Veszely Canyon

The damp dew sat on the leaves undisturbed and calm, only Leon's movements of waking up shook the tree and caused the beads of dew to drop and fall into the grassy ground. Leon rubbed his eyes after he stretched his body like a cat. The sleep had been comfortable enough that it didn't cause Leon to feel sore, but the stretching still made his body feel stiff.

After his eyes had adjusted to the hazy light surrounding him, he packed as fast as possible and carried everything as he jumped down onto the grass with a soft thud. The horse had eaten a good chunk of the grass near the tree it was tied to and was prepared for another day of traveling.

Yawning as he put everything back onto the horse, Leon took out his map and went over everything again/

'So the main goal is going through the Veszely Canyon without encountering anything hopefully.'

Leon took out a small book which he had received from Erik about the places he would encounter on his way to Mifis and started to read out the information on the Veszely Canyon.

The Veszely Canyon was an intriguing patch of land. It was once the home to a tribal nation that built houses and buildings in the canyons under rocks to protect themselves from the sun and monsters.

However, as the Parthian kingdom expanded, they eventually had borders with the small tribal nation that lived in the canyon. In the end, Partha wished to snag up more land so they could compete with their life-long rivals to the north, so they had the tough decision of deciding how to deal with the small nation.

They tried their best at diplomacy, but every attempt to absorb the small nation or reach a compromise was shot down as the nation refused to let any outsiders through the canyon. After reaching the boiling point, Partha declared war, and Partha's army of regular soldiers and few adventurers marched into the canyon, as at this time Partha was still a new nation trying to gain its grasp on new territories.

Partha's force actually encountered fierce opposition despite the fact that the small tribal nation only occupied the canyon compared to the much bigger Partha empire. The tribal nation used guerilla warfare tactics and utilized their knowledge of the land to outmaneuver and ambush the small and weak army.

After a crucial battle in which half the normal soldiers lost their lives as well as some of the backbone of Partha's adventurer scene, the first king and founder of the country, Arsaces the first, became infuriated and annoyed as his army proved incompetent to even wipe out a small tribe of barbarians.

Although he knew the army itself was made of regular soldiers with only leaders or commanders possessing powers on par with adventurers, he didn't think the army combined with conscripted adventurers would lose in such a fashion.

Seeing his rivals in the north continue to expand, the king decided he would have to come down himself. At this time, the natives were confident in repelling the Parthian forces after they had crushed their first army. So they laughed when they saw the king arrive with only his personal guards and a battalion of regular soldiers.

Arsaces didn't mind the laughter, deciding that speaking with actions was louder than any sentence could be. He cut straight through the trivial defenses the tribal nations had put up and arrived in front of the walls of the capital of the small tribal nation. The committee that ruled the capital city didn't think he could last a long siege on the city, so they holed up in hopes of tiring out the invaders.

However, they couldn't anticipate how powerful one person could be. The natives had fought mere adventurers that would have been cutting it close to D-Tier's, however, Arsaces was a man who had fought tooth and nail to establish a new, thriving empire. Although back then the standard adventurer tiers hadn't existed yet, scholars estimated Arsaces the first to be as powerful as a top A-Tier adventurer or maybe even a low S-Tier adventurer.

Arsaces took out his famous weapon which was his greatsword and with one slice, it cut through the entire city like tofu. The strike also carried Arsaces's magic which left the entire city burning and any person trying to escape the blaze was killed as they attempted to run from the inferno.

One strike from Arsaces was enough to cripple the small nation which at best had a few B-Tier leveled generals and the moment this happened. The rest of the cities were subjugated to the same treatment, but some of the people managed to get away and were thought to locate north to seek asylum in the Akkad Empire.

After the tribal nation was wiped out, their cities were ransacked and burned down as a road was built that cut through the whole canyon, so the canyon was left be as the Partha had more important problems to look after. But the one thing they didn't expect was the fact that without the natives hunting the local animals, the few that had lived in the canyon started to get aggressive.

This led to conflict over the years between adventurers and the monsters, however, the monsters in the canyon were so few that it wasn't considered a monster zone. The reason why Leon had stopped early rather than setting up camp in the Veszely Canyon was simple. It was because, although the number was few, the monsters could still attack him any time throughout the minutes he spent there. So he decided that he would go through the canyon in one go.

After re-reading everything, Leon untied his horse that was carrying all his stuff and hopped onto the huddle before urging the horse to start trotting faster towards the canyon. It only took Leon a few minutes to see the road that led into a huge hole surrounded by mountains made of rocks that made the canyon a canyon.

The giant rock's made Leon admire nature and its power, as he looked like a piece of dust next to the tall canyon walls which reminded Leon of one thing.

'Nature is truly scary'