Author: 冬瓜茶仙人 / Winter Melon Tea Immortal
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 38
Eugene’s dark guess was entirely driven by his survival instinct.
Because he couldn’t swim. If he really got thrown into the water like a fish expelling its young, sinking was the only outcome he could think of.
Fortunately, the Darby Belly Fish didn’t take them on an impromptu gastrointestinal tour. After compressing them to their limits, like dried fish, it suddenly inflated them again and spat them out like bubbles.
But for Eugene, the situation didn’t improve, as the Darby Belly Fish chose to drop its passengers into the water, and it was a very turbulent river.
“Ahhhhhhhhh—ow ow ow ow!” Eugene frantically grabbed the nearest person, who roared back, “Calm down!”
Eugene grabbed Shivers’ beautiful blonde hair as if it were a rope. Shivers was desperate to check on the Duke and wished he could knock Eugene out to end the chaos. But in such circumstances, Eugene displayed remarkable potential, clinging tightly to Shivers, who could usually toss him aside with a punch, and began to drag him down too.
It was unclear why the Darby Belly Fish thought this was an ideal drop-off point. Just as Shivers was nearly drowned by Eugene’s panicked actions, Dwight was also caught off guard by the sudden rapid currents, but he was better off than Shivers, as the shopkeeper next to him wasn’t a panicking liability.
Charlie seemed to have been mentally prepared for the Darby Belly Fish’s lack of consideration. After a brief adjustment, he calmed down and tried to spot the direction of the riverbank in the water. After struggling to swim a few miles, the two barely managed to reach a gentler bay and eventually clambered onto the riverbank. The Duke of Brandenburg nearly rolled his eyes back in exhaustion.
The rabbit-headed shopkeeper, panting, dragged Dwight ashore and looked up at the night sky. The stars were cold and bright, telling him it was probably after midnight. There was silence in the nearby bushes, and not even the sound of insects could be heard.
“Columbus—and Shivers…” the shopkeeper coughed while fumbling in his soaked coat. “I didn’t manage to grab them in the water.”
“Shivers is a good swimmer,” the Duke said irritably. “The tin soldier can’t drown. That little wretch is the real danger. He grew up inland.”
Charlie suddenly laughed. “You’re worried about Eugene?”
Dwight said, “I’m worried he’ll drag Shivers down with him and drown.”
The shopkeeper shrugged and went back into the river.
“What’s wrong with you?” the Duke exclaimed, astonished, as he watched the rabbit-headed shopkeeper head back into the water.
Charlie seemed to be searching for something in the water. A small halo of light gradually appeared in his hand, looking from behind like he was holding a mini lantern over the water surface, but apart from a sodden piece of wood, nothing else seemed to flow downstream.
Dwight’s cloak was waterproof, but the clothes inside were soaked through after being washed into the river. It was heavy and cold, hanging on his body. He was about to angrily tell the shopkeeper to stop wasting energy trying to fish people out of the river when a cool night breeze brushed past him with an unusual rustle.
The Duke, whose senses were quite sharp, perked up his ears immediately. “?!”
The forest at night was never quiet. By concentrating, one could hear the rustling of rodents foraging, the chirps of crickets, spinnerets, and unknown insects on the leaves, and even the sound of snakes slowly sliding over the grass. But among these subtle sounds, he seemed to hear a discordant scraping noise.
It sounded like the crisp sound of metal or wood colliding—the sound of human-made objects. As he tensed his body to listen again, the noise vanished.
The Duke turned his head, annoyed to find the rabbit-headed shopkeeper still looking around.
“Stop looking,” Dwight whispered.
Charlie was startled, and the light in his hand immediately went out.
Not completely beyond help.
Dwight’s anger slightly subsided, and he gestured to the shopkeeper, who was approaching him again.
Charlie turned his face to listen, his long ears twitching. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“It seems I can’t rely on you.” Dwight scoffed. “What’s the use of having such big ears?”
“Ears or not, I’m still human,” the shopkeeper said patiently. To avoid alarming whatever or whoever was in the forest, they spoke in hushed tones, nearly pressing against each other. If someone had seen them under the moonlight and against the backdrop of the river sounds, they would look like lovers eloping in the night, whispering secrets.
Dwight also realized the atmosphere was a bit strange and slightly distanced himself. “Who would be in the forest in the middle of the night?”
Charlie was tempted to crack a joke, “Aren’t we the same?” but he sensed that the Duke was in a foul mood, and joking might lead to a prompt execution right there.
“There are only two kinds of people who like the moonlit night and the forest,” the shopkeeper said seriously as they quietly walked deeper into the forest. “Werewolves and witches. Which do you think it is?”
While this might sound somewhat casual, Dwight knew the rabbit-headed shopkeeper was serious.
In Pennigra, there were almost no wild werewolves left. This difficult-to-control race, prone to losing their sanity, had been semi-exiled since the last century. They were pushed by the allied forces deep into uninhabited areas of the plains, given territories with nominal self-rule but effectively isolated from other races. Charlie couldn’t judge whether this sweeping policy was correct, but it indeed prevented the scenario where physically weaker races became prey to werewolves, providing a relatively stable chip for Pennigra’s non-violent development.
But now they were on the Doran continent, where no powerful federal or national control existed. According to some continent-crossing rangers, some kingdoms on Doran even incorporated werewolves into their armies due to their physical strength and combat prowess, making them part of their competitive drive for imperial power. Whether exiled or enlisted, one thing was indisputable: werewolves are extremely dangerous.
That’s not to say that witches weren’t dangerous. They were often quite mad, but at least they didn’t have the massive bodies, sharp fangs, and claws like wild beasts. Moreover, most legends about witches and forests had a somewhat mischievous aspect… The most common belief was that witches set up magical circles in the forest based on the moon phases and lit bonfires to brew potions and summon demons. Various demons would come to the human world aided by the light of the bonfires, engaging wantonly with the witches. If a lost soul stumbled upon this wicked ritual, they would be drawn in, and by sunrise, the witches and demons would have left, leaving behind only a dried-up crucible, unburned logs, various lizard skins, cat skulls, and the desiccated corpses of the unfortunate passersby.
Being a man himself, Dwight certainly understood what the shopkeeper meant—no matter how terrifying the tale, lust always came first, a common trait among all male creatures. But these two options were only a choice between bad and worse. In their current soaked condition and with only the two of them, even the Duke couldn’t proudly claim, “As a man, of course, I must face the beast and fight for glory until death”—that would be just pretty nonsense.
Nor did it mean he was keen to witness witches and demons getting up to mischief in the pitch-black forest. The voluptuous witches of popular imagination were mostly a product of worldly lust. From the witch incidents he’d seen, long periods of isolation and strange alchemical experiments had made many witches look stranger than the demons themselves. Those who could use magic to maintain their youth and beauty were the well-known grand witches. A witch of that status might be wealthier than a noble with lands, hardly likely to run into a small forest to make bodily sacrifices to lowly demons… Anyone who took such stories seriously was surely a fool.
The rabbit-headed shopkeeper’s hearing wasn’t physiologically weak, but it was the Duke of Brandenburg, often derided for being more sensitive than an elven girl, who could catch the faintest noises in the air, leading them towards the source of the sound. The deeper they went into the forest, the more they felt something was off—dim lights flickered through the sparse and dense tree trunks. They stopped some distance from the light source and listened quietly.
It was definitely not werewolves.
At this distance, any werewolf with their keen sense of smell would have detected them.
As for witches… it seemed not to be the case either. They didn’t smell burning potions. Instead, a faint scent of blood mingled into the air.
“Thieves?” Dwight frowned.
In areas without town jurisdiction and under noble rule, encountering thieves wasn’t unusual, which was also why civilian mobility rates were so low across continents. Travelers and merchant caravans that strayed from major roads could easily become targets for thieves, often meeting untimely ends in foreign lands. The common practice among these highway robbers was to kill for loot and then dispose of the bodies in swamps or throw them off cliffs. The sounds coming from the forest suggested digging, but without voices, it indeed resembled the actions of thieves disposing of bodies by night.
If they were just thieves, there wasn’t much to be afraid of, since the “entry requirements” for this “profession” weren’t high. A starving farmer could take up arms by night. If Eugene hadn’t met Charlie and his group, his life might well have led him to join a band of petty thieves. If they were dealing with that sort, the Duke, handsome and fierce in a fight, thought he could take on five single-handedly.
That said, creating complications wasn’t Dwight’s style. He considered quietly retreating before alerting them, but then noticed the rabbit-headed shopkeeper eagerly craning his neck forward, as if the digging and body-disposing were something worth observing.
What is wrong with this guy? Dwight thought irritably.
Sensing the Duke’s change in mood, Charlie turned around. The meager moonlight filtered through the branches seemed to fall into his large, round eyes.
“Look.” The shopkeeper’s voice was very low. Even so close, the Duke barely caught it.
They moved closer, peering carefully through the branches and bushes.
There were about two or three people, all in dark clothing. If not for a lantern hung on a half-dead hawthorn tree, even an owl would have trouble spotting them. At that moment, they had dug a shallow square pit from a small clearing among the trees, and a skinny figure began dragging something that looked like flour sacks from a donkey cart.
Charlie’s eyelids twitched involuntarily.
The shape and weight were clearly body bags.
One.
Two.
Three…
The lantern swayed in the night wind, causing the scent of blood to grow stronger in the air. Hunkering down behind the bushes, Charlie and Dwight watched their actions, their breathing growing heavy.
The number of bodies far exceeded the level of ordinary thieves. If not for the crude murmurs intermittently mixing with the night wind and the sleazy actions that even the night couldn’t hide, they might have thought they were witnessing a well-trained mercenary group.
But these men were almost within reach of Charlie and Dwight and still completely unaware, probably feeling that nothing but owls roamed the forest at night. They even began chatting as they filled the grave.
“So many again.”
“I need a strong drink when we get back, or I’ll have nightmares.”
“Come on, it’s not your first time…”
“Doesn’t make it any easier. What exactly is the master thinking, believing in that witch’s…”
Witch.
Dwight instinctively moved, glancing at Charlie, but the rabbit-headed shopkeeper was still staring at the group, seemingly unfazed by the content of the conversation.
His companion became anxious. “Shut up!”
He hissed lowly. “How dare you—”
The smaller man paused. “There’s no one else here right now.”
Another skinny man finished covering the last shovelfuls of earth. “I’ve heard she has many eyes and ears. Rats, trees, crows… They all listen to our words.”
“Stop talking,” the smaller man urged hurriedly. “I’m just scared. How many times have we been to this forest? And that old woman, where does she find so many—”
“We’re not allowed to talk about this,” the other man said, trying to keep the peace. “Load up your shovel. We’re heading back now.”
The author has something to say:
Actually, whether it’s “expelled” or regurgitated, it’s all washed in water anyway.
But it seems like everyone wanted to see it “expelled”. How naughty.
Kinky Thoughts:
Uh… One way is less gross than the other.
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