“I found the ruins,” Lightning lowly muttered, “but the Devil was already there.”
Hearing this, all the expression of the surrounding people immediately change.
“Did you enter it?” Scroll asked.
“No,” Lightning shook her head and continued to tell the story, “The Devil stood in the doorway of the basement, and I could hear people crying for help, but I was too scared, I could do nothing besides escape, I didn’t even try to save her.” Her voice shrunk to a whisper, “Am I not qualified to do the work of an Explorer?”
“No, you handled it well enough,” Roland encouraged her. “Good Explorers know how to read the situation and do not take unnecessary risks. When you couldn’t save her, escaping was definitely the right choice.”
“She had to be a witch,” Wendy thought aloud, “nobody else could reach the depths of the Concealing Forest except for another witch.”
“No, even a witch wouldn’t be able to go there,” Scroll shook her head in disagreement, “That is a ruin from four hundred and fifty years ago. Without a map, which indicates the direction one has to travel, the task of finding the location of the Stone Tower in such a vast sea of trees would be extremely difficult, unless…”
“Unless what?” Roland asked.
“Unless someone had already been living there,” Scroll said slowly.
“You mean that they didn’t come from the kingdom and found the tower, but instead they are already living there from four hundred and fifty years ago. One generation, after another, living a life in seclusion?”
Within his heart, the Prince had already rejected this speculation. Living for the whole time in the Concealing Forest, shouldn’t be possible! Besides a variety of terrible insects and poisonous plants, there was no stable source of food… only in case you were Bear Grylls, it would be possible to live for such a long-term in the forest. Not to mention, in that part of the world, they would have several months of snow every year. Also, with the constant threat of the demonic beasts and Devils about, living in the Concealing Forest was simply suicidal.
He once again turned in the Lightning’s direction. “Were there any signs of smoke in the vicinity of the ruins?”
“No,” the little girl shook her head.
“Maybe there exist more than one map,” Soraya offered, “maybe there are other people like us, who are also looking for the whereabouts of the tower.”
“No matter what it is, we cannot help them,” Leaves concluded in disappointment. “Nobody can so quickly reach the Stone Tower, except for Lightning.”
“I’m afraid we still need to know the real situation,” Roland touch his chin, “In short, we have to find a way to insure that we can come back safe and sound. For today the teaching will be stopped, we are all in need of a good rest. When the time is right, the riddle will naturally solve itself.”
Leaving Lightning’s bedroom, he turned to Nightingale and said, “There is still another problem that we have to solve, next.”
“Just let her take off the God’s Stone of Retaliation,” Nightingale laughed, “Then everything will be made clear to me.”
Chapter 152 Negotiations (Part 2)
At this time the rain outside the window had basically already stopped, the clouds were dispersing, and the sun was already on its way down, tinting the sky red.
Roland opened the door to the guest room on the first floor, seeing Margaret walking in circles in front of the fireplace, seeming quite restless. When Sean, who had been standing at the side of the room, saw that the Prince had just entered the room, he raised his hand to his chest and bowed. Margaret who had also seen the Prince enter, stopped her walking and stepped in front of him, anxiously asking, “Your Highness, how is Lightning?”
Roland became startled, there were several kinds of outcomes he had imagined, from being calm to angry and possibly acting cold, but he had never expected that her first sentence would be this.
“She’s all right… just a little tired.”
“Is that so? That’s good.” Margaret looked relieved.
“You seem to care about her a lot.”
“She looks exactly like her father, especially her narrow eyes and pointed nose… I could immediately see that she was the daughter of Thunder.”
Then with a sigh, she unbuttoned her neckline, lowered her head, and took off a string of gold ornament hanging around her neck. “Only to verify it, previously you said… that you have the ability to judge if I am lying, did you speak about the ability of a witch? If this was what you previous meant and if you wanted to have me prove my sincerity, then could you please let her join in this conversation? I do not like the feeling of being secretly spied on.”
Set into the gold ornament, connected to the gold chain was a hexahedral light blue piece of jewelry, which had to be a high-quality God’s Stone of Retaliation.
Roland had been thinking about what he should say to reduce the other’s resentment and doubts, not thinking that it was actually Margaret who took up the initiative to do so. To be honest, he felt some admiration for the Seafolk woman. Despite being in such an incredibly unfavorable situation, she was still trying to grasp and hold the leading position in their dialogue. Whether it was her negotiation skills or acting style, everything was consistent with the identity of a successful merchant.
He received the offered God’s Stone of Retaliation and put it on a hanger beside the fireplace. Calculating it by the quality of the stone, the estimated suppressive range at which no magic could be used was around one meter. Looking at it from Nightingale’s eyes it would look like a black hole around one-meter big. To avoid the effective range of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, she had to always keep it away from her.
“Let’s go to the reception-room,” Roland offered. Since the other side showed their sincerity, he shouldn’t act so stingy himself. When the two of them entered the reception-room, Nightingale had already stepped out from her fog and was sitting on the side on a couch, with her chin placed on both her hands and deliberately showing a bored expression as if she had already been waiting there for a long time.
When they had seated themselves, Roland first introduced Nightingale: “The name of the woman at my side is Nightingale, she is able to judge the authenticity of your words.”
“Hello, Miss Nightingale,” said Margaret, nodding her head, and receiving a greeting in return.
“You previously said, you don’t harbor negative feelings for witches, why?” Roland immediately started with his first question, which he most wanted to know, “As far as I am aware, the Fjords also belongs under the influence of the Church.”
“But their influence is far weaker than the belief of the Three Gods. Regarding this, the Seafolk and the Sandpeople are quite similar. They both worship the sky, the sea, and the earth. As for me…” she paused, “I had a very important and good friend. In the middle of a fishing trip with my friend, it happened that we were unexpectedly hit by a storm. Fighting for our lives, our sailboat was unfortunately hit by a wave, breaking it into many pieces. During this disaster, she became a witch, getting the ability to breath like a fish. She found me when I had already lost consciousness and was floating on the water, so it was she who dragged me to the shore.
“What happened later?” Nightingale curiosity was picked.
“Soon after I had woken up, she left… perhaps bigger than the wish to be with me, she was more eager to be back in the sea,” said Margaret regretfully, “Since then I have never seen her again. People often say that she would appear during foggy days, raising her body out of the water and guiding the fishing boats with her singing. Guiding them successfully around the rocks. No matter what, my friend could never be evil, nor the Devil ‘s minion.”