Ch. 88 Mia was prepared to be further questioned or even exposed.

But by her logic, a knight should be considered an officer, and Wilden’s response clearly didn’t seem like the attitude one has toward a’superior’.

Sure enough, she noticed the knight stop and stare at Wilden.

Mia was prepared to be further questioned or even exposed.

Then, after a few breaths, the knight didn’t do so.

Then, she just passed by the three of them, just like the Soldier from before.

She did nothing.

After the knight passed Wilden, she seemed to let out a sigh.

Mia didn’t hear it very clearly; perhaps it was just an illusion.

But the girl couldn’t help but look back.

However, the knight didn’t look back; the tall white plume on the knight’s helmet bobbed with her steps.

A tug came from the rope in her hands, lasting only a moment. Wilden, realizing someone had stopped, looked back.

Mia quickly picked up her pace.

Before long, they left the ruins. Mia roughly estimated the Soldiers stationed in the village; conservatively, there were about one or two hundred.

The ruins were situated with their back to Stormgate, so there were no sentries at the rear entrance.

And Stormgate was now close at hand.

Steep cliffs stood on both sides of the gate; the closer they got, the more they could feel their height.

But, on both sides of this gate… are those fields?

The ridges of the fields were somewhat neat, keeping separate from the grassland.

But the plants within were almost all unhealthy-looking—thin, short, crooked, and arranged in a disorganized manner.

Rather than food.

They looked more like foxtail grass.

A few scarecrows were stuck comically in the fields, making one wonder if birds would actually come to damage such fields. Perhaps the wild berries found everywhere in the wilderness were more nutritious than the grain produced by these weak plants.

“What is that…”

There was no one around, so Mia boldly asked Wilden.

“It’s wheat,” Wilden replied.

Then, Melina took over the conversation from Wilden.

She didn’t appear, but her voice clearly reached Mia’s ears.

“This appearance is because of the Erdtree.” Melina’s lips were so close they seemed pressed against Mia’s ear.

The sensitive hairs on the girl’s earlobe vibrated with the air brought by the voice, sending a wave of heat through Mia.

“After the elden ring was shattered, the Erdtree could no longer recover nutrients through the Return to the Erdtree ceremony. Therefore, it began to plunder the nutrients of the land.”

“Up until now, the Erdtree’s root system has spread throughout the entire Lands Between.”

“While wild plants still have enough nutrients… the fertility of the soil is no longer capable of supporting large-scale human cultivation of food.”

Thus, the wheat here was as messy as wild grass.

As the foundation for human civilization in The Lands Between, such a severe ‘pathology’ in the Erdtree could only be described as a natural disaster.

Yet beneath such a natural disaster, a man-made calamity like the Shattering had also occurred.

Mia remained silent, nodding to show she understood.

The Stormgate stood on the narrow road between the cliffs, a gate built against a natural wall of rock.

Of course, the narrowness of the road was only relative to the grand scale of the massive cliffs.

As a vital thoroughfare, the gate of this pass was not narrow at all.

After another half hour of walking, they arrived beneath the gate.

The gate was not closed.

As if walking into a ruin, Wilden led the four of them inside with great swagger.

Passing through the gate, the area behind was a more dedicated military camp. There were no messy ruins, only continuous rows of tents filling the area behind the pass on both sides of the canyon.

Mia even saw a massive Troll.

The Troll sat cross-legged in the camp, its body clearly too large for any wooden fence to contain.

The girl swallowed nervously.

There were clearly more people here than in front of the pass, and some figures about the same height as the Tarnished appeared, wearing iron helmets and dirty padded armor.

Those were the common foot soldiers of the Royal Army.

Wilden had said that these were also Tarnished, but unlike those who had once been banished, these were Tarnished born within The Lands Between as the Erdtree’s grace gradually weakened, born naturally without grace.

They did not possess the immortality of the Erdtree’s subjects, yet they were still swept up in the war.

Livelihoods destroyed by years of war and the barren land left these foot soldiers sallow and thin, looking like refugees…

A proper Soldier might be able to take on a dozen of these foot soldiers.

Furthermore, the number of foot soldiers was far fewer than the regular people.

No wonder they could only perform tasks like operating machinery.

Speaking of which, the fields outside must be the work of these foot soldiers, right?

But they were different from the regular people of the Royal Army.

Even though they were sallow and thin like refugees, they were still much better off than the numb, muddled soldiers of the Royal Army.

Perhaps due to malnutrition, their eyes seemed larger than normal, appearing even brighter against their sallow skin.

Like monkeys, they watched Patches and Mia as the three of them walked past.

But they lacked the courage to approach.

They likely understood that the habitually taciturn Royal Army people did not like them.

Mia recalled Wilden’s words from long ago.

He seemed to envy these foot soldiers for being able to die when it was time to die.

She wondered if other Royal Army people felt the same way.

There was a status gap between the Royal Army people and the foot soldiers as vast as the difference between Stormhill and the Limgrave grasslands.

In the reverent gazes those foot soldiers turned toward Wilden, Mia mostly saw numbness.

The three of them wound their way up the road, heading deeper into the canyon.

As they passed through the Stormgate, just like at the ruins before it, they encountered no resistance.

The journey was incredibly smooth.

After another half hour of being led, the Stormgate and the military camp behind it were no longer in sight.

Wilden untied the two of them. Mia remounted Torrent and massaged her aching legs.

This road through the canyon would continue to wind upward until it reached the windswept Stormhill plateau.