Shadow of the Evil God

Diana held her forehead and sighed, "The Eye of the Furnace... Actually, I also want to ask how you got into such trouble. Even in the historical texts, there is no record of the Eye of the Furnace appearing in the past few hundred years. You just had a dream, but I actually saw it with my own eyes. Although my ancestor must have had some reason."

"what is it?"

"The thing used to tear apart the white nightmares and those cursed evil creatures in the genocidal war of the last era. There are very few records of it since then. I think its appearance may indeed mean some signs..."

"You want me to stop thinking about the ancient pact, so I also want you to stop paying attention to those inexplicable omens," Cesar told her. "Prophecies and omens are bullshit. Instead of locking yourself in a tower and pondering, you should first find a way to stand firm with us in the midst of the war. With actual power and status, everything will be easy. Unless you want to be a lonely prophet calling for salvation and be regarded as a lunatic."

Chapter 161 Be careful or I'll break your fingers

.......

As Diana had said, he would no longer be able to sleep normally at night. He would have to wander the wilderness, searching for the so-called homeless souls of Ajeh and Firth according to Diana's advice. It sounded like a hunter going out hunting for his family. The difference was that he would have to carry his family on his back while hunting.

"You can take a break tonight," Diana said. "First, get some wood and build a frame to put the person up. There's no way my little ancestor will wake up here. After all, the dream she had wasn't her own..."

"Can this guy regain his memory?" Cesar pointed at Ajeh. Maybe it was because of Big Ferriers, she looked like a young girl.

She was a few years younger than Phils. Her eyes were blank, hollow, and she sat on the tree root, hugging her knees and saying nothing. Her hair was a mess, like weeds, not only scattered all over her body but also hanging down to the ground.

"I didn't lose my memory,

"You old idiot." Ajiehe raised her head and said, "Don't point your finger at me and talk nonsense, or I'll break your finger."

Diana stared at her, silent. "It seems I was wrong," she said after a long moment. "It's not her memory that's been damaged, but her stable personality. You have to let her gradually return to her previous state, so that she won't speak like that..."

Cesar lifted Ajeh up by her wrist and locked eyes with the stern-faced girl. "Childish?" he asked.

The other person's face lengthened. "I just have trouble expressing myself."

"That sounds terrible." Cesar stared into her gray eyes. "The way you talk and your attitude are bad enough, and now it's even worse. Do you think I have a chance to change your attitude towards people?"

Before Ajeh could reply, Diana had already reached the tree and tapped on its roots, reminding them to pay attention to timing and location. "Don't waste time here," Diana said. "There are some thinner roots sticking out of the ground here that are barely suitable for use as materials. Let me think about what to do with them..."

Cesar held the unconscious Phils in his right hand and the stern-faced Ajeh in his left. "I can chop wood, weave ropes, hammer nails, and even put wooden frames together—all kinds of odd jobs," he said as he jumped down.

"You're slower at doing odd jobs than a country farmer with a lame hand," Ajiehe grinned at him.

"Well, you're right, dear." Cesar shook his head and added, "My skills are indeed not very good, but it's enough. I mean, it's enough for me to spend the night alone in the wilderness and forest. The problem is that there are no tools here," he said, looking at Diana, "You can't expect me to roll tree roots into wooden frames with my hands, miss."

"This is an unreal wasteland," Ajeh complained. "You are a bloody mist that hasn't completely lost its human form. Why do you think of yourself as a human and yet feel you need tools?"

"I treat myself as a human being wherever I go, not to mention the Wasteland, even in the Crimson Realm." Cesar glanced at Ajeh, then turned to Diana. "Since you're able to come in wearing a cloak I've never seen before, Miss, could you bring a set of the tool kits used by the servants in the Duke's Mansion?"

Diana frowned slightly, "You want to do this yourself like a carpenter?"

"If you're willing to pass me the nails, I don't mind," Cesar replied. "If I can do something myself, I don't need servants or magic. After all, I have my own hands. And please get some clothes for this wild woman, so she doesn't walk around naked."

Diana was silent for a long time, then disappeared. Cesar gathered some fallen leaves, piled them together, and placed Phils's curled body on top. The maze of giant trees seemed even quieter than before. Ajeh sat cross-legged under a tree, lost in thought, staring silently at the black sky obscured by the leaves.

After a while, Cesar felt his hand sink, and found that several black cloaks and linings fell into his hands out of thin air. These clothes gave people a strange feeling. He fumbled for a while and found that there were no ropes that could be untied, no traces of needlework, and some buttons on the cloak were just some specious decorations.

These weren't real clothes, but a simple figment of their imagination. Like the flames summoned by the mages, these clothes were illusory.

He caught the tools that appeared in mid-air one by one, finding that they were also simple entities that looked like real tools, but their actual structures were completely different. He sorted them one by one and placed them in front of him. Finally, he looked up and looked at Diana who had returned to the wasteland.

"What kind of spell is this?"

"It's not a spell," Diana said. "I'm simply transferring what I dreamed of. I also want you to wear this cloak to disguise your identity. The clothes you dreamt of are too obvious."

"You speak as if there are many people in the wilderness who can recognize me."

"There are more creatures in the wasteland than you think," she said. "A so-called rural wizard is a farmer who can't even read and suddenly has a dream. He then learns the method of traveling between dreams and the wasteland without any teacher. They don't need to receive education or understand the principles of magic. As long as they wander the wasteland long enough, they can master some primitive but cruel witchcraft and curses."

"What about the ignorant beasts?"

"Even a dying wild dog has a chance," Diana said. "It wanders the wilderness in dreams at night, and hunts people and livestock by day in unrealistic ways that it could never hunt. That's how horror stories are born in the countryside."

Cesar couldn't help but think of the road they had taken in the carriage to Gonzales, and the unusual phenomenon that Phils had discovered on the road. He pulled little Ajeh over, held her in his arms, then lifted her thin arms and forced clothes onto her naked body.

She had no strength left now, and even if she wanted to resist him, she was powerless.

"What about the military mages?" Cesar suddenly thought of these people.

"Military Mage..." Diana considered her tone, looking at

He seemed a little hesitant. "Military wizards are actually people who are not suitable to be wizards. Let me tell you this, any rural wizard in Iris, as long as they can receive education, they are talented spellcasters. The problem is that this kind of mediocre talent is not lacking anywhere.

What we lack is..."

"The tuition fees paid by the merchants and aristocratic children who came here in droves to make a name for themselves?"

She sighed and spread her hands. "It's a significant source of income," she replied. "The tuition paid by someone with no qualifications at all covers the daily expenses of an average wizard in the school for ten years. At first, I couldn't understand why so many people in Itris were making meaningless efforts. They paid a huge price, only to master a few minor tricks. Then I met Artinia and did some research on the matter, and I finally understood the society's motives."

Chapter 162 Werewolf

While Cesar chatted with Diana, he cut stumps, split wood, and cut logs with a saw. This type of carpentry typically required hammering a wedge into the wood and splitting it with an axe, but with his strength, he could simply split a log straight in half with just the right amount of force. He also had no problem holding a log and sawing it in each hand. It didn't take long for him to finish the various pieces of wood, sorting them into their respective categories before him.

He didn't expect to find comfort in it, he just hoped that this job could help him relieve some of his emotions.

Cesar scraped the wood smooth with an iron brush, then cut the cloak with a knife, applied a layer of fabric, and began fitting the box together using traditional mortise and tenon joints. He then further cut and sized the wood. The work progressed smoothly, and the finished product was far superior to his previous, cruder creations, a refined object ready for display on a shelf. The reason for this was, of course, that even now, the precision required of many veteran craftsmen seemed as easy as a game to him.

He pressed the fabric inside the wooden box with his hands to make sure it was soft enough, then put the cloak Diana had prepared on Fils and carried her in. He picked up the newly built suitcase and slung it, along with the girl inside, over his back.

"Okay, it's done," Cesar said. "What do we do next? Find a suitable place to wake up?"

Diana frowned and examined his work, like a picky customer evaluating the goods on the shelf. "The box is not bad," she said, "but this feeling is really strange..."

"That's how slave traders steal children," said Ajeh.

Cesar grabbed Ajeh's wrist and lifted her into the air. He kicked her bare foot and then clamped her under his arm. "We've got the other one too," he said. "Where do we go now?"

"Let's find a place where we won't open our eyes and find ourselves surrounded by monsters." Diana said, "I think this area is abnormally quiet."

Cesar couldn't help but glance sideways: "Don't you know the dangers of this place?"

She pondered. "Our school has recorded many safe locations given by our predecessors, but you, drawn by the Crimson Realm, changed the anchor point I marked... I don't know where we are now."

......

They journeyed through the dark woodland, where towering trees, like mountains, formed a complex network of corridors. The intertwined roots covered the soil, making the terrain extremely complex. Sometimes the height difference was as high as ten meters, making one feel like a tiny insect crawling through the primeval forest. Cesar wrapped his cloak tightly around his hood and leaped over the tree roots that resembled chasms in the mountain stream.

After walking for an unknown amount of time, they passed the thickest area of ​​tree roots and found a stream in a corridor of giant trees. The water in the wide valley was dark, and the surface of the water was strangely calm, without a ripple, looking like an unfathomable stagnant lake.

Cesar looked up and saw that the sky was covered with dark clouds, with pale green lightning flashing in the gaps between the clouds, but the woodlands and valleys were still dark and silent, oppressive to the point of being indescribable. The silted clouds clung to the trunks of the giant trees, emitting a dazzling halo that made him feel like they were about to fall down with the fluttering fallen leaves and bury everything on the ground.

He followed the direction of the stream, feeling the terrain gradually descend and the slope gradually increase, as if he were a stone falling into an abyss. The forest was strangely cold, with no birds singing or predators roaring, as if everything was dead and gone.

"If we get into trouble, you should have a way to take us away, right?" Cesar asked Diana.

"Using the teleportation spell in the wasteland is much easier than in the real world, but there are risks unrelated to the spell itself," Diana said. "Some of the beings that inhabit the wasteland have set traps specifically for teleporting mages. If you accidentally fall into one, your soul and consciousness will be transformed into nutrients, and your physical body will disintegrate."

"What a disaster..."

"It won't be more disastrous than the Eye of the Furnace and my ancestors."

Cesar had been walking for so long that he felt tired and numb. He finally sat down on a cracked tree root to relax. He felt the damp, cold air around him, and mist everywhere, but no living creatures could be seen in the dark and gloomy woodland. He panted as he asked Diana about the conditions in the wasteland, occasionally responding to Ajeh's pointed comments.

He suddenly heard a sound, and immediately knelt down in the crack of the tree roots and stretched out his arms.

A shadow shrouded in mist was rapidly approaching in the darkness, completely imperceptible to human eyes and ears. If he had not used his other vision to perceive the presence of living beings, he would not have been able to detect it.

Cesar unconsciously split his right arm, and

From beneath his broad sleeves, dozens of black tentacles, real and fake, emerged. Bloodshot eyes and cracks drifted across their surface, peering in all directions. Silently, the mist leaped through the forest, clinging to the dark trunk of a massive tree, nearly a hundred meters above them. It then leaped to another giant tree, silently dropping over ten meters.

His gaze followed the creature's form, watching it descend from behind them, crouching in a predatory stance in an instant. As the bloodshot eyes on his right arm turned toward the mist, the creature, which had been about to pounce, suddenly stopped, its claws scratching sharp wounds on the tree.

Ajeh climbed up his back and poked her head over his shoulder. The creature let out a deep wolfish howl, and the witchy mist surrounding it dissipated, revealing a dark, hunched, almost humanoid form. A werewolf? It looked different. The creature's hunched body stood nearly five meters tall, its mouth shorter than a wolf's, its jaw wider. The upper part of its head took on a triangular, pyramidal shape, a hint of evil. The creature extended its three-jointed arms, its jaws wide open, revealing shark-sharp, dense fangs, and uttered a series of words. It was a language Cesar had never heard before.

Diana immediately pointed to Cesar's right arm and replied in the same language.

"A worg," she whispered to Cesar. "It asked where we were from, and I said we were from the Crimson Realm."

"A branch of the Beastmen?"

"One of the most notorious higher races of beastmen."

"I thought the wargs you were talking about were just folklore."

"Worgs only exist in small populations further north in the empire. In the last era, these wolves, taller than war horses, gained wisdom and were the quickest to submit to Analik. Later, the various temples spared no effort in exterminating them..."

There was another howl of wolves, and Diana communicated with the beastmen as if nothing had happened, as if there was no language of intelligent creatures that she had not learned. The werewolves fell into a long silence, and then more silent mists flew closer, revealing the dark bodies of the werewolves on all sides.

This is a community.

"What did you say just now?" Cesar asked her.

"It said they were going to worship the ancient beings that inhabit the wasteland and hold a ceremony there. It required us to go together because Ajehe, the one on your back, hadn't yet had her coming-of-age ceremony. It followed us all the way here because it smelled her scent. It believed you were her priest and I was their servant."

"Can we say no?"

"I guess not," Diana said. "Otherwise, it would think you were unworthy of being its father, and such sires would be eaten by their own kind according to their habit."

There are now groups of werewolves. Cesar feels that if they gather together, they will definitely form a huge fog that will sweep across the entire city.

Diana continued to negotiate with the leading Warg. Halfway through, they realized there were more than just Wargs nearby. Suddenly, a pterosaur-like creature descended from a thousand meters above, landing on a branch a hundred meters away, silent and soundless. Cesar initially thought it was a genuine scarlet dragon, but then it suddenly broke apart, disintegrating into thousands of tiny goblins with tiny, humanoid bodies and membranous wings. They circled around them like a swarm of insects, then coalesced into a vaguely red dragon beside them, its head lowered.

"What kind of species is this?" Cesar asked her in a low voice.

"There are too many beastmen who cannot be accurately defined, and the only ones that can be named are those common populations! You can't expect me to give you a scientific name for everything." Diana reminded him in a low voice.

"So how did your negotiation go?"

"We're going to hold a ceremony with them, to worship something ancient... I must tell you this is the safest way. And when I'm in the wild, I also find a wolf's den to spend the night in."

"Okay," Cesar said, "then why would these beastmen want to worship something they don't know about?"

"It said they were heading south, seeking some kind of great revelation. This place isn't on their route, but it's close enough that a detour isn't out of the question..."

Before Cesar could grasp the meaning, the leading werewolf had already reached Cesar's side and raised his slender arm, beckoning him to join them. It seemed that they were of similar status and should move forward together in a friendly manner. Cesar had no choice but to bite the bullet and pretend to nod. All around was still silent, as if in this place where ancient things existed, silence was the commandment that these beastmen should follow.

In order to show that he was indeed qualified, Cesar held Ajeh carefully in his arms, smoothed her messy hair in front of her strange gaze, and then followed them all the way, lowering lower and lower.

Although the surrounding giant trees still towered tall, their tops invisible, he became increasingly certain that this forest was a vast depression, where the streams might eventually converge into a lake. Cesar couldn't help but ponder whether these beastmen and the ancient beings they worshipped could bring about some change in him. Compared to the various temples and the Great Firil, perhaps they would be more...

Chapter 163 True Dragon

At least I can see what they are first, Cesar thought.

......

This is a lake where you can't see the other side. Even if there are huge trees like mountains surrounding it, they can no longer block the sky.

There was a deathly silence. The Wargs sat cross-legged by the lake, like ancient statues. Not only was the Beastmen still, but the lake and stream were also still. The sky was full of chaotic clouds, but there was no sound either, as if a silent herd of beasts were running wildly across the sky.

Sometimes, amidst the silence, a dull rumble of thunder would suddenly break out, not from the dark sky, but from the depths of the lake. Each rumble of thunder from the lakebed was accompanied by a lizard-green light flickering in the dark clouds, revealing the outlines of everything on the ground, from the beastmen on the lakeshore to the towering trees.

The lake is like a black mirror, reflecting all the scenery on the bottom of the water, making people feel that there are upside-down giant trees and herds of animals under the lake, and there is also another sky with chaotic clouds flying across.

For a moment, Cesar felt that they were actually suspended between two skies. Whether looking up or down, there were only madly surging clouds, and the people and objects in the middle had no support.

He didn't know whether he had sat in silence for a quarter of an hour, a day, or a month, but every time he glanced at Diana, she would see her gently shaking her head, indicating that day had not yet arrived in the real world and it was still late at night. The wasteland was indeed a strange world, and the perception of time had become confused, but whether this place disturbed his own judgment of the passage of time or the passage of time itself, Cesar had no way of knowing.

Firth used to say that the wilderness is something that cannot be understood by knowledge and reason.

They waited in silence until an exceptionally large worg, a shaman or a prophet, approached the lake. Cesar thought it was wearing a gray monk's robe, not a cloak, with a rope tied tightly around its waist and its claws entwined with bleeding thorns, as it slowly approached the lake.

It raised its arms, reaching towards the clouds, and suddenly let out a deafening, heart-wrenching, inhuman roar. Its roar overlapped with the thunder at the bottom of the lake, rising continuously, almost turning into a continuous roar like an earthquake.

Terror enveloped everything here, causing him to feel an instinctive chill.

Cesar still couldn't understand what the worg was saying, but he felt the ground tremble violently, as if the world was about to collapse. Then he realized the sunken lakeshore was rising, grabbing them and climbing upward, shaking the towering ancient trees around them, as if a storm had swept across the sea, raising a tsunami. This upward momentum carried them and the beastman community through the endless clouds.

The moment he broke through the clouds, Cesar saw that the land covered with giant trees was breaking layer by layer as the terrain undulated, revealing deep and bottomless cracks. These cracks covered and squeezed each other, intersecting and overlapping, squeezing the land inward and bulging, forming a series of mountains.

Aside from the lakefront beneath their feet, which remained stable, the boundless forest was wriggling, rising and falling, cracking and closing in a repetitive cycle. He found these sudden shifts in the terrain like wrinkles in the skin, and the thunder beneath the lake like a heavy heartbeat. A pale green light shone in the great rifts, and the ground was covered with a network of blood vessels like floating on the surface, extending along the veins of squirming muscle. The further he looked, the more complex and dense the veins became, like cracks in glass.

Diana didn't hold her breath at the horrifying sight. She suddenly leaned closer and whispered in his ear, "Have you heard of the Kuna people's creation myth?"

"How can it be......"

"This is a real dragon," she said.

"what do you mean?"

"This whole forest is shaking beneath us."

"Are you drinking too much?"

Diana gritted her teeth, as if she wanted to bite his ear off, but she managed to hold it back. "The Kuna people say that real dragons have always existed in the world. They are neither alive nor dead, without beginning or end. They are mountains, tsunamis, and clouds. Everything in our world could be a dormant real dragon."

"Are you saying that if the real dragon wakes up, everything will cease to exist?"

"No, in the Kuna people's creation myth, the very existence of true dragons conflicts with time itself. Their so-called slumber means that within time, they are completely still. Only outside of time..."

Cesar looked her in the eye. "Don't you think that the outside of time is meaningless to us? Therefore, true dragons are also meaningless to us. The entire narrative you told me is a self-consistent closed-loop narrative that can only be achieved in the creation myth of the Kuna people. All creation myths and all metaphysics do this."

Diana was stunned by his question. "I... well, you're right." She nodded slightly. "This creation myth is indeed meaningless to the real world, but we are in the wasteland now."