Chapter Ninety-Three: The Gate to the Demon Realm

Skanaoli dropped a bombshell on Ville: within the mist zone, there might exist a gate leading to the demon realm.

Seeing the shock on Ville’s face, Skanaoli did not break into his usual gleeful, rasping laughter. Instead, he sighed and said softly, “In the Wild Forest, all the races know, to some extent, about the demon realm. But what they know is far from accurate. I made a point of gathering what every race had recorded, and then, based on the history handed down among the beastfolk themselves, I pieced together a rough conclusion. If we reckon according to your human calendar, the first appearance of undead beings from the demon realm should have been four hundred years ago. And it was around that same time that those eerie, strange mists appeared in the Wild Forest, forming the mist zone we see today.”

“More than four hundred years ago?”

Ville blinked, then asked Skanaoli, “From the records I know, going back eight hundred years from the present, humans and the other races have never once gone to war. If what you say is true, and those undead creatures appeared four hundred years ago, then what were the nonhuman races doing during the four hundred years before that?”

Ville’s meaning was obvious: he was doubting Skanaoli. If the undead creatures truly appeared only four hundred years ago, then during the four centuries before that there had been no strange mist zone in the Wild Forest, no undead from the demon realm. The resources of the Wild Forest had remained as barren as ever. Ville did not believe that, during all that time, those crafty and greedy wild races would have been so obedient as to huddle in one place for several full centuries.

“Well…” Skanaoli’s face actually reddened a little, a rare sight. With a dry laugh, he said, “During that period, the beastfolk’s internal affairs were nowhere near as orderly and secure as they are now. The beastfolk had split into several different races, constantly at war with one another. In human terms, it was something like civil strife. And unfortunately, besides the beastfolk, the other races in the Wild Forest weren’t exactly well behaved either. Several of them all stuck a hand in at different levels, and as a result the entire situation among the beastfolk grew more and more chaotic. In the end, well, cough cough…”

“All right, all right. Let’s get back to the demon realm,” Ville said, waving a hand with generous ease to indicate that Skanaoli needn’t explain any further. After all, that concerned their own history; Ville had no interest in understanding it so thoroughly.

Still, it was truly rare to see that old fellow Skanaoli looking embarrassed… He had even blushed just now, hadn’t he? Ha, amusing.

Ville snickered inwardly. Seeing that Ville did not press further, Skanaoli breathed a sigh of relief and hurried on with the matter of the demon realm.

“With the appearance of the mist zone, those undead creatures from the demon realm gradually became more numerous. At first, those disgusting things only appeared one or two at a time, not many in number, so we merely took them for unfamiliar magical beasts. But as time passed, the number of undead beings slowly increased. More than that, the strange suppressive force also arose within that eerie mist zone!”

“Hm?”

Ville let out a soft sound of surprise and asked, “You mean that at the beginning, the mist zone didn’t have that strange suppressive force?”

“That is indeed the case,” Skanaoli nodded. “At first, that peculiar suppressive force was not strong. But as time went on, the strength of the suppression gradually increased as well. And as that force grew, the area covered by the mist zone quietly expanded, and the undead inside became more and more numerous. Until one day, we suddenly discovered that many of the beastfolk in the tribe had vanished without a trace. After asking around, we learned that those beastfolk had all gone into that mist zone! But the result…”

Skanaoli’s expression darkened. He continued, “So we began going into the mist zone to search. Beastfolk do not use magic the way elves and humans do, but beastfolk possess their own beast arts, a kind of power that can only be obtained through long years of training. If one insists on comparing them, the beastfolk’s beast arts are actually not far from the battle aura that humans have since lost.”

“Once inside the mist zone, many beastfolk discovered that their strength had been suppressed. The longer they stayed there, the weaker the power of their beast arts became. Fortunately, apart from having their beast arts suppressed, the raw strength of the beastfolk’s muscles was not suppressed. We had thought that with such formidable physical power, nothing would happen in the mist zone. Yet just at that moment, those disgusting death creatures appeared!”

Skanaoli looked at Ville, and a trace of barely perceptible gloom flickered through his eyes. “At the time, there were more than thirty beastfolk warriors who entered the mist zone, including two priests. In the end, not a single beastfolk returned alive. Only then did the beastfolk realize that something terrible seemed to have happened. The various beastfolk races, once split apart, discussed it among themselves and decided to stop the infighting for the moment. Each race sent a certain number of warriors into the mist zone at the same time. According to the records passed down, the number of beastfolk who entered then included more than ten priests and as many as four thousand beastfolk warriors. The beastfolk feared that another race might be behind it, hiding within the mist zone, so they had no choice but to proceed cautiously. But what they never expected was that awaiting them was not some other race, but those death creatures from the demon realm! And they were not just one or two, but thousands, even tens of thousands! Of the entire four thousand beastfolk warriors, only two ultimately escaped. One died the moment he returned, and the other went mad. Fortunately, at the time a priest forcibly read the memories of that beastfolk warrior and learned everything that had happened in the mist zone.”

“And then?” Ville’s brows rose slightly. “Then you rallied the army and went into the mist zone again?”

“Ha! Kid, this time you’re wrong,” Skanaoli said with a strange laugh. Unlike before, when his laughter had been a sinister, choking sort of sound, this time it rang out wildly, almost like a roar.

“The beastfolk were already a mess to begin with. The various beastfolk races gave different accounts of the undead in the mist zone, and just then, those undead hiding within the mist zone rushed out instead, numbering well over ten thousand! If not for the beastfolk’s great mobility, I’m afraid that even if you searched the entire Wild Forest now, you wouldn’t be able to find a single beastfolk left!”