Chapter 14: The Vanished Girl
A diary with a blackened cover, yellowed pages, and scattered signs of corrosion.
June 19th - Sunny
Today I took Old Abel to herd the sheep. He looked out of breath. Leah was right—the flock is getting too big, and Abel is struggling. Maybe I should get a new sheepdog and let Old Abel, who has worked hard for seven or eight years, have a good rest.
June 22nd - Cloudy
Two ewes are about to give birth today! This should be great news, but strangely enough, the lambs don't look well. They're having trouble breathing. Did the ewes not get proper prenatal care? Regardless, my flock is growing. Maybe I can consider selling a few sheep to send my little Ebra to the academy in the city, to see if he can become a Mana Warrior!
June 23rd - Overcast
The lambs are dead... Perhaps it really was a lack of proper care. It's my fault for not watching over them better. Leah told me not to be too sad, but I'm still a bit heartbroken. The ewes look sad too—after all, these were their children. Strange, how can the grasslands have such gloomy weather? It's been like this for several days now.
June 27th - Overcast
The flock refuses to leave the pen—Old Abel barked himself hoarse but couldn't drive out even a single lamb. The overcast sky outside is getting darker, to the point where I can barely see the path. The air is misty, but not damp, and it doesn't seem like rain is coming.
June 29th - Heavy Fog
The grass has all withered. The fog seems poisonous—all the plants are starting to die... I don't know when those ewes died either. When I found them, their bodies looked like they had been rotting for a long time. Come to think of it, when the lambs died, they looked very strange too. Could it have been back then...? Black, filthy stains have glued the following pages together, looking like blood, or perhaps ink.
July 3rd - Sunny
The fog has finally cleared! Those eerie presences that appeared at night seem to fear sunlight! Ancestors bless us, my family is safe and sound, but all the other shepherds nearby are dead. What in the world is going on?! Regardless, I hope I can keep writing in this diary.
July 4th - Storm
Earthquake! I was planning to take the family to the city early in the morning, but we encountered an earthquake right after getting up! The house is fine, but the sheep pen collapsed. Not a single sheep ran out—I dare not look... At noon, a torrential rain came. I could only pack up and stay home. In this weather, the road to the city must have turned into a muddy swamp. Speaking of which, I haven't seen Abel in days. Where did he go?
July 6th - Heavy Fog
The monster that ate all the sheep... and those shadows that suddenly appeared in the weapons at night—what are they...? Leah's arm is injured, but for some reason, the bleeding won't stop... She's bandaged up and asleep now. I don't know if she'll recover...
The subsequent diary entries are chaotic, with water stains and wild black smears, as if tears mixed with ink were smeared across the pages. Amidst it all, some barely legible, jumbled words can be faintly made out.
Leah... dead... monster... Abel... Ebra...
August 1st - Sunny
After crossing the grasslands, I finally reached the Sanctuary. There is a sacred aura in this forest... but I am dying.
One last word for you, my child... May you live in peace, all your life, in this mad world.
Late night, heavy fog. In the western part of the Gradia Continent, within a dense primeval jungle, a crude human village was built on an island in the middle of a river. Amidst the sound of rushing water, one could see a great fire raging in the village. Intermittent black smoke drifted across the wooden eaves in the flickering firelight, the dim glow wavering unsteadily.
Inside a wooden hut on the verge of collapse, a black-haired, red-eyed warrior silently put down the diary in his hand. Frowning, he held the hand of a small boy covered in blood, his face filled with panic. The warrior's expression was grim.
"Your grandfather... he seemed to love your father very much."
Joshua murmured to himself: "And your father loved you very much."
Last night, after bidding farewell to the Titan, the warrior had traveled westward, following the guidance of the Holy Radiance Mirror, racing towards the direction of the Fourth Sage's legacy.
The colossal Life Energy Giant had been formed by releasing most of the life force stored within the Azure Orb—energy far exceeding the limits of his own body. That was why Joshua needed to learn the compression techniques of the Titan and the Atmospheric Evil God, to force this energy into his body and merge it with his flesh and blood—not relying on the Sage's relics, but using his own power to accomplish this step.
With his physical body further sublimated, the warrior's speed was greater than ever. In just one night, he had completely flown out of the Saya Mountains and crossed a vast grassland. But as the sky grew increasingly overcast and the fog thickened, the guidance of the Holy Radiance Mirror began to waver. Finally, it turned into an ordinary mirror, no longer able to provide the location of the Sage's legacy.
Joshua was not surprised by this. The fact that the Holy Radiance Mirror could function for so long in an alien world like this, where even the basic ambient energy was vastly different, was a testament to Pope Israel's thorough preparations. After all, even he, an Ultimate-rank powerhouse, had been constrained in most of his strength. For such a small mirror to last this long only showed that its creator was truly the strongest among Legendary peaks—a deity walking among mortals.
Following the last direction indicated by the mirror, Joshua flew slightly southwest. At this time, sunlight bathed the land, allowing the warrior to witness many scenes along the way that weighed heavily on his heart.
Villages destroyed by brute force, caves buried by landslides, lake islands sunk beneath the water, Sanctuary forests burned to ashes by great fires... Flying along this path was a journey of utter silence. The warrior could even tell that these were traces left just recently, in the dead of night. He could discern signs of powerful beings who had fought around these ruins, but the result was always the same: villages destroyed, humans lying dead everywhere.
Until he reached this place.
Joshua sensed an extremely faint life force.
This was a crude village built on a river island. It seemed defenseless, with scattered, low wooden walls that couldn't even stop a wild boar. But the warrior knew this was just the village's surface. Those seemingly crude defensive measures and ubiquitous wooden stakes, if controlled by a spellcaster proficient in plant-based magic or a Druid who could manipulate nature's power, would become an impenetrable barrier and a web of traps.
But now, none of these measures had been used. A massive fireball falling from the sky had directly ignited the entire village. The expert who controlled the plants had been defeated, and the ubiquitous Death Shadows, taking advantage of the chaos, had killed all the villagers.
Except for this one.
Leading the boy out of the collapsing, burning hut, holding the hand of this dazed child, Joshua arrived at the village center and couldn't help but shake his head.
This child had been knocked unconscious by his father and hidden inside a large clay jar used for storing flour. The man had then used his own body to block the jar's lid. Even as the mindless undead tore off all the flesh from his back and ripped out most of his internal organs, he never let go.
This father used his own remaining flesh and blood aura to mask his child's life force, until Joshua arrived and pulled the boy out of the jar.
"Your name is Adair."
From the latter part of the yellowed diary, written by Ebra, Joshua had learned the child's name. Strangely enough, even after experiencing so much, even after seeing his father's bloody corpse with his own eyes, the boy hadn't cried. He just stood there in a daze, his gaze unfocused.
But Joshua paid no attention to this. Patting the boy's head, the warrior made him look at the burning village before them, his voice flat and without emotion: "Adair, this is the village where you lived. It has been destroyed."
The boy, who seemed to be dreaming, suddenly shuddered violently.
Joshua watched this scene, faint firelight reflected in his eyes. He said calmly: "You've also seen your father's body."
The boy named Adair curled up in pain like a shrimp, squatting on the ground with his hands over his ears, as if refusing to accept this reality.
But the warrior only needed one sentence to make him instinctively look up, awakening from the deepest despair.
"I can give you the power to take revenge."
In his hand, red Battle Qi condensed into a small short sword. Joshua looked at the bats flying in the darkness, his voice ethereal, as if he might leave at any moment. Lowering his voice, he handed the short sword to the boy, whose panicked expression was gradually calming down, and whispered: "And the most basic thing for revenge... is to stay alive."
In mid-air, a shrill beastly cry rang out, but quickly faded away.
The night passed. The surviving boy stood in the center of the village, now reduced to ashes, frozen in place. But in his hand, he held a bloodstained red short sword. The bodies of hundreds of bats and bloodthirsty beasts lay dead at his feet, becoming part of his power.
The warrior left behind a portion of his power and then departed.
The first breathing technique, born from the fusion of Battle Qi from the Mycroft Continent and the Mana of this world, had been secretly taught to the child named Adair by the warrior during the darkness of the previous night. The unique breathing rhythm accumulated power within the boy's body, turning this once ordinary child into a strongman capable of fighting fierce beasts overnight.
Of course, Joshua did not deny that he was using this native child's body as an experiment for his process of merging the power systems of two worlds. But even if that night were to repeat itself a thousand times, the boy would never refuse his request—those who seek revenge always have restless flames burning in their hearts, eager to burn others and scorch themselves.
Such scenes were numerous. The warrior had traveled to the western side of the continent, and just along the roadside each day, he had seen over a dozen ruins similar to abandoned villages, too many to count. Some of these villages naturally had survivors, but the vast majority of broken Sanctuaries showed no signs of life, only utter silence.
Whenever he could help, Joshua never hesitated. He generously taught the survivors the breathing techniques he had carefully constructed after deep thought, allowing them to cultivate the power of the fusion of Battle Qi and Mana. This cultivation method did not require Primordial Crystals; one only needed to calm the mind to draw ambient energy from the atmosphere for training. Although it was slower, it indeed saved a lot of effort in finding Primordial Crystals. In comparison, this new method was actually safer.
Every moment, the two-world cultivation method that the warrior was deducing in his mind changed, so much so that the breathing techniques each survivor he encountered received were vastly different, even conflicting with each other. But even so, their core was the same: by tempering the life energy within the body, one's existence could be sublimated, drawing closer to the fundamental power known as 'Steel Force.'
This was a cultivation method from a higher level, leading directly to the Ultimate realm!
In just a few days, Joshua had left his legacy on this continent, giving countless survivors who had lost their Sanctuaries and could only hide in the mountains a chance to barely survive and fight to live.
And many people or Death Shadows, whether in the open or in the shadows, had also taken notice of the warrior's presence.
At this moment, Joshua was still heading west, towards the direction originally indicated by the Holy Radiance Mirror.
Along the way, the warrior had also received some information about the High Commander of the Death Shadows—many survivors recounted that they had seen three-colored crystal streams of light piercing the dark clouds in the northern sky, flying into the distance. This was undoubtedly the trail left by those Crystal Puppets in flight.
However, although he did want to obtain the Sacred Stone Seed and take a step closer to the Legendary realm, the warrior had not forgotten his true goal.
Joshua knew that he had come to find the Fourth Sage's legacy, to obtain the information about the First Flame hidden within the Sage's inheritance. Pope Israel, and even all the beings of the Mycroft Continent, were waiting for his actions.
The Grandia Continent was indeed invaded by the Undead Calamity, an immensely tragic situation. All beings were sinking into a vortex of despair and pain, enduring blood and wailing. But precisely because of this, the warrior could not look back. He could not let the Mycroft Continent become like this world. The Sacred Stone Seed on the High Commander of the Undead was indeed his chance to advance to Legendary, but if it was on the way, that was fine. If the direction was opposite, he could not change his course for this and turn around to hunt those monsters. This was the trade-off.
But, for some reason, having arrived at a barren wilderness, which was very likely the destination of the Urbandenny Teleportation, Joshua still could not find his target.
The Dragon-winged girl, Shirea, seemed to have completely vanished from this land.