Elias stopped his shadow horse at the foot of the mountain, and the members spent a moment enjoying the breathtaking view.
The Rebelbub Mountain, based from the documents that Lord Phillip handed me, it is the second largest mountain range in Andromeda. It is filled with dangerous monsters that are stronger than ordinary beasts. Recently, monsters have become increasingly dangerous, with swarms appearing, and powerful one that roam at one of the mountains
The flora and even the environment varied drastically from mountain to mountain. One mountain might be covered in trees with leaves the vibrant color of the fall, but the next mountain over there will be a dense green jungle. Each of the mountain ranges were complex.
The Rebelbub Village is a small and fortified lakeside village that was located at the foot of the mountain range. It's primary target was the beasts itself, it is protected by a wooden spike that was covered and scraped in monster residue. I can tell they are having a hard time in the village.
Moreover, no matter how many mountains one scaled, they would only see a sea of mountains extending infinitely forward. The first four rows of mountains had been somewhat explored, but past that was unknown terrain
A number of ambitious adventurers had tried mapping the entire range, but as the strength of the monsters grew with each progressive mountain, no one had yet to scale each uncharted rows.
"Woah, look at the stunning view up there! It was magnificent!" Catherine was heard from the distance
The few of the girls let out murmurs of appreciation. Meanwhile, I had just awoken up from my sleep, they didn't think about my slumber. Fortunately, everyone else was too focused on the scenery to notice.
There, I saw my brother, suppressing his desire to enjoy the view for a little while longer. He demonstrates his superiority by activating it's dark magic skill. He chanted the word silently.
"Shadow Crow… activate"
Suddenly, a majestic black crow materializes out of thin air, small and mana-fed. While the others were admiring the view, I just saw the whole thing.
A standard male bird and a ring with a tiny stone embedded inside of it. The body of the bird was gray, similar to a crow, but it had a crystal affixed to its forehead
Elias activated his human skill on, pulled another extra two model birds from his dark magic, and threw them to the air. As I expected, the model birds did not fall to the ground. Instead the flew freely to the sky. I gasped in surprise
"Umm, what exactly are they?" I trailed off as I watched the artificial birds glide away without making a single sound
Elias's reply was "Shadow Crows", hence the name of his skill. In a sense, these objects were even more unfit for a fantasy world that I reincarnated.
Like the crow's eyes, by pouring a small sum of mana into the crystal embedded into their forehead, he could reflect what he was seeing at the crow's vision. Making a real-time "military drone" via the crow's vision.
However, Elias's brain processing power was finite, and having two crows circle far overhead already brought him close to the limits of his brain's activity. Now, Elias only control a limited time of crows, two is only limited to his.
This time though, he'd just brought his crows out to scout. They have a wide area to search, so he figured they would be useful
"Big Brother, how many abilities does your dark magic have?" I said
"Eirene, I don't count my abilities, just stay out of my way, I'm concentrating"
Elias lend out a discerning look onto my face, ever since he became serious, the only memories from my childhood seemed off. Now, Elias has three known skills from his dark magic, the ability to power his revolver, summon a pristine black horse and able to summon black crows.
Meanwhile, the party continued down the path Cassius had supposedly gone up.
According to the reports I just read just now, the dangerous monsters only started showing up a little over halfway up the mountain.
In which case, it stood to reason that Cassius's party had been investigating the area. Big Brother sent his crows out ahead to scout the area while we set a gruesome place.
After a little over an hour of walking, they finally reached their destination. They stopped there in order to investigate more thoroughly, and because it is a hour trip. Our party showed signs of exhaustion…
"Haah… Haaah… Finally, we can take a break… ugh… Haha!" Catherine was lend out a exhaustion
"Haah… Haaah… Are you alright, Catherine?" Patricia replied to Catherine
"Uhh… Can was rest now? We can, right? I will sit down, okay?"
"Ahh… You siblings are monsters, Elias"
Patricia and Catherine had even less stamina that I had expected.
Of course, Elias's party had far lesser stats than most people in this world, so hiking this far wouldn't normally tire them so. However, Elias had been going at a fast pace that they'd had to sprint all out just to keep up.
Patricia was kneeling on the ground, panting for breath. Catherine were lying on their backs, gulping in huge lungfuls of air.
"Eirene, can you keep up the pace, it seemed your stamina is improved!"
Elias saw my drastic change, my agility stats were higher than before, not just my Blood Curse, but the daily exercise were circling through the Flower Manor, I didn't drank a single drop of blood, my stats increased with only training-reliant.
My brother sighed as he looked over his companions. Though in the end he was planning on searching the area anyway, so he supposed it was fine to let them take a break in the meantime. He decided to investigate nearby river while they rested.
Thanks to the view from his crow's, he had a pretty good idea of the overall geography. He told me where the river was and left the students there. It was likely Cassius's party had stopped there to rest, too.
Soon enough, they heard the sound of rushing water, indicating the river was nearby. The sounds of nature were pleasing to the ears. I never visited nature before.
"Guys at the riverside, let's rest there!"
"Good idea."
The river was just too large to be classified as a stream. Just to be safe, Elias also swept their surroundings with his crow's, but that didn't seem to be any monsters nearby. The three of them sat down of a nearby rock to discuss their strategy
Thinking they might have gone upstream, Elias sent one of his crows further up to scout while he watched his companions recover enough to catch up. They weren't very happy about being left behind, so they glared testily at Elias when they arrived.
Catherine and Patricia collapses at the riverbank, and busied themselves with their task of replenishing their thirst.
However, a second later his expression turned dead serious.
"Wait, This is…" Elias muttered
"Hm… did you find something, Brother?" I said
"Further upstream there's a… sword, I think? And a bag that is worn out. This might be what we're looking for. Eirene, Catherine and Patricia, let's go."
The four of them stood at the same time, then started packing up. They roused their exhausted bodies and pushed themselves forward, struggling to keep up with the hellish pace that Elias's set.
When they arrived, Elias found a small sword and a bag, just as he'd seen from one of his crows. However, what the crows had not been able to show him were the details. The sword was dented and looks old, and the bag stats was ripped
I cautiously examined their surroundings. Upon doing so, i discovered that one of the nearby trees had its bark ripped. Furthermore, it was stripped a few meters up the tree's trunk. It looked like someone had meticulously scraped off all the bark, but judging it's size, no human could have done that.
The further the party went, the more we found evidence of a fierce struggle. A tree snapped in half. A broken sword lying in the grass. Traces of blood. The more they found, the grimmer the members expressions grew.
Elias kept an eye from his companions as well as maintained his crows. Suddenly, I found something sparking up ahead
"Eirene, this is a pendant, isn't it?" Elias said
"Hm? Yeah… looks like it belonged to someone. May I take a look, Elias?" I replied
I took the pendant and brushed the dirt off. As I did, I realized it wasn't a pendant, but a locket. I opened it to see a portrait of Lord Phillip. On the other side is a woman, it most likely belonged to one of the adventurers we were searching for. I decided to keep it just in case
They found a few other articles scattered about, and kept the ones that looked like they had been significant to their owners.
Searching the area took quite some time, and the sun was beginning to set as they finished. They'd probably have to make camp for the night soon.
So far the only other living creatures they'd seen on the mountains had been animals. They'd been on alert for the monsters that attacked Cassius, but they hadn't even seen a single hostile creature.
A short while later, Elias deployed one of his crows to scout the area as usual. About three hundred meters to the east, he found signs of large-scale destruction. Elias hurried over, forcing everyone to go even faster to keep up.
After some time, They found a larger river than the almost-stream they'd stopped earlier. There was even a small waterfall further upstream. Not only that, some of the trees had snapped clean in half, Thirty-centimeters long footprints remained in the muddy riverbank
"So this is the fight really picked up… Judging by the footprints, we're dealing with some huge monster that walks in two legs, Supposedly, High Orcs."
Having come to that conclusion, Elias sent his crows upstream, electing to take the downstream path itself. Since the footprints we're all near the riverbank, it was possible Cassius and the others had escaped through the river
As Elias hypothesis is true, Exhausted by the fighting as they must have been, they probably hid at this very area.
The others agreed with Elias hypothesis, and they began trekking down the river
As we were searching through the area, Plasma interrupted from my head, telling me some important sightings.
"Roxy, my senses detected something, but it feels human. And it's coming from behind that waterfall." Plasma asks in a manly tone
"There's a living person inside of there!?"
"Certainly Roxy, just one" Plasma asked, to which I responded was a simple confirmation
Only I noticed that something was wrong about my senses, but judging from Plasma's response, I can tell someone was alive in there. I called one of my parties about this
I called Elias and the rest of his girls about the incident. They looked shocked as well. It was only natural, as while it was still theoretically possible someone had survived. Elias hadn't actually expected to find anyone alive.
Three days have passed since Cassius's party had gone missing. If the survivor was one of them, it'd be a miracle
"Eirene, I'm counting on you."
"Sure, Big Brother"
I didn't take my eyes off the pool of water surrounding the waterfall. Guessing what I wanted, Elias raised his right hand and activated his dark magic.
"Dark Energy… activate!"
The water around the waterfall was pushed to either side, the dark wall keeping the resulting spray from soaking them. Elias looked like Moses parting the red sea with his hand outstretched like that.
Elias mana supply was at half-capacity, he easily executed that spell. The party walked past the waterfall into the cavern behind it.
Now, Elias dark magic has bullets, crow's, horses and energy. It has a lot of options considering that he is my big brother.
They found a man in the furthest corner of the room. As they approached, they could make out his features better. We doubted it that he was dead, but my blood curse tells me that this is alive
He was young, probably in his twenties, with graceful features. At that moment, though, that graceful face was pale as a cardboard, ruining the effect. However, he didn't seem to be injured, and his bag still had a little food left.
From the looks of it, he was just asleep. His pale features were probably due to the terror of hiding out alone
Elias was in a hurry to find out who he was. In an instant, he pressed his revolver against the man's forehead, scaring him in the process.
"Ah, Ah, don't kill me!"
He awoke with screams and its pupils dilated as he pointed the revolver at him.
"Are you Cassius Calico? The third son of the Calico family?"