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Chapter 20: Specter hunting I

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"To ghost hunting, we shall go..."

As he expected, no one came to say goodbye to him or anything. Moreover, no one will go with him. It's all him all alone.

Of course, he wouldn't be so stupid to actually believe that. He's sure someone will be watching over him like always.

'Even Rhys didn't come. I thought he would, but most likely my father didn't allow him. Independence, is that his goal in raising us?

I guess he learned from others' mistakes. Showering children in love and affection isn't always a good thing, especially when they always depend on their family to solve all their problems.'

In fact, no one was allowed to see him off. That's not something Alvion wants his children to expect.

Before going out, Val picked something quite important, something he instructed Louis to prepare, a large black bag that contains most of his achievements and other prepared things.

He of course came across many guards and servants, but none paid attention to him, neither did he.

He walked out of the castle where he found a servant already waiting for him with a horse, a gorgeous snow horse.

He took the reins from the servant and started caressing its soft silky white hair, 'Gorgeous beasts. They can almost elude one from what's out there.'

The beautiful horse offered no resistance, mainly because it's trained though Val didn't think it would be a problem otherwise. He was always good with beautiful animals.

He mounted the horse before guiding it to move at a trotting pace. The outer walls gate opened as he neared them, and with that came the cold of the north.

Val had to say goodbye to the warmness of the castle. Well, he does love the cold, so he found this change of pace wonderful, especially considering his current resistance.

He was met with the first appearance of light before sunrise, dawn, the perfect time to start his journey.

The trotting turned into cantering as he made his way towards his destination, ignoring the Helious capital city right before him. His destination is much further than that.

The surroundings of the castle are mostly safe, and even the Helious city's surroundings. The horse started galloping, their destination being the most north part of the Nathalian kingdom.

The Helious territory resides approximately in the middle west part of the kingdom. The northern part belongs to the Nathalian family.

They're the royal family of the Kingdom, but they have to delegate parts of the conquered lands to other families.

Some kingdoms use the peerage system, but the Nathalian kingdom isn't one of them.

It requires some serious achievement to be granted the right to establish a family or a clan.

The Nathalian kingdom has a long history but only two families and one clan aside from the royal family. That should testify to its difficulty.

The benefits of course make up for the difficulty. They just have to obey some rules and pay a small sum of their income but they basically have full control of their territory.

What's keeping kingdoms such as these together is power, the Nathalian family is just that powerful.

However, there is a more important reason. That's the existence of ether beasts and other ether entities, they're keeping a tight leash on the lower echelons of the world.

Val made sure to keep his distance from the forests and large jungles along the road. Basically not going too far off the established paths between cities and towns.

Snow horses like most other northern beasts are built differently, they're resistant to the cold and don't have much trouble moving through the thick blankets of snow all over the path.

Snow horses can gallop for a fairly long time before getting tired, approximately 20 minutes. It's mainly to the fact that they're ether beasts and they can gain a bit of strength from the ether.

Val carefully sensed the fain movement of the ether as it got absorbed by the snow horse. They can do so instinctively and at all times though their rate is nowhere as fast as humans.

'Nature has a way to balance things out and succeed more often than not, or perhaps it always wins, it's just that we can't see it. As the saying goes, Nature does nothing without purpose or in vain.'

'Just like the scene before me, is it nature at play or a conspiracy seeking to attract me to its clutches. Then again, what's the difference between the two.'

Thought Val as he coldly stared at the strange scene of a few ether entities he read a lot about in the midst of feeding upon the cold corpses of three grown-up men and women and another smaller corpse.

"Quite the introduction huh," Val remarked as guided the horse to slowly trot towards those vile disgusting creatures. He's still far away from them, he can see them but they have yet to detect him.

Very rarely do monsters leave the vicinity of the forests. There are enough beasts around for them to feed on, and though it's said they prefer human meat, rarely do they take the risk of leaving their natural habitat.

The trot became a slow walk after closing in on the monsters. Val brought his bow from his back and picked an arrow from the quiver.

The horse continued to walk as the distance between him and the monsters became about 420 meters.

He equipped the arrow and pulled the string then aimed towards the three occupied monsters. From the top of the horse, an arrow was released, sliding through the air towards its target.

Unfortunately, he missed, the arrow lodged itself in the snow a bit to the left of his targets, which got the monsters' attention as they screeched and started running in his direction.

However, by that point, an arrow has already been shot. The dark arrow ignored the falling snowflakes as it nailed one of the monsters' heads, going through them with little resistance.

'And just like that, I broke my previous world's world record. I guess it's not fair considering the circumstances.' Val appreciated his bow very much. It's after all a third-grade artifact.

The formations engraved on it make it so that the wind has little effect on it, and its lightness is incomprehensible. The ember it's made of is incredibly strong, with the addition of a strengthening formation creating the exquisite work before him.

He didn't let that distract him as he pulled the string for the second shot, then he released it.

The arrow finds itself going through one of the monsters' chest and exiting from behind, pulling it back with it.

"Whetehyyy!!!!" Its scream rang out through the surroundings as it stood up and ran after its fellow monster. A shot to the chest is more often than not; not enough to kill them.

However, another arrow followed right after that, nailing the forefront monster's head, then another, and another. Three more shots, just to make sure.

Many died under the instinctive cunningness of monsters. Monster hunters learn the hard way why they should always stay cautious.

Val pulled the reigns and went closer to inspect the scene, noticing another body, slightly buried in the snow. This one however is that of a horse.

'Hmm, they were traveling but encountered a monster attack. They had etherless horses, more susceptible to fear. The horses must've jumped around, throwing them off.

The father tried to fight back, and got one of them.' Val observed and ruminated his findings, noticing another body, a monster's.

'Two sets of horse tracks. They had two horses shared between the mother, the father, the grandma, and their child.

They must've been a bit poor and didn't have enough to go along a convoy. The latter usually hire guards to protect them, seekers included... No, it's likely they just wanted to save money.'

He then turned his attention to the monsters. The horrifying thing about them is that from afar they look like children with long legs and arms. The middle of their body is quite small.

Their skin is pale grey and filled with wrinkles to a terrifying degree, each and every part of their body is filled with them.

Their head is the most peculiar thing about them. They're bald with not a single hair on their entire bodies, a vertical thin eye resides in their face and a thin mouth with no lips, or perhaps they're there, the wrinkles are just hiding them.

Their irises are all pale grey, seemingly blind. Their nose is but two tiny holes above their mouths. They seemingly have no flesh, as if their wrinkly skin is tightly stuck to their bones.

"Forest Wrinklers. What're they doing out here? They have the word forest in their name for a reason after all."

Val didn't dwell on that thought for long, or if he did, he showed none of it. Across the entire thing, he stayed put on his horse, and he didn't bother searching the bodies for any valuables, not that they have any.

Instead, he lifted his left hand, on which a triangle rune could be seen. The rune seemed to gain light as Val uttered the words...