Harpy (Part 3)
The roads of the southern plains that were bordered by the Karazan Mountains had been paved by the elf sprites.
Before these hybrid elves had migrated, they did a lot of trade with the human city-states. As these elf-sprites had since moved away, the road had gradually become barren and overgrown with weeds. However, fortunately, up to this day, the road was still clear and hadn't been overrun with wild vegetation. Over the years, some wayward mercenary teams would go to the ruins of the gathering grounds of the elf sprites and attempt to find some valuable things inside them.
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It was around three in the afternoon.
Murphy and his team were riding their horses at a slow pace down the road. They weren't far from the outskirts of the Karazan Mountains and were only less than 15 kilometers away.
Anyone who knew anything about the cold weapons age should know that horses then had weak feet.
In order to save the horse's feet, many cavalries led their horses on foot before they entered the battle. No one could really believe that horses were like the ones in stories that could easily travel up to three or five hundred miles daily. In fact, there was a secret in this. In order to reach the mileage of three to five hundred miles, the roads the horses traveled on were official roads, which were flat and didn't hurt the horse's hooves. There were also relay stations along the way where horses were swapped, but never the human. The distance between the relay stations was mostly around fifty miles in Ancient China. Having a horse that could run hard (it didn't even have to go very far) was like having a Mercedes Benz that could go one to two hundred miles!
Unless they were the light cavalry, the horses didn't run before joining the battle.
A qualified rider should know when to make the horse run in order to preserve the horse's strength and escape and save his life when he needed to.
The so-called "whip" used to make horses go faster wasn't actually very reliable. Just take Murphy for example. If he didn't conserve the horse's strength, he couldn't escape even if he wanted to if he encountered a large number of gnolls in the wild.
So the group of thirty-three riders were all advancing at a jogging pace.
The General Guard was only equipped with long swords, javelins, and leather armor. They were basically the light cavalry, as this equipment together with the weight of a person was well within the capabilities of a horse. If they were equipped with equipment suited for heavy cavalry, the horses wouldn't be able to withstand the burden during these long rides.
About half an hour later, the group reached the jungle on the outskirts of the Karazan Mountains.
The inside of the dense forest was once within the elf sprite clan's range of activity. However, the inside of the dense forest was different from the outside. In this dense forest, the new plants and trees had covered up the old roads after the elf sprits migrated, and it was impossible to ride their horses inside. Thus, the group of people had to leave their horses outside and walk into the jungle on foot.
The horses were left in an open meadow outside the forest, and three knights were left behind to guard them. This was done so that in case there was any danger, everyone could get on the horses as soon as possible and promptly leave. The open meadow could help the horses gain speed and increase the distance between them and any possible aggressors.
Not including the knights who were left behind to look after the horses, Murphy and the General Guards totaled 30 people. This group started to march toward the inside of the jungle.
A group of people cleared the way with a long sword and cut off the lush vegetation on the road that was blocking their view!
The soldiers of the General Guards were consciously forming a circle around Murphy and guarding him in the middle so that if they were to meet with danger, they would be able to buy time for Murphy.
The vegetation in the dense forest was quite lush, and towering trees could be seen in every direction.
The tree branches blocked the sunlight, and the mottled light illuminated the dense forest. Although it didn't affect their vision, it was still slightly dim in the forest. There were the sounds of crowing birds, and in the distance, there was the sound of some frightened beasts running away.
Although this forest was near the Karazan Mountains, at the end of the day, the living creatures inside it were really just ordinary beasts.
Other terrifying creatures, such as the Karazan Hurricane Pterodactyl, mostly lived in the hinterlands of the mountains and rarely stepped outside of their territory.
This wasn't surprising!
In fact, most of the ancient magical beasts in the southern plains found within the range of human activity had been swept away by the famous human heroes at the beginning of the Second Era! In order to carve out a space for human survival, these ancient and famous human heroes would even exterminate the powerful magical beasts.
It must be mentioned here that in ancient times, the most distinguished humans were heroes, then nobles.
Almost all the ancient nobles in this world of pure lineage were descendants of the famous heroes of these ancient times. The first batch of human nobility, at the beginning of the Second Era, referred to those with surnames. In fact, even now, there were still many human peasants who had names but no surnames. In the human city-state, a recognized surname was a marker of prestige!
Whereas in the original human world...
A name with no surname was a marker of prestige!
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The group walked in the dense forest for about half an hour, and then their field of vision suddenly widened.
Then they came to a valley.
"There's the smell of blood!" Murphy said, rubbing his nose and motioning for everyone to stop.
His sense of smell was a tad more sensitive than the average person's, and after personally experiencing war, Murphy had become extremely sensitive to the smell of blood! Before everyone else had even approached the valley, Murphy detected the bloody smell in the air that had yet to dissipate.
The others stayed in place, and a nimble soldier from the General Guards carefully approached the valley before going inside.
About three minutes later, the soldier of the General Guards walked out with a pale face. Then he gestured to everyone that it was safe.
The rest of the General Guards proceeded to escort Murphy into the valley.
Once he was in the valley, even though he had guts now, he couldn't help but feel an inexplicable, uncomfortable tightness in his chest!
The scene in the valley wasn't that bloody.
There were only about a dozen gnoll corpses and a bonfire that had since burned out.
A wooden stick was hanging near the campfire, and there were burnt marks on it. Below that, there was a pile of goll bones. The meat had been eaten clean off the bones, and the gnolls' hard skulls had been smashed open and their brains had been swallowed!
Indeed, yes.
In the valley, more than ten gnoll corpses had been eaten until only the bones were left.
Pushing back his disgust, Murphy pieced together the gnoll bones near the fire. The skeleton of this gnoll was about 2.2 meters long. Based on Murphy's estimations, it was an adult male gnoll, and the fatal wound that had killed it was a broken neck because the rest of its bones had been vigorously crushed!
The discovery made Murphy feel a little uneasy. He ordered the General Guards to collect and gather the corpses of the gnolls who had been eaten.
After inspecting them for a little while, Murphy was startled to find that these gnolls that had been eaten were all adult male gnolls. The strongest one even had a height of nearly 2.6 meters!
What made Murphy even more shocked was that the cause of death for all these gnolls was broken bones!
That meant that these adult male gnolls with physiques above 2.2 meters had been crushed by some sort of creature and had been killed with just a few moves! Judging from their broken bones, nearly half of the adult male gnolls had been killed by their necks being brutally broken.
What kind of creature was this?
What kind of creature could have such terrible power?
What kind of creature would have such devastating crushing power even against a well-built adult male gnoll?
Murphy searched around the valley, but it had been quite a while since all this had happened, and he could only vaguely find some slightly distinguishable footprints.
The prints were huge, and they had been left behind by something that was barefoot. The shape of the foot was somewhat similar to a human foot, except it only had three toes.
Murphy roughly formed a visual image of this creature in his mind.
After some consideration, he judged that the height of this terrible creature was more than three meters. It had a huge body, and its weight could reach up to 400 pounds. That was to say, 150 kilograms! These creatures were very strong, and they suffered almost no casualties of their own when they faced more than a dozen adult male gnolls.
It could be said that this creature, with its overwhelming power, held an outdoor gnoll picnic in this very valley a few days ago...
The footprints were headed east, and there weren't any signs that they had come back. It seemed that these terrible creatures had really just been passing by.
"Hoo, let's go!" Although it was impossible to tell what kind of creature had done this, Murphy had roughly estimated the creatures' terrible combative power!
For now, hardly anyone in the territory could rattle these creatures in a head-on fight.
This kind of crushing strength, which could even defeat an adult male gnoll, was completely outside the range of what an ordinary human could fight!
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Not too far from the valley was a stream.
Next to the stream, Murphy unexpectedly saw the dead bodies of another type of creature.
At first glance, Murphy thought it was an angel because it had snow-white feathers and a beautiful female face. As he came closer, he discovered that these motionless creatures lying on the ground had many physiological characteristics that weren't human!
Characteristics such as eagle claws and feathers on their heads.
But soon he found that one creature's chest was still rising and falling softly, which meant it was still breathing.
The creature clearly had elven features. She had a beautiful face, long narrow ears, and a slender figure. She wore a long white robe inlaid with silver thread, and there were two sculpted rings on her long fingers. Unlike the other corpses, this creature had two slender legs instead of a pair of eagle claws. Her arms were slender, and a pair of pure white wings were spread across her back. If you excluded the ears with obvious elven characteristics, it did look like an angel!
What race was this?
Although she looked similar to the dead harpies, Murphy felt that she didn't belong to the same race.
The dead creatures had eagle claws, and their arms were a pair of wings. They didn't have hair but bundles of feathers on top of their heads. However, the creature that was still breathing had a pair of legs, arms, and long hair. If it weren't for the pair of pure white wings on its back, Murphy almost would have thought that it was an elf! After hesitating for a moment, Murphy immediately picked up the elf-like creature, whose chest was still gently rising and falling, that had yet to die. Then, he took out a bottle of Holy Water and gently poured it into its mouth. Later, Murphy pulled out his dagger and prepared to pull the long arrow out from her chest.
This elven-like creature's breathing was already very weak.
His priority was to rescue her before all else!