Chapter 443

Gaelen went completely stiff as Elia approached, his hand darting to the hilt of the leather-bound blade at his hip.To a man immersed in forbidden arts, the mere sight of a high-level Miko was instinctively menacing, a blinding light shining on shadows he depended on for survival.

Nick shifted his weight, ready to step in, but Elia didn't give the older man a reason to draw steel. She simply offered a respectful, perfectly executed bow, the silver bells tied to her hair ringing a clear note.

"You must be Gaelen," she said, her voice warm and completely free of judgment. "Rhea has told me so much about you. It is an honor to meet the man who made her who she is today.”

Gaelen blinked, his posture faltering. Expecting condemnation from a holy caster, he was caught off guard by her normal greeting. He slowly loosened his grip on the sword, and the tension in his shoulders eased a bit.

"The honor is mine, Lady Miko," he replied, his gruff voice softening just enough to stay non-confrontational.

Elia caught Nick's eye over Gaelen's shoulder, sharing a knowing look before turning to greet Rhea, and with that, the tension in the courtyard eased up.

As they gathered their packs and stepped into the street, Rhea and Gaelen led the way, engaging in a quiet conversation about supplies, while Nick and Elia fell back a few steps, letting the noise of morning merchants hide their words.

"It's the sword," Elia murmured. "The corruption is attached to the blade, but it is also spreading into his coils. He’s become too dependent on it.”

"I noticed," Nick replied just as quietly. “As it is, trying to strip the curse by force means he'll fight me to the death. There’s a lot of power in that grudge, and without it, he thinks he won’t be able to get his revenge.”

It was unfortunate but true, at least as far as Nick could tell without seeing him fight.

Gaelen’s level was in the upper seventies, which was impressive considering he couldn’t have been much older than his early twenties. That alone would make him a strong contender for prestige in a decade or so if he kept pushing himself.

But the timeline they were working on was much shorter than that, so it wasn’t surprising why he depended so much on external power.

"He is far too proud," Elia agreed, her golden eyes shadowed with concern. "You will have to earn his trust on the battlefield before he lets you anywhere near him.”

"That's the plan," Nick replied. He wasn’t sure if it was even possible to exorcise such a curse, considering that Gaelen was willingly accepting it, but for Rhea’s sake, he’d try. Letting her brother waste away would be a poor show of friendship.

The walk through the expanding northern district was quick, as they already had everything they needed. Floria was wide awake by then, filled with the industrious clamor of hammers and the shouts of cart drivers. They moved swiftly through the crowds, away from the markets, until the western wall appeared, separating the town from the wild Green Ocean.

Compared to the rest of the town, this area hadn’t changed much, but then again, the dungeon had been broken not even a year ago, along with the flock of wyverns that once threatened the town. Usually, it’d take decades for anything truly threatening to grow back.

As far as Nick remembered, during the day, the gates served as a simple checkpoint where loggers and adventurers showed their permits. But today, the wide thoroughfare was completely blocked.

A crowd of disgruntled locals, adventurers, and town guards had gathered in a restless semicircle around the main gate. The air was filled with irritated voices and open resentment, and Nick pushed his way to the front, using telekinesis to gently part the crowd.

Gaelen and the girls kept close behind him.

A team of four adventurers stood at the heart of the bottleneck, arguing loudly with a tired-looking guard captain. They clearly did not belong to the local population, as their armor gleamed with high-tier alloys and bore the subtle prismatic sheen of expensive enchantments.

They also wore immaculate cloaks that had never caught on a thorny bush, and their weapons looked more like display pieces than gear for facing monsters.

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"I don't care about your daily quotas or your queue," the group leader sneered. He was tall, with perfectly coiffed blonde hair and a polished silver breastplate—evidence of noble birth, likely from a minor branch considering his presence here. "We are operating under a direct commission from the Valerius Consortium. Our tracking spells are time-sensitive, and we are not going to wait behind a line of dirt-farming laborers.”

That sent an angry murmur through the crowd. Though the local adventurers weren’t anything particularly impressive, in the grand scheme of things, they had their pride, and they’d more than once proven their worth by helping defend the town.

That a newcomer spoke so dismissively of them was unlikely to cause anything but resentment, and it was only the heavy presence of the guards that kept them from acting.

"The line moves as the line moves," the guard captain replied, rubbing his temples. "I don't care if the King himself signed your writ. You’ll wait your turn, or you can go around the town and enter the forest like that.”

“They are from the capital," Gaelen muttered, a sneer curling his lip as he eyed the intruders. "High-ranking, but soft. You don't see armor like that this far west unless they are throwing gold around to secure a monopoly.”

Nick took a moment to assess their auras. Compared to the locals, they were strong, probably in the mid-fifties to low sixties, but their mana felt perfectly manicured.

They lacked the wild, desperate edge of people who genuinely fought for their lives on a regular basis. These, then, were the vanguard for the wealthy merchants trying to buy up the town.

"Let them argue," Rhea whispered, pulling her hood up to shield her face from the sun. "We don't have time to waste on inflated egos.”

Nick agreed and trusted that if they ever became a real problem, Darien would step in, as he could sense the man’s presence in the nearby barracks.

He caught the eye of a guard he recognized from the previous day and gave a subtle nod. The man quietly moved a side barricade, creating a narrow gap, and Nick led his team through the opening, slipping past the shouting match and leaving the arrogant adventurers to their tantrum.

The moment they crossed the threshold and left the palisade behind, the atmosphere changed completely as the loud noise of Floria was instantly swallowed by a heavy silence.

The towering trees of the Green Ocean formed a thick canopy overhead, casting the forest floor into perpetual twilight. The scent of damp soil and the sharpness of wild mana in the air struck Nick for the first time in a long while, and he had to fight the urge to soak it all in.

Shaking his head, Nick took the lead. He knew this part of the forest well, but the landscape had changed since he was last here. The aggressive logging had pushed the northern portion of the tree line back, and the increased foot traffic had carved new, muddy paths through the underbrush.

Fortunately, he didn't need to rely on the marked trails. Instead, he expanded his senses, feeling the subtle vibrations of the ether around him. He could sense several low-level adventurer parties thrashing clumsily through the woods, making enough noise to alert every predator nearby.

"This way," Nick murmured, veering off the beaten path and pushing through a thicket of ferns.

He guided them along the route he remembered from the dungeon raid, using his spatial awareness to navigate the uneven terrain and avoid the more crowded hunting grounds.

They moved silently for most of an hour, and as they went deeper, the surrounding mana grew heavier. All signs of human influence disappeared, replaced by pristine wilderness.

Gaelen proved his skill right away. He moved through the forest with the predatory grace of a seasoned ranger, leaving no footprints behind, and his presence became so subtle that Nick could only detect it because he sensed his emotions.

Elia glided over the roots and moss, her robes still completely clean, while Rhea delegated the scouting to them and focused on searching the area for alchemical ingredients.

Occasionally, they paused so she could harvest various ingredients, from Nightcap Mushrooms to poisonous berries, and soon after, the sound of trickling water reached Nick's ears.

He led them down a steep, moss-covered embankment to the edge of a sluggish stream. The water was dark and murky, filled with thick reeds and tangled sunken roots.

"We can cross here," Nick said, testing the muddy bank with the butt of his staff. "The water is shallow enough, but watch your footing. There are monsters lying in wait.”

He took the first step into the water, deliberately squelching the mud loudly beneath his boots.

Immediately, the rivulet's surface boiled as the ether around them surged with sudden aggression.

Four humanoid figures emerged from the murky depths, spewing sprays of muddy water into the air. They were featureless beings made of churning sludge, roots, and wet clay, their bulky shapes shifting and reforming with every move.

One of Gaelen’s normal blades rasped against its leather scabbard as he drew it in a blur of motion, and he cut down the first before it could even fully form.

Nick barely blinked. Level 30 elementals hardly posed a threat compared to the horrors he’d faced before, and even when he was weaker, he dealt with them easily.

However, he knew from experience that mud elementals were extremely tedious to fight. They lacked vital organs, so physical attacks and piercing magic often went right through them, and their proximity to water allowed them to regenerate damaged clay almost instantly.

Even his father struggled a bit to put them down before he reached Prestige.

A second lumbering elemental lunged at Gaelen, swinging a root-entwined arm. The older man pivoted smoothly, bringing his sword around for a devastating strike that sliced through the elemental's torso, cutting it clean in half.

However, as the top half splashed into the rivulet, the muddy sludge didn't dissolve but instead flowed back together. The clay lifted itself from the water and reattached to the legs within seconds.

The elemental reformed, completely unharmed, and was soon joined by more of its brethren.

“It’s useless to cut them down,” Rhea grunted, probably having more experience with the annoying things than any of them, since she often went into the forest to gather ingredients.

One of her flasks shattered against the chest of a second elemental, splashing it with a highly volatile freezing agent, and the sludge hardened into brittle, icy dirt, slowing the creature to a crawl.

A ring of golden fire bloomed around Elia, repelling a third elemental that tried to flank her. The holy flames dried the mud, causing the creature's arm to crack and turn to dust.

The monster tried to reach into the water to reform, but the fires swept over it once more, destroying it.

Nick watched as more elementals appeared, holding back for now. He could easily destroy them with a high-level spell or crush their primitive minds with spiritual pressure. But this was the perfect chance to test a theory he’d been quietly developing since understanding the new nature of his soul.

He wanted to expand his elemental skills. Now, he had plenty of mana and could create a method to fight regenerating enemies without relying on high-level spells.

For that, he needed fire.