Chapter 369: Bonus Chapter 37: A Day or Two with my Stalker: Rules and Residents of Eerkal-la

When I noticed what had made Shelly let out that small scream of terror, I immediately used my hand to press her head firmly against my ribs, blocking her view of what she had seen, shielding her eyes with my body.

"Don’t stare at it. It’s rude," I rubbed her head gently to calm her down, my fingers running through her hair in slow and soothing strokes. "Some things in this place don’t like being looked at directly."

With this lesson learned the hard way, I trusted that Shelly would never stalk a person again.

Undoubtedly, I would later come to know how completely wrong I was about that assumption, and how little Shelly had actually learned from this terrifying experience.

But that is another matter entirely, a story for another day.

By the way, what scared Shelly so badly that she screamed was a small mountain sitting in the distance, seemingly harmless and ordinary at first glance.

Her hyper Amazon senses — the heightened perceptions that all warrior women of Verdant Spire possessed — probably let her understand on an instinctual level that the mountain was not normal.

Something was wrong with it. So she had kept staring at it, her eyes locked onto the formation, trying to figure out what was bothering her...

Until it glanced back at her, a bit pissed off at being stared at for so long.

I mean that literally; one big brown eye slowly tore open from the surface of the mountain, the rocky exterior splitting apart like eyelids opening after a long sleep, revealing a massive pupil that focused directly on Shelly’s small and trembling form. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

And yes, the mountain was clearly not a mountain at all. It was something else entirely, an old being who apparently doesn’t like being given any attention.

We passed a sea of serpent, a vast and writhing ocean of scaled bodies, forked tongues and venomous fangs, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, in a steep valley.

The serpents there were so dangerous that one drop of their venom was enough to poison a small country three times over, killing every living thing within its borders and leaving the land barren for generations.

Fortunately, if you do not breathe wrongly, they will mostly ignore you and let you pass without any incident.

They are not hungry for human flesh the way you might think. They are simply ancient, powerful, and uninterested in small prey.

Though Shelly almost soiled herself from the fear of being surrounded by so many giant, dreadful serpents, her face pale and her hands shaking against my arm the entire time we walked through their territory.

I personally think Violette is way worse than these guys, though. A single Violette is more terrifying than the entire sea of serpents. She has the power to effortlessly destroy a planet.

Elyndor has way too many law-defying individuals for Violette to succeed in destroying this planet, though.

***

We had to greet the Snow King of a particular area before passing further into Eerkal-la — it was a small portion of this strange land that was completely covered in snow and blizzard.

A pocket of winter surrounded by the permanent orange and crimson sky of the rest of the region. Weird.

The Snow King was... basically Kong, but wrapped in thick white fur with piercing blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light of his frozen domain.

He was pretty chill (pun intended) for a giant monster, not aggressive or territorial like some of the other beings here.

Except he took an interest in your appearance whenever you entered his territory, and if he found you beautiful enough, he wanted you to stay with him forever in his frozen kingdom.

By using high-level illusion magic, taking the risk of alerting battle junkies that I was close by with the slight surge of power, I wrapped myself and Shelly in a convincing disguise.

To the Snow King, we looked like dirty old mages in search of some elixir, wrinkled and hunched, and utterly unremarkable in every way.

Since I was respectful to him, and bowed accordingly as customs demanded, he was pleased with my manners and looked the other way, allowing us to pass through his territory without demanding that we stay.

He was way too large anyway to even notice that I was concealing my appearance with magic.

His massive eyes just scanned over us without really seeing closely, dismissing us as unimportant and moving on to other thoughts.

Thank goodness.

Last time I came through here, he had wanted to marry me because he thought I was beautiful. He’s like a horny old man when he spots an attractive person, seriously.

And it had taken hours of polite conversation and creative excuses to convince him to let me go without causing offense.

Pervert. How does he expect to breed someone of my size?

***

We climbed extremely high valleys and mountains that scraped the orange sky, our hands finding holds on sharp rocks and crumbling ledges.

We navigated past death drakes and alligators that lurked in shallow waters and shadowed caves.

We even snuck past overpowered zombies that wandered the landscape aimlessly, shambling corpses that were definitely strong enough to threaten my own life if they decided to attack.

Nevertheless, I kinda like Eerkal-la, honestly, despite all the dangers and the monsters, or even the strange rules.

Because everyone there is so chill, so relaxed, so unconcerned with supposed small fry like us.

If you follow the local rules and do not do anything flashy or disrespectful, the beings there see you the same way humans see a small ant walking on the wall: subject to their overwhelming power, sure, but not really worth the effort of crushing.

In no time at all, maybe twenty-three hours of continuous walking, climbing, and sneaking, we had reached the point where I could see the large gate standing on its own.

On the other side of a huge chasm that stretched wide enough to fit the entire village of Verdant Spire inside it, and deep enough that a person would die from the fall long before they ever hit the ground at the bottom.

I grabbed Shelly’s waist firmly with one arm, pulling her tight against my side, and crouched a little.

Bending my knees and putting a lot of power into my legs, I gathered strength from my thighs and my calves.

Before I even leapt, before my muscles fully extended and launched us into the air, the ground beneath my feet had already begun to crack and roar, fissures spreading outward from where I stood like spiderwebs across the stone.

And like a bullet tearing through the sky, I flew.

Haha! Shelly was shouting so much, screaming so loudly into my chest as we soared across the endless chasm, that her voice became a soothing white noise to my ears, blending together with the soft cries and screeching sounds I was getting from the darkness below us.

It was not pitch black down there because light wasn’t entering the chasm.

It was pitch black because something tangible and dark was being emitted from the core of the chasm itself, a shadow that seemed to have weight and presence.

With hot air blowing past our faces, whipping our hair back, we were still hoisted in the air, still flying across the crazy distance.

And with a deafening boom that echoed across the area, I landed hard on the other side, my feet hitting the ground in front of the gate.

This... was way better than simply teleporting there, I thought to myself as I set Shelly down and watched her knees wobble.

Crossing over such a small chasm with raw physical strength was the bare minimum that any being here could achieve.