Chapter 320: Domain of the Dead

Considering the feelings of the being who ruled the Shadowfall Netherworld, Ron ultimately let the Dark Weaver and his ravens go as a gesture of goodwill. Before he did, however, he tasked the Shadow Spirit with going back to "do some persuading"—that a rogue Shadow Spirit was like spilled water. With so many Shadow Spirits in the Shadowfall Netherworld, they wouldn’t miss one Yelena, so it was time to drop the matter.

Ron had no way of knowing if the Crow Queen would be so receptive to his advice. In any case, after his own trip to the Ghost Gate, the "Soul-Grabbing Messenger" known as the Dark Weaver had been stripped of his Elven arrogance. Having narrowly escaped with his life, he thanked the human profusely before scurrying away with his ravens, his tail between his legs.

With the external threat eliminated, the dilapidated graveyard was hardly a place for conversation. At Silvia’s enthusiastic invitation, Ron and the others had little choice but to follow her.

"Thank you for traveling day and night to find me. You all must be exhausted," Silvia said, leading the way. She chatted and laughed with ease, showing no sign that anything was wrong. "When Old Opal had me captured, just looking down from above, I could tell those woods would be a nightmare to get through."

"You can say that again!" Of Ron’s group, Delaford was probably the only one who could chat with Silvia without a care in the world. "Let me tell you, you should have seen those Mud Monsters and Gnolls... And those giant birds!"

As the Goblin Hunter rambled on, neither Silvia nor anyone else interrupted him. They let the oblivious fellow fill the awkward silence with his noise. Delaford himself didn’t notice anything amiss; this was how he always was. To him, tonight was just another ordinary night among countless others.

Silvia seemed intimately familiar with the layout of the area. Not long after leaving the graveyard, she led them onto a flatter, wider path. The trees lining the road, arranged like swords and halberds, parted on their own as the group advanced. Even the ghosts, which had been wailing mournfully in the distance, fell silent upon noticing Ron’s party—or rather, upon noticing Silvia’s approach—as if they had never been there at all.

"These were all once his subjects," Silvia explained after Delaford finally quieted down a little. "As you’ve seen and heard, this was indeed once a count’s domain, isolated from the world. But then, certain events took place that led to the entire domain’s decline."

"The subjects had suffered an unjust fate, and their resentment refused to fade. The Count himself was unwilling to be simply wiped away into the dust of history, so he and his wife and daughters—two powerful witches—made a final effort and transformed the entire domain into a Ghost Realm."

"It’s a bit grim, but in the end, it allowed everyone to ’live on,’ didn’t it?" Victoria said with a forced smile. "I hope these common folk can get used to such an oppressive atmosphere."

"Oh, Victoria, when they are part of the atmosphere itself, they don’t feel anything is out of the ordinary," Silvia said, casually pointing. In the withered yellow grass nearby, three or four Night Howling Hounds were playfully fighting over a skull. "They weren’t used to these big dogs I command at first either, but aren’t they playing together just fine now?"

Ron observed closely and found that Silvia was telling the truth. Although the dead here made chilling sounds and their appearances were rather unsightly, if one listened carefully to the snippets of words mixed in with their wails, one would discover that these Undead were indeed enjoying this ’life’.

When the ghost of a little boy, too engrossed in his singing, failed to make way for the group, Ron could faintly make out lyrics in his song praising their Lord.

"Indeed, the souls here are all so... uninteresting," Yelena said, curling her lip. To her, souls with no suffering to recount were like stale, hard bread—utterly tasteless. "No wonder that merchant’s friend said this place was terrifying."

"Ordinary people have a hard time discerning the voices of the dead. And what’s more annoying are the ones who know full well what’s going on but play dumb," the Vampire Descendant said as she led the group through a village in the Count’s domain, pointing to a gallows erected in the center. "See that? Word is, two or three hundred years ago, a group of clueless Demon Hunters came here and tried to ’purify’ this domain. They were sentenced to death for murder by him and hanged right here."

"There are no living people left here. Once the population of residents decreases, there’s no way to recover it. That’s why I showed up at the cemetery immediately—some of the folks who were drunks in life are just the same in death. It would have been troublesome if you or that Shadow Spirit had run into them."

"The Dark Weaver wouldn’t care for a drunkard who was, quite literally, ’lost in a drunken dream’ both in life and in death," Yelena said. "The Crow Queen can foresee the death of every living creature, but that doesn’t mean the death of every creature is to Her liking."

"They aren’t willing to give up on people like that?" Victoria let out a long breath. Ron, walking beside her, couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of relief or one of sorrow. The Priest, however, put away her Holy Emblem. The Magical Artifact was no longer as scalding as before, leaving only a faint warmth.

"It seems Heim doesn’t mind this sort of thing?" Aive had also noticed Victoria’s action.

"He does mind. But this is Silvia. Heim blessed me once, helping me save her from the brink of death. He’ll understand what I’m facing now."

Victoria managed a weak smile. The entire way here, she had endured the intense heat while clutching her Holy Emblem, not daring to relax for a second. A trial from a deity was no mere figure of speech. If she had shown the slightest doubt, confusion, or fear, causing her to drop the Holy Emblem, that deity would have certainly rescinded the grace He had bestowed upon her.

’He might even have sent down punishment.’

The Priest lowered her head, glancing at the nearly scorched flesh of her palm. The mark of the Holy Emblem was branded onto her hand: the image of an upright, iron left-hand Hand Guard with a gazing eye on it.

The place Silvia wanted to take them for a visit was not close to the cemetery. They walked at a normal pace until the sky began to lighten, and only then did Ron see the inky-black behemoth at the end of the road.

It was a huge manor with a standard Gothic castle standing at its center. Its extremely symmetrical structure resembled a person’s stern face looking down over the entire domain. A number of corporeal Undead Creatures were at work inside and outside the manor, using the last moments before dawn to clean the lavish courtyard.

’A bit too extravagant for a castle in the middle of nowhere?’ Silvia turned her head, guessing Ron’s thoughts from his expression. "Like I said before, his wife and daughters were powerful witches. This castle was built entirely by their own hands. To this day, the hired subjects only do some of the cleaning."

"But they’re not living people anymore, so carelessness is inevitable," the Vampire Descendant said as she pushed open the manor’s gate. She casually plucked a piece of rotting flesh stuck to the bars and tossed it back to its owner. "Come. Let’s meet the current master of this place. He’s the one who sent Old Opal and the others."

Once the group was standing on the castle steps, Silvia knocked on the ancient and heavy castle door.