Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 1138 - 251: Hope and Despair

Chapter 1138: Chapter 251: Hope and Despair

"Can we really still get out of this wilderness? I highly doubt it. Do we really still have a chance to complete our mission? I highly doubt it." This message was found inscribed on the wall of one of the mud houses during the inspection process. The writing was crooked and messy, hardly the handwriting of a sane adult, looking more like the scribbles of a madman. The content of the message, however, still seemed rational. It was likely just a way for the author to vent their inner restlessness and anxiety, not meant for anyone else, but written for themselves alone.

"We can’t get out, we’re trapped." "I can’t take it anymore, I want to go back." "Why can others keep going? Why?" "Don’t they doubt their decisions?" "Are we really moving forward?" "We must have taken a wrong turn, we must be getting sent back to the start over and over." "Why is this happening, why can’t we get out?" "Is this not their first time here?" "How can they be so sure, why don’t they hesitate, why are they so proficient?" "Ahhh, I want to go back, I must go back tomorrow."

The jumbled handwriting, line after line etched into the slanted walls, almost allowed one to see the chaotic and desperate eyes of someone forty years ago. An adventure team, before setting off, could choose whether or not to follow the team leader, could argue as much as they wanted while planning, which was all fine. But once the adventure started, once the plan was set, everyone had to try their best to follow the leader’s command—this was the most basic condition for surviving in dangerous environments. Therefore, during the day, this chaos and despair were hidden deep within, due to the authority of the two leaders. But at night, when alone, despair would coil around the warriors’ hearts like a savage giant python, squeezing tighter and tighter, leaving no chance to breathe.

"I finally understand why the Elves named this place the ’Graveyard of Bones’," Lina said, looking towards the increasingly close edge of the grassland and recalling the delirious words she had seen in the camp not long ago. She exhaled as if to relax and said, "Those who barge in here without understanding, if their will is not strong, this place might truly become their graveyard, no matter how well they prepared before. Tsk tsk, ’Graveyard of Bones,’ it’s quite an apt name indeed."

In fact, just as Lina said, this area, though seemingly normal, was fraught with extreme danger. Even before this place became the Forbidden Land of Living Souls and home to Twisted Souls in the Third Epoch, it was no exception because the danger was not caused by foreign substances but by the environment itself, formed from the accumulation of Spatial Fragments. Even if all the Spatial Fragments were spread out, the area would cover only a few tens of thousands of square kilometers; for adventurers capable of reaching this far, it wasn’t considered especially vast. If one were to walk continuously towards their goal as the expedition team did forty years ago, one could walk out unscathed in four or five days—it would seem almost easy. However, that simplicity and ease were predicated on the need to keep moving towards a goal without any hesitation.

Those who enter here for the first time cannot possibly fail to notice the anomaly of the environment, yet without a precise understanding of the location where each Spatial Fragment overlaps, there is no solution to this, and the only method is to keep going. However, to keep going in this area is not so simple in itself; the less resolute your will or the more doubtful you are, the less likely you are to succeed. When you step forward, you can still see the path you came by, but with the next step, the view behind becomes a vast wilderness with nothing but grass and wildflowers, not even the footprints you left before remain, as if you abruptly emerged at your current location, This contrast is not something every person can endure, or rather, something most people cannot endure. It is hard not to doubt one’s own decisions, and moreover, the further along the journey and the closer to the edge of the Fragment Area, the more pronounced the doubt becomes. It’s not hard to imagine that after crossing the wilderness and seeing the edge of the lawn right before our eyes, after glimpsing the hope of departure, taking a few more steps only to be met with a prairie stretching tens of kilometers, ending up with nothing but emptiness at the horizon once again. This repeated process from hope to despair is the most brutal torment for the heart, even those who believed in their judgment before may begin to doubt or even negate their previous decisions after wandering between hope and despair countless times, thereby turning to other directions. However, once the first line of will is breached, once the direction starts to change, the self-doubt only becomes more severe, the frequency of changing directions increases, and the only result this leads to is endlessly traversing between Spatial Fragments, never finding a way out, even if the boundary seems to be only a few hundred meters away; they would no longer trust their own eyes and finally collapse from hunger and exhaustion just a few hundred meters from hope.

"I wonder how many forerunners have fallen here, dying of hunger or thirst, or fatigue? Or even from mutual slaughter after a collapse of trust?" Freya speculated maliciously, her grasp on human nature as a princess allowed her to fully imagine the process from certainty to doubt, from trust to suspicion. The fleshy face bore a mocking smile like a poet who had seen through the world’s affairs and said in a lamenting tone, "Doubt, oh doubt, wisdom is born from you, life perishes because of you."

"Don’t use Marek’s lament here, it’s not appropriate," Catherine turned back and gave the princess a cold glance: "That gloomy philosopher lamented the suspicion between people, which is completely different from the situation here. And don’t forget, four years after he made that lament, he killed his wife and then himself because he suspected she had fallen in love with someone else, but afterwards it turned out his suspicion was just a misunderstanding and not at all true, which is the ultimate irony. What, do you want to follow in his footsteps? But on the other hand, think about it, without Ava guiding us, could we have made it like we are now, persisting with our judgment all the way through the prairie to the border? I, for one, am not so sure I could have done that."

"It is indeed difficult," the princess did not hide her thoughts: "But the problem is, once we realized there was an issue, our first choice was to turn back and leave the wilderness to find another way out, so your question is invalid."

"That’s because the range of the Forbidden Land of Living Souls has expanded now, and even if we bypass this prairie, we still have other exits, but it wasn’t like that back then; they had only this one path to choose," Catherine retorted with a pout: "And what you’re talking about is a different issue altogether, don’t try to change the subject."

"Alright, alright, I surrender, I admit my mistake," Freya raised her hands and spoke, "I won’t mock something I can’t do myself anymore, honestly, it’s indeed very low-class."

"Let’s put aside whether we’re mocking or not, that’s not important at all," Vivian interrupted the minor quarrel between the two young girls, raising her magic staff to point ahead, "The problem now is that we’re about to leave this strange area, and then the bigger issue is, I think I’ve seen something not so good."

"What did you see?" As soon as Vivian raised her magic staff, the princess instinctively hugged her head and retreated a few steps, and only after realizing it wasn’t meant for hitting her did she clear her throat and pretend as if nothing had happened, drawing closer. She also cast the Hawkeye Spell, squinted her eyes, and spoke, "It’s just a camp, I thought it was some strange creature. However, the location of its appearance is indeed odd, based on the time, they shouldn’t be camping here, Ava, when did they set up camp?"

"I can’t judge the specific events, because that area is beyond the range of the Spatial Fragments, and the Geological Research Center hasn’t set up imaging collection devices for that area," Ava shook her head, "However, the time they left the Fragment Area was at eleven forty-seven in the afternoon by their assessment, they should not be later than two o’clock in the afternoon."

"It seems their mental stress really was enormous, having to stop for rest immediately upon leaving the Fragment Area. It’s probably not just the person who left the message that was on the verge of collapse but also the others who simply didn’t write it down," Freya said. "But, does this count as something not so good?"

"Are all scholars of the Colossus School as disrespectful towards details as you are?" Vivian said with feigned contempt, "Of course I’m not talking about the camp itself, but that next to it."

"Stop joking around. If we ignored details, puppets wouldn’t even be able to move. But if you don’t make it clear, who knows what you’re referring to?" Freya insisted on this point and retorted forcefully, but her voice went from loud to quiet, and by the end, it was almost inaudible, as she too saw the object Vivian was pointing at. Her expression grew somber as she said in a low voice, "That’s... a grave and a tombstone, isn’t it? Did someone not make it to the end after all?"

The moment they heard ’tombstone,’ the tender-hearted girls thought of many things—unease, fear, despair, madness—and then, a second before hope arrived, in order to escape the despair that might descend again, they chose to end their own lives. Such instances were actually quite numerous, so much so that the girls were no longer surprised by them. What the girls felt was only a profound sorrow, mourning for those who had failed to persist to the end.

"Let’s go take a look," Catherine sighed, shaking her head helplessly, "Even though he didn’t make it to the end, we should still pay our respects to the departed who went before us."