Ch. 102 No matter when or where she looked up

And by that time, the sky had already been covered by thick, dark clouds.

No matter when or where she looked up, the sky was always a gloomy gray.

“Is it pretty?”

Mia and Melina looked up together.

The latter nodded gently.

“Don’t look for too long, it will hurt your eyes,” Mia warned.

Melina looked down at Mia and blinked her left eye.

Mia suddenly reached out.

‘Squeeze——’

She pinched Melina’s fair, tender cheek.

The latter clearly hadn’t reacted in time.

Then, after seeing the bloodstain on Mia’s hand that hadn’t been washed off yet, she frowned.

She fanned the air in front of her face with her hand and took a step back.

“You should pay attention to hygiene…”

“I didn’t get it on your face!”

Mia pouted, retorting in dissatisfaction.

However, Melina was right; she really should find a way to clean up.

She didn’t know where there was a water source.

After thinking for a moment, Mia walked to a slightly wider area.

She took out the textbook that Sellen had given her and flipped through it rustlingly.

“What are you doing?”

Melina asked curiously.

“Divination, hmm.” Mia nodded, finding the knowledge she needed to cram in the book.

She held her staff and used the tip to trace a certain pattern on the ground.

Afterward, she poured magic into the formation.

The formation emitted a blue light, and a sheet of blue fluorescence rose from it, coalescing into an ethereal band of light that pointed in a certain direction.

“Alright, if I’m not mistaken, there’s water over there~” Mia explained cheerfully.

“Come quickly, Melina.”

“And Wilden, you should give yourself a good wash, too.”

— —

Lappland wove between crisp shrubs and large trees.

Sometimes leaping, sometimes running.

Its steps were light and swift, and when it trampled through grass and branches, it made only a faint sound.

Sometimes it would stop, either to lower its head and sniff for suspicious scents, or to observe the elven-like mushrooms and flowers beneath the trees.

Lappland remembered the order Mia had given it — — to look for signs of human habitation.

It had been traveling through the forest for nearly ten minutes, and there wasn’t even a shadow of a person anywhere it passed.

Even the wild beasts in the wilderness fell silent out of awe when they saw its robust and powerful form.

The surroundings were astonishingly quiet.

Suddenly.

The Spirit Wolf, radiating white fluorescence from its entire body, stopped to sniff the ground carefully, and before long, it pricked up its ears.

The beast’s keen senses picked up every sound within a radius of several hundred meters.

Then it lowered its head and sprinted in a certain direction.

— —

The hunter’s only catch today was a squirrel.

Carrying his longbow on his back, he returned to the village along the leaf-strewn path in the forest, lacking any enthusiasm.

Birds sang hidden in the forest, as if mocking his incompetence.

He wasn’t the only hunter in the village; this profession required competition.

Deer herds hadn’t been seen for months, and the hares were becoming increasingly sharp.

There must be wolves in this forest.

Although no one had seen them with their own eyes yet, most people in the village were spreading such news.

For the ordinary people living peacefully in this Celtic town located in the Wales region, far from the Anglo-Saxon Raiders.

Compared to rumors like ‘the sword of selecting kings has been pulled out by an unknown person,’ they cared more about this year’s harvest, or which pretty girl in the village had reached the age of marriage.

Rumors of wolves had appeared several months ago.

To prevent possible beast attacks, several young men from hunter families volunteered to take on the task of night patrols.

Last week, they even organized the village’s hunters to search the mountains.

But whether it was the prophet’s rituals or the village-organized search, the available prey in the forest was becoming scarcer and scarcer.

If this continued, there would be no way to make a living at home.

The hunter sighed.

A ray of sunlight suddenly struck his face through the dappled tree shadows, and he looked up.

‘It’s already afternoon.’ The hunter thought to himself.

Immediately, he quickened his pace slightly.

He didn’t notice that the surrounding forest had gone quiet at some point.

He also didn’t see a pair of silver-white eyes watching him from behind the bushes in the distance.

— — — — — —

About an hour later, the hunter crossed over the densely vegetated hill.

From the hillside, he could see the cooking smoke of the village from afar, and a yellow dirt road connected the various parts of the settlement.

On both sides of the road were rows of wooden houses, people walked on the streets, and in the fields further away, farmers toiled with bent backs. Cattle and sheep grazed leisurely on the grass.

A peaceful and serene scene.

But a group of people had broken this peace.

Just as the hunter approached the village, he heard two groups of people arguing.

On one side was the village elder, and on the other was a group of fully armed young men wearing chainmail and helmets, equipped with swords and shields.

“You are all the young and strong men of the village; if you leave, what will happen to the autumn harvest?”

The elder leaned on his cane, advising them earnestly.

Correspondingly, the hot-headed youths shouted loudly: “Our village, our village, all you know is our village. When the Anglo-Saxons occupied London, we didn’t raise an army, and now the Anglo-Saxons are almost crossing the river to Wales! Do we have to wait until they arrive at our village entrance to burn, kill, and pillage before we know to resist?”

“All you think about is fighting and killing all day long; I’ve eaten more salt than you have eaten bread! You haven’t left the village for fifty miles since you were born; have you ever seen the outside world?”

The elder’s cane struck the ground forcefully: “I know you want to go find the king who pulled out the sword in the stone. But do you even know who it was that pulled out the sword in the stone?”

The young men wearing armor and carrying weapons were choked for words.

In the end, pulling out the sword in the stone was just a rumor.

Although the sword in the stone had disappeared, no one had witnessed with their own eyes who exactly had pulled out that sword.

After stuttering for a moment, the youths still decided to remain stubborn: “Whoever it is, once we get to the city, we’ll surely know! That king must be waiting for our allegiance to drive the Anglo-Saxons out of the Celtic land!”

“Idiots!” the elder scolded sharply: “You don’t even know who you are pledging allegiance to; what kind of warriors are you! With a bunch of muddled fellows like you, can you kill the enemy on the battlefield? All of you, get back home! If you leave, who will do the farm work?”

The youths were silent, looking at each other.

The elder seemed to have seen something.

Not far away, three outsiders were watching this with curiosity.

One was a blonde girl wearing a white dress.

The second was a handsome white-haired man holding a long staff and wearing a flower on his chest.

The third was a tall, strong, and burly young man wearing armor.

These three were also equipped with swords.

That was the standard equipment for travelers these days.

The elder, whose peripheral vision caught the outsiders, looked at the youths still standing before him wanting to argue, and his anger flared up even more.

“What are you still standing there for?! You’re embarrassing yourselves in front of outsiders! The harvests haven’t been good these past few years; it must be because you aren’t working hard, thinking about fighting and killing all day long, and neglecting the spirits of the land!”

The elder raised his voice, perhaps by more than one octave.

His roar could probably be heard by people even at the other end of the village.

The hunter walked past them; he didn’t want to get involved in the dispute between the young and the old.

He walked back to his cabin located on the edge of the village.

“Woof! Woof!”