The voyage from White Tower City-state to the Emerald Crown was not long.
It only took one day to reach the waters that led into the Shadow Mountains, but the ships had to navigate that eerie dark waterway cautiously for a full four days to reach Quel'Thalas, the elven city-state closest to the Shadow Mountains.
So if you wanted to cross that stretch of water safely, the ship owner had to be willing to pay for an experienced old captain.
The captain at the helm now had been plying the dark river for at least thirty years, his temples white, yet he could, with visibility less than three yards, judge whether something ahead was a reef or a shoal just by the echoes of water striking the hull.
What surprised Chen Yu a little was that the extraordinary professionals escorting this merchant ship weren’t the human old captain but an elven aide wearing a deep-blue wizard hat.
This elf wasn’t the kind of academy mage who only taught theory on a lecture platform. From the calluses on his fingers and the old scars across his body, it was clear he had escorted ships along this dark river many times.
No wonder the elven passengers had privately complained about the high fare earlier.
With extraordinary professionals as escorts, a higher price was expected; certainly better than those old wrecks sunk to the riverbed that nobody cared about.
As the ship gradually entered the Shadow Mountains area, black mist began to spread, and visibility plunged from several yards down to just the orange glow of the bow’s magic lamp.
Some sunken ships still looked relatively new, their hull shapes faintly recognizable; others had rotted for years, hulls pitted by shadow corrosion, decks littered with unknown crew skeletons, some finger bones still ringed with gold rings left untouched.
There were adventurer teams at the riverbank who specialized in salvaging valuables from wrecks; they rowed their small boats past, occasionally diving to retrieve debris from the riverbed.
Sure enough, wherever danger lurked, adventurers were never far away.
After all, the greater the risk, the bigger the payoff.
Salvaging a haul from these sunken merchantmen often yielded far more than clearing monsters around the city-state’s outskirts.
However, the danger in this stretch of water was different from other places.
As time passed and the ship sailed deeper into the Shadow Mountains, Chen Yu sensed abnormal changes in the nearby shadows through his Shadow Perception.
Outside this area, shadows were just insubstantial projections—empty to step on, intangible to touch—requiring a professional’s contract as a medium to interact with reality.
But the shadows here were different.
The boundary between shadow and reality was slowly fading.
What had been nothing more than an inverted hull reflected on the water surface twisted its direction on its own, churning up spray as if it had come alive.
Just now he had seen an adventurer suddenly ensnared by shadow tentacles that burst up from beneath the water, his ankles wrapped so quickly he couldn't even scream before he was dragged under.
Chen Yu sank his divine sense into the water, tracing the tentacles back to their roots, and discovered they weren’t limbs of some shadow creature at all. They looked more like extensions coming out of the mountain’s shadows.
Wherever there was shadow on this mountain, it was alive.
Chen Yu grew curious about how Count Bran had once managed to reside within such dangerous Shadow Mountains. Rumor said he even had a territory inside—whether that was true, Chen Yu could not say.
Night eventually fell slowly.
In that stretch of water, one didn’t care for day or night; the sky always remained dim, almost entirely covered by shadow.
At that moment the captain ordered the ship to dock and retreat, to avoid being drawn by the shadows beyond the river.
The hull edged toward a shallower channel along the mountain face, oars sped up, the blades making a faint sound as they entered the water.
The ship’s dim magic lamp flickered as they moved through the shallows, casting shadows on the deck that leapt and twisted like a snarling monster.
At that time someone quietly slipped into the corner of shadow.
It was Salemir, the potion-maker among the three half-elves.
He half-kneelted in the shadow and poured a bottle of Shadow Dust into the river. The powder blended with the surface and quickly spread into a long, inky streak that would not dissipate.
Chen Yu suddenly felt the whole ship tremble slightly.
“Not good! Shadow creatures are attacking the ship!” A sailor on duty shouted first, drawing his scimitar and flipping over the rail to check the damage to the hull.
The elven aide-mage took his staff and hurried down the deck.
Seeing the aide-mage’s attention drawn by the commotion, Salemir quietly withdrew from the shadows and retraced his path back down to the lower passenger berths.
From his actions it looked as if he intended to cut a hole in the hull.
But the ship’s draft was shallow; such a hole wouldn’t cause river water to rush in and sink the ship. Clearly these three half-elves were restrained, not blinded by hatred.
Elsewhere, Orion and Natalis’s plan was proceeding surprisingly smoothly.
They had followed the same passenger corridor Salemir had scouted to the door of their target.
Seizing his weariness, Natalis blew a soporific mist through the crack in the door.
The Sage's Son didn’t notice anything amiss; thinking he was merely tired, he slumped forward onto the table.
Once there was no more movement inside, Natalis rubbed her hands in anticipation, twisted the doorknob off with her bare hands, then strode into the room and shoved the Sage's Son into a coarse sack she had prepared.
She slung the sack over her shoulder and silently headed to the aft compartment to meet Orion.
Orion led the way warily in front. He didn’t even frown at the sound of Natalis ripping off the doorknob with her bare hands; he was clearly used to the disproportionate brute strength this petite-looking half-elf girl possessed.
Chen Yu only then learned that this one was a warrior.
Of all things, she hadn’t learned any finesse — she trained raw brawn just like Sekashi.
Their plan had executed smoothly through most steps. Salemir had already used a corrosive potion in the aft compartment to eat an irregular hole just large enough for a person to slide through.
Outside the hole was the dark river; the nearest shore lay barely a dozen yards away—a few seconds’ swim.
Orion carried the hostage and Natalis to the agreed-upon compartment on time. The three were about to leave through the hole in the prearranged order.
But their luck didn’t hold.
Footsteps suddenly sounded at the cabin entrance.
Salemir reacted first: he shoved the remaining corrosive vial into his pouch, crouched, and gripped the dagger handle strapped inside his boot.
Orion took the hostage and melted into the shadows, his hand already on the hilt of the short blade at his small of the back.
A white-haired elder elf entered at the doorway, the warding magic on his staff illuminating his features.
He was an older elf but showed no signs of decay—smooth, firm skin and sharply pointed ears, the classic appearance of a pure-blood high elf.
His gaze swept the dim cabin.
“You are indeed up to something. So another trio of half-elves has snuck aboard.”
He fixed his eyes on Natalis at the front. “I have no interest in the elders’ pure-blood rhetoric. You can leave now and no one will pursue you, but set your companion down and drop that gentleman he’s carrying.”
There was no sharp interrogation in his gaze; instead there was pity.
That pity matched his indifference to pure-blood ideology. He didn’t believe half-elves were wrong to exist, yet he knew these short-lived hybrids had no chance before the Ancient Tree Council.
Compared to the elves’ long lifespans, the bloodline curse forced these half-elves to live only twenty or thirty years, sometimes not even finishing childhood before they faded away. They couldn’t possibly fight the Council.
He felt powerless to change that reality and didn’t want to make things harder for these kids.
Natalis and Orion exchanged a glance—they obviously had no intention of giving in.
Natalis suddenly produced a great hammer from nowhere, raising it with both hands and threatening fiercely, “Don’t come closer, or I’ll smash this whole ship with one swing.”
The white-haired elf stopped, as expected.
What stood before him wasn’t a reckless little girl but a bona fide extraordinary warrior. Even relying purely on strength, one strike could easily sink half the ship.
Natalis backed away slowly when she saw her threat had worked.
Salemir pulled the dagger from his boot and clamped it in his teeth before being the first to hoist himself out of the hole, sliding into the icy black water.
Orion shouldered the hostage again and followed close behind.
Natalis was last. As she jumped out she politely offered an apology, “Sorry for disturbing your rest, Sir Elf.”
The white-haired elf reached the hole and looked at the ripples still spreading on the water’s surface, then sighed.
The people were polite, but the issue wasn’t about disturbed rest.
He intended to turn and go up on deck to support the ship, but his foot hadn’t even cleared the threshold before a violent shake nearly sent him sprawling.
Looking toward the ship’s breach, he saw the entire water surface go mad.
Countless shadow tentacles thicker than the mast poles surged from the water. They smashed into both sides of the hull, throwing wood chips and spray into the air, and the defensive runes along the gunwales overloaded and shattered like glass.
The hull was wrenched out of the shallows and dragged toward the center of the channel. The captain’s shouts mixed with the sound of mast snapping into one chaotic roar.
Orion and the others had not swum far when they were ensnared by the same shadow tentacles bursting up from below.
“What’s going on? How could there be such shadow creatures here!” Orion shouted through the splashing water.
Salemir had just hacked the tentacle wrapped around his ankle and broke the surface to gasp half a breath, then croaked, “I don’t know. The reports didn’t mention this at all. All previous passage records at this spot were normal—even last week’s daily merchant logs show no anomalous encounters!”
“Our little bit of Shadow Dust wouldn’t pique something this huge!”
“Never mind that, run!” Natalis tore the thick tentacle from around Orion’s waist with both hands, then spun and hauled Salemir out of the water.
She shoved the sack into Orion’s arms and pushed the two of them, swimming desperately for the shore.
The shadow creatures apparently had no intention of letting the whole ship and its passengers go.
Countless even thicker arms erupted from the water at once and heaved the merchant ship upward.
All the hull’s protective formations flared blue and then shattered like glass.
The hull was toppled onto the pebbled slope along the bank and grounded; the mast lay broken on the ground, the half-ship perched crookedly on the incline.
The monster at last surfaced its full form—
An absurdly enormous shadow octopus.
Its head remained hidden in the black mist seeping from the inner layers of the mountain wall; only two massive, barely defined eyes emitted a cold, faint blue light from within the dark vapor.
The three extraordinary professionals aboard the ship could no longer afford to care about the three half-elves who had escaped.
The elven aide-mage stood on the tilted bow, raining volley after volley of Holy Light spells onto the octopus’s arms.
The white-haired elf rushed up from the cabin, weaving a sustained harm spell of dark words with both hands, coordinating with the two mages on the bow to try and end the assault quickly.
On the riverbank, Orion steadied the hostage in the sack and looked back at the stranded ship.
The sailors used oars and hastily removed planks to fend off the octopus’s small tendrils. The captain had been flung by the earlier upheaval and struck his head against the mast base, knocked senseless.
The three mages were also struggling. Among them, only the aide-mage could channel the Holy Light spells that suppressed shadow.
Orion lowered his voice and urged, “We should get out of here!”
Salemir wiped river mud from his knees and shook his head.
“No. If we run, the story that half-elves attacked a merchant ship will spread through White Tower City-state.”
“No one will care about the facts. They’ll only care that half-elves did something again, which will make things harder for our kin still held in shelters.”
“Hey, that’s easy.”
Natalis sprang up from a pile of river stones, yanking her hammer out from where she’d stuck it into the mud and slinging it over her shoulder with the casual air of someone hearing about a bar brawl and going to gawk.
“You two go. Take this guy back. I’m going to help them with this octopus now.”
“I’ll settle the bill for that doorknob I broke. Those elves will be so moved they’ll cry.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Gripping the hammer with one hand she grabbed the anchor chain hanging down the side of the beached hull, kicked once, and bounded up onto the slanted deck.
The white-haired elf was maintaining a spell suppressing the octopus’s main arm near the hull breach and felt a twinge of shame—if he hadn’t gone soft and let those half-elves go, perhaps the ship wouldn’t have been overturned.
As he debated whether to change his stance toward half-elves, a small shadow tendril silently lashed from behind him.
He turned to strike back, then heard the dull thud of a blunt instrument striking flesh.
When he looked back, the half-elf girl had somehow returned, hammer sheathed, and casually ripped a small tendril off one of her arms and tossed it into the river.
Meeting the white-haired elf’s gaze, she puffed her chest out and said, “We didn’t flip your ship, so don’t blame us.”
“I’ll help you take care of this big one. When we’re done, don’t go around badmouthing us half-elves.”
The white-haired elf was torn and didn’t know what to say. He resumed chanting and focused on the rampaging shadow octopus.
But the octopus’s body was so enormous that while the four extraordinary professionals could, in the skirmish, cut off some arms, they still couldn’t inflict any substantial damage to the octopus’s core.
Every arm blasted to pieces by Holy Light would quickly absorb shadow from the mountain and regenerate to its original form. It looked like the fight would continue for some time.
Finally, some spectator lurking in the dark grew bored of waiting.
A beam of golden light suddenly ruptured the hull and shot out, streaking toward the shadow octopus.
Before anyone could react, the golden beam swelled and flashed past the octopus—
The monster was cut cleanly in two.
It let out a mournful sound. All its arms instinctively tried to pull the two halves back together to rejoin, but the wound seemed sealed by some mysterious force; no matter how they pressed together they could not fuse.
After repeated writhing and collapse, the shadow creature finally lost control of its remaining arms. The two massive halves fell to opposite sides, crashing at the interface between water and bank, sending up towering splashes.
“What spell was that?”
“Are there more extraordinary professionals here?”
All eyes turned back to the ship’s breached hole.
Then they saw a round, bouncing shape pop out from inside.
Wait...….
Everyone froze.
A slime?!