Chapter 69: Finding the path
"Ghaaaaaa...!" Once again, there came a junction where the powerful tiger stopped as well.
"GHAAAAAAA!"
Unlike the demonic beast, however, the tiger beast was held off at this junction.
"This is different."
As the three of them watched, waiting for his back to heal with the passive healing effect of the heirloom ring, the tiger continued clawing at them with its flame-covered weapons.
The beast tried its best, even destroying the very ground it was present on, and it did not stop until the powerful ward exhausted the beast completely.
"Grrrr..." As if a friend hitting their homie, the ward slapped the left tree, gave him a deadly look, and walked away from where it had chased them from.
"Haaa..." A sign escaped the boy’s heart when his legs, shaking like a leaf during a storm, finally gave up.
"Chirp..."
"I want to rest too, Nyx. But, we cannot do that."
As much as they wanted to believe that a few days had passed in this dark forest, it had barely been six hours since they entered this god forsaken place.
He still did not know how far this ’sanctuary’ even was, but, from what he had seen until now, he knew that the path was a challenge that had its own endings.
"Even if it starts in a complex manner, it is possible to clear it."
They survived the demonic beast because they had gathered enough experience to deal with their kind.
They survived the traps and the tiger because they ran away instead of fighting against the beast.
They had been running on this path for so long they forgot they were supposed to reach somewhere.
The path was too straightforward for them to end up anywhere as well. So, was this really the right way?
"Must we go this way?" He was left on this path without any information on where he was supposed to go.
He followed this path only because someone told him that this was the right way.
Ever since he entered the forest, he was only following a way that was already there instead of figuring out where his destination actually was.
"Nyx, can you fly up?"
"Chirp?"
Suddenly, the new questions brightened something that he had almost forgotten before.
"I’ll share your senses now, alright?"
"Chirp."
When the little bird flew up and above the canopy of leaves, he saw the sun that shone on the great forest.
Sam, seeing the same thing as his partner, watched the forest from a different angle for the first time.
"Hmmm..."
Then, as Nyx flew around with his little wings, looking through the forest and scanning through things, not long after they had started, finally, something caught their attention.
"Do you see this, Nyx?"
They could tell which trees were the wards that were blocking the demonic beasts and the dangerous monsters. They were clearly covered in what seemed like talismans used in the Wuxia continent.
It was strange seeing them here. But considering how the Sungrades ancestors had travelled all across the world to bring any of the Salamanders they could find to the Sun Sanctuary, this wasn’t too strange to them.
What surprised them was the way these wards were positioned.
"Nyx, circle around for a little."
Sam left the bird flying high up while he created a simple map of this sector of the forest with the wards marked as an X.
Since they were currently in the 3rd sector of the forest, the map that came out was relatively smaller than the first two sectors that were much larger, or the following six sectors that weren’t of their priority for the time being.
"If we connect them like this... and this..."
"Meow?"
Felix did not understand what was going on right now, but she knew this was no ordinary map.
The way Sam drew the connecting paths of the wards visible from above suggested a much more complex formation than what met to the eyes here, below the canopy.
"Oh... oh!"
Sam was able to decipher the map and the structure of the path quickly even though it seemed far too complex to the learned gray kitten.
"Nyx! Go to the south and see if you can find something down there!"
From what he could tell, the paths were designed to keep anyone who followed them blindly in a certain loop.
If they were lucky and stepped off in any way or followed their heart and went off that road, they would go through a different, unpaved path and after some struggle, they might reach a certain point.
"Chirp! Chirp!"
"Eureka!"
This certain point was their destination.
They would have stayed in this forest if they had kept going, but now that they knew where they needed to go, they did not wait any longer.
"Let’s go, Felix!" He pickled up his little kitten and started running towards the unremarkable open area that he saw from above.
-Sruuuuuuuuush!
Passing through the dark jungle was not easy, but after his training with Elder Valor, he was proficient at various movement techniques.
"Haaa. Haaa." To maintain his stamina, he also kept his breathing under control.
If he was tired out quickly, they would get stuck in this forest once again.
"Haaa!"
Even though his breaths started getting heavy and his chest had some pain, he continued on. The new path that he had discovered did not have any traps.
There were demonic beasts roaming around the place, certainly, but they had learned to avoid the enemies that they did not have to fight.
"Chirp!"
Nyx was guiding them from above, so it did not take them too long to reach their destination.
"Chirp!"
"Yes! I can feel it as well!"
There was a certain uniqueness to the empty open area without trees that seemed like a ray of light passing through dark clouds.
If there was anything special in this part of the forest, then it was right here.
"How do we get in though?"
Still, reaching this place on the same day he entered the forest was an amazing feat in its own right.
{ "Master, I think I can help with that." }
"Chirp~!"
The rest... he can leave it up to his partners.