"Cleric Sven, we've lost them again."
Using Dawn's prestige, the Dawn Followers had commandeered an abandoned village as a temporary base. The villagers here had vanished, but traces of Abyss still lingered in the air.
The Dawn Followers who had come with Cleric Sven had thought this would be a difficult missionary journey, filled with uncertain unknowns and terrible dangers. Yet in reality, though their progress had been slow, they had remained safe all the way.
Following behind the Armored Bear Legion, they saw only the appalling devastation left in the wake of that terrifying army. Everything that should have stood above the ground had been destroyed, leaving behind only the world's most primitive, jagged landscape.
The thick Abyssal aura had been reduced to a faint mist lingering over the ground. If not for the wrong season, they might even have mistaken it for the cold morning fog.
"Is there no one left in this land?"
Sven looked somewhat gloomy as he turned to the Griffin Knights, hoping they could find signs of human life from the sky.
The Griffins had sharp eyesight, but it still took a full two hours before they brought Sven an answer.
"To the east, between two mountain peaks, there is a fortress. We saw humans."
"Perhaps humans."
The Griffin Knight added that last remark. He had also seen those Abyssal Servants and had been too terrified to approach. No one knew why those servants of the Abyss had become like this, their souls sacrificed while they remained alive.
Sven immediately decided to head there. As the air grew colder, the atmosphere gradually became more uneasy. Between two low hills, a noble's earthen stone fortress finally came into view.
The bedraggled soldiers were filthy from head to toe and looked half-starved. Seeing such a large