Cthulhu Gonfalon

It was getting dark. The castle was located on the edge of the sparse woods. In the distance, the moon rose slowly from the horizon. The villages could be faintly seen during the day, but now they disappeared into the darkness. It was silent all around.

“Something is wrong here,” the trainee paladin said. “In this season, it shouldn’t be so quiet in the wild.”

“The Departed Soul monsters can emit negative energy, so no creatures like them as a result. In addition to a few variant monsters in the Ashes Woods in the northwest, common demon beasts deliberately avoid the range of negative energy,” the trainee priest said. He was very clear about these things. “But... when we come here during the day, there are many beasts here.”

“Yeah, I planned to catch some beasts to barbecue at night,” the trainee paladin said, sighing. “We can only eat solid food.”

“Probably during the day, negative energy is suppressed by the sun,” the trainee priest guessed. “At night, negative energy is strengthened. Therefore, it is said that in the Ashes Woods, a large number of Departed Soul monsters come out at night, so it is extremely dangerous.”

“Departed Souls? If they are skeletons, they won’t be horrible,” the bold trainee warrior said, laughing. “Just find a thick wooden stick and knock them down.”

“One or two skeletons are certainly not horrible. Even ordinary farmers can deal with them,” Yue said, smiling. “But it is said that the skeletons in Ashes Woods don’t appear in a small number. If they appear, there will be at least hundreds of them. On every full moon night, there may even be tens of thousands of skeletons. Do you think that you can defeat that many skeletons?”

The trainee warrior shook his head directly without thinking.

Of course, some heroes in the world could defeat hundreds of skeletons, but he certainly was not one of them. Let alone hundreds, just eight to ten skeletons at a time could kill him.

After all, although one skeleton had weak combat ability, it wasn’t afraid of pain and death. When the number of skeletons was large, their threat immediately rose.

Moreover, once a person’s legs and head were caught by five or six skeletons, he could do nothing but die. If that person was a hero born with superhuman strength, he might have a chance to escape. However, as long as he was an ordinary person, even if he had good combat ability, he would also die.

The trainee warrior was counted as a good fighter. If he used all his skills, he could drive a dozen farmers away. However, in the face of a dozen skeletons, he would be the one to run away.

“It is strange that I can’t feel negative energy. Why?” The trainee priest sensed for a while carefully. He said, confused, “I can’t feel it at all.”

“Go out of this magic array, and you may feel it,” Yue said indifferently. “But it also means that you may be attacked by evil spirits.”

The trainee priest said, shrinking his neck, “I don’t want to take that risk. It is okay that I can’t feel it.”

Everyone laughed kindly. For those rookie adventurers, safety-first was the undisputed golden rule. Most people who didn’t respect this rule would die in an adventure and had no chance to enjoy a bright future.

“Well, it’s late. Everyone, eat some solid food and go to bed early. We three will take turns to keep watch at night.” After laughing, the trainee knight began to arrange the night watch.

During adventures, the night watch was an essential and important task. At night, most monsters were active. If they didn’t arrange a night watch, once they were attacked by monsters, everyone would die without knowing why.

There was a common practice among adventurers. Spellcasters didn’t keep watch at night. The reason was that others wanted to take care of the spellcasters. Spellcasters’ bodies were relatively weak, so they needed sufficient rest. Moreover, other adventurers had to ensure that the conditions of the spellcasters during the day weren’t affected, so the success rate of spells didn’t decrease due to lack of sleep.

Enough sleep could help spellcasters recover magic power, and it could also help them maintain a good mental state. Unless there were enough spellcasters in the team that they didn’t need to care about those things, everyone would obey this rule “Spellcasters don’t keep watch at night.”

In other words, in an adventurer team, if spellcasters kept watch at night, they would definitely be rookies!

Of course, there were exceptions. For example, for some priests who believed in the God of Night or the God of Shadow and some necromancers, nighttime was their home court. During the daytime, they were sluggish instead.

However, such spellcasters would certainly not move with ordinary adventurers, so strictly speaking, they were not really special cases.

Yue and that trainee priest were naturally not special cases. Both of them needed to rest to ensure that they could have sufficient magic power and good conditions tomorrow. Different from Yue who slept very well, the trainee priest obviously didn’t sleep well. He turned again and again and woke up several times during the night.

More than once, he clearly felt that an evil force was gazing at him, so he woke up in his sleep. However, when he looked around, he didn’t see anything. Soon after he fell asleep, he felt that the evil force was gazing at him again, and he was awakened again. It repeated several times, so he couldn’t sleep well that night. The next morning, his whole person languished, and he was apparently in poor condition.

His companions naturally noticed his condition, and they asked him about it with concern. When he told them that he had been awakened several times during the night, the three who had kept watch were confused.

The warrior and the knight had relatively weak perceptual ability, so they hadn’t felt anything. However, the paladin had better perceptual ability. He hadn’t felt any evil gaze, either.

“Don’t think about it. This is the usual means of evil spirits,” Yue said, sighing. After a good sleep, she was full of energy. “They spy on you from the spiritual world. They know that spellcasters are their archenemies, so they try hard to disturb your spirit. It may be something good because it proves that this evil spirit is not very strong. Otherwise, it wouldn’t need to use such means.”

After analyzing it like that, everyone was relieved. The curious warrior thought of something. He asked, “What about you? You are also a spellcaster.”

Yue said, smiling, “Probably, it can only disturb one person’s spirit, and that is already its limit. In any case, a priest is definitely more threatening to it than me, a mage.”

What she said was, of course, a lie. Although she was using the body of that trainee mage, the soul in that body was a genius young mage as well as the child of two legendary strong people. According to some scholars, her soul was inherently stronger than that of an average person. That evil spirit had tried to attack her at night. As a result, it had failed to disturb her spirit. Instead, it had been countered and had suffered a serious injury.

However, she naturally couldn’t explain those things to her companions. Anyway, that evil spirit was mentally injured, so its strength definitely declined. Although her previous analysis was wrong, at least the result was correct.

In contrast, she was somewhat curious about another thing.

During this night, she had clearly felt that a kind soul was watching her. It had wanted to convey friendly news. It was a pity that she was a mage instead of a priest. She was not good at soul communication, so she couldn’t hear it clearly. It was truly a pity.

“How many days is our solid food enough for?” the captain asked.

The paladin, who was responsible for managing the supplies, checked it. He replied, “If we save up, it will be enough for three days. If we don’t, we will have to hunt after tomorrow’s lunch.”

“Then we rest this morning,” the captain said. “The priest must get enough rest. We can’t take risks.”

No one disagreed, and the paladin even said that he could use this morning to hunt and catch a few rabbits for lunch.

So they ate roasted rabbit at noon, along with a little solid food.

The barbecue skills of these rookie adventures were not very good, but at least the food was cooked. Yue was not satisfied with the food, but she still ate it. She was safe and full.

This morning, she wasn’t idle. While checking the purification array, she made some temporary items. She used some materials she collected at the scene and used up almost all the gems reserved by this trainee mage. She made a few roughly-crafted pendants, strung them with thin strings and gave them to her companions.

“Mental protection pendant,” she said. “It can slightly improve your ability to defend against mental attacks.”

Her companions were very happy to wear these pendants, but Yue knew that the pendants couldn’t help much.

The characterization of the mental protection array was correct, and the matching of materials was strictly in accordance with the rules. The problem was that the material level was too low, and she didn’t have enough magic power to infiltrate these materials to enhance their effects.

This was called enchantment. It had the necessary requirements for the magic power of the spellcasters. The trainee mage only had so much magic power. Considering that she might need to fight in the afternoon or the evening, the only magic power she could use was just this much.

If they were safe tonight, she would be able to rework these pendants tomorrow morning to enhance their effects. Although she couldn’t improve them much, at least she wouldn’t waste those gems.

Yue thought so, putting scrolls and wands in a place where she could reach at any time. Then she hung two daggers made from a Chinese scholar tree at her waist.

The two daggers were made by a knight at her request this morning. Chinese scholar trees could blend well with negative energy. As an essential, the two daggers could also be used to harm evil spirits.

Of course, she still needed another kind of essential, but if it was not necessary, she wouldn’t want to use it.

Even though it was just a game, Yue never intended to risk her own life.

However, if it was really necessary, she wouldn’t hesitate.

In a battle, the most useless emotion was hesitation. No matter what choice a person made, it was better than not choosing.

After lunch, the priest finally rested well and recovered his spirit. Therefore, the team set up the formation that was most suitable for battles and stepped into the castle again.

This time, they were much more serious and nervous than yesterday.

Looking at them from the sky, Sui Xiong couldn’t help but smile.

“This kid, Yue, seems to be very talented as a commander.”