Chapter 1230: The Furnace Outpost

The smell of blood was very light as the chaotic environment in the forest had covered up most of the stench. Hao Ren knew that if it had not been for his demigod physique preventing the chaotic energy from interfering with his sensory perception, he would not have been able to smell out the blood.

Veronica was next to Hao Ren, but she could not smell the stench in the air.

The princess and the knights rejoiced after treading through the land of the Chaos; they finally saw the Light of Order. Knights, like everyone else, were mere humans. They could feel tired and depressed. It was their faith all this while that kept them coming this far. The glimmer in the distance had given them hope, from which the exhausted soldiers drew their strength. They were already close to the outpost of Taros.

For those trekking in the realm of Chaos, seeing the outpost was akin to returning home. That was the mark of the World of Order.

But Hao Ren had to pour cold water on their sanguinity. “Something is not right there.”

“What’s wrong?” Veronica was excited, but she did not lose her calmness and judgment. When the Ancient Guardian alerted her, she kept her mind steady. “What do you see?”

She knew that the Ancient Guardian possessed a unique power to perceive things that the ordinary people could not in the realm of Chaos. She did not doubt it.

“It smells acrid, raw. It is of blood,” Hao Ren said. “It comes from the direction of the outpost.”

Veronica’s brows knit together. “How is it possible? The furnace in the outpost is still burning, no servants of the Chaos could get inside. If it is the Festered, they would not be able to get past the guards.”

Veronica’s confidence made sense. “The Servants of Chaos could not form into the physical body under the illumination of the Light of Order, which is an indisputable truth in Collow. Though the Festered could rush into the Light of Order, they are just like a moth to a flame. Maybe they are a threat to civilians, but they won’t be a match to the veteran soldiers in the outpost. So the common sense here is: as long as the furnace is still burning, the outpost is safe. No matter how deadly the fighting on the outside was, the monsters would not be able to defeat the enchantment of the goddess.

So she made another conjecture. “Maybe there is a battle near the outpost.”

Hao Ren shook his head slightly without saying anything. But he knew that Veronica’s conjecture was not logical.

In the realm of Chaos, dissipation was shockingly fast, especially in the case of living tissues. The bodies in the battlefield, if without the shroud of the sacred object of the Order, would decompose in just a dozen minutes. So combat in the realm of Chaos usually did not call for the aftermath cleanup as everything would dissipate before other units arrived.

If there had been a fight outside the outpost, no stench of blood could have remained.

Hao Ren was not the only one who could think of this fact; Veronica had probably realized it. But the princess was not willing to accept it. She wanted to believe that there had been a fierce battle outside the outpost rather than that the outpost of the kingdom had fallen just like that.

But Hao Ren’s warning still achieved its intended purpose. Veronica ordered everyone to raise their guard. The old knight Morian led in the front as the group edged closer to the furnace outpost.

As the maneuvered past the old trees and bushes, the entire furnace outpost was within view. It was a small station, protected with a wall constructed with stones and wood. But the wall had no meaningful protective effect against the monsters in the realm of the Chaos. It was mainly for blocking the Festered which occasionally showed up. Runes glowing in a faint light were on the wall, but those runes seemed inactive. On the inside, three tall wooden sentry towers could monitor the surroundings for any movements in any direction. Other than that, there were only a few two-story wooden buildings, which should be facilities such as barracks and warehouses.

A beam of light, not bright, shone up from the center of the outpost into the sky above. That was the light of the furnace, in the heart of the outpost and the pillar on which every installation in the outpost could function in the Chaos. The kingdom was spending a fortune to maintain these outposts. More than eight-tenths of the cost was to keep the miniaturized furnace burning. In this place away from the Order, the furnace depended on the expensive magic fuel and blessed holy items, which were not easy to obtain, to sustain the fire.

Veronica’s heart sank when she saw the outpost. She knew Hao Ren had got it right: something terrible had happened in the outpost.

Except for the light column of the furnace and of the rune on some permanently running installations, all lights in the outpost were out. Even the Light of Order of the furnace was particularly dim: smaller furnace required manual fuel feed to keep the flame up. Dimming light meant no one had been there to fuel up the furnace at least for several days.

A faint metallic smell of blood drifted into their nostrils. This time, Veronica had smelled it.

The princess drew her sword and used a magic spell to mask the glow of the blade. She then ordered the standard-bearer to stay in place while slowly sneaked up to the front of the outpost.

Hao Ren watched as Veronica stopped at the entrance. He clenched his spear and prepared to back her up.

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Veronica gestured with her hand from afar. She meant it was safe; there was no scent of the Chaos.

“The door is locked.” Hao Ren went up and gave the heavy door, wrapped in copper skin, a little push. “There is no sign that the door is damaged.”

Veronica nodded. “The door is locked from the inside, which means the commander of the outpost has ordered a lockdown before things get out of hand. Perhaps they have noticed something.”

“But things have still gone wrong.” Hao Ren pressed his hand on the door, which seemed not moving a bit. “Shall I?” Hao Ren looked at Veronica.

For a moment, Veronica did not catch what Hao Ren meant. But she quickly understood. “Ahh, forced entry? It’s okay, but first, let me get a battering ram—”

“Bang—”

The metal-clad door, along with the walls within two meters of the door frame was ripped apart and thrown out into the forest far away.

Veronica and the knights were stunned. Oh, goddess! Is this still a human? What did the ancients eat that gave them so much strength? She exclaimed in her mind.

But Hao Ren had no time for Veronica’s strange stare because when he saw the situation inside, he froze.

All the soldiers of the outpost were here. They fell on the open space between the barracks and the tower. Dark blood that had dried up covered and dyed the ground in red. The stench was suffocating. But there seemed to have no signs of a struggle.

The soldiers seemed to have been killed without resistance.

Veronica’s face turned pale. She walked into the outpost with Hao Ren, bending over to flip the body of a kingdom soldier so that he would face up. Hao Ren saw that his chest was in a mess, badly mutilated as if being ripped apart. His face twisted as if he had seen something horrible before he died.

Veronica lifted the soldier’s hands, which was covered in blood. “He scratched himself in the chest to death.”

Morian kneeled with a heavy heart. “Look at his expression; he seemed to be scared to death, literally.”

“Most of these soldiers did not wear armor,” Veronica said as she looked up and farther away. More bodies spread out in front of her eyes. The situation of the bodies was the same, and more than half of the bodies did not have armor on them. The first-tier soldiers of the Kingdom of Taros were all equipped with enchanted upper-body armor that was easy to put on and off. Soldiers only wore this armor during battle or on shift duty. The rest of the time, they were in a normal fabric military uniform. “It looks like many of them ran out from the barracks. See, some of them did not even wear shoes.”

“They got out from the barracks, and they were scared to death. They ripped their chest open before they died,” Hao Ren said as he shook his head in disbelief. “It’s too strange.”

A knight, who was exploring in front, suddenly shouted, “Your Royal Highness! We found the commander!”

The commander was also dead, but his death was different from the others.

The commander’s body was in the open space in front of the small furnace, as if he was guarding this place before he died. Wearing a full armor, on which no scratch marks found. He was still clenching his commander sword in his hand, but the sword had broken in half. On the ground around his body, crisscrossed sword marks were everywhere. It seemed that the commander had a fierce struggle with the enemy.

The cause of death of the commander was also suicide: he slit his own throat with the broken sword in his hand.

After carefully examining the body of the lower-ranking officer, Veronica determined that he killed himself in a frenzy. Beside his body, Veronica had found something.

“There are some words here!” The princess cried out.

Written with blood, it seemed that the commander must be regaining his consciousness for a moment and wrote his last words before he died. His hand must be unsteady as his handwriting was anything but neat. But it was still legible.

“There is something in the dream, it came out of our hearts…”