last of the Cecil Clan’s land…”

Gawain was stunned. He realized instantly that he was not fully immersed in the role he was supposed to play, and had tripped up. He hastily put on a straight face and conjured all of this acting skills and said, “Dwelling on such things is of no use. Gawain Cecil is a pioneer, and every inch of family land and wealth was built from scratch by me. If the land is gone, it’s gone. At worst, we can always find new land to settle on. What’s the use of brooding over this?”

Herti and Rebecca nodded hurriedly. As they did so, their hearts filled with admiration for their ancestor. He was as legendary as they said, and his worldview and breadth of mind was indeed different—for he did not know that all the available land had already been split between all the current aristocrats, and the unclaimed lands were the ones that were devoid of life and forbidden areas, so where was this ancestor going to claim land from…

“There’s nothing else to see here. The next thing we have to do is plan our itinerary. The first thing to do now is to find a town and convene with the people who broke out.” Taking advantage of the influence he had as their supposed ancestor, Gawain changed the subject swiftly. “I remember a Knight Philip breaking out with a group of people. Do you have an agreed upon meeting place?”

Rebecca answered quickly, “We planned to meet at Tanzan Town up north. If Tanzan was also attacked by the monsters, they would continue north along King’s Road.”

Gawain nodded and was about to set off when a strange feeling made him stop in his steps.

After a moment of pause, he and Knight Byron shouted out almost at the same time, “Duck! Hide!”

Even though they did not know why, Rebecca and Herti still fled with Knight Byron to the protection under a large rock nearby. Amber had already vanished into some cranny of darkness the moment Gawain opened his mouth. Gawain himself took cover behind Rebecca. However, he noticed that the lost little maid Betty was still grasping onto her saucepan with a blank expression, and darted out to pull her back—almost in the next instant, a sense of oppression seemed to descend from the sky upon them.

In the rising brilliance of the “great sun”, an elegant and enormous creature sailed across the sky slowly.

It was a gigantic dragon that spanned over ten meters.

In her panic, Herti subconsciously cast a third-level spell of “position distortion”, hiding everyone’s figures, though she was not at all sure that this shallow spell could fool the eyes of such a legendary creature.

However, the humongous dragon did not notice the people on the ground—or maybe just disdained to notice them. He, or she, only flapped their wings languidly, sweeping across the sky with grace and majesty, its eyes reflecting the Cecil territory that had been ruined by the Dark Wave.

Then, with a mouth full of salted soda… er, it spat fire onto the land.