Night Ranger

Nighttime, on the main road outside River Shore City.

Marvin was walking alone when he suddenly felt sorrowful.

‘I was also able to feel that grief…’

‘Even though Anthony died as I expected, how could I feel sorrowful?’

Marvin stood motionless for a moment, slowly recovering.

He was somewhat shocked. He wasn’t shocked because of the grief.

Ordinary people may not know what that grief meant but he knew. As one of the few active legendary wizards alive, Anthony had always been the most active in suppressing evil powers and was also the strongest one.

Regardless if it was the twin snakes cult or the lower planes evil spirits, they couldn’t do as they pleased because of Anthony’s Eye of the Bright Sun.

That righteous legendary wizard was East Coast’s protector. He was also one of the highest members of the south wizard alliance.

This kind of person couldn’t be described with a few words.

His death definitely was a loss for Feinan Continent. And the good people would feel some kind of power and feel some kind of grief.

This was just the first one.

Because this was first legend’s death since the Great Calamity started brewing.

Under the gods’ conspiracy, the deaths of mankind’s wizards would definitely not be just a few. From Marvin memories of those shocking events, everything would happen one by one.

It wouldn’t be long before Anthony’s death spread around, and at that time, all evil powers would begin to gain ground.

It was the eve of the rise of the [World-ending Twin Snakes], the [Plague God] cult, the [Living Puppets]... Everything was just beginning.

All of Feinan would sink into chaos.

Wizards would lose their strength and be reduced to monsters. The mortals in their suffering would start to pray to the gods.

This was the goal of those high and mighty gods!

Of course, there was still the 4th Fate Tablet.

Everything couldn’t be stopped. The only thing Marvin could do was not to go against heaven but rather set up a relatively safe place in this chaotic world.

That was quite difficult!

But as a former legendary player, Marvin never backed down from a challenge.

Fate made him come to this world. He had a deal with the body’s owner, so he had to acheive it

This was Marvin’s pledge to the soul, and because of that, he needed to defend his territory with his life.

...

‘Could it be that I’m also kind-hearted?’

Marvin gazed at the black cloud floating in the east, somewhat laughing at himself.

Heavy rain would fall from that blackness for several days, and rainfall would hit all of the East Coast.

This was a warning to the Feinan’s people of the death of the legendary wizard Anthony. A disaster was approaching.

Marvin adjusted his breath and took advantage of the darkness to accelerate.

The main road was quite deserted. Very few people would walk alone at night. Also, this main road was actually built by the first lord of White River Valley, Marvin’s grandfather. Obviously, there weren’t many people taking that road.

Ever since the fall of White River valley, no caravan would go there. After all, who would do business with gnolls?

Marvin’s dark vision was quite poor but luckily, the moon was out tonight. He was able to see quite far because of Mark of the Moon.

He sped up his lonely journey and because he didn’t want to leave any traces, he decided to rest during the day and move out during the night.

In the evening, two days later, he finally arrived at the border of White River Valley.

…...

Northern Mine.

Strong winds blew on the grove of beech trees while the heavy rain was approaching. The main road ended here, splitting up in many narrow paths.

Marvin used stealth to travel through the grove.

He arrived in front of a crossroad and noticed a road sign.

Marvin was quite familiar with this sign. It showed the way to the northern mine and the castle in the south.

But right now, something was painted in green on top of it!

A series of ugly looking words replaced the original words.

‘Gnoll language! Fuck! These beasts!’

Marvin clenched his teeth.

Even if he wasn’t very proficient in the language, he could still more or less guess that the words on the road sign meant Gnoll Territory.

Move one step further and you would end up on the gnolls’ property!

That’s right, the attack on Marvin’s castle was definitely from a gnoll tribe or else, considering the castle’s defense, it wouldn’t have fallen so quickly.

It’s just that, from that time of the night, with so much confusion, the innocent youth wasn’t able to leave Marvin too much useful information.

He had to personally investigate.

But he already encountered a troublesome situation no further than the crossroad.

There were gnolls sentinels.

They were common sentinels. Two fighters and two archers, carrying very rough weapons. One look was enough to figure out that they crafted them themselves. Skillful human weaponsmiths were able to make slingshot more powerful than gnoll bows.

He wasn’t worried about those gnoll sentinels. The important thing were those six tall shadows behind them.

Marvin used Inspect and his pupils couldn’t help but constrict.

Mutated Aardwolf¹!

A level 4 beast with hp reaching 200 and melee fighting ability comparable to fierce tigers.

These mutated aardwolves were the main force in the previous the attack on the castle. The castle’s defensive army, tried to defend themselves with their shields but those were easily ripped apart.

Marvin himself was almost bitten to death by a mutated aardwolf!

If not for Anna saving him...

...

Marvin knew that gnolls could tame aardwolves.

But this kind of mutated aardwolf wasn’t the kind that gnolls could usually tame.

‘Could that pack of gnolls have a rare beast tamer?’ Marvin guessed.

He was now facing a difficult problem.

The road in front was blocked and if he wanted to move ahead, he had to get rid of those sentinels.

But he had come to scout this time and not to alert his enemies.

He needed to know the ins and outs of the gnoll tribe, their fighting forces, their leader’s level and so on.

This needed to be done quietly.

These sentinels and aardwolves were hindering his path.

This was quite troublesome.

Marvin hesitated, and then finally crouched behind a beech tree and used stealth.

‘Time to be patient.’

...

Marvin waited in the cold wind for two hours.

The rainstorm started wildly falling from the sky.

This was a spell cast by the legendary wizard Anthony before his death, using his own life, to admonish Feinan’s evil creatures.

And as pointed out by Marvin, gnolls were very scared of rainwater. If their fur was drenched, it would be very difficult to dry it and would rot under the action of parasites.

As a result, they would generally hide in any cavity they could find.

And as expected, once it began to rain, those sentinels began to shriek and escaped to a cavity in the hill not too far from there.

They were also followed by those six mutated aardwolves.

Marvin was delighted. He used stealth and under the cover of the rain, silently walked forward.

...

After going through the first checkpoint, the rest of the road was smooth.

Marvin stealthily went to the northern mine.

He discovered that those gnolls were totally clueless about mining. After Marvin evacuated the miners, their defense only had around twenty fighter gnolls and two aardwolves One of them seemed to be a Level 3 Officer.

‘Seems like their leader put the main defensive forces at my castle. To have so many aardwolves, this is definitely a medium sized tribe with three hundred gnolls or more. No wonder that we were defeated that night. The destructive power of that kind of mutated aardwolf is too high. It would take 2nd rank human experts to be able to deal with them.’

Marvin put a reminder in his heart: he needed to deal with these aardwolves if he wanted to take back his territory.

After all, they could just surround and cut ordinary the gnoll fighters into pieces.

But right now he was more interested in the one that bred those mutated aardwolves.

Ordinary aardwolves were level 2 beasts, and normally one aardwolf would appear in community of ten or more gnolls. To be able to train aardwolves to level 4, their master must be quite extraordinary.

‘It might be a ranger advanced class – Tamer?’

Marvin wasn’t sure. But those mutated aardwolves’ master was most likely the leader.

That kind of powerful guy had no reason to not be the leader.

He had been thinking for a long time, and the shadow of the castle in the valley could already been seen in the distance.

Heavy rain kept pouring down but Marvin didn’t advance without thinking, as he knew of a secret entrance to the castle. However, the road there was quite slippery. One wrong step and he would slip into the abyss.

He needed to wait for the rain to subside.

Therefore he planned to go to the castle hill and look for a farmhouse that hadn’t been occupied by the gnolls to temporarily live in.

He cautiously avoided the patrolling gnolls’ line of sight, picked a house that felt familiar and rushed in.

The house’s owner should have evacuated to the countryside. Marvin would only live here temporarily so it shouldn’t be a problem.

But shockingly, a shriek could be heard from the house’s backyard.

‘That was a girl’s voice!’

____________________

1 - Short explanation – The aardwolf is actually a an insectivorous mammal belonging to the same family as the hyena. Aardwolf mean earth wolf in dutch and afrikaans.