Chapter 119: Nightshade (1/3) (1/2)

Irea asked her question in a normal tone. At most, she was only slightly curious and stunned by the marvelous sight of the completely dark sky. But that situation didn't last long.

”It's not me,” Layn said while shaking his head. He strained his eyes, trying to see the source of this unusual blackness.

'It can't be an eclipse, not on this scale,' Layn thought, tuning himself down. Irea followed him to the outside, closing the doors behind her. The voices of the men inside the dorm turned silent. Layn closed his eyes and attempted to sense anything extraordinary.

”Layn?” Irea asked, wrapping her hands around his arm. Her body was slightly trembling. What started as a curiosity now turned into a genuine fear of the unknown.

”I have no idea what's going on.” Layn gently shook his head. There was no point in trying to cover the truth. Right now, they had to figure out whether their lack of any light from the stars was just a prelude to some real trouble.

A wave crashed into the shore nearby.

”Wait for a second,” Layn requested, prompted by the sound. ”When the monsters attacked you, where did they came from?” he asked.

A bad premonition appeared in Layn's thoughts.

”Back then? From the lake, around….” Irea took aim with her arm before correcting it a few times, ”there.” She pointed her hand in the one direction Layn hoped she wouldn't.

'Isn't that where that structure lays?' The archmage noticed with a grim look surfacing on his face.

”What kind of monsters were they?” Layn turned his head to Irea. His eyes were filled with a strange shine. A shine Irea saw for the first time in her life.

”Ugh?” she mumbled, clearly at a loss for words. ”Three of them were like giant frogs, three others looked roughly like snakes,” Irea started recounting, only for Layn to raise his hand and stop her.

”Did they look like seaborn monsters?” He changed his question.

”Oh,” Irea moaned in surprise, finally paying attention to this small detail she missed.

”They were not, right?” Layn didn't even look at the girl when asking for clarification. His eyes were glued to the shore instead, watching how the ripples on the otherwise flat surface of the water continued to grow bigger and bigger.

”Yeah,” Irea replied, nodding her head to her words.

The sound of the water crashing against the shore intensified. Now even Irea noticed it. Her head turned towards the shore while her eyes widened.

”What are we going to do?” she asked.

”For now, go and alert everyone that something is coming,” Layn replied while biting on his lips.

'If I'm right,' Layn thought, analyzing the stray thought that appeared in his head. 'If that's right, then it would make sense.' The archmage looked in the direction of the site from before. 'If all the monsters it produced would end up as a feed for the existing ones,' Layn thought while rushing towards the shore, more and more inclined to believe his intuition, 'then where did all the monsters that are alive come from in the first place?'

There was a chance that the original monsters were introduced here artificially or were naturally present in this place before the site was built. But the chances for it were small. It was impossible to construct such a detailed structure while under constant threat of the monster's attack.

And that left only one possibility.