“People?”
Rosily frowned in confusion.
This was a vague word she heard from the Whisper in the Wind. Although she could hear it, the sounds were rather hazy.
They felt to Rosily like her own ears and eyes, yet these ears and eyes seemed separated from her by a thick barrier, making it hard for her to hear clearly and see truly.
She turned lightly, dodging the sharp slash of an Ironwing Bird.
Rosily glanced at Elqi and Simona hiding behind the trees, then swept her gaze over Scarlett and Bella, who were likewise unaffected by the Monster Tide, before finally fixing her eyes on the Monster Tide.
The Monster Tide was composed mostly of herbivorous Magical Beasts, with few carnivorous or large ones appearing.
In other words, this Monster Tide was very likely a large-scale ecological chaos caused by the movement of some powerful Magical Beast.
But why did the Whisper in the Wind say the word “people”?
Rosily hung from her longsword, waiting until the Monster Tide’s momentum weakened and only two or three Magical Beasts were still fleeing and scampering on the ground.
Then she pushed off a thick tree trunk with both feet, pulled out the [Cang] embedded in the tree, and landed on the ground.
After she landed, the branches and leaves of that tree withered in an instant.
The power of [Cang] inadvertently leaked, turning such a giant tree into a withered dead tree in the blink of an eye.
The others also noticed this detail, but none of them thought it had anything to do with Rosily. Elqi even flew over to Rosily with Simona, asking with a worried expression.
“Rosily, are you okay? Quick, Simona, use Purification on Rosily!”
“Okay!”
Simona was stunned for a moment, but quickly cast Purification on Rosily. However, she got no feedback from Rosily.
Simona was a bit puzzled, but the person in front of her was Rosily!
Without any hesitation, she cast several more Purifications.
Rosily looked at the soft colored light shining on her, and after the two girls’ emotions had calmed down a bit, she spread her hands and said with a smile.
“I’m actually fine.”
“……”
Elqi and Simona both stood frozen in place.
Scarlett landed on the ground. She crouched on the ground where the Magical Beasts had just passed.
After being trampled by the Monster Tide, the ground was very messy, with many footprints embedded in the soil.
There was even some blood.
Scarlett crouched beside a puddle of blood that had not yet fully coagulated.
Following the direction of the blood droplets, she looked upward at the canyon they were in, then cast her gaze toward Rosily, who was sandwiched between the two girls.
As it happened, Rosily was also looking at her.
Rosily walked out from between Elqi and Simona, came to Scarlett’s side, and asked with a serious expression.
“Are these bloodstains anything special?”
“No… there’s nothing.”
Scarlett looked at Rosily’s serious expression, which seemed indifferent to women, and couldn’t help but feel a sense of dislocation from the world. At the same time, she sighed that Rosily really knew how to pretend.
Pretend? She wasn’t pretending. When Rosily was serious, she was genuinely serious.
Rosily’s clear eyes, without any timidity, met Scarlett’s deep eyes.
After only three breaths of eye contact, Scarlett declared defeat. She averted her gaze and stood up from the ground.
After calming her mind, Scarlett spoke.
“My captain, do we still continue forward now?”
“Of course.”
Rosily nodded affirmatively.
Scarlett lowered her eyes and sighed.
“I see.”
“Then let’s go.”
Rosily didn’t linger much. She took the lead and walked ahead.
They hadn’t directly clashed with the Monster Tide, choosing to stay in the trees to avoid a frontal confrontation.
The road after passing the Monster Tide might be easier than before, since all the Magical Beasts along the way had run away.
That way, no Magical Beasts would come out to waste their time.
The group tidied up a bit and soon regrouped to continue exploring deeper. According to the map’s instructions, they had probably gone more than half the distance.
They could probably reach their destination tomorrow, leaving enough time to conquer the [Brass Dragon].
Two days of travel, one day to fight the dragon, and the remaining two days to return to the gathering point.
The five days given for the Training Trial were just right.
Just as Rosily was planning and calculating the upcoming itinerary in her mind, she suddenly smelled a hint of blood in the air. That smell was very different from the scent of Magical Beasts.
Rosily stopped. When she stopped, the whole team stopped. Elqi craned her neck, looked ahead, and said.
“What’s wrong?”
“……”
Rosily didn’t answer.
Instead, her eyes went vacant, as if she was sensing something. Scarlett, who was at the back of the group, came forward.
Scarlett didn’t notice anything either, but she trusted Rosily’s senses, so she didn’t disturb Rosily’s concentrated perception.
Soon, Rosily’s eyes focused ahead.
The map in her hand was sucked into her storage ring, and at the same time, [Cang] was grasped in her hand.
A hint of Magic Power’s glow appeared on her body.
In the blink of an eye, she had already run five or six meters.
The others, seeing Rosily’s rapidly shrinking back, also reacted and used their running abilities to chase after Rosily. After three minutes of sprinting, Scarlett, who was in second place, frowned.
She smelled a bloody scent, and it was unusually strong!
Scarlett quickly passed through a patch of fallen trees, jumped down a cliff over ten meters high, landed on the moss-covered roots of a giant tree protruding from the ground, slid all the way to the soil, quickly arrived beside Rosily, and then looked at that terrible scene.
“Aaaaaah!”
Elqi, who arrived a step later, also saw the scene before her. The girl cried out in fright and took several steps back.
She accidentally fell to the ground, turned her head, and began to vomit.
In contrast, Simona seemed a bit more composed. When she was a nun at the Goddess Church, she had faced many injured people, and the bloody smell was equally pungent and stinging to the eyes.
She had some resistance, but Simona still felt very uncomfortable looking at the scene. After recovering from her stupor, she immediately turned her head.
The pale-faced cleric miss crouched beside Elqi, gently stroking Elqi’s back, using Healing Magic to restore Elqi’s condition, making her stop the violent vomiting reaction.
As a typical new noble missy, Elqi had almost never seen blood in her life, let alone smelled such a strong bloody smell.
Faced with this situation all at once, she could hardly bear it. Just feeling nauseous and vomiting was considered mild.
So, what kind of scene was that?
In front of Rosily and Scarlett, about five or six meters away, a wooden stick was stuck in the ground with a head impaled on it. The face of the head’s owner was full of fear.
And further away, a person was embedded in a tree, but the part below the waist had completely disappeared.
Perhaps there was even a third person…
On the grass in front of them, there were many fragments and remains.
Scarlett walked over with a cold face.
Rosily shifted her gaze slightly, looking at Scarlett’s back, watching her step onto the grass covered in blood and fragments.
Scarlett arrived in front of that head, crouched down, and examined it carefully.
Rosily pursed her lips and also walked to Scarlett’s side. Where Scarlett had just stepped, she picked up a piece of broken iron.
Just as Rosily was wondering what this thing was, Scarlett suddenly stood up, snatched it from Rosily’s hand, looked at it, and then said to Rosily.
“They are not Adventurers.”
“……”
Rosily looked into Scarlett’s eyes. After a few seconds, she nodded, and didn’t press Scarlett on how she knew that these people’s identities were not Adventurers.
Rosily walked back, went to Elqi’s side, and asked softly.
“Are you okay?”
“…Mm.”
Elqi avoided Rosily’s gaze, not wanting Rosily to see her in an unseemly state.
Rosily, because she had gotten blood on her hand from picking up that iron thing earlier, did not touch Elqi.
After that, Rosily led Elqi, Simona, and later Bella to leave that place filled with the smell of blood, but left Scarlett alone at that place.
The four first arrived at a stream and rested for a short while.
Elqi, Simona, and Bella all noticed that Scarlett hadn’t followed.
They were all curious about what relation the dead had to Scarlett, but they actively suppressed their curiosity.
About half an hour later, the sound of rustling footsteps on fallen leaves came from beside the resting place of the four.
In a short while, a girl with a dark green ponytail walked out from behind the trees.
Scarlett returned to the group. Rosily saw her and directly asked.
“Do you know them?”
“I don’t know them.”
Scarlett shook her head in denial.
Rosily narrowed her eyes, but didn’t pursue the matter insistently.
Both were silent for a while.
Scarlett broke the silence. She gave a light smile at Rosily.
“You seem like you’re not scared at all.”
“You too.”
Rosily chose to answer bluntly.
In Scarlett’s eyes, Rosily and Elqi should be the same type of person—little girls spoiled by their family elders. It was normal to be scared into vomiting after seeing such a scene.
If the reaction had been even stronger, perhaps fainting or wetting herself would have been likely, but Rosily was very calm, so calm that it seemed almost inhuman.
This made Scarlett confused at first, but soon she understood one thing.
Some people are born different, especially the geniuses.
Scarlett took a deep look at Rosily, who appeared to be a simple blonde girl. The smile on her face faded a bit, and she said.
“I have a question I want to ask you now.”
“What?”
“Do we still continue forward?”
“Of course.”
Rosily did not hesitate, and her tone was quite calm.
Scarlett’s pupils dilated slightly.
She was thinking about something, but soon refocused on Rosily.
“Since the captain says so, I can’t very well disobey the captain’s orders.”
“Then can I let you…?”
Hearing that her orders were so effective, Rosily became excited.
Scarlett mercilessly refused.
“No.”
“Oh.”
Rosily sighed in disappointment.
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