But with his growing strength and the baptism from the Golden Demonic Tree’s dream, he finally felt the carefree feeling from the past returning to him. This made him feel like things could be solved easily. His thoughts also had the addition of the former Brendel’s flexibility.
He took out the black gargoyle statue which still had a small crack on it.
He said: “You need to be prepared as well. Turn your ring to face inwards, Freya. Your fire agate is too conspicuous. Little Romaine, you need to keep your dagger close to your body. The lazy guards won’t search too close for it.”
“Do I need to turn my ring too?”
“That’s not necessary, nobody will want your cheap ring.”
“Brendel, these people are the guards of the fortress! Why do you look like you don’t…… trust them too much?” She asked.
“… I had never trusted them in the first place. Once we reach there you will understand what I mean. In any case, just follow what I said for the time being.”
Freya had never entered the city and felt that he was overdoing things. But she could only choose to believe since he was the leader of such things now.
Brendel took out various trinklets while he explained. The only thing that he had not identified was the trinklets from the fallen noble. He found that the pipe was only a common item and he he threw it away. He did not know what the dark gray colored stones were, but there was bound to be something that he did not recognize since there were thousands of different materials.
But the crystal beads were interesting. He discovered they were the containers of a spent soul gem, or more accurately, a storage spell item. The spell inside them should be a silencing spell, an appropriate magic to use for going around the monster’s nest during adventuring.
But what made him feel awkward was the inability of activating the storage spell items since he was a warrior. He hesitated for a while before keeping the cards and the items away, so the greedy guards would not take them away later on.
He checked the night sky. It was still early.
They started to leave Vendeck from the east, and there were signs of bright stars illuminating the buildings in their path. They were mostly farms distributed on the two shores of the Pine Forest, one after another. There were also inns in the outskirts, which only adventurers and illegal merchants would patronize these buildings. Many NPCs treated the players like they were grave robbers, since it was true that the majority of them had done something similar.
They walked in the wild for approximately an hour, and suddenly Fortress Rideon appeared right in front of them. There were fire baskets at the towers, which lit the surroundings dozens of meters away. Brendel told the girls to slow down, and to gradually walk out of the darkness into the edge of the light.
The guards were chatting with each other, and there was even a faint snoring sound. He was particularly sensitive to the noises, and he furrowed his brows. There were approximately seven or eight of them in the tower.
Once the three of them appeared, the chatting ceased.
“Identify yourself!” The guards looked warily at them for a while, and one of them revealed himself with a helmet and demanded them to answer. Romaine squinted and looked up, finding a black pine symbol on the helmet’s top.
Brendel had once explained to her that the black pine symbol represented the local forces, while that white-mane something army was a symbol of a wolf. ‘Brendel really knows everything’, she thought.
“A men and two women. We came from the forest. Sir, we saw something strange there. Me and my wives are completely scared, and we want to seek refuge in the fortress!” Brendel raised his arm and shouted loudly.