Free Web NovelChapter 29: Redoak Vale
The heavy, oppressive darkness had completely claimed the sovereign trade route outside Tanchapel.
Xander navigated the mud-slicked road alone, his steps silent, when a sudden, suffocating wave of profound grief slammed into his consciousness, momentarily knocking the wind from his lungs.
I felt it too... even all the way out here.
Anthony met his end exactly as my historical metrics predicted. But why should a temporal anomaly like me feel this crushing sorrow?
Xander froze in his tracks, standing entirely motionless beneath the swaying canopy of the wilderness. He forced his breathing into a measured rhythm, slowly regaining his mental equilibrium.
He wasn’t shaken by the emotional weight itself, but by the sheer systemic magnitude of the phenomenon.
Ordinary mortals traveling the trade roads would have absolutely no baseline understanding of what that sudden, ambient despair truly signified.
But Xander knew with absolute mechanical certainty.
As one of the last remaining high-tier Grand Magi actively walking the mortal plane, Anthony had spent centuries serving as the ultimate cosmic anchor, single-handedly suppressing localized dark anomalies and holding the line against extra-planar entities.
Whether it was the fanatical Serpent-Tongue Cult or the predatory entities creeping out from the lower abyssal planes, their global operations had been utterly paralyzed for generations by the sweeping radar of Anthony’s [Eyes of the Sovereign Sun].
That unyielding, righteous archmage was the undisputed shield of the entire East Coast.
He was the supreme martial vanguard of the Southern Arcane Coalition.
A figure of that legendary status could never be properly summarized by mere historical text.
His sudden elimination was an cataclysmic, objective loss for the entire world of Feinan.
It was a cosmic rule of this plane: when a champion of absolute righteousness falls, the very fabric of the world bleeds a fraction of its grace, forcing every good-aligned soul to endure a phantom wave of mourning.
And this was merely the opening casualty.
This marked the definitive first death of a legendary-tier powerhouse since the catastrophic parameters of the Great Shattering had begun actively rendering in the background.
Under the meticulously synchronized conspiracy of the ascendant pantheon, the systematic culling of mankind’s greatest spellcasters would certainly not stop with a single archmage.
According to Xander’s flawless recollection of the apocalyptic timeline, these high-tier assassinations would now begin cascading across every major kingdom, one after another.
It would take less than a week for the formal verification of Anthony’s demise to shatter the morale of the high courts.
The moment that specialized arcane network remained permanently dark, every latent evil faction on the continent would immediately launch an aggressive surface expansion.
It was the dawn of the dark ages—the rapid ascent of the fanatical Serpent-Tongue Cult, the unhinged zealots of the Blight Sovereign, and the terrifying spread of the [Living Puppet] plague.
The apocalypse was no longer a distant theoretical script; the gears were actively turning.
Soon, the global magic pool would encounter a total systemic inversion.
High-tier arcanists would watch their standard spells fail, their minds fracturing as they systematically degenerated into mindless, warped aberrations.
The absolute horror of that transition would leave the defenseless mortal populations with no recourse but to throw themselves upon their knees, praying desperately to the very deities who had orchestrated their ruin.
This was the absolute, ultimate grand design of those high and mighty gods.
They engineered the crisis to harvest an infinite yield of mortal faith.
Of course, the variable that the heavens failed to calculate was the imminent manifestation of the 4th Tablet of Destiny.
The macro-events of the world state could no longer be aborted by any single mortal hand.
The only viable path remaining for Xander was to abandon any foolish notions of saving the continent at large.
Instead, he had to aggressively carve out, fortify, and defend a localized sanctuary capable of surviving the absolute chaos of a dying world.
Executing that strategy would be an extraordinary, high-difficulty challenge. freewёbnoνel.com
Yet, as a former max-level legendary player who had conquered every elite raid this world had to offer, Xander had never once backed down from an impossible difficulty modifier.
Whatever cosmic mechanism had pulled his consciousness into this reality, he had established an absolute, binding pact with the original soul of this noble vessel.
He would reclaim this bloodline’s birthright, or he would die trying.
This was Xander’s unyielding pledge to the lingering remnants of the soul. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
It was the sole reason he was prepared to defend his ancestral borders with his life.
Could it be that this physical vessel still harbors a baseline alignment toward kindness? Xander thought, casting his gaze toward the ominous, pitch-black cloud mass unfurling across the eastern horizon, a sharp, self-deprecating chuckle escaping his lips.
That massive atmospheric anomaly would soon unleash a relentless, torrential downpour that would submerge the entire East Coast for days on end.
It was the world’s natural eulogy—a grim, weeping monument to the fallen Grand Magus Anthony, warning the denizens of Feinan that a localized dark age had officially arrived.
Xander adjusted his physical stance, drawing a deep breath as he utilized the cover of the absolute midnight darkness to accelerate his pace.
The imperial highway was entirely deserted.
In this current political climate, no sensible merchant or traveler would dare navigate the wilderness alone at night.
Furthermore, this specific secondary branch of the road had originally been commissioned and cleared by the founding lord of Redoak Vale—Xander’s own grandfather.
Following the catastrophic fall of the valley to the demi-human hordes, commercial traffic had ground to an absolute halt.
After all, what merchant guild in their right mind would attempt to open a trade ledger with a ravenous pack of marauding gnolls?
Xander’s baseline night vision parameters were notoriously low for a rogue archetype, but luckily, the high moon managed to break through the gathering storm clouds.
The pale light activated the passive tracking modifiers of his [Mark of the Moon], casting sharp outlines across the terrain ahead.
He pushed his physical stamina to the limit, maintaining a brutal, solitary pace.
To ensure he left absolutely zero physical tracks for any wandering scout groups to log, he systematically adjusted his itinerary: hunkering down in deep concealment during the daylight hours and covering massive distances under the shroud of night.
By the twilight hours of the second day, he finally crossed the outer territorial markers of Redoak Vale.
The Northern Quartz Extraction Site
A series of violent, freezing gale-force winds whipped through a dense grove of native beech trees, signaling the immediate arrival of the super-cell storm.
The main paved road terminated abruptly at this logging junction, splintering into a complex web of narrow, unpaved hunter trails.
Xander immediately dropped into a low crouch, activating [Stealth] as he melted into the shadows of the beech grove.
He advanced cautiously until he reached a strategic three-way intersection, his eyes locking onto a weathered wooden directional signpost.
He recognized the marker instantly; it was a standard estate sign pointing toward the northern quartz mine and the grand ancestral castle rising to the south.
But right now, the pristine family crest had been aggressively defaced with a thick, rancid layer of luminescent green pigment.
A sequence of crude, jagged, and utterly alien glyphs had been violently carved over the original human lettering.
Gnoll dialect. Disgusting beasts.
Xander’s jaw tightened, his fingers instinctively twitching toward the hilts of his twin blades.
Even without a specialized linguistic sub-routine active in his interface, his deep lore metrics allowed him to easily decipher the crude markings.
The defaced signpost read: Savage Fang Territory.
To take a single step past this intersection was to officially cross into an active demi-human war zone.
The initial night of the assault had been a chaotic blur, and the terrified, dying thoughts of the original young noble hadn’t left Xander with any actionable intelligence regarding the exact numbers or composition of the invading force.
If he wanted to reclaim his castle, he had to secure the data himself.
However, he encountered his first tactical roadblock before he could even clear the crossroads.
A forward security detail of gnoll sentinels had fortified the intersection.
They were standard frontline scouts—two low-tier melee grunts and two primitive archers, all draped in mismatched leather scraps and bearing incredibly crude, self-fashioned weaponry.
To a trained eye, their equipment was a joke; a skilled human weaponsmith could forge a basic hunting sling that possessed more kinetic stopping power than the brittle composite bows those archers were gripping.
Xander didn’t give the grunts a second thought.
What caused his eyes to instantly narrow were the six massive, predatory silhouettes pacing restlessly in the brush behind the sentinels.
Xander focused his gaze, triggering [Inspect].
The data block that materialized in his vision caused his pupils to sharply constrict.
[Target Scanned: Mutated Aard-Wolf]
[Classification: Tier 1 Elite Beast — Level 4]
[Attributes: 200 HP | Melee Combat Modifier: Frenzied Apex Predator]
These warped, hyper-aggressive beasts were the exact shock troops that had shattered the castle’s outer gates during the midnight raid.
The Redoak Vale militia had attempted to form a standard shield wall to contain the breach, but these level 4 monsters had systematically ripped through the reinforced ironwood shields as if they were wet parchment.
In fact, the original young lord of the house had been cornered and nearly mangled to death by one of these exact creatures, surviving only because Elyra had executed a high-risk extraction to drag his bleeding frame from the courtyard.
Xander’s analytical mind quickly processed the implications.
Standard gnoll tribes possessed the biological capability to domesticate common wild wolves.
But these highly volatile, mutated variants were an entirely different mechanical variable; they were notoriously resistant to standard demi-human handling.
Could this specific clan command the services of a rare Elite Beast Tamer? Xander deduced, his mind calculating the threat matrix.
He was currently staring down a high-risk tactical bottleneck.
The primary approach was completely locked down.
If he intended to advance his reconnaissance toward the inner valley, he would have to systematically execute every single sentinel at this checkpoint.
But his primary objective tonight was pure data acquisition, not standard combat clearance.
If he triggered a skirmish here, the death of an elite scout squad would instantly alert the main tribal encampment, ruining his element of surprise before his mercenary army could even arrive.
He required an absolute, uninterrupted mapping of the tribe’s layout—their exact troop counts, the specific level of their chieftains, and their defensive positions.
It had to be executed without triggering a single system alarm.
These sentinels and their level 4 beasts were an active hindrance to his path.
Xander hesitated for a fraction of a second, then quietly melted back into the deep shadows of a massive beech tree, dropping into a sustained, low-profile crouch while maintaining absolute [Stealth].
Time to rely on patience.
Xander remained completely motionless in the freezing, howling wind for two agonizing hours, his heart rate suppressed to avoid detection.
Then, the sky completely fractured, and a massive, violent rainstorm slammed into the valley with apocalyptic force.
This was the continent-wide macro-spell Anthony had anchored to his own life-force before plunging into the abyss—a final, sweeping elemental manifestation designed to batter and suppress the dark entities roaming the surface of Feinan.
And as Xander’s historical database highlighted, gnolls possessed an intense, biological aversion to heavy rainwater.
Their thick, matted coats were an absolute breeding ground for virulent flesh parasites; if their fur became thoroughly drenched, it was exceptionally difficult to dry in the wild, causing the parasites to rapidly trigger localized necrosis and skin rot.
Consequently, the moment a downpour initiated, their primitive survival instincts forced them to abandon their posts in search of immediate overhead cover.
True to his calculus, the moment the torrential rain began hammering the dirt, the sentinels began letting out high-pitched, pathetic shrieks.
They hastily abandoned the intersection, scrambling toward a wide, natural cave opening carved into the side of the eastern ridge.
The six massive mutated aard-wolves followed closely on their heels, eager to escape the stinging drops.
A cold, predatory satisfaction flared in Xander’s eyes.
Utilizing the absolute visual and acoustic cover of the roaring rainstorm, he glided forward in deep [Stealth], his boots leaving no traceable imprints as he slipped past the abandoned checkpoint undetected.
With the primary outer bottleneck successfully cleared, the secondary approach trails were entirely open.
Xander advanced through the downpour, navigating the treacherous terrain until he overlooked the northern quartz mine.
Peering down from a rocky ridge, he observed that the occupying gnolls had absolutely zero comprehension of industrial mining logistics.
After Xander’s household had successfully evacuated the human labor force during the retreat, the beasts had merely established a skeleton defense perimeter.
The entire mining camp was garrisoned by roughly twenty standard gnoll grunts and a pair of roaming aard-wolves.
One of those beasts, however, possessed distinct markings.
[Target Scanned: Clan Vanguard Officer]
[Classification: Tier 1 Elite — Level 3]
It appears their primary warlord has concentrated at least eighty percent of their elite martial assets directly within my ancestral castle, Xander analyzed, logging the data into his mental map.
To field a deployment of this scale with so many mutated beasts, I am tracking a medium-sized demi-human horde totaling at least three hundred active combatants. No wonder the local militia was utterly annihilated that night. The raw destructive output of those level 4 monsters is simply too high for tier 1 human conscripts. It will require at least Tier 2 professional class-holders to successfully neutralize them.
Xander filed a critical strategic reminder in his combat ledger: the moment his mercenary vanguard initiated the siege, neutralizing those mutated shock troops had to be prioritized above all else.
His standard hired swords could easily surround and dismantle the low-tier gnoll grunts in a straight formation battle, but if those level 4 apex predators were allowed to flank his line, they would shatter his frontline cohesion in seconds.
Furthermore, he was profoundly interested in the identity of the handler who had successfully bred these mutated beasts.
Common wild wolves were merely level 2 encounters, and a standard demi-human clan typically only managed to tame a single beast for every score of fighters.
To systematically elevate multiple beasts to level 4 required a specialized advancement path.
Could their primary strategist hold an advanced Ranger specialization—a master [Beast Tamer]?
Xander couldn’t verify the assumption yet.
But the handler of those monsters was almost certainly the absolute chieftain of this horde; an individual commanding that level of raw martial power would never submit to a lesser warlord.
He continued shifting his position through the brush, his thoughts racing as the massive, jagged silhouette of his family’s ancestral castle finally materialized in the distant valley, illuminated by jagged flashes of lightning.
The torrential downpour showed absolutely zero signs of abating.
Xander paused his advance; he was well aware of a highly secure, undocumented postern entrance built into the sheer cliffside beneath the castle foundation, but the narrow rocky ledge leading to it would be catastrophically slick in this weather.
One missed mechanical input, and his physical vessel would slip straight into the rocky abyss below.
He needed to wait for the worst of the storm cell to pass before attempting the cliffside infiltration.
Therefore, he altered his immediate route, deciding to slip down toward the residential foothills of the castle sector to locate an abandoned, vacant farmhouse that hadn’t been pillaged or occupied by the roaming demi-humans.
It would serve as a perfect, low-profile staging ground to dry his gear and rest his stamina bars.
He cautiously navigated the patrolling gnolls’ peripheral cones of vision, identifying a small, familiar homestead resting near the edge of a wheat field.
He checked the perimeter, verified the entrance was clear, and slipped through the rear door.
The original agrarian tenants of this property had successfully fled to the southern country sectors during the initial evacuation order.
Utilizing the vacant structure as a temporary hiding spot wouldn’t disrupt any local variables.
But the moment Xander’s boots cleared the threshold, a sharp, terrified shriek echoed from the darkness of the property’s enclosed backyard.
That was the distinct vocal frequency of a human girl!
