Chapter 417 – The Wilds Boundary Marker

Chapter 417 – The Wilds Boundary Marker

The Wilds boundary marker was the border sign of the Witch’s Wilds, and it would appear before every living creature that approached the boundary line.

Whether flying through the sky or walking on the ground, whether an intelligent race or a magical beast or wild animal—it was all the same.

Magical beasts and wild animals couldn’t read the text, but they could feel the marker’s targeted pressure and instinctively kept their distance.

Intelligent beings could read the common language written on it and would know that ahead lay the Witch’s Wilds, and that trespassers would be treated as enemies.

The consequences of being deemed an enemy by the Wilds boundary marker weren’t explicitly stated on the marker itself, but they were already common knowledge throughout Valen.

Anyone who knew about witches knew that trespassing into the Witch’s Wilds would get you blasted to the sky by a Firework Blast, your corpse reduced to powder.

As for intelligent beings who couldn’t read common language and hadn’t received the marker’s warning, accidentally crossing the boundary would yield the same result.

The principle of “ignorance is no excuse” held true in Valen, and with the witches as well.

So the Valen common language was indeed a necessary language for traveling across the continent.

Without understanding it, wandering aimlessly across the continent could very well lead to stumbling into forbidden territory and losing one’s life.

That said, while every intelligent race learned Valen common language, it wasn’t actually the native tongue of any race.

This was different from Earth, where the language of a powerful nation served as the international common language.

“Moira, let’s descend and try it out—let’s see how the marker moves!”

Lilith was very curious about how exactly the marker appeared before every creature that reached the border of the Wilds.

Mo Lan was curious too. Right now, the marker looked as though it had grown right out of the clouds, appearing perfectly natural.

If she hadn’t previously ridden the flying carpet through the cloud layer and learned that even Valen’s clouds were just masses of water vapor—at most containing some water elemental force—and couldn’t possibly support a stone marker, she might have believed the marker had always been on the clouds.

She guided the flying carpet toward the ground, and before they had fully landed, Vasida pointed at the surface and exclaimed, “The marker! It appeared again!”

This time, they saw it very clearly.

The marker had appeared on the ground in the blink of an eye.

They were near the Black Forest here. The clear streams, lakes, and thick meadows of Emerald Creek Plains gave way to black, wet mud and a few scattered dead weeds.

The marker sat in the muddy ground, looking just as naturally placed as before.

They looked up at the cloud—the marker on it had already vanished.

Mo Lan flew off to the side, and the marker immediately shifted to a new position.

Each time, it appeared precisely in front of them, ensuring it was always in plain sight the moment they looked up.

Rising and descending, they played with it many times. It wasn’t until the sky was nearly dark that they finally stopped.

Lilith released her Vampire Vines, Sylph brought out her Burrowing Mushrooms, and they set up their underground mushroom house camp for the night.

After learning meditation, they didn’t actually need much sleep or rest, but during their journey, they still needed some personal time for quiet study.

Nighttime had become their time for independent study and self-improvement.

Usually, after dinner, they would each return to their own tents to do their own things, but today was a bit different.

Tomorrow they would be leaving the Wilds, so they needed to discuss together what to do once they were outside. First was adjusting their mode of travel—the wilderness outside the Wilds was more dangerous than inside.

“Should we continue flying through, or walk?” Lilith asked.

“Let’s fly!” Mo Lan said. “Walking isn’t necessarily safer than flying.

“Although the Emerald Creek Plains area outside the Wilds has many flying magical beasts, on our side, near the Black Forest and under the influence of Death Force, even the grasslands are more barren. Wild animals don’t come this way much—only snakes, insects, rats, and ants are particularly rampant. Powerful large flying magical beasts shouldn’t come to this area to hunt.

“Besides, the Black Forest is nearby. After we leave the Wilds, we can enter the Black Forest’s range within just a few minutes, so we’ll need to worry about flying magical beasts even less.

“We just need to watch out for the undead creatures inside the Black Forest.

“Shrouded year-round in dense Death Force, the Black Forest has already become a paradise for undead creatures.

“But among undead creatures, there really aren’t many types that can fly. We just shouldn’t fly too high.

“Flying at roughly treetop or canopy level should be fine—that way we can also avoid the venomous insects that wander over from the Poison Mist Swamp.”

“They say there are also some Animated Blackdeath Trees hidden among the ordinary blackdeath trees in the Black Forest. They look no different to the naked eye, but once you enter their hunting range or touch them, they’ll wrap around you and drag you down to the base of the tree, burying you as fertilizer. If we fly too close to the trees, could we be attacked by Animated Blackdeath Trees?” Sylph asked.

“It’s fine. 《The Valen Complete Travel Guide》 has an entire volume dedicated to the Black Forest. It says Animated Blackdeath Trees only go after living things. You can use a feign-death spell to make your body emit Death Force, disguising yourself as an undead creature, and the Animated Blackdeath Trees won’t attack.

“Moreover, Animated Blackdeath Trees are only Advanced magical plants. Advanced Path Clearing works on them just the same—we can force them to ‘move aside’!”

Mo Lan had already carefully organized all the usable information about the Black Forest in her mind back when everyone had decided to go there to find corpses for making humanoid undead servants.

“No need to worry about the blackdeath trees then. Flying above the canopy really is more convenient—the ground environment is too complicated,” Lilith said.

Seeing that they had decided on their method of entry, Vasida whipped out a map with a flourish. “The reply letter from my mother arrived today. Here, here, here, and here—all the places marked in deep red are places my mother has visited in recent years.

“The lighter the red, the longer ago the last visit was.”

She had written to her mother originally intending to ask where in the Black Forest was good for finding humanoid corpses. She hadn’t expected her mother to send her an entire map.

Her mother had already been through the entire Black Forest.

She even went back in every few years to take another look around, checking for new corpse materials while also picking some magical plants unique to the Black Forest.

“Your mother has already been everywhere—would there still be skeletal materials left?” Lilith asked.

“Of course!” Vasida said. “My mother said she’s not so desperate as to take every rotten bone pile she finds.

“She suggests we go to the northern part of the Black Forest. Fresh corpse materials frequently appear there.

“And she also has a request.”

When Vasida mentioned this request, her expression turned somewhat peculiar.

“What request?” Mo Lan asked.

“She says if we encounter undead creatures with red cloth hanging on them, we can use the Witch language command ‘back off’ to drive them away, or say ‘Ginia’ to them and they’ll treat us as one of their own.

“But please don’t smash them to pieces or take any of their body parts, because… because those are all undead servants she could no longer afford to maintain after returning to the Wilds, so she released them into the Black Forest to roam free as her… free-range undead army…”