Hadjar shuddered and looked to the north. Far off in the distance, the night was dying down. The stars were fading under the onslaught of the blazing and bloody golden dawn. It was weird… He could sense a war coming from somewhere far away. The sound of war drums seemed to be coming from that area…

Bam… Bam… They slowly fell silent somewhere beyond the night.

“Is something wrong, Hadjar-dan?” Alba-udun, after rubbing an apple on his forearm, bit into it with a loud crunch. “Oh, by the Stone Ancestors, it’s a pity that these don’t grow in our lands. They’re the food of the Seventh Heaven!”

“They don’t eat apples in the Seventh Heaven, they eat cherries,” Hadjar answered him absently while thinking about something else.

Alba-udun choked on the apple. Clearing his throat, he tapped his chest and looked a bit oddly at Hadjar.

“What?” He wheezed out through his pain and surprise.

“The Cherry Feast,” Hadjar continued. “It’s celebrated once every thousand epochs. During one of them, the Sage Liao-Feng, the patron saint of the Girtai country, died.”

Alba-udun coughed some more, then struck Hadjar quite hard on the back of the head with the butt of one of his axes.

“Fucking hell! Are you out of your mind, dwarf?”

“Are you, human?” Albadurt squinted at him, then jerked his head in the direction of Abraham and his people. They’d gone ahead along the trail and now they could hardly hear their conversation. The relatively small distance, even for mortals, of just sixty feet, severely limited the senses of cultivators due to the atmosphere of the Strange Lands. “I understand that it’s customary for you humans to trust thieves and bandits, and that’s why they still live among you, but you should still be careful!”

“Actually, no,” Hadjar replied, feeling a little indignant. “Humans aren’t as different from dwarves as you might think, Albadurt.”

“Maybe,” the dwarf shrugged. “But not a single resident of the Ruby Mountain, if they were in their right mind, would speak about the secrets of the Seventh Heaven so openly.”

“But I…” Hadjar trailed off.

In the past few minutes, he had felt like he was being called to war, as if battle drums were thundering somewhere in the distance, and some commander was calling for him to serve under their banners. He’d almost answered this call, even though he didn’t know how he could do so. It was some kind of impulse coming from somewhere deep within him, from the true depths of his being that were even deeper than the illusory world of his soul. And since he’d plunged so deeply into them, he hadn’t even realized that he was talking to Alba-udun. He had no idea how he had acquired this knowledge. That sometimes happened to Hadjar: he knew some things simply because he knew them. Maybe it was due to the neural network’s and his subconscious’ tricks. Maybe it was something else entirely. There truly were too many secrets and mysteries in the Nameless World.

“Calm down already, Albadurt!” Hadjar threw up his hands in defeat.

The dwarf, who had brought his axe butt up again, squinted at him a little, then returned the weapon back to its sling.

“I just wanted to make sure that you’re of sound mind, Hadjar,” the dwarf retorted as if nothing had happened. “What is the Cherry Feast and who is this Sage Liao-Feng? I’m not very knowledgeable about the gods. I’ve never heard of those.”

Hadjar wanted to answer that he had never heard of them either, but he stopped himself just in time and avoided another ‘mental health check.’ It was a good thing he had done so, as the dwarves had a natural power that wasn’t inferior to the orcs in the slightest. And, as they progressed along the path of cultivation, their abilities only multiplied.

In other words, a Nameless human cultivator, all other things being equal, always lost out in terms of pure power to a Nameless dwarf cultivator. Humanity was saved only by the fact that, according to Alba-udun, they ‘bred so much that rabbits were jealous of them.’

“Have you finished flirting?” Itia called out to them. “We’ve already arrived!”

“Let’s hurry up,” Hadjar nodded and quickened his pace.

Albadurt lagged behind. Hadjar could feel the dwarf’s gaze boring into a spot between his shoulder blades, but there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t afford to reflect on the oddity of that call to war that had come from nowhere, or to puzzle over having yet more incomprehensible knowledge. The Cherry Feast? The Sage Liao-Fang? He had never heard of either of them. Of course, he had the option of going inside his soul and talking to the Black General about it, but considering that with every hour that Hadjar didn’t get stronger, his prisoner became stronger instead, he didn’t want to waste time on idle conversation. If Hadjar’s soul truly weakened at some point, it would be completely absorbed by the Black General. Fucking hell, sometimes he just wanted to relax…

“The Eglhen marsh!” Abraham announced proudly, pointing down at it from atop the hill where they had stopped.

The view was truly enchanting and frightening at the same time.

“I read about it as a child,” Gustaf leaned on his bow and put his hand to his eyes.

“Yesterday?” Itia asked him with a chuckle, but she was ignored.

“I never thought it would be so huge,” the archer continued.

“And so unpleasant,” Alba-udun added. “It is utterly unpleasant. I remember my grandma’s garden. It was so lovely...”

Of course, no one listened to the dwarf. Albadurt was talking about something related to his grandmother, her garden, his grandfather, his numerous brothers, his other grandparents, and so on, but it was just white noise to them at this point.

Everyone checked their weapons and sources. The mere sight of the Eglhen marsh filled them with a kind of primal anxiety. This was how an herbivore felt in the presence of a carnivore: goosebumps would roam along their spine, and the roots of their hair would appear to be slightly electrified.

The marsh, which was enveloped by a purple mist, stretched out as far as the eye could see. Dead trees rose from the moss and quagmire to extend their broken, bare branches a few feet into the air. The stench of decay and rot was dizzying.

Hadjar blinked. He could’ve sworn he’d just seen two glowing, miniature figures flying between the trees. They had looked very similar to the Fae that acted as the messengers of the gods. He wondered what Freya was up to. He hadn’t heard from her in a long time…

“They say that there are more anomalies and dangerous monsters here than in both the Red Phoenix and White Dragon regions combined,” Guy said. “Death is near.”

“I wonder what Kafem forgot here.” Abraham held a part of the map in front of him, on which the sectarian was marked with a flickering rune. Judging by its movements, he and the mercenaries were moving deeper into the marsh.

“I’m liking our adventure less and less.” Itia untied her whip from her belt and wrapped it around her right arm.

“Did you like it at first?” Abraham grinned.

“Should I answer you honestly or send you to the demons?”

“I’m afraid that’s where we’re going anyway, dear,” Abraham dodged Itia’s whip.

“Death is near,” Guy repeated, and was the first to start heading down the hill.

Hadjar followed him, then the others followed Hadjar. Alba-udun brought up the rear.

“So, every autumn, my grandma would make wonderful stone currant pies. Have you ever tried this delicious berry? No? I can tell you about twenty-six different recipes…”