Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 208 - 63 Avenger_1

Chapter 208: Chapter 63 Avenger_1

(263...084...458... Literary friends can join the group if interested. P.S. Passersby, please add to your reading list and recommendation list. Your support is my biggest motivation. Also, many thanks for your advice. P.S. 2: The book title has changed, please refer to the works-related section for further information.)

The night was hushed.

In the Shining Forest, midnight would usually herald the time to pack up and start the journey. However, in this barren zone of several tens of thousands of square meters with the Illuminator lost, the camp was pitch black. Only the dying campfire at its center struggled to release a glimmer of light.

Among the ten tents, the sound of steady breathing was intermittent. The longer one stayed in the Shining Forest, the harder it became. This was because the period called ’night’ in the forest was too short. Although the forest canopy filtered most sunlight during the day, making the forest commodious and cold, it was still too bright to sleep or rest. The nights made it even more impossible. Flashing Vines were brighter than sunlight, making the environment even more unfitting for sleep or rest. Added to this was the kind of alertness one had to maintain while sleeping outdoors. One could say that every day in the Shining Forest was spent with great quality lacking sleep. Short periods were fine, but once it exceeded a month, even for the professionals with higher physical fitness, it would become a huge burden.

And right now, they had a rare opportunity. The interference of reversed day-night was not present, and the place was practically a unique location that no magical beasts would dare approach. This dual stimulation allowed everyone to release the long accumulated fatigue and stress, and accompanied by the dim moonlight, they all immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Near the central dying bonfire, Lina leaned on her huge backpack, leisurely flipping through the thin book in her hand. The feeble firelight was far from enough for Lina to read the words in her book. She flipped through the pages mindlessly, her similarly fatigued self shifted her attention between keeping watch and dozing off. Her silver hair already drooping over her face.

Silence surrounded them, without any beast howl, chirping of insects or even wind. Only the crackling of the bonfire broke the silent night.

At the edge of the forest several hundred meters away, outside Lina’s line of sight, several shadows trembled. Without a direct gaze upon them, one would assume these movements were tricks of the eye. But there were indeed over ten magical beasts on the ground, slowly slithering out of the dense forest with extreme caution. Under the pitch-black night, the magical beasts moved incredibly slow, stopping to wait after just a few steps. Only after finding that Lina, the night watch, had no reaction would they dare move forward again. And then they would return to their cautious waiting.

With a "whoosh", Lina suddenly stood up. The magical beasts immediately halted, curling up in their original spots. The curling beasts began to look like rocks sticking out from the ground. Without closer inspection, no one would find out that they were actually carnivorous beasts.

However, the standing Lina did not look in the direction of the magical beasts, but turned and walked a few steps to the entrance of a tent behind her. She picked up a pot of water and gulped it down. After drinking, Lina wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, stretched her body hard, and did several chest expansion exercises with arms outstretched. She swung her hammer around a few times, then went back to the fire to re-pick up her book, reading attentively, paying no attention to the magical beasts lurking a few tens of meters away.

A breeze blew, the fine wind brushed over the mouth of the deep hole in the ground, bringing with it a barely audible sobbing sound that was both haunting and mournful. It sounded like a woman’s intermittent crying carried over by the wind in the wild night, or the echo of a faint moan of a dying creature deep in the mountains. Although it was known to merely be the wind, it could still make one’s hair stand on end.

"Alas." Hearing the eerie wind, Lina sighed helplessly, adding a few logs to the bonfire. The slightly brighter bonfire bestowed a bit more warmth to the surroundings. Warming her hands by the fire, Lina grumbled unhappily and gazed at the starry sky, lost in thought. Her fingers unwittingly tapped lightly on a pile of luggage beside her, thinking about something.

The lurking magical beasts in the distance, seeing Lina calming down again, began to move once more. The closer they got, the slower and more cautious they became. The magical beasts took nearly an hour to silently appear at the edge of the camp after traversing a forty-meter distance. Dozens of small eyes filled with greed and malice stared at the fire and tents in the camp.

There was a clear "rattle" as something seemed to have touched Lina’s hand. Accompanied by the soft sound, a cylindrical beam of light nearly a meter in diameter suddenly sprung up, instantly illuminating the area where the lurking magical beasts were, unimpeded by any obstruction within a ten-meter radius.

The magical beasts were caught completely off guard, directly hit by the blinding light beam. Their pupils, adjusted to the darkness, were stimulated by the strong light and completely lost function for a while. They couldn’t see anything.

"Element, Triple Fire Cage." Vivian’s crisp incantation echoed in the quiet night, and a circular firewall exploded around the area where the light beam hit, trapping the magical beasts inside. What would have been a less than one-meter-wide firewall was amplified to three times its width thanks to the Magic Array arranged by Vivian in advance. A near-three-meter wide firewall severed the magical beasts’ escape, and their natural fear of fire left the temporarily-blinded beasts restless and randomly turning about in the cage, making strange noises.

"As expected, it’s them," Pannis came out of his tent, impeccably dressed, showing no signs of just having been asleep.

"Is it really Marrow Eaters?" Catherine crawled out from another tent, looking at the blazing flames and asked, "They’ve been chasing us all the way here?"

"Yes indeed." Lina turned off the pre-prepared Goblin Illuminator and carefully packed it into her bag before she replied, "They are ridiculously sneaky."

The noises outside had already awakened everyone in the tents. They grabbed their weapons and rushed out in surprise, looking at what was happening before them. Dora couldn’t help but ask, "What on earth is going on?"

"Didn’t Charles mention seeing Marrow Eaters this afternoon when he came back?" Catherine explained, "Then Pannis told me privately that Marrow Eaters might be the type of magical beast with a strong sense of revenge, and they have been tracking us here. If this is the case, I’m afraid we would be under attack tonight. However, since we know little about them, Pannis also couldn’t confirm if it’s really the case. He didn’t want to disturb your rest and recovery in case it wasn’t. As for us, we don’t have to hit the road in the morning anyway, so we simply decided to stay up all night, always on alert for their attack. Seems like we didn’t wait in vain."

"Let me check." Catherine gestured to Vivian. With a wave of Vivian’s hand, an activating rope wrapped around Catherine’s waist and lifted her five meters straight into the air, allowing her to see what was happening inside the circle over the flaming wall.

Upon close observation, Marrow Eaters did indeed resemble anteaters, with the exception of their completely regressed and disappeared tails, and their mouths were sharper and longer than those of anteaters. Once their tongues started to dart out, they would gain enough speed in their long oral cavity to become deadly weapons. By now, the Marrow Eaters had also recovered from their initial panic, regrouped, and formed a circle with their backs to the outside, bending their hind legs and sitting on the ground, using the solid ground to shield their most significant vulnerability.

"Sixteen of them." Catherine said after she landed back on the ground, "They are now on high alert close to the firewall, seemingly ready to hold their ground. The magic flame of Vivian won’t last much longer, we need to deal with them before the flames disappear. It would be troublesome if they escape again, especially when we split up later."

"Let me give it a try." Pannis moved a few steps closer to the firewall, estimated the distance, opened his short bow and shot an arrow into the sky. The arrow described a high parabola in the air, flew over the flaming wall and fell inside. Immediately there were angry yells from within the firewall, and several hard tongues, accompanied with a sharp whistling sound, shot through the flames and straight toward the position of Pannis. Luckily, Pannis was well-prepared, his position was just beyond the attack range of the beasts. Even when their thorny tongues reached their maximum length, they could only arrive about one meter in front of Pannis, incapable of causing any harm to him.

"Hehe, you’ve been fooled." Pannis gave a sneaky smile, while lifting his right hand, a sharp camping-use metal rod shining under the Aggression light was strenuously thrust into the tongue and into the ground. The Marrow Eater suffered both from the prick on its tongue and the burn from the fire, while the poor beast could only weep in pain, unable to free itself.

"My turn now." Catherine moved her right hand, which was wearing the newly acquired armor-plated glove, and grabbed the fixed tongue, winding it a couple of times around her hand. Fine thorns on the tongue couldn’t pierce through the alloy-made armor, and the hapless Marrow Eater was swung in the air by Catherine gripping its tongue, wildly moving its limbs. A pitch-black whip thrust up in sync, penetrating accurately from the anus of the Marrow Eater, depriving its life in a scream.

"Should we lure them out one by one like this?" Catherine asked Pannis, "Can it work?"

"I’m afraid not." Pannis fired a few more arrows into the firewall, but the smart magical beasts who had fallen for it once no longer took the bait. They knew the arrows couldn’t damage their hard skin, so they simply ignored his provocation, "They are clever, refusing to fall for the same trick again."

"What a nuisance." Vivian muttered grumpily, "Might as well solve it all at once."

So, the firewall started to change. Thick flames extended rapidly both inwards and outwards, rapidly reducing the safe space for the magical beasts inside. The beasts started shrieking in the scorching heat, in vain scratching at the ground.

"Hold on, Miss Mage." Gaston, the guide who had been saved earlier, suddenly noticed something, he shouted, "The fire on the left is too low. They might jump out at this height. Their jumping capacity is quite strong."

Before he could finish his sentence, a dark figure leapt high into the air, jumping over the slower flame on the left, followed by the other fourteen beasts who also jumped following their leader, aiming for the perimeter of the fire circle.