Guardian's Farm 23

 Sage greeted us with a sharp growl when we returned to the farm after a long trek, showing his frustration. “Sorry, buddy. The situation required a delicate touch,” I said as I patted him even as I carried an unconscious Eli. To his credit, the kid had managed to keep pace almost until the end, until exhaustion got too much.

I was still glad that the guards’ lack of training had allowed me to retreat smoothly merely by copying some of the tricks from my adventuring days. I was not an expert at any of those tricks, but against an untrained bunch, it had been enough.

Hopefully, those two spies were the only ones from the capital. All I needed was a day or two, and those tracks would turn impossible to follow, no matter how skilled the ranger was.

Sage whimpered as I carried Eli inside. “We were lucky,” I explained. “Things could have been a disaster if we waited more.”

Sage’s response was a low whine.

“I know, keep an eye on him,” I said as I moved to the fireplace and started a new fire before mixing some new medicine, combining the herbs in my possession with some of the stuff I had looted from those mysterious agents.

At least I didn’t lack finances anymore, I thought with a huff, annoyed that what was supposed to be a calm retirement died as I somehow found myself in a tricky situation. One that could even be considered a conspiracy due to the combined appearance of rangers and agents.

One that clearly had nothing to do with my choice to pick South.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I could ignore it. I ignored it when the rangers first arrived, and Eli almost died for it. A total coincidence, but that didn’t mean I could leave it alone.

“I wonder what they would say,” I muttered, annoyed by the speed at which my thoughts shifted to my old party. I was even more annoyed by the accuracy of their imaginary voices. Seraphine would say something snotty about my overdeveloped sense of duty. Elric would mutter about the big picture. Berin would try to take over the planning. Thorne would drink and laugh. And Anna…

Sage whimpered questioningly.

“I’m just thinking, buddy,” I said and patted his head, appreciating the distraction from him. The last thing I should have done was to lose myself in the memories of the past. Not when I had more important things to focus on.

Once I finished feeding Eli his medicine without waking him up, I continued mixing and brewing, this time for my own pain.

It wasn’t as bad as what Eli was feeling, but using Indomitable essence was enough to wreak havoc in my body, and channeling it through my fist rather than a proper sword didn’t make it any easier. Just two punches had been enough to trigger a lingering pain, deep enough to feel in my bones.

It would have been best to lay down and rest, but I couldn’t do that, not when I had an important mission ahead of me. “I trust you to stay here and protect Eli,” I said as I looked at Sage. “If you detect anyone, drag him out and let the place be discovered. Take no risks,” I warned him.

He whimpered in protest.

“No, you can’t come with me. I need you to stay with the kid and take care of him in case of any danger,” I said. “Don’t worry. You know nothing can hurt me,” I said, doing my best not to show the extent of my injuries.

It took a while to calm down Sage, but ultimately, I managed to convince him to stay before leaving the farm. My destination: the location of the anomaly. I didn’t know its exact location, but on the way back, I had managed to learn enough from Eli to point toward a general direction. I expected it to be easy to find.

Leaving it alone was not an option.

Eli mentioned that it took most of the day for him to arrive at the location, but that was with him carefully wading the area to avoid predators while also looking for medicinal herbs to sell. For me, it merely took an hour to arrive at the general vicinity he described, and that was with avoiding several patrolling squads.

I had already assumed that there was a conspiracy, and avoiding several guard patrols deep into the territory didn’t make me change my mind. However, once I drifted near one to listen to their arguments, their chatter was mostly about possible scouts for a large bandit team, with no mentions of a disease or cultists.

A reasonable precaution, I admitted. Regardless of the nature of the conspiracy, it was impossible to maintain secrecy when the ordinary guards knew about it; as they were the single worst collection of people when it came to gossiping — the boredom of endless patrols loosened their jaws quite a bit.

Their presence ended long before I approached my true destination.

As I got close, I tightened my grip around the dagger I had previously liberated from the spies. Not my preferred weapon, but still better than anything else I owned, including the staff I had carved, which I was still carrying on my back. The closer I got, the quieter the forest grew, making me tense. Soon, there were no birdsongs, no chittering squirrels, and there were no usual marks of predators.

“There’s definitely something wrong,” I muttered even as I journeyed deeper and deeper, only to freeze when a familiar smell wafted through my nose. One that reminded me of my nightmares.

“Darkness,” I growled angrily as I followed. The smell was subtle, and it would have been easy to miss if it wasn’t for the two decades I had spent fighting against its source. Soon, I reached the edge of the infection, using a rock I found nearby to scratch the surface.

The smell got even stronger. “It’s tainted by darkness,” I said, feeling tense. “However, it’s clear that it’s not the Blight.” That judgment, I could make instantly, for one simple reason. It had been almost three days since Eli had discovered it. In a dense yet unprotected forest like this, Blight would have already reached halfway to my farm, yet the general area roughly matched Eli’s description.

“However, I don’t know how much it spread,” I muttered to myself. Eli’s description was unreliable for precise calculations at best, and he didn’t try to pin the exact edge of it in the first place. I carefully examined the edge of the spread, memorizing the current layout. On my way back, I could examine the area again to get a better sense of what was going on.

With that done, I began moving deeper into the tainted area. Such a taint required a focus to spread around. Find and destroy it, and the disease would weaken, and eventually disappear. It was also the reason why the forces of darkness couldn’t simply destroy the world with ease.

Blight was the exception, not because it didn’t have a focus. No, it did have a focus, a pretty well-known one at that. It was destroying it that had been the challenge.

The Dragon of Darkness was not exactly an easy target to destroy.

Blight was such a threat due to the nature of dragons as the entities of nature. Every dragon was dangerous simply by their nature, as they had been deeply linked to nature itself, in a way that no other creature could even replicate. The death of one was a tragedy … but the corruption of one had been nothing less than a nightmare that shook the world to its core.

Even now, I wasn’t sure how much of it was luck, and how much of it was skill that we had even managed to kill it.

“And, here I am, dealing with a pale shadow of it,” I said as I tightened my grip on my blade, my eyes on a shape emerging behind a tree. A boar, its horns twisted badly, its skin rotting with clear signs of disease. Drool dripped from its jaws, thick and black. It lumbered toward me on three good legs, the fourth twisted at an unnatural angle, as if it had been broken and poorly knitted.

A corrupted beast, though one at its earlier stages. Another confirmation that it was not the Blight. If it was, that boar would have resembled a rotting corpse more than an animal, driven only by the perverse demonic influence of the Darkness.

Yet, it moved toward me with an angry snarl, showing a speed that would have caught an unprepared hunter flatfooted.

I merely took a step to the side, dodging it at the last second, close enough to alarm any observer, but for me, it didn’t even make my heart flutter. As a guardian, I had long learned that, it didn’t matter how close an attack was. Either it connected, or it did not, and brought the enemy to the perfect distance for a counter-strike.

I just brought down my blade, killing the poor beast in one blow.