Chương 479: B7—Chapter 55: A Road to Nowhere is Still a Road

For two days, we looked for another passage without success. First, we circled the chain of canyons on foot, examining every cliff and crack. Our boots scraped over loose stones, and the echo of our steps bounced between the walls, but that was the only sound and nothing revealed itself. The only crack we found was the one we came through. As a second step, we flew above and scanned the canyons from the air, hoping for a hint of a shadow or a change in the rock. Still nothing.

I even asked the wind and again got a big fat nothing. Eventually, we had to call it quits. We crossed back through the crack and were immediately attacked by the bug birds again. This time, the flock had only about thirty instead of over a hundred, but that was the only difference. Mahya jumped and cut them down with quick, efficient swings. Al settled into his two-hand routine, shooting fire and lightning. My contribution to the fight was casting Fortify on Al.

Rue still felt useless and did his sad-dog impression, ears drooping and tail lowered, as he hovered behind me. Once they finished with the bugs, I turned toward the entrance, but Mahya stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. She tilted her head toward the canyon wall.

"Let's look around. Maybe there's another entrance from here." Again, we searched for another crack. It took another day, and the only thing we discovered was that the original crack we had passed through vanished. The wall stood smooth, as if it had never held an opening. That strange discovery lifted Mahya's and Al's spirits, and they insisted we keep looking. Sadly, Rue's nose didn't find anything, even after his determined sniffing along every stretch of rock.

The following day, we flew above the cliffs and looked for anything out of place. Well, the three of us looked. Rue had already given up on this portal and used the chance to zoom back and forth on his Skyrush, barking his head off in pure delight. This time, I was the one who found the next passage. While flying above and straining my eyes to the max, I noticed a black spot tucked against the cliffside. At first, it looked like nothing more than a dark patch of stone, but it was worth checking.

An overhang hid an entrance to a narrow shaft that dropped straight into the rock. I cast Light Ball and sent it drifting down. The pale glow revealed a shaft about one and a half meters wide and twenty meters deep, its walls rough with stone protrusions. Before calling the others, I slipped inside and flew down with Mana Shield around me and lightning tingling at my fingertips, ready to fire if anything moved. At the bottom, the light showed a dark tunnel branching off to the side.

It stretched for about a hundred meters, twisting left and right like the other one. Eventually, it opened into another canyon that looked almost identical to the other two. The rock had the same reddish tint and the same clumps of thorny bushes. The only real differences were that the entrance canyon was about three kilometers across, and the second one about five. I couldn't tell how big this one was from where I stood, but the space ahead felt wider, the sheer amount of open air hinting at something much larger.

Based on previous experience, I knew something would attack the moment I stepped fully outside. No point in testing my luck alone, so it was better to go back and get the gang. I pulled up from the shaft and scanned the canyon for the others. They had scattered all over the place. Mahya skimmed along one cliff on her sword, leaning forward with a focus that meant she was checking every shadow.

Al flew farther out, tracing wide circles over the cliffs, as if the entrance would politely reveal itself if he passed over them enough times. Rue wasn't helping at all. He zipped back and forth on his Skyrush, barking happily at the wind. I headed to Mahya first. When she noticed me waving, she angled her sword and glided toward me. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw my expression.

"Found something," I called. She grinned, already turning in the direction I pointed. Next was Al. I flew across the canyon to catch him on his next pass. He slowed when he saw me, posture straightening. I pointed.

"Entrance." He nodded once and headed that way. Rue was last. He shot past me at full speed, fur rippling, and ears flapping in the wind. I had to call his name twice before he circled back, still panting happily.

"New passage," I said. Rue rocketed after the others, leaving a long, echoing bark behind him. When I reached the shaft, all three of them were peering over the edge, with Mahya's Light Ball casting a pale circle on the stone below. Mahya tapped the hilt of her sword.

"We can glide down," she said, already shifting her weight forward.

"No, we cannot," Al said.

"The blades require space to maneuver, and this passage is far too confined." She tried anyway. She stepped onto her sword, gave it the tiniest push, and the tip scraped the wall with a screech that made Al flinch. The sword wobbled out of balance. Mahya hopped off with a huff, and the blade dropped straight into the shaft. She leaned over the edge with a worried expression. I sighed and reverted to my old role as an elevator, pointing at my back.

"Hop on." She climbed onto my back, and I carried her down to the bottom, then went back up for Al and delivered him the same way. Rue trotted to the edge, peered down, and wilted.

"Hole too small," he said with a soft whine. He tried lowering himself straight down, paws tucked tight, but his back legs bumped one wall, and his snout scraped the other. He floated back up with his ears flat in pure canine frustration, then huffed and shifted tactics. Nose-first this time, he stretched out like a furry arrow and eased himself into the shaft. His paws brushed the stone once or twice, but he hovered all the way down.

The moment he touched the bottom, he angled himself into the tunnel and finally stood on solid ground. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. I was right about something attacking immediately, or almost immediately. The moment we stepped out of the tunnel, the ground trembled beneath our boots. A thundering sound rolled across the canyon, and a group of creatures galloped toward us in a loose, pounding wave. Spirits, they looked weird.

Their bodies were almost perfectly square, with four legs, one at each corner. They lifted and slammed down in an oddly synchronized way that made them look both fast and clumsy at the same time. In the exact center of that boxy body rose a long, flexible neck, too thin for the bulk it supported, swaying like a reed in the wind with every stride. On top of it, perched a bony head stretched into strange angles, more skull than flesh, with clusters of small eyes scattered across it.

Some faced forward, others sideways, and a few even pointed backward, giving the unsettling impression that the creature could see in every direction at once. They tried to stampede over us, but we were terrible targets for that. The moment the first row closed in, all of us rose into the air. The creatures thundered underneath us in a confused wave, their square bodies slamming into each other as they realized their momentum meant nothing if the prey wasn't standing in front of them.

I fired lightning at the closest one. The bolt hit squarely, lit up the creature like a lantern for half a heartbeat, then fizzled out into the ground. Another earth-aligned creature that grounded my lightning without a scratch. Mahya and Al saw my results and didn't even bother trying the lightning approach. Mahya switched to rifles. First one from Earth, then one from Zindor. The reports echoed off the canyon walls, but the bullets didn't sink in, only kicking up tiny puffs of dust from their hide.

She lowered the rifle with a frustrated grunt, then called out, "Fine. Plan B." She dove low, sword extended, and made a clean flying run above the herd. Her blade sliced through the first neck like it was fruit. The creature dropped instantly, legs folding in on its weird square body. Al and I exchanged a quick look and copied her method. We descended in staggered passes, catching the creatures from above.

The odd shape of their bodies made it easy to target the long necks, and each successful strike turned the charging chaos into a stumbling mess. Rue turned it into a game. He swooped down with a delighted bark, clamped his jaws around a neck, and darted upward again, leaving another creature collapsing behind him. He repeated it over and over, tail wagging, clearly having fun. The stampede didn't last long. Ten minutes of coordinated swoops, slashes, and bites, and the canyon grew quiet again.

Dust settled in soft clouds around the fallen creatures, and the strange echo of their galloping faded into the distance. When the last one dropped, Rue landed with a thump and immediately burst into excited circles, paws kicking up grit, tail wagging a mile a minute. He barked triumphantly at nothing in particular, proud of himself for finally contributing.

We regrouped above the bodies, catching our breath, and for a moment, the only sound was Rue's happy panting and the crackle of the small stones his paws scattered. Mahya kicked one creature.

"I had it up to here with this tainted bullshit." Dead Tainted Clopper.

"Do you still want to look for more passages, or are we giving up on this useless portal?" I asked.

"Let's collect the cores and go," she said in an extra annoyed tone. I glanced at Al, and he nodded. Outside the portal, its color had shifted from red to orange.

"Is this normal?" I asked, pointing at it. Mahya blew a raspberry at the swirling surface.

"Nothing is normal about it." Yeah, this portal was definitely a bust. Once we were back in the air, I tried a different approach. I closed my eyes and concentrated, hoping to feel if any direction had a higher mana concentration, something that might hint at a vent or even more than one. We flew like that for over an hour, drifting farther from the portal, but I couldn't sense anything. Finally, I gave up and let out a long breath.

"You pick a direction," I told Mahya. She tightened her grip on the steering gizmo and peered over the edge, scanning the cliffs below.

"Alright," she said, and turned us toward a new stretch of rock. For a while, none of us spoke. The balloon swayed gently, creaking in the wind, and Rue pressed his paws against the rim of the basket to look out, tail sweeping back and forth at a leisurely pace. After a while of flying in silence, I asked, "Does it happen often that a portal is useless?"

"No," Mahya said.

"First time. There's always something to collect."

"That is not accurate," Al said. Mahya and I both turned toward him.

"I personally did not experience it," he said, "but I read about it in my family's archive. Sometimes portals are truly useless. They still need to be closed if they present a danger to the nearby populace." He gave me a slight nod.

"Also, we did collect something. The cores."

"They're tainted. It doesn't count," Mahya said.

"Yes, it does," Al insisted.

"John is not the only one who can clear tainted cores and crystals. Every wizard with good mana control can do it."

"They can?" I asked.

"Of course," Al said, sounding honestly surprised I didn't know. Huh. It made sense; I just never considered it. In the late afternoon, we flew over an open grassland. The fields stretched out in gentle waves, green and gold in the warm light.

"That looks nice," Mahya said. All of us agreed. She guided us down, and I opened the house. Initially, the plan was to stay for the night and continue in the morning, but the weather was perfect. A blue sky, warm air, and the kind of calm that felt like an invitation. I asked the core to open the pool to the outside so we could have a dip before moving on. That dip became a swim, and the swim turned into lounging on the edge while the sun dipped lower.

Rue splashed everyone on purpose, then pretended he had nothing to do with it.

"Maybe we should stay another night," Mahya said, stretching out her legs in the water. No one argued. By the next morning, it was obvious we weren't leaving anytime soon. The grassland felt too peaceful to walk away from. The days passed in a pleasant blur. We swam in the pool, sometimes racing each other, sometimes floating quietly, or simply lazing about on the loungers in the sun. I barbecued steaks and crabs, and their smell drifted across the grass like a dinner bell.

Rue sat as close to the grill as he dared, drooling in a straight line onto the ground. At some point, we invented a ball game in the air. It was mainly to steal the ball from whoever held it, without dropping Al or Mahya from their swords. Mahya took to it instantly, darting around with sharp turns that made the ball nearly impossible to steal. Al insisted on playing with perfect form, which made it even funnier when Rue swooped in to grab the ball out of nowhere and zoomed off with proud little barks.

I joined them, and the four of us zipped around the sky for hours, shouting and laughing and not keeping score at all. Evenings were just as good. A couple of nights, Al pulled out his alcohol enhancing potion, and we got pleasantly drunk. Other nights we watched movies curled up on the couch, and argued about plot twists that made no sense, or played board games till the middle of the night. By the fourth day, none of us mentioned leaving. A quiet break in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing important.

Over two weeks passed like that. Swimming, flying, eating, laughing, sleeping in, and waking up without plans or projects. Mahya put her ship project aside and didn't nudge Al about the enhancement potions she wanted. I didn't bother the elements and let them be all around us, and Rue didn't chase the occasional wildlife that wandered by. This mini-vacation made up for the useless portal and then some.