After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World-Chapter 1884: Path to Light
Wolfe’s skill was a Class C skill, and it was more than just tracking people. He could also have a glimpse of the person’s last moments, as witnessed by the colorful fog he recovered. The tragedy should have just happened recently, so he could still recover some images.
The longer the time between the event and the recovery, the less clear the information relayed back to him.
The one thing he was thankful for was that the smoke was unaffected by natural wind; otherwise, a bit of a breeze would’ve made it difficult to recover anything.
The person that Wolfe touched was a middle-aged level 14 Terran under the Lord, which was quite high for a village. He was not a bad bloke, and they could be said to be acquaintances. To say that Wolfe wasn’t affected by his death would be a lie.
He wondered if they had to go through this much danger when heading to Alterra? If so, then it wasn’t too bad that they were charging so much. The Lord just got too greedy, but he did feel pity for the people under him.
The man’s last vision was... a monster’s large bite.
Cringe
"What did you see?" Cardinal asked, running in another direction to create another shield. He was getting worried about his mana consumption, though.
"A relatively high-level monster, one that could eat a level 14 in one bite."
This made them pause.
What? That must be an infamous town-level monster. At some point, a few started to pass by here and there, every so often. Even before, the monsters were probably headed to a nearby Town but they happened often enough that they knew there was a Town in the region.
It would be okay if this happened while they were inside their territory. Even if the monster was stronger than average for a village, they at least had walls and sentries to assist them.
Out in the open, dealing with such monsters at their level was too dangerous, and they’d definitely lose people.
As such, they had no choice but to just take the opposite direction of where the monsters probably were.
Later, they’d find out that this caravan was just really unlucky. During the pandemic, the clearing missions had declined sharply. This was why there were more monsters now than before.
Had they waited until Alterrans started going out and killing off monsters, then it would’ve been a bit easier to travel to Alterra, even as a village, as long as they were prepared well enough.
They did not know this for now. As the group walked, they unexpectedly encountered a deserter who was bleeding, holding out a sword. It was an aborigine named Utang.
It was an aborigine hire, and one of the greediest bastards in their village. He was shocked to see them all so far away from home. "You!"
People weren’t prohibited from going outside the village, but how many could go this far off? The Lord made sure there couldn’t be anyone other than people aligned with him in the groups heading to Alterra!
"What are you doing here?!" the man, Utang, screamed. "You...did you follow us?!" 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞
Wolfe grabbed the back of his head, and the rest stared at him with dark looks. Utang shivered.
"The path to salvation is narrow," Cardinal said, smiling mysteriously. "Which path would you choose?"
...
One had to know that Cardinal was very gentle and kind, usually, but this bastard in particular irked him a lot. This was the very guard who arrogantly pushed them away when they begged for an inhibitor.
He couldn’t help but look at the direction of the group, at the young girl with cracks on her skin, and a weak complexion and people could only pity her.
If this bastard did not have any use, he was better off dead than alive.
Cardinal did not want to murder someone when he had an option, though, and fortunately, the bastard did choose the ’right’ path in the end.
The man gave them a copy of his map to Alterra, just in case. It was just that it was night, and they could barely see anything, even with the torches made by their fire users.
They were already very injured at this time, encountering many monsters on the way. There was also another town-leveled beast on the way. They could only run away in those cases, accepting the injuries from the chase without any gains.
It was only when they lost track of the level 20-something monster that they could finally breathe and have the chance to look around. "Where are we?"
"Let’s just follow the map."
"Easy for you to say when it’s pitch dark."
"The map could at least give us a general direction."
When it was night, the map was dark too, as if they were looking at a satellite map at night. Another limitation of the map was that, even if they bought a wide map, the real-time display was only a couple of hundred meters away, so they could only go step by step.
They did encounter a few more monsters, one of which was definitely town-level, but fortunately below level 20. By the time they dealt with it, all of them were bleeding profusely, and they had absolutely no patience to walk aimlessly across a forest.
They glared at Utang. "Are we lost?"
"We’re not! Do you think I can fake a map?!"
They glared at him but they just walked through the dark forest. Their guards were up, prepared for an attack, the tension in their bodies so palpable it was painful.
They felt their psyche crumble as the minutes passed by without a clear direction, and some of them were slowly descending into the pit of hopelessness.
It was around this time that they saw it: Light.
It was still a distance away, and their steps hastened to see.
They were hoping to see people, but there were none.
However, they were not disappointed— just very startled.
"This..."
Wolfe narrowed his eyes as if to absorb the sight. The others were the same.
There was indeed no person associated with the light. Rather, what they were looking up was a path lined with glowing plants!
It was as if they were trying to guide them to a fairyland...
