Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 1162 - 274: Sacrifice Again?

Chapter 1162: Chapter 274: Sacrifice Again?

"Hmm?" Just under two minutes after leaving the battlefield, Pannis’s steps suddenly halted, and he frowned, looking back over his shoulder. However, the dense woodland obscured his view and beyond the trees, vines, and bushes, nothing else could be seen.

"What’s wrong?" Catherine asked, alertly, "Is something appearing behind us? Or has something happened?"

"No, nothing’s appeared," said Pannis with some hesitation. "I just felt a fleeting energy fluctuation. It wasn’t directed at us. I just wonder why the energy fluctuation occurred; it can’t possibly be triggered out of thin air."

"It might not be impossible," Freya said, holding a disc-like crystal device in her hand and looking down at it. "For over an hour now, the leyline energy beneath our feet has begun to change slowly but continuously. Huh, they know we’ve arrived and, apparently, they have already prepared a welcoming ceremony for us."

"Damn, have they started the ritual already?" Catherine gritted her teeth. "We must get there immediately. Otherwise, if we’re even a little late and their ritual is complete, that’s problematic. No matter whether their purpose is to reopen Death’s Gate or not, I think it’s nothing we would want to witness."

"Perhaps that’s exactly their purpose," Pannis mused. "They only began the ritual after confirming our arrival. Simultaneously, they started drawing energy from the leylines again, probably to tell us that we’re in for a major event. If we want to stop them, we must come at once, maybe there’s still time. They don’t want to give us time to hesitate or investigate. Maybe they’ve already set traps ahead waiting for us."

"But even if we know it’s a trap, we have no choice but to jump in," Catherine said with a bitter smile. "If it turns out not to be a trap, the cost would be too severe. I dare not gamble on the likelihood between the two, do you?"

"Unfortunately, I don’t either. Although I really want to turn around and walk away to see how they react," Pannis sighed and shook his head. "But we can’t just experiment with matters involving the lives of millions; so as you said, even knowing it’s a trap, we have to jump into it."

"As long as we remain cautious enough, even if there are traps, they may not necessarily pose a threat to us," Catherine said, as if to encourage everyone or perhaps just herself. "Let’s do everything as you’ve planned; you don’t need to worry about us. Everyone who chose to come here didn’t plan on returning alive. Besides, using the same number of members, my grandfather and his team were able to hold off three moribunds and seven or eight ghouls. Now that you’ve eliminated one moribund, I believe our strength is stronger than it was in my grandfather’s time, and even if there are traps, we might still stand a chance."

"The problem is, although you may not plan on returning alive, I certainly do, and your grandfather didn’t face countless demi-god undead magical beasts, nor did he face an unknown number of Undead Mages," Pannis said in a low voice, so low that the young women could barely make it out, until he raised his volume at the end, "You were right about something earlier; our difficult journey has likely just begun, and the rest of the path won’t be easy to travel."

However, this time it seemed everyone guessed wrong. From that point on, they didn’t encounter any more battles. The dense forest was as calm as the woods on the outskirts of a city, seemingly devoid of dangers, making it hard to believe that this was the core of the deadliest Forest of Death. Along the way, not only were the previously ubiquitous Twisted Souls nowhere to be found, even the modified undead magical beasts had disappeared. No, more precisely, not a single living undead magical beast was seen, and all the undead magical beasts that did appear on the team’s path had lost their ability to move, turning completely into lifeless corpses.

"What’s going on here?" Dillie, the scorpion-tailed lion, sniffed around the corpse of an undead magical beast and said with confusion, "There are no wounds, no visible internal or external injuries; it’s as if they died for no reason at all."

"Could it be an imperfection in their transformation?" speculated Vivian, squatting next to Dillie and probing the body of the undead magical beast, muttering, "I still remember the first time we encountered an undead magical beast on the Snowfield; it also inexplicably died suddenly."

"I don’t think so. From the modified undead we’ve encountered earlier, their technique seems quite mature," Pannis shook his head. "Given their current technology, even if they have failures, it’s highly unlikely that eight magical beasts would fail simultaneously; such a coincidence is too exaggerated."

"True, the way these magical beasts died, it seems like they went into Undead Transformation for no reason and then had all their Energy of Death completely drained," Vivian turned to look in the direction of the temple Catherine had mentioned, frowning, "Could it be that they are recycling Energy of Death?"

"In theory, with the Temple of Danacus as their base, they hold almost inexhaustible Energy of Death; they wouldn’t need to recycle this." Pannis shook his head. "For them, doing this would only weaken their own strength and serve no purpose."

"The fluctuations in the Leyline Energy have become even more intense," Freya, who had been holding a disc-like device, suddenly interrupted Pannis’s words as her gaze remained fixed on the disc. "I’m worried that the deaths of these magical beasts are related to the changes in Leyline Energy, oh, no, maybe I just said it backwards."

"Should you say that the changes in Leyline Energy are related to the deaths of these magical beasts?" Catherine’s eyes narrowed, and she spoke in a raspy voice, "Do you mean to say that this is another form of sacrifice?"

"Hmm, that’s not impossible," Pannis, stroking his chin in thought, said, "Commanding these controlled magical beasts to stay in designated positions and then extracting the absolutely conflicting Energy of Life and Energy of Death from them at a certain time, offering both energies simultaneously, does indeed fit the style of a dark god’s sacrifice, although we can’t yet determine what end they ultimately want to achieve. But if you say that these wide-scale sacrifices are part of their ritual, then everything has a reasonable explanation."

"Indeed, the magical beasts we’ve encountered along the way are not the Divine Servants’ charges left outside," Catherine nodded, "Those were merely arranged by the Divine Servants at designated locations, waiting for the start of the sacrifice. As for why those magical beasts seemed relatively weak, it’s probably because they were just expendables, and the truly elite undead magical beasts were not sent out to die."

"If that’s the case, could it be that we’ve already disrupted part of their ritual?" Vivian asked, "Those magical beasts were killed by us ahead of time, and the sacrifices couldn’t have been completed according to their plans, right?"

"Are you sure that us killing those magical beasts wasn’t part of their plan?" Pannis countered, "I’m not so optimistic. Them placing those magical beasts alive on our path could very well have been intended for us to kill them, thereby saving them a step and also depleting our strength. In their plan, the most ideal outcome would have been if those magical beasts could have inflicted casualties on us. As for these here, the moribunds likely calculated the time, guessing that we wouldn’t be able to kill them within the permitted time, so they took matters into their own hands."

"So that surge of energy you just felt..." Catherine speculated, "Was it the effect of the sacrifice happening?"

"I’ve never seen such a bizarre method of sacrifice, nor have I even heard of it," Pannis shook his head, "So I also don’t know what kind of energy fluctuations occur during such sacrifices. I can only say it’s possible; after all, the energy fluctuations I felt just now were very strange, something I’ve also never seen before."

"But no traces of an Array have been found here," Vivian searched around, "Nor is there any residual energy similar to an Array."

"However, the highest form of sacrifice sometimes only uses the Array as an aid, merely set up to enhance the effect of the sacrifice. Depending on the purpose of the sacrifice, the necessity for the Array varies," Lina, quite familiar with this, explained, "In some cases, especially with multiple points of sacrifice occurring simultaneously like now, all of the sacrifice points in themselves form a super-large scale Array. Remember the time-plundering Arrays that Master Fila set up in Butte? It’s similar to that situation, and here too... it couldn’t really be like that, could it?"

"Could it be that the Divine Servants are doing just that?" As she spoke, Lina couldn’t continue, her eyes widening in surprise, "That method of sacrifice only appears in myths, and implementing it is unimaginably difficult. Have they really carried it out?"

"Don’t forget those moribunds are also survivors who walked out of the Mythical Age," Pannis said with a wry smile, "For them to recreate a method of sacrifice that only existed in the Mythical Age isn’t impossible, is it?"

"Alright, maybe you’re right, I shouldn’t be so surprised," Lina sighed, saying helplessly, "I can’t consider them normal people."

"What if we destroy these bodies now?" Catherine probed, "Could that affect their ritual?"

"Since these offerings are already dead, that means the sacrifice has ended," Lina shook her head, "Destroying the scene now is pointless, unless we could find offerings that are not yet dead and move them elsewhere without killing them. But I think it’s probably too late for that; if the Divine Servants have personally taken their lives, it means this step has already reached the final moment. We’re unlikely to find any un-dead offerings now."

"Hmm?" This time, not only Pannis but everyone simultaneously let out a soft exclamation, all turning their eyes in the same direction - where commanded by the memories left by Catherine’s grandfather, the temple lay. There a powerful surge of energy spontaneously appeared, lingering tenaciously on the spot.