The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1418 Familiar Sights

It only took them half the day to get to the edge of the Swamp, which was much reduced from their own time.

But in their own time, there was a corrupted spell over this whole region, and all sorts of spatial distortions had become commonplace. Hopefully, that wouldnʼt be the case now.

It shouldnʼt if his memory was right.

”Shall we set camp?” Karl asked as Cara landed to inspect something in the grass.

[Make a nice illusion, and we can have a proper rest.] She agreed.

Karl nodded. ”Do you have a preference?”

[Hmm, letʼs go for the city and gargoyle gardens in the Drodh Guild House Library secret area.] Cara decided.

Karl laughed as he activated the [Illusionary Domain] using [Reality Warp] to make it solid enough that passing nuisances wouldnʼt mess up their nap.

The illusionary gargoyles werenʼt as good as the real ones, but they would do the job of raising the alarm, and if the intruder was below the Totem Rank, there was little chance that they would be damaged.

Even with Reality Warp, the illusions werenʼt as durable as the actual Gargoyle spell, but they certainly werenʼt soft. It would be similar to trying to hack through Mythic Rank stone, a hundred times harder than expected.

Anyone who passed by in the evening was sure to be confused by the sudden presence of a small ruined village full of strange-looking buildings, and then even more shocked when it all vanished in the morning. But what mattered to Karl was that there were comfortable beds in some of the houses, and that he could rest peacefully.

Dawn came much too early, and Karl prepared to head out after a quick meal.

[We need to start bringing Lotus with us when we go places.] Cara noted.

[Youʼve got a point. A designated cook should definitely be on the list. I can make some of the basics now, thanks to Leoʼs affinity for nature magic. But itʼs still not the same as having a Nature Priestess with us.]

It did briefly occur to the pair that they were simply spoiled by an excellent group composition when they travelled. But they had put a lot of work into keeping their group, even if they had started to separate out a little as everyone advanced.

You could only push so far and so fast, especially when you were reaching the higher levels. So, they couldnʼt just make everyone Mythic right away, they lacked the necessary comprehension.

While they didnʼt have an exact location, thanks to Mistyʼs typical lack of information, Karl did have a good general idea of where the System Stones should be.

The old Temple wasnʼt too far from here, and hopefully that was the set that they had been sent for.

It was in an odd time distortion the last time that he came across it, and the stones had sealed themselves away. But at this point, it might still be perfectly fine and accessible.

Hopefully.

[Wait, wait. Remember the history? That was WAY before the last resurgence. I donʼt think that Misty sent us that far into the past. There should be another set around somewhere. The ones that everyone was looking for that were in some Grand High Muckety Muckʼs Crypt or something.] Cara reminded him.

[Oh, thatʼs a good point. We found what everyone was looking for, but not the place that they were looking for it in. So, there might be a second set of stones somewhere in this country.

Good catch.]

Still, the temple seemed like the best place to start, so Karl headed there anyhow.

At a jog, and in his enhanced form, the ground simply flew by underneath his feet, and it only took a few hours until he had to slow to check landmarks to be sure that he was in the right spot.

Yes, there it was. The ruined village, and what must have been the temple.

It was still visible, but it had long since collapsed, abandoned to the sands of time.

Cara wandered around the ruined building, looking for any sign of a message that might have been left behind for them.

The last person here had been a member of the Darklight Host, the last way station attendant in this section of the continent, as her resurgence had come to an end. She had promised to hide the underground levels so that nobody would ever find what was hidden there, but with erosion and curious researchers, nothing remained hidden forever.

It was either found or destroyed by the elements.

She remembered the layout well enough, and Karlʼs memories of the place helped. So, it was with great annoyance that she found what should have been the entrance to the secondary basement, the one that was just storage and a sitting room, only to find that it was completely filled with rubble from the collapse of the temple.

It had been left open as a decoy for robbers, but now that she wanted to explore it, everything was buried.

The part that she was truly interested about was the idols.

There used to be statues to all sorts of gods from many species here. But while there were portions of the altars left, there were no signs of the statues or

other religious items.

Had the cleric moved them to her inventory before she died? That would let them return to wherever the System put inactive inventories, and keep them from being desecrated. But she also might have left them, so that adherents of the gods could come to collect them.

The war in the region would have eventually ended, and some of the locals might have wanted the keepsakes from the abandoned temple.

It certainly didnʼt look like the place had been looted. There were no broken statue pieces anywhere, and the building hadnʼt been destroyed by force, it showed all the signs of having collapsed in on itself after the roof had crumbled and removed the lateral support.

Though, given that it could have been thousands of years since the place was abandoned, it was still in remarkably good shape for a ruined temple.