Chapter 81 - 80: The Village within
A few more minutes passed.
Still nothing.
One of the survivors stopped.
"Are we sure we entered the village?"
Everyone looked at him.
He pointed behind them.
"The System said we entered Velaris."
"Yes."
"So why are we still in the forest?"
Nobody had an answer.
Another survivor scratched his head.
"Maybe this is the village."
A few people stared at him.
He looked around.
"I’m just saying."
Nina almost laughed.
Almost.
They had followed that mysterious light for days.
They had crossed dangerous forests.
They had survived monsters.
They had watched people fall behind.
They had stood outside an enormous stone wall and wondered if they had finally reached salvation.
And now they were walking through trees.
Still trees.
Nina looked at the notification’s last words in her memory.
Velaris Village, Level 1.
She looked around again.
Nothing.
"This better not be some kind of joke," someone muttered.
A quiet laugh escaped another survivor.
"What if we walked all this way just to enter another forest?"
"Don’t say that."
"I’m serious."
"So am I."
Nina shook her head.
"No. The village has to be somewhere."
She continued forward.
The others followed.
The forest slowly swallowed the sounds of the gate behind them.
Soon, even the walls disappeared completely from view.
Nina stopped.
She looked back through the trees.
Nothing.
They couldn’t see the entrance anymore.
For the first time, a small knot of unease formed in her stomach.
They had entered a territory.
The System had confirmed it.
So why did it feel as though they had simply walked deeper into the wilderness?
She turned forward again.
Trees stretched endlessly ahead.
No buildings.
No roads.
No signs.
Nothing.
Nina sighed.
"Maybe we should just keep walking."
Someone behind her groaned.
"After everything we’ve been through, we’re really about to search for the village inside the village?"
That earned a few tired laughs.
Nina couldn’t help smiling.
At least they were still capable of laughing.
So they walked.
Deeper into Velaris.
Still searching for the village they had supposedly entered.
They stood there for several moments, staring into the trees.
Nothing.
No houses.
No voices.
No signs that anyone lived here.
Nina was beginning to wonder if they had somehow misunderstood the notification.
"This is a village?" someone muttered.
Nobody answered.
They continued forward anyway.
At first, there was no obvious direction to take. The forest stretched endlessly around them, with tall trees rising on both sides and thick branches forming a canopy overhead.
Nina kept looking ahead, expecting something to change.
It didn’t.
Then, after several minutes, someone suddenly stopped.
"Wait."
Kyle glanced back.
"What?"
The survivor pointed downward.
Nina followed his finger.
For a moment, she saw nothing unusual.
Then she noticed the ground.
A narrow strip of stone ran beneath the leaves.
She crouched slightly and brushed some of the leaves aside.
The surface beneath them was smooth.
Flat.
Deliberate.
"That’s a road," someone said.
Nina stared.
It wasn’t a broken trail left behind by travelers.
It wasn’t a path where people had simply walked often enough to flatten the earth.
The stones were fitted together neatly, forming a proper road that continued between the trees.
Someone stepped onto it.
"It goes this way."
They followed.
With every step, the path became clearer.
The road continued deeper into the forest.
For a while, the survivors said nothing. They simply followed the strange, well-made path beneath the trees, each person becoming increasingly alert as the forest around them slowly began to change.
Then Nina noticed something between the trees.
A structure.
She slowed.
"Wait."
Kyle glanced back.
"What?"
Nina pointed ahead.
"There."
The others looked.
At first, the structure was mostly hidden behind the trees. But as they moved closer, more of it came into view.
A building.
Not a tent.
Not a wooden shelter thrown together from whatever materials its owners had managed to find.
A proper building.
Another one stood farther behind it.
Then another.
The survivors gradually slowed.
Nobody needed to tell them what they were looking at.
They had found the village.
Nina stepped off the road slightly, staring through the trees.
The first thing she noticed was how organized everything looked.
The buildings weren’t scattered randomly.
The road continued forward with smaller paths branching away from it, leading toward different structures. There was enough space between the buildings for people to move comfortably, and nothing looked like it had been placed there simply because someone had found an empty patch of ground.
Someone behind Nina whispered, "This is a village?"
Nobody answered.
They continued forward.
The trees finally opened enough for them to see the area ahead properly.
The Village Center stood farther along the road, larger and more imposing than the other structures they had glimpsed. Nearby was another substantial building that appeared to serve a different purpose.
The Warehouse.
And beside it stood the Armory.
Nina stared at the three buildings.
Her mind struggled to reconcile what she was seeing with the words that had appeared before her eyes earlier.
Velaris Village, Level 1.
Level 1.
She looked around again.
Even the surrounding houses were different from what she had expected.
They were cleanly constructed and properly maintained. Their walls weren’t patched together with mismatched pieces of wood. Their roofs weren’t sagging beneath the weight of age or damage.
Nothing about the place screamed desperation.
That was what unsettled her most.
King’s Territory had never looked like this.
Nina remembered the settlement she had left behind.
The cramped shelters.
The rough wooden structures.
The constant repairs.
The way every available space had eventually been used because there was never enough room for everyone.
Even before the Beast Tide, King’s Territory had felt like a place struggling to become something more.
Velaris didn’t feel like that.
It felt planned.
As though someone had decided exactly where things should go and simply made it happen.
A few people were visible farther ahead.
Residents.
Some stopped when they noticed the newcomers.
One person stared openly.
Another whispered something to someone beside them.
A few others looked over from the nearby buildings.
The survivors immediately became aware of the attention.
After everything they had been through, Nina couldn’t blame them.
They looked terrible.
Their clothes were dirty and worn.
Some carried injuries.
Others looked as though they could collapse at any moment.
They were strangers walking into a territory they knew nothing about.
Yet nobody came rushing toward them.
Nobody surrounded them.
The residents simply watched from a distance, curious and cautious.
Nina understood that.
She would have done the same.
Her gaze moved past them.
That was when she noticed something else.
Farther from the main road, several beautiful structures stood among carefully arranged greenery.
Nina stared.
"What are those?"
A survivor followed her gaze.
"I don’t know."
They couldn’t see the buildings clearly from here, but even from a distance, they looked completely different from the ordinary houses around them.
They were larger.
More elegant.
Almost like they belonged to another world entirely.
Nina eventually looked away.
There was already too much to take in.
She turned back toward the Village Center.
Someone behind her released a slow breath.
"Level 1."
The words sounded almost disbelieving.
Nina looked at him.
He shook his head.
"This is supposed to be Level 1?"
Nobody laughed.
Nobody answered.
They had spent days traveling through Eldilon.
They had seen what settlements could become when people were forced to survive with limited resources.
They had seen fear, overcrowding, makeshift shelters, damaged walls and people fighting simply to make it through another day.
Velaris had none of that.
At least, not from what they could see.
And that was the strangest part.
They had expected a place barely holding itself together.
Instead, they had found a territory whose very foundation seemed different.
The walls were stronger.
The roads were properly constructed.
The buildings were organized.
There was a Village Center.
A Warehouse.
An Armory.
Even the houses looked like they had been built with permanence in mind.
Nina slowly looked around once more.
The notification appeared in her mind again.
Level 1.
She almost wanted to laugh.
Not because it was funny.
Because she genuinely couldn’t understand it.
"How?"
The word slipped from her lips.
Kyle glanced at her.
Nina shook her head.
"Nothing."
She looked toward the Village Center again.
They had only been inside Velaris for a short while, yet already, every assumption she had made about a Level 1 village was beginning to fall apart.
This wasn’t just a settlement with unusually strong walls.
There was something fundamentally different about the place.
Nina was still staring toward the Village Center when something caught her attention.
There were more people ahead.
A small group had gathered near one of the buildings, talking among themselves.
Nina barely paid attention at first.
Then she saw someone she recognized.
She stopped walking.
Her eyes widened.
No.
It couldn’t be.
A middle aged woman was standing a short distance away, speaking with several others. Nina had seen her before. More than once, back in King’s Territory.
Veronica.
And Nina had a feeling they had only seen the beginning.