Before long, the nimble figure of the Forest Elf Laisa was the first to appear at the entrance of the stronghold.
Her emerald hair was slightly disheveled, a clear sign she had just sprinted a long distance.
Right behind her, the scout Alvin and the assassin Dulu silently emerged as well.
All three carried a faint scent of blood.
At a glance, they saw Betty kneeling on the ground, her face flushed red.
The young girl kept her head lowered, her fingers tightly clutching the hem of her clothes as she curled herself into a ball.
“U-um...” Betty's voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz. “I'm sorry. This was my fault.”
Her ears were burning red, and her voice grew softer and softer.
“I had just learned some practical tricks from the little mage, and I couldn't resist trying them out...”
“But I lost control and crashed the train.”
Freya stood with her arms crossed, staring down at her coldly.
The other team members remained silent as well, an oppressive quiet hanging in the air.
“Your reward for this run is completely forfeited,” Freya said, her voice devoid of emotion. “Do you have any objections?”
Betty shook her head frantically, her voice trembling on the verge of tears. “N-no, none...”
She stole a quick glance at everyone before quickly lowering her head again.
Freya let out a soft sigh.
This was far from the first time Betty had crashed the team into trees.
Her little apprentice had only been practicing Levitation for a year, yet she had already crashed five times.
The worst crash had completely flushed four months of their hard-earned income down the drain.
Freya turned to Lin Gui, the biggest hero who had just saved them from Betty's blunder, her tone softening considerably.
“We owe you for reacting so quickly.”
“Once we receive our pay, Betty's share will be transferred to you.”
She looked around. “Does anyone have an objection?”
“No objections here!” the barbarian warrior Barton bellowed in a gruff voice. “If it weren't for the little mage, we would've worked for nothing again!”
The beastkin Grom nodded gruffly. “His Levitation... is very strong.”
The priest Silas smiled warmly. “I have never seen such exquisite control.”
Laisa and the other two, who had gone to lure the demons away, looked thoroughly confused.
After listening to their teammates' vivid descriptions, their faces filled with disbelief.
Alvin muttered, “A twenty-meter-long train weaving through a dense forest? How is that even possible...”
Dulu spoke up, a rare occurrence for him. “I missed a good show.”
Recalling the scene from earlier, Freya's eyes still held a trace of awe.
Lin Gui's understanding of Levitation had already transcended conventional knowledge.
He was capable of precisely controlling a hundred-ton object.
Furthermore, he could maintain absolute stability during high-speed flight.
Even more astonishingly, he could channel the train's massive momentum.
This allowed him to execute agile turns that practically defied the laws of physics.
This level of precision made even her, a Legendary Mage, feel inferior.
In the face of everyone's praise, Lin Gui seized the moment to propose,
“How about... I steer through this forest section?”
“Once we clear the forest, Miss Betty can take over again.”
He explained, “Unlike the complex terrain of the forest, the sea is mostly unobstructed.”
“As long as we're careful not to be spotted by the demons beneath the surface, it will be much easier to handle.”
Hearing this, Betty's face instantly turned pale.
She frantically winked at Lin Gui, tears almost welling up in her eyes.
Lin Gui was puzzled.
The sea was indeed an ideal environment to use Levitation.
There were no obstacles, and the field of vision was wide open.
Epic demons usually inhabited the deep ocean, with the seawater acting as a natural barrier.
It wasn't as if he was talking about that forbidden Silent Sea...
Noticing his confusion, the scholar Eli smiled and stepped forward.
“Little mage, you'll understand once we reach the coast.”
He cast a schadenfreude-filled glance at Betty.
“By the way, when we first left Twilight Fortress, everyone suggested that you should be the one to steer through this forest.”
“But Betty insisted on letting you handle the sea while she took care of the forest, claiming her Levitation had improved a lot.”
“And then... what just happened, happened.”
Lin Gui's expression turned odd.
It seemed Betty was exceptionally averse to steering the train over the sea.
And judging by the scholar's expression,
it didn't seem to be because Blackwater Bay itself held any particular danger.
The last fading light of dusk was being swallowed by the forest, and darkness crept in from the depths of the trees like a rising tide.
Lin Gui gazed at the forest as it plunged into deep darkness and suddenly spoke up.
“How about we set off tonight under the cover of darkness?”
This proposal made the surrounding team members frown in unison.
Deputy Captain Aubrey stroked his chin, murmuring, “It's true that we're more easily exposed during the day...”
“But the cover of night also means limited visibility,” the Forest Elf Laisa pointed out calmly. “The difficulty of transport will multiply.”
The scout Alvin added, “And we lack true night vision.”
“Dulu and I mostly rely on hearing to orient ourselves. The range we can see in total darkness is very limited.”
The assassin Dulu nodded silently, his figure fading in and out of the twilight.
Lin Gui had already anticipated their concerns and pointed to Theia beside him.
“My ranger can see through the dark.”
Everyone's eyes immediately focused on Theia.
At that moment, Laisa's gaze suddenly sharpened.
In the chaos of the train's rollover earlier, the hood Theia used to conceal herself had slipped off.
Now, her dazzling silver hair and pointed elven ears were completely exposed to everyone.
Only now did the North Wind caravan realize that this ranger, who had been quietly following behind the little mage,
was actually an elf—and an extremely rare silver-haired one at that.
The Forest Elf Laisa narrowed her eyes and stepped forward quickly, almost pressing her face against Theia's as she stared directly into her eyes.
“Which elven tribe... do you belong to?”
Her voice carried an unquestionable tone of interrogation.
“Silver hair is extremely rare among elves. Only two tribes possess this trait—”
“the elven royalty, or...”
Laisa's voice suddenly turned freezing cold. “the traitors, the Windrunners.”
Theia's body instantly tensed up.
Her fingers unconsciously gripped the hem of her clothes, and she instinctively reached to pull up her hood,
only to realize it had already vanished in the earlier chaos.
Lin Gui immediately stepped forward, shielding Theia behind him.
“She's a half-breed. Her mother was an elf captured by humans, and as for her father...”
He paused deliberately, giving Laisa a meaningful look.
“I don't think you'd want to know her father's race, would you? As an elf.”
Laisa was completely unmoved and retorted in a cold voice.
“Silver hair! It's absolutely impossible for it to appear on a half-breed!”
Lin Gui shot back without yielding an inch.
“Are you sure about that?!”
“Of course! This is a universally acknowledged fact among the elven race!”
Lin Gui suddenly smiled. He held up his hand and began counting them off one by one.
“There are plenty of races on the Akara Continent born with white hair.”
“The barbarians of the far north, who have lived in the snowfields for generations—one out of ten of them is born with white hair.”
“The beastkin of the White Fox tribe, their fur is naturally silver-white.”
“And the winged folk of the Snow Eagle clan, their feathers shimmer with silver under the moonlight.”
“Even the hair of certain sea folk is silver-white.”
His gaze swept over Laisa's shifting expression as he continued,
“How can you be so sure that when an elf mates with one of these races, their child won't inherit the white hair trait?”
Lin Gui's voice suddenly rose.
“Lest you forget, in the history of your own elven race, there was that hero known as the 'Blade of the Silver Moon'!”
“Wasn't she white-haired? And she was a half-breed rescued from a slave market!”
Rate on N.U.
