Chapter LI: Hunt for the War Knife I

Demonic Wildlands

Month of the Tortoise 25, 172 ,328 DE

"See, there aren't any airships here. I told you, Grandmaster Jones and I came here while you were playing around with the crazy girl." Speaking in a petulant tone, Brigitte leans against the Silver Princess' control panel with a miffed expression. Strangely, her scent carries more of an odor that is probably jealousy, but I do not what could be causing her to be jealous.

Jealousy is not an easy emotion to pin down in someone's scent. Animals and Beasts seldom experience jealousy. It is not a pure emotion and originates more from the Mind twisting the Souls. It is not a straightforward emotion, and it could be called a false emotion. Often, other emotions can be mistaken for jealousy. I see humans constantly and wrongly assume varying degrees of hate and anger are jealousy. It must have something to do with how the Minds of humans work.

While watching Brigitte from outside her line of sight, Vorn looks ready to burst into laughter. As Brigitte turns he all signs of amusement off his face, but his attempt to look innocent makes him look guilty of something. Brigitte glares at him for a few seconds, before looking out the bridge's front window once more. Raising a telescope to her eye, she returns to observing the mining camp visible several kilometers in the distance.

Since I unlocked the seal in my Soul and became a Triune, I can easily see the camp without using a telescope.

The mining camp has come to resemble a refugee camp. The wreckage of the transport airship sits near the north edge of the airfield. It made it farther than I expected before its steam engine blew up. The next time I sabotage one with similar sigils in the firebox, I should probably do it differently. Charring from the explosion covers most of the airfield. There is no sign of any other airships.

The doors of the warehouse, where the teleporter was being built, stand wide open. The crates, which should have been visible through the open door, are long gone along with the teleporter. Old Man Jones had already been to the compound after dealing with the Chaos sludge. Both he and Brigitte, who he took with him, had already told me the bitch princess had abandoned the compound, but I was hoping to find some clues that shitty old man missed. It was nothing but a vain hope. That old bastard has better sense and analytical abilities than anyone I have ever met.

Scattered throughout the compound, clusters of workers huddle around cooking fires. At this distance I cannot be certain, but only a handful of the visible humans appear to be Cultivators. The normal humans should be laborers or miners brought there by airship. They appear to have given up all hope. If the try to get out on foot, there would have almost no chance of survival. In the hundreds of kilometers of Ferocious Beast wilderness that lie in all directions, they would be nothing more than food.

"Where do we go now?"

"The Demonic Wildlands. Brigitte take us east."

"Aye, Master." Returning to the control console, Brigitte engages the airship's propellers and turns the nose toward the Demonic Wildlands.

* * * * *

Twisted, corrupted plant growth fills the valley beneath the airship. Vomit purple and shit brown flowers grow form puke green and piss yellow vines and shrubs. Multicolored fluids drip from the leaves of the flowers. Even with the hull of the airship between me and the valley, I feel the warped, unnatural energy radiating from the plants.

Standing between Vorn and myself, Brigitte shivers while she looks down at the valley. The blood drains from her face, and in less than a minute her skin looks whiter than snow. As she continues to examine the valley, her breathing becomes ragged, and she clasps her hand over her stomach.

Vorn gives me a questioning look and at my nod, he takes Brigitte by the shoulders and pulls her away from the window. I continue to observe the valley.

About a quarter of the Goblins, which were once there, still remain. I do not see any females among the Goblins, and every one of them has chitinous plates and spurs growing from random parts of their bodies. Many of them have one more limbs that do not match the size or shape of a normal goblin's limbs. Some have extra joints in their limbs, and others' have limbs that look more like tentacles than limbs.

Many of the Goblins wander around the valley. They pause at the flowers dripping the most fluids, and sticking out their long snake-like tongues, they lap up the disgusting fluids.

Besides the corrupted Goblins, bound or chained Beastmen of several other species lie scattered around the camp. Normally, Beastmen like Hobgoblins or Gnolls would not fall victim to weak Goblins, but these Goblins are no longer normal Goblins. While I watch, some of the Goblins casually rape their captives. Whether the captives or female or male is immaterial to the Goblins. They will shove their dicks into any hole on their victims and pump like man for ten or fifteen seconds. When the Goblins finish, they walk away from their victims and join their brethren licking the fluids seeping from the flowers.

After settling Brigitte on a bench where she cannot see the valley through the windows, Vorn rejoins me at the window. With a grimly hostile look on his face, he glares down into the valley. "Is this the effect of Chaos?"

"This is only the beginning. If we don't eliminate your crazy, bitch aunt and find a way to deal with the source of her Chaos sludge, it will get worse."

Vorn snarls like a bear. "We have to find her first."

Half-unconsciously, I nod. "We'll search to the south for now. She might be back here at the full moon. If we don't find any signs of her or better location to wait, we can lie low near here when the full moon comes. We might catch her then."

"What about Grandmaster Jones? Can't he help?"

I shrug. "He's chasing down the Almughayir. He won't be back until he kills it. He says, its more dangerous than your aunt."

"Brigitte, take us south.

"As you command, my Master."

Demonic Wildlands

Month of the Tortoise 31, 172 ,328 DE

We searched the Demonic Wildlands three-hundred kilometers south of the Goblin valley, from the Great Plateau to almost five hundred kilometers east. While we find more sites with corrupted Beastmen and Ferocious Beasts, we find no other sign of our target.

After six days, we anchor in a valley near a spring-fed pond, which shows signs of only being recently corrupted. Cliffs surround the pond and, as though covered by an oil slick, the surface of the pond glistens with a polychromatic sheen. A large pride Forest Lions lives in caves around the pond, and all of their eyes glow with a lambent, red luminescence.

With leafy branches tied to the superstructure for the gas bags, we will not be easily spotted. We just have to wait for our target to show.

"You look happy, Master."

Looking at Brigitte, I grin. "After we deal with the smug cat's crazy aunt, we get to exterminate those cats."

Vorn glares at me. "Stop calling her my aunt! We still pass down the stories about the Demons of Chaos in the Jewel Kingdoms. As soon as my father finds out how she's given herself to Chaos, her name will be stricken from all the family records."

"How can you say that about lions? Cats are so pretty. They're proud and elegant. Why are you so happy about killing them?"

"Cats are the spawn or corruption. They pretend to be amicable while waiting to kill their human minions. Big cat skip the amicable part and just torturing before killing everything weaker than themselves."

With a pouty expression, Brigitte looks away. "You're crueler than I thought. Cats are so pretty and cute. I can't believe you want to hurt them."

I put on a condescending smirk. "You can't speak the Language of Beasts. If you did, you would know how vile cats are."

* * * * *

As midnight nears, an airship shows to the south. It draws slowly closer, but once it comes into clear view, I do not recognize it. This airship is not the War Knife , the first airship I saw the bitch princess using, or the surviving transport. With a shape like an i sosceles trapezoid, its has neither a gasbag superstructure nor a gondola. Everything appears to be combined into a single structure. On the underside, a painting of a thorny rose branch runs from the back to the front with a huge purple rose under the nose.

"That's Jaanfaag's airship."

"You said he was from the Kingdom of Opal, one of the Great Puma's descendants."

"Yeah."

My lips part in an ear to ear grin. "I wonder if they're all corrupt like him. Hopefully, I'll have a good excuse to kill them all."

I stroke my still-short beard. "I suppose I don't really need any excuse to exterminate them. Even if the Great Puma didn't ally with the Dragon Gods, it refused to fight against them."

Cargo doors in the bottom of the airship open, and dozens of Blood Fruit fall into the pond. A polychromatic mist rises from the pond, and the lions leap into the water. Snarling and scratching at one another, while barely keeping their heads above water, they fight over the Blood Fruit.

As I watch the cats tearing each other into bloody shreds, my nasty chuckle fills the bridge.

After dropping the Blood Fruit, the trapezoidal airship head toward the northeast. I wait for the airship to reach a distance of about five to six kilometers away.

"Brigitte, follow that airship. Stay close to the ground. I don't care if the treetops scrap the bottom of the gondola section."

"Yes, Master."

Apparently unseen, we travel generally northeast. We watch Jaanfaag's airship make four more drops of Blood Fruit before it turns to the south.

Before dawn, we see a polychromatic glow lighting up part of the southern sky, but once the rising sun paints the sky in a tapestry of gold and orange, we lose sight of the glow.