Chapter 337: Akeso
The arrival of rainbow dragonflies turned the entire Pocratee upside-down just like what happened to Twilight Well.
Caught by surprise, almost all villagers were possessed overnight. The village was home to countless healers who saved many lives in the outside world, yet they couldn’t save themselves.
The parasites could survive by absorbing nightmare energy and didn’t need to kill their hosts, yet mortal bodies couldn’t live long in such a condition. One after one, the residents of Pocratee died off in the following years.
Angor reached the conclusion above by his own assumptions and with the help of body language, or in this case, the “head language” of the giant serpent. There were many details that he couldn’t figure out, such as why there were so many corpses that lay along the path that led here. He took many guesses, but none of them were approved by the serpent.
Also, the serpent didn’t know why the individual in the coffin could live through the thousand years, and neither could it tell Angor about the man’s identity or name. It only knew that the man was a villager from Pocratee.
Angor assumed that the serpent took the pain to keep someone like this alive for so long because it wanted to keep the last bloodline and hope of Pocratee. As the serpent told him, there were no survivors. The man in the coffin was the only one “alive”.
When Angor asked information about the outside world, the serpent only shook its giant head. It had spent centuries in the waters nearby without knowing anything beyond the bounds.
In the end, Angor decided to keep his remaining questions for the man in the coffin for when he woke up.
“I guess I’ll take him away now,” he said.
The serpent didn’t move. It looked at Angor with hope and gratitude.
Angor sighed in relief and covered the coffin up. He cast a Bind spell to restrain the coffin tightly and placed it inside his space bracelet.
Thanks to the large lump of Hollow Weed he obtained in the plane passageway, the entire storage space could sustain life forms now. He even had some spare Hollow Weed left.
Before he could walk away though, the serpent moved in his way again and tilted its head toward somewhere, with the hope that Angor could follow it. The creature seemed to be in better shape after resting for a while.
After walking for a while, Angor thought the serpent was simply seeing him off. In the end, he was a little surprised to find out that he had entered another small, concealed cave.
He noticed traces of human works inside the cave, such as a really big stone bed and drainage pipes. The marks on the bed and the smell of animal waste suggested that this was where the serpent slept.
The serpent moved behind the bed.
Angor joined it and saw a pile of molted snakeskin, snake teeth, and dark-colored scales.
“Thingsss... for you.”
It picked up a shiny black skin patch and a pale-white snake fang. It then tossed them to Angor.
The body parts of wizard-level monsters were always valuable. Angor took a quick guess that these were at least mid to high-tier materials!
He was very satisfied despite the fact that the serpent only gave him a small portion from the pile. He never expected this anyway. Anything would be welcomed.
Next, the serpent waved its tail and asked Angor to leave on his own.
Angor said thanks and prepared to leave for real. He then turned back and asked one last question, “May I know your name, mighty one?”
The serpent lifted its head again and stared at Angor with those golden eyes.
“Mine name... Akeso.”
...
After leaving Akeso’s domain, it took Angor about half an hour to reach the end of the caves.
Another water pool.
He saw animals this time. There were only bite-size fishes and shrimps, but he was very glad to find them.
Toby’s dried fish already ran out one month ago, and they had been munching on his Mana Bread. Not considering Toby’s opinion, Angor himself was going to vomit at this rate.
The water full of fresh seafood was like a gourmet table in his eyes.
“Not now... I need to get out of here first,” he said as he tried to persuade himself to move. However, he failed to contain his primal urge once he was in the water. He caught several small prawns and boiled them in hot water. He then quickly ate them.
After spending such a long time without eating proper food, he couldn’t help but tear up when the slick and soft shrimp meat touched his tongue.
Toby urged him eagerly. Compared to humans, this seabird felt as if he just returned to paradise.
Now Angor had enough reasons to haul fishes and shrimps while swimming along with the water flow.
They didn’t find any larger sea creatures probably because they were still inside Akeso’s territory. And Angor was glad about being free of potentially hostile predators.
He spent another ten minutes in water to head downstream. When the sky had taken on the darker tone of the evening, he then finally saw the light,
The golden-red color of dusk painted the sky above the lush forest full of wildlife. The trees stood solemnly beside the water where only the sound of leaves rustling could be heard.
This was what Angor saw when he emerged from the surface of the lake.
He looked back briefly to check the quiet and still lake behind him. No one could ever believe that such a tranquil place covered an underground village for a thousand years.
Angor still didn’t know where he was now, which wasn’t really important since he had a bigger task at hand—To satisfy his stomach!
They feasted upon the delicious fish, and they used the clean lake water as wine, the beautiful scenery of nature as a spice, and the falling sun as decoration.
They didn’t actually have spice. However, being able to swallow meat was already good enough.
Stars and the moon hung in the sky. Angor didn’t really feel tired yet, so he decided to continue his travel during the night.
As a “pseudo” level-2 apprentice, he didn’t have trouble staying fed in the wilderness. Besides, he also had Toby’s help.
The bird circled around in the sky for a while and told Angor the landscape that surrounded them.
The mountain range was absolute a no. The other directions were full of trees but with different density. According to Toby, he could walk toward the southeast as there were fewer and shorter trees.
Shorter trees didn’t necessarily mean that there was an exit. However, it was very likely that there was one.
Anyway, he didn’t have any other clues to follow. Angor believed that as long as he could walk, he would always reach someone.
He didn’t intend to ask the man in the coffin for now. Wizards and wizard-level monsters alike could all observe something hundreds of kilometers away as if it were right in front of their eyes. Perhaps Akeso was still looking at him by using some supernatural powers.
He lied to the serpent that only Sunders could restore the health for possessed beings because he feared that Akeso might change its attitude once he actually saved the man in the coffin down there.
For this reason, he planned to take the man farther, just in case.
Every once in a while, Angor would ask Toby to check the surroundings, which was mostly meaningless at their current condition. But it was still better than having nothing.
Even with the help of the “Haste” spell, he still couldn’t travel very far. It was already two days, but he was nowhere near the edge of the forest.
Angor watched as Toby flew around, and he suddenly felt jealous of those wings.
“Can you give me a lift, Toby?” he asked the bird with an eager look.
Without much of a thought, Toby grabbed Angor’s collar and tried its best to fly upward. However, Angor’s body remained completely still.
Until Toby unleashed his power of gravity, which... hurled Angor into the air like launching a rocket.
Angor would certainly scatter into several parts if it wasn’t for his “tornado” which helped him to break his fall. It seemed like Toby couldn’t do anything to speed up their trip now. Maybe it was something about lower gravity that allowed Toby to carry him in the plane passageway, and once they were back in the wizarding world, everything returned to normal.
He thought and quickly gave up on the idea of crafting a vehicle item on the spot. He didn’t have many basic materials in his bracelet, and it was not like he knew how to make one.
Another two days later, he ran across a river.
A river meant potential colonies. Angor chose to change his route and travel along the river. This way, he could satisfy Toby’s need for fish as well.
In the coming days, he saw several random beasts from the forest including a ferocious tiger.
They all ended up in his belly.
It was already the 16th day of Month of Looming Frost when he finally found the presence of a human.
While still inside the forest, he discovered a hunter hut beside the riverbank.
It was built with several simple wooden planks and by using dry hay as the roof. It would provide an acceptable shelter from rain and snow, but it would not shelter anyone from extreme temperature or anything else.
Angor entered the hut and saw a simple bed and desk inside. There was a bow hung on the wall as well as several patches of tanned animal hide. The collected dust suggested that no one had been here for several years.
Maybe the hut was abandoned long ago.
Still, it told him that someone used to hunt here, and it shouldn’t be hard to find a way out now.