Chapter 1720 - The North (2/2)

Yet, Rheia shook her head, “I’m afraid not, while the weakening may have something to do with the vaccine, but these Gorgonian Demons are practically meaningless to us.

“Why is that so?” Hao Ren was baffled.

“Because…” As Rheia spoke she looked at the metal egg and gave it a gentle knock, “They have already been destroyed in the flow of history…”

As Rheia’s voice trailed off, the neural exchange cabin that carried the ancient warrior, Eli Gneer was suddenly engulfed in a cloudy light before disintegrating into tiny light particles.

Vivian could not help but gasp. “This…”

“The Gorgonian Demons are a fragment of the Inbetween. And even if they have a physical body in this world, and had been warring against the L’Harroneans, its ‘existence’ is practically no different than a phantom. As long as it is away from L’Harrone, it will disappear,” Rheia shook her head, “In other words, they only ‘exist’ within L’Haronne.”

She then paused, as she came to a conclusion, “So does the Black Forest.”

“And that means, the Gorgon Abyss is actually another Black Forest… and the Gorgonian Demons are no different than the Black Forest in form,” Hao Ren understood what Rheia meant, “But they were ‘more real’ compared to the Black Forest, and we even fought against them.”

Rheia touched her lips with her finger, and it was similar to how Vivian acts when she’s deep in thought, “This is probably the most curious part, L’Haronne is a place where many objects reality and falsehood crosses each other, its like another world that was supposed to be separated being forcibly stacked onto this planet, and even I have the ability to directly see the truth, I can’t seem to find what is causing this overlap…”

Hao Ren too ran through what he knew of the Grand Unification Theory of Information, “Does it have anything to do with the apocalypse? The collapse of the universe resulted in the history of every civilization across worlds to be compressed and stacked over one another, and on this basis, L’Haronne was created, and the planet had undergone another rebirth because of you, so any traces of the ‘overlapping history’ were wiped out when the world base data recovery system and only fragments of the Inbetween like the Black Forest and the Gorgon Abyss were left behind, thus you are not able to find the cause of their formation…”

Rheia pondered for a bit before tapping her palm with her fist… “Ah, the second part of the seventh chapter of the Generality of Information!”

“….Well, looks like all that reading did pay off…” Hao Ren quipped.

Graeme’s brow furrowed as he looked at the group of mysterious people from the Basilica of the World Tree suddenly speaking in a language that he had never heard before, and the topic they were talking clearly had to do with the core of the Gorgonian Demon. In the end, he could not help but ask, “Is it possible that you know something to do with the Gorgonian Demons? And that thing earlier… was she a human?”

“Yes,” Hao Ren nodded, “But that was a very very long time ago, and the Gorgons now… are nothing but a swarm of maddened war machines.”

Seeing that the Ebon Blade Knight had the intention of asking further questions, Hao Ren waved his hand, “We can talk about this after we leave this forest, say… why does it feel like the place is getting colder?”

Awenna blinked. “Since the two Gorgon Lords had died, won’t it be normal for the temperature to go down after the fires died off?”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Lily, who was much more sensitive to the change in temperature looked up at the forest facing her, “There is a cold draft coming from that direction, and it’s getting more and more obvious.”

The team soon continued their journey after a short preparation, and as they headed to the north of the Black Forest, ‘the drop in temperature’ was quickly proven.

At first, everyone felt the cool wind, but not long later, the cool wind became frigid, as the wind blowing across the forest had a bone-biting chill to it, and the soldiers in the team had to activate various magical amulets to protect themselves against the rapidly falling temperature, while Lily was getting more and more excited as the temperature dropped.

And a little further in, there were clear icicles on the black pines around them, as snow and the frozen ground appeared beneath them. This was totally abnormal, as it never snowed within the Black Forest, and there were no records of temperature this low ever recorded in the forest.

Even though pines were a cold climate plant life but these unnatural black pines were growing in the south.

Plus the drop in temperature was way too fast…

That said, Lily was rather happy about this.

And the caravans went further ahead as confusion mounted, and just as Hao Ren was thinking about stopping the caravan and have Rheia open her eyes, the forest suddenly ended.

The team had exited the Black Forest.

The scene before them suddenly turned bright, as a vast snow plain appeared before them just as they left the gloomy forest, leaving them slightly dazed. Charlemagne and Awenna gawked at the vast snowfield before them, and Lily, who was seated beside Hao Ren immediately leap up in joy, “Woah! Snow plains! It’s a snow plain! SNOW PLAIINNSSSS!”

Hearing how excited the werehusky was, Hao Ren’s first reaction was to hold the about-to-go-crazy doggo back, but his movement was just tad slower than his thought, and he could only see the excited doggo darting out into the distance. The next moment, she was running about happily on the vast snow plains.

Vivian facepalmed. “That does it… She won’t stop for the next half and hour…”

Hao Ren quickly accepted the fact that he could not control the werehusky and as he turned around towards Charlemagne and Awenna who were acting as guides, “Say… Is this normal for you to exit the Black Forest directly into a snow plain?”

“Of course not!” Charlemagne’s eyes widened, “The northern exit of the Black Forest is the Fertile Plains, that’s the heart of the Empire!”

Graeme too was stunned as he saw the snow plains, and he quickly noticed something in the surroundings as he turned his head around looking for something, and it did not take long for him to find the thing he was looking for:

That massive crack rift across the sky: the entrance of the Gorgon’s Abyss

“This is the north!” the Knight of the Broken Blade exclaimed. “Look, that’s the Gorgon’s Abyss!”