Chapter 83 — The Origin of the Monsters

Deep within the Dark Mountains.

The pioneer corps had been operating here for a month now. Once they had gained a preliminary foothold, Gao Yang began dispatching all manner of scouting parties every day—to the southern range, the western forest, the eastern mines, or the wilds across the Whitewater River—to search for supplies and survey the terrain. The route the serfs had taken into the mountains was one of the natural mountain paths discovered only in recent days. Yet though newly found, it had already been traversed several times by scouting teams and soldier patrols, and never once had any trace of monsters been spotted.

Those aberrations had without question appeared only recently.

The mountain road was hard going. Gao Yang and Amber moved with astonishing speed on their feet, but the two serfs, ordinary men both, could not keep such a pace; it took them nearly an hour before they finally drew near the fork where the monster attack had occurred.

As they drew closer and closer to that place, even Amber—usually so carefree and flighty—could not help growing tense. Clutching her small dagger, she lowered her voice: "I mean, it's been so long—those monsters ought to have wandered off by now..."

"Not necessarily. You don't understand the 'habits' of aberrations," Gao Yang said, studying the jagged, rock-strewn mountain path ahead and the dense growth flanking it on both sides. His gaze lingered a long while on a steep cliff face that looked liable to collapse at any moment, then he dropped his voice. "They aren't normal living things. In a mana-rich environment they don't need to eat. Apart from their instincts to attack intelligent life and to gravitate toward mana sources, they have no clear purpose of action. If a human or a mana reaction enters their sensing range, they lunge at it; if not, they wander aimlessly, or simply stay where they are. Of course, once their numbers reach a certain point, their behavior becomes hard to predict."

"So what the hell is an aberration, anyway..." Amber muttered, her eyes constantly darting among the shadows between the trees—not watching for enemies lurking in the dark, but searching for escape routes.

Gao Yang shook his head. "Hard to say, honestly. One theory holds that humans corrupted by chaotic mana become aberrations; another claims that during a mana tide, passages to other worlds open, and aberrations come through from elsewhere. But neither theory has ever been proven."

Amber pursed her lips, thinking to herself that if even a man like Gao Yang—who in his last life had fought monsters for twenty years—couldn't say where the monsters came from, then the so-called experts and scholars back in the heartland of the kingdom were surely even less reliable on the subject.

And just as her eyes swept their surroundings, a mark on the ground suddenly caught her attention: "Hey, hey—there's something over there!"

Not far ahead, on the rock face, the stone could be seen gouged and clawed apart, and in the crevices of the rock there were still traces of dried blood.

At the sight of those marks, the two serfs serving as guides began to shake like leaves in the wind.

"Looks like we're close," Gao Yang said, tightening his grip on the Pioneer's Sword and focusing his senses on any faint change around them. "Stay sharp."

Amber swallowed and followed behind Gao Yang, cautiously rounding the other side of the fork as though facing a great enemy.

Suddenly Gao Yang stopped short. A primal wariness, an instinct belonging to this body, spread through him; guided by that sense of alarm, he swiftly ducked behind a boulder and peered toward the other side of the mountain path.

Four enormous humanoid creatures, like giants of flesh and bone, came into view. They swayed and shambled along the path, their faces—streaming with red mud—devoid of any features, while from between their chests and bellies came a ceaseless, chaotic, blasphemous, indescribable murmuring.

Oh—low, whispering murmurs.

"One, two, three... four," came a warm breath by his ear, Amber's hushed voice from behind him. "Looks like these are the ones the serfs ran into. Doesn't seem they've spotted us yet. You go first—I'll run once you're out of sight."

Gao Yang paid no mind to this daily dose of the elf's shameful, asking-to-get-hit remarks. His eyes were fixed on the belly of one of the aberrations, where a twisted, deformed, utterly decayed gray-black object was plainly visible. To anyone else it might have been unrecognizable, but after studying it carefully, Gao Yang made out the truth: it was a weapon of Gondor Imperial pattern!

He drew back his gaze, focused his senses on the surroundings, and confirmed there were no more monsters nearby. Only then did he answer Amber: "I'll charge them head-on. You sneak around and backstab the last one, then keep one of the others occupied. Once I've finished the other two, we'll join up and end the fight."

Amber blinked and nodded readily. "Got it. Wait for your move."

For all her deliberate clowning and nonsense earlier, it was clear that when it came to serious business, she was not one to falter.

The two serfs who had led them here were by now frozen stiff with fright, yet they had at least scraped together the last of their courage to clap their hands over their mouths—no panicked screaming, no bolting. For them, that was already a fine showing. Gao Yang nodded to the two of them, signaling them to stay quiet and wait, then raised the Pioneer's Sword.

Mana poured into the blade, and searing light burst forth from its edge. A pale white sheen spread over Gao Yang's armor as well, and in the next instant he leaped, clearing a distance of dozens of meters in a single bound, and came down from the sky in a slash at the monster that had just begun to react.

At the same moment he sprang forth, a hazy shadow flickered through the air, and the last of the four monsters convulsed violently—it had just had its attention drawn by Gao Yang and was throwing back its head to loose a chaotic roar when it was struck in its vitals; a single critical blow, and it went down.

Amber emerged from the shadows and began darting swiftly around another monster that had just reacted. Her small dagger had no effect at all when it struck anywhere but a monster's weak point, producing only scattered flecks of red mud or sparks, so from the very start of the fight she was shouting: "Boss, help!"

Gao Yang's longsword had already come down, sending the first aberration staggering. Without pursuing, he wheeled and lunged straight for the monster with the ancient sword planted in its belly. Just as he had expected: though a sword in the gut was not a fatal wound for such a freak, it did hinder its movement. Against Gao Yang's ferocious assault it blocked only twice before being cleaved cleanly in two.

If you had the strength to cut an enemy in half with one stroke, then whether you struck a weak point hardly mattered.

The aberration before him let out a chaotic, unnameable howl; its death-murmurs carried a power that could unsettle the mind, but Gao Yang paid no heed to the momentary daze in his head. Using his momentum to twist his body, his blade came down upon the enemy he had wounded with his first strike.

Then, amid Amber's disgraceful wailing and yowling, the last enemy was smoothly cut down.

As the giant of flesh and mud crashed heavily to the ground and rapidly decomposed in the air into chaotic elements, Amber collapsed onto her backside as well: "Oh my god... I'm dead tired... Guess I still need to work on my escape skills..."

Gao Yang, examining the monster remains on the ground without even looking up, replied: "Isn't the normal line of thinking to work on your frontal combat ability instead?"

"I'll have you know, my frontal combat ability is already at my personal peak. I'm a person who knows my own limi—hey, what are you studying there?"