Chapter 35: Reappearance

Chapter 35: Reappearance

Withered yellow vines hung down, covering the decayed wooden buildings. The entire ruin seemed frozen in a dull silence, as if no one had set foot here for a very long time.

In the desolate winter environment, Alger and several sailors circled through the ruin for a while, but they still did not discover anything of value.

“Captain, one batch of adventurers after another has been here. What could possibly be left for us?” Finally, one sailor in his thirties, whose patience was wearing thin, broke the silence.

His words immediately drew agreement from the others.

“If we could find out about this place so easily, others definitely could too.”

“Exactly. We might as well go back to dealing with the Feysacians!”

“Captain, are you trying to turn this place into a base?”

Alger slowly swept his gaze over them. Under that look, the sailors stopped complaining and chose obedience.

After several seconds of silence, he finally spoke.

“I intend to use this place to ambush Feysacians.

“First, we observe the terrain and see whether it is suitable.”

With that excuse, the sailors reluctantly pulled themselves together. Before long, the group entered the deeper parts of the elven ruin.

As they walked, Alger’s spirituality was suddenly stirred. Almost instinctively, he turned his head and looked behind a giant tree.

The soil there showed faint signs of having been turned over, and it had happened no more than a year ago.

Alger withdrew his gaze and, pretending not to have noticed anything, naturally looked elsewhere.

After finishing their exploration of the elven ruin, they returned all the way to their new camp.

By then, evening was approaching. The forest grew colder and colder. After Alger and the sailors finished dinner, they left two men on patrol while the rest entered separate tents.

The bitter wind whistled through the trees, making the campfire sway. Alger, who had already intended to leave the camp in the middle of the night, suddenly heard a faint song coming from far away.

The song was ethereal and airy, like a lady softly singing, pouring out the sorrows in her heart.

Alger involuntarily recalled the past. He recalled his mother, who had passed away many years ago. He recalled the childhood in which he had suffered bullying.

Indescribable sorrow surged uncontrollably from the depths of his heart. For a few seconds, he failed to wake from it. Only then did he abruptly flip over and sit up, brows tightly furrowed as he strained to listen.

This time, he heard nothing. That melodious song seemed never to have appeared at all.

Alger narrowed his eyes, grabbed a thick jacket, draped it over himself, and stepped out of the tent to the side of the campfire.

The two sailors on night watch had just finished a round of patrol and were warming themselves there.

“Did you discover anything abnormal?” Alger asked in a low voice.

The two strong, capable sailors shook their heads at the same time.

“No.”

Alger’s brows relaxed slightly. He turned around, planning to patrol the area personally.

Just then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed something:

The two sailors were standing too close together.

If these were ordinary pirates, that would not be much of an issue. But Alger’s subordinates were sailors who had received formal training from the Church of Storms. They certainly knew that, in such an environment, patrolmen needed to maintain an appropriate distance between one another. They could not be too far apart, nor too close. They had to be able to see their companions, yet also avoid being taken down together by a single attack.

Alger calmly took two steps forward, then looked back in an apparently casual manner and asked, “Did you discover anything normal?”

He slightly altered his previous question, making it sound extremely strange.

The two sturdy sailors shook their heads without any gap between them, their expressions unchanged as they answered, “No.”

No… Alger’s expression…