"That place..." Wade looked at the spot where the light column disappeared, hesitating for a mont.
"Hm?"
"Nothing." The Centaur Elder seed to snap back to reality, turned around, and began walking towards the centaur troupe. "What's wrong?" Antitina, standing beside Brand, asked with a hint of curiosity at Wade's reaction. She had added a long shawl to her attire to fend off the cold before the Frost Tide approached.
"That direction is towards the Arbor Forest, the holand of many centaurs from the Green Tower," Brand replied.
"Ah—" The noble lady looked sympathetically at the back of the Centaur Elder. "But how do you know that, Lord?"
"Didn't the Dead Wood guide ntion it yesterday morning?" Brand countered.
"Seems like it..." Antitina was taken aback. "B-but it was just a passing ntion, wasn't it? Lord, you rembered that?" She couldn't help but look at Brand with both envy and surprise.
Brand quickly pretended to examine his sword, lest he burst out laughing at the noble lady's serious expression. Of course, it was impossible to rember sothing like that; the truth was that these twelve outposts (soon to be seventeen) around the Green Tower were already famous online due to Valhalla.
But that reason was not sothing to share with outsiders.
"Alright, let's go." He interrupted the topic, speaking to Antitina.
"Hm?"
"The wolves are coming."
By now, the forest had plunged into darkness, with the faint starlight and moonlight hidden behind the clouds. As the Magic Tide approached, the world turned pitch black, and the solitary light columns in the distant mountains and forests seed to be the last remnants of light in this world.
Those light columns were slowly moving.
This scene was eerily familiar to Brand; he had seen it before in a video of the first Wolf Calamity—at that ti, only a select few of the top players were involved in this plot task.
Amidst a dark storm, a sparse group of players raised their torches heading toward Valhalla—those re twenty-plus light columns appeared like the last flickering flas of hope on a vast desolate earth.
But they eventually succeeded.
As for whether he could succeed himself—Brand didn't know. He looked around; the forest was now a silvery-gray under the darkness, and with his Perception nearing Energy Level 25, he could see white shadows flitting through the woods a few miles away.
Those were the Winter Wolves.
From the front of the troupe ca the chiding voice of Centaur Elder Wade, and the troupe began to move forward again.
After nearly ten hours of travel, the troupe was close to the southern end of Thorny Ridge. A few miles ahead, two crisscrossing black ridges stood like opposing guards marking the entrance to the Kalanja Mountain Range. The terrain beca rugged and steep in that direction; however, once past there, the first hurdle would be considered cleared.
At the speed of this troupe, at most an hour's journey remained.
But that place was known as Wolf Pass.
It was also the most perilous part of the journey.
Brand looked around, observing the increasing number of Winter Wolves in the forest ahead, but he knew this was only the beginning. The Winter Solstice Wolf Pack still needed ti to gather. He took out his pocket watch—the ti indicated that less than ninety minutes remained until the second wave of wolves arrived.
"Looks like we'll make it just in ti," Brand thought to himself.
The troupe was slowly crossing the last undulating ridges of Thorny Ridge. Every now and then, a few Winter Wolves would dash out of the snow, only to be t by the sharp attacks of the centaurs—though Brand had already laid a stringent periter around the troupe. Fire Claw Lizards, Shadow Rock Beasts, and Shadow Wolves—though Brand called them Rock Garuru Beasts, unfortunately, Antitina, Kulan, and Caglis, and even Qian unanimously agreed it was a horribly bad na, and thus they bypassed Brand's decision to call this creature Shadow Wolf—in any case, the periter Brand arranged was essentially to guard against that mysterious Lord-level creature.
As for the lone Winter Wolves, he didn't mind if the Fire Claw Lizards gained so exclusive experience, but if an organized wolf pack approached, he ordered his Summoned Creatures to let them through.
Brand did not want a breach in his periter. The centaurs could deal with the trouble of sacrificing against the persistent Winter Wolves, but if that mysterious boss slipped through unnoticed, it wouldn't be a matter of just fleeing.
As for the Winter Wolves themselves, they were Upper Silver creatures, like white ghosts. These white shadows howled and darted through the forest, wind and snow in their wake. Each one was the size of a foal, swift as lightning, possessing formidable strength beyond ordinary reach.
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