The Gamer's POV-Chapter 241: Heralds of Madness [1]

Cedric looked away and reached into his inventory. He pulled out a leather pouch of water and tossed it toward Celeste.

"Here."

She caught the pouch with a practiced hand and quickly uncorked it, taking a long, grateful drink.

Then Cedric, out of the corner of his eye, watched to see if the princess had her own supplies. When he saw Aurora pull a similar pouch out of a beautifully made haversack, he looked away.

He took out a second pouch and began drinking. The liquid was cold against his parched throat. When he was done, he threw the pouch carelessly into his inventory.

Aurora looked at him with curiosity, because to her, it looked like he had thrown his pouch into thin air and it simply vanished. Not long after, Cedric took off his coat and also tossed it into the inventory. Then he walked up to where the ground arched up slightly and sat down. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt due to the heat, while looking up at the conspiracy of ravens circling high above in the now blue sky.

Then he called out mentally to his bond who was among them, ’Aika, I don’t think it’s a good idea to be that high up as a raven. Don’t ravens have good hearing?’~

’Is that worry that I hear?’~~ Aika’s teasing voice echoed back in his mind.

’Yes. Yes, I’m worried, so get down here. All of you, actually.’~

Cedric watched as the black specks began to spiral downward, descending from the clear blue heights. In less than half a minute, they all dropped to the ground around him. Then one of them shifted into Aika. She reached to the side, pulled out a water pouch from the inventory, and began drinking.

While she was doing that, Cedric looked at the five ravens on the ground. Then his eyes stopped at one in particular. This one was smaller than the rest and had a white patch on the nape of its neck, marking it as a White-necked Raven.

"Come here," Cedric said quietly as he reached out a hand. The bird immediately responded, flying to him and perching on his forearm.

He studied the bird for a few seconds, then said a bit somberly, "From today, your name is Arlo."

The previous raven he had named Arlo had been killed during the fight to destroy the red bridge. Cedric missed that raven, and since this one didn’t have a name yet and looked similar, he decided to name it Arlo.

The bird tilted its head, then let out a low, gravelly croak in response. It seemed to accept the name, its sharp black eyes fixed on Cedric with an intelligence that went beyond a normal animal.

Then, in a serious voice, Cedric addressed all the ravens. "Listen to me. I am going to share my hearing with you. You need to focus only on the things I hear." He raised two fingers, dropping one with each point he made. "Until we return, you must not listen to anything else. And you must not croak. If you do not follow these rules and begin showing signs of madness, I will kill you myself."

The ravens shifted nervously and silently ruffled their feathers in response.

After that, Cedric shared his hearing with the ravens. He looked to the raven on his arm, then said, "Keep watch, Arlo."

The bird flapped its wings and silently took off into the sky toward the direction of the Stone-Crag Wastes.

At that moment, Cedric could hear Aurora’s voice:

"We’ll leave in an hour. Is that alright?"

He looked at Aurora. She was now sitting on a collapsible camp stool she had pulled from her haversack.

Cedric nodded in agreement, followed by Celeste who answered simply, "Yes."

The hour of rest was a silent one. Cedric remained seated, hugging his katana to his chest while his eyes remained closed. He couldn’t sleep and kept counting from one to a hundred as he usually did before a major encounter. As for Aika, she was comfortably sleeping on the ground beside him, resting her head on his knees.

The minutes passed. The only sound was the occasional shift of gravel or the distant, muffled wind from the Wastes. And then, a shadow fell over him. He opened his eyes and saw Aurora standing before him, which signaled that the one-hour rest was over.

She reached out her hand, which held two pieces of bees wax, then said, "Do you want this? Or do you already have something better to use?"

Cedric looked at it. The wax was to be used to cover the ears and to stop them from hearing the monsters’ voices when they got to the Wastes. To be honest, he did plan on using small rolled up linen, but since this looked better, he took it and nodded. "Thanks."

He began to knead the wax between his thumb and forefinger, using the heat of his skin to make it pliable.

Aurora nodded, and turned to the side where she could see Celeste some meters away muttering something to herself with an annoyed expression.

She arched a brow and called out, "Celeste?"

Celeste snapped out of it and whipped her head towards Aurora in a startled manner. The princess then opened her other palm, revealing another pair of wax, then offered, "Do you want this?"

Celeste stepped closer, then shook her head. "No, thank you. That’ll melt into my ears. I think some linen would be better."

"Oh..." Aurora said, her voice trailing off as she looked down at the small yellow lumps in her hand.

"I’ve got linen for you," Cedric added. "I’ll give it to you after you..." he tilted his head, "...you know."

Celeste nodded, cleaning her sweaty hands on her pants over her backside.

Aurora alternated gazes between them and said sheepishly, "Uhm... my plan initially was to sneak in, and try to quietly take out a few of the monsters. If they proved too challenging to kill from the ground, I planned to attack from the air, then immediately escape once I had killed enough. But... since we are working together now, I think it’s best we come up with something proper."

When Cedric heard that, he turned toward the Stone-Crag Wastes, looking lost in thought.

The monsters that inhabited that territory were called the Heralds of Madness. Towering at over four meters tall, they were hideous creatures with humanoid torsos that lacked any traditional arms. However, in place of legs, a swarm of numerous pale, elongated arms sprouted from their lower bodies to carry them forward.

Each creature had a single head that bore three distinct faces. One resembled a child, the second was that of a middle-aged person, and the last looked like an old man, though every face was twisted with heavy deformities.

Cedric already had an idea about how these creatures operated. And during the time the cadets spent crossing their territory to reach the home of the hollow ones, they had learned a bit about them as well.

These monsters were not only incredibly intelligent, but were also extremely dangerous due to their power to inflict madness upon any person or creature. They did this through either touch or voice.

One of the faces spoke, and anyone who heard the words it uttered went mad instantly. The second face listened, and it inflicted madness upon anyone who made a sound that it could hear. The last face, which was the main consciousness, seemed to be the one controlling the numerous pale hands that these creatures possessed instead of legs. If a Herald managed to touch someone with those hands, it inflicted a madness that was just as total and devastating as its voice.

Cedric exhaled a hot breath, then looked back at the princess with a brave face.

"Let’s do this. I’ll send my ravens as scouts. Then, I’ll lead us to a section of the maze where there are only a few Heralds. Once we are there, the three of us will work together using only our skills and abilities. If we have to engage them in close combat, which I wouldn’t even advise," he pointed to the princess and then to himself, "only the two of us will engage them. You can easily step into the air, while I can just swap with my ravens to avoid their hands."

He turned to look at Celeste. "Celeste," he said, his gaze dropping to her arm, "...and the Demon of Resignation. Please try your best to control the demoness inside you. You absolutely cannot let out a roar in your rage. Do you understand?"

Celeste nodded hesitantly.

Cedric looked away, and his eyes darted some meters away, where he could see Aika. She was smoking her pipe and facing away, seemingly lost in her own world as the blue smoke drifted into the hot air.

He looked back to Aurora and Celeste, exhaled, and concluded.

"We won’t be there for very long, because the longer we stay there, the higher the chance of being killed becomes. If I see that we are going to be swarmed, or we’ve reached a point where we can no longer fight, I’ll send out a signal with my flames for us to retreat as fast as we can."