Helmut: The Forsaken Child - H.F.C Chapter 292 (Part 2):

A moment later, Kantara started to move. Water splashed around it.

It had exposed the shell where Helmut and Alea were standing above the water.

It started swimming just like that.

It wasn’t moving purely by physical power, but by creating whirlpools with demonic energy and advancing with that force. Naturally, this made it incredibly fast.

Kantara was an incomparably excellent means of transport on the sea, better than any ship in this world.

Unlike Elaga, it didn’t shake the internal organs with impacts, but moved smoothly and stably like a huge ship.

“This is amazing. I never thought I’d ride a turtle across the sea in my life.”

Alea remarked, astonished.

“But if we’re going by swimming, how are we going to cross the ice? Are we going around?”

There’s also the option of diving and dropping both of them off. Alea’s eyes sharpened.

Kantara’s response was absurdly simple.

[I’ll…… break it!]

It was exactly as it said. The whirlpools arising around Kantara shattered the thick ice plates like paper.

Ice shards flew like a blizzard, creating a storm. Yet, the speed didn’t slow down at all.

Kantara was a ship that broke through ice and advanced. No natural object in the sea could pose a danger or hindrance before it.

It seemed to have chosen the shortest route. The direction it was heading was straight south.

‘Now, we’ll reunite in the central region.’

Alea closed her eyes and then opened them.

Once everyone meets up, the only thing left will be the final stage – breaking through the sacred barrier in the sky of the central territory.

*
Around the same time, Igrelle was beginning to fly toward the central region, and Elaga had started running again with Asuka on its back.

While the north, south, and west were peaceful due to the movement of the rulers of the regions, the east was not.

This was because there was only one human in the east.

‘What kind of forest is this? It’s terrifyingly scary.’

Sian, who had completed his mission, was passing through the Forest of Roots alone.

Getting to the eastern end was easy, but coming back was not at all easy. Especially if alone.

As if paying the price for the comfortable journey there, he had entered a dangerous zone where one wrong move could mean death.

The infamous reputation of the Forest of Roots, which he had forgotten until now, vividly came to mind.

One fortunate point was that he was much more skilled in concealment magic than ordinary mages.

Spirit mages are basically beings with developed affinity with forests.

Moreover, he had a dark spirit. One of the abilities of the dark spirit is concealment. That power was capable of hiding a single human from the threatening demonic beasts of the Forest of Roots as if they didn’t exist.

It blurs both scent and traces.

The dark spirit sitting on his shoulder was spewing out something like black mist from its mouth.

Of course, that’s how it looked to Sian, but from the outside, it would just look like a shadow.

Every time a vicious demonic beast passed by him, Sian had to hold his breath.

‘I should have done more training for large-scale demonic beast battles with illusion magic.’

How often would one fight demonic beasts in the outside world? There was a training course for that too. He had prepared to some extent before coming to the Forest of Roots.

‘But I didn’t think I’d end up crossing the Forest of Roots alone.’

This was all Alea’s fault for not giving him a heads-up. If only a swordsman had been with him, at least he’d have time to prepare his spells.

While Alea was exceptionally fast at magic manifestation, not all mages are like that.

If Alea was close to a combat mage, Sian was a spirit mage. He was good at supportive roles.

Additionally, something Sian hadn’t realized before was that he was more cowardly than he thought.

After encountering demonic beasts a few times, he chose to quietly, like a mouse, head towards the central territory without fighting.

Elaga, despite being a massive, white, fur-covered leopard, was elegant and beautiful, far from resembling a terrifying demonic beast. The same went for Igrelle, despite its vibrant feather colors, which made it look more like a majestic bird than a monstrous creature.

But that was where the similarities ended. The beasts he encountered here, in the Forest of Roots, were horrifying beyond belief.

When a huge wild boar with twelve eyes and exposed giant fangs brushed past him, he couldn’t help but swallow his saliva.

It was fortunate that maintaining the dark spirit didn’t require special concentration. If it had, his focus might have wavered, breaking the concealment spell altogether.

For Sian, this was nothing short of a terrifying experience.

Worse still, the demonic beasts continued to linger around him, as though they could faintly detect his scent. It was as if, despite the dark spirit’s concealment, they could still sense the delicious, out-of-place scent of a human in this Forest of Roots.

Yet, thanks to the spirit’s veil, they couldn’t pinpoint his exact location, so they simply roamed around before eventually leaving.

If he made one wrong move and accidentally bumped into one of them, all the concealment in the world would be useless.

Sian had to hold his breath every time he got too close to a beast.

Sure, he could probably take out a few beasts if it came down to it, but doing so would only attract more, making it impossible to escape. That’s why his progress was slow.

The path to the central region still stretched out long and far ahead of him. At first, the magic stones Alea had given him seemed like they would be enough, but at this pace, he’d run out long before reaching his destination.

‘When is that giant white leopard going to come?’

Sian found himself cursing Elaga under his breath.

It was ironic that, while he feared the weaker beasts of this forest, he felt no such fear toward Elaga, the massive and terrifying demonic beast that was as large as a house.

The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.

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