Chapter 333: Is It Really All Right?

After traveling south for about two hundred kilometers, the scenery before their eyes had unknowingly transformed completely.

The once gloomy sky had been dyed with a faint blood-red hue at some point. The trees along the road were all dead, and where rivers once flowed, only winding black waterways remained.

Twisted figures wandered the distant wilderness; it was impossible to tell if they were human or beast. They staggered aimlessly, letting out hoarse howls that did not sound human.

The team stepped beneath this crimson canopy.

An oppressive, apocalyptic weight pressed heavily on everyone's hearts. No one spoke, and even the horses grew quiet.

Altina, who had been circling in the sky as a crow, slowly descended. She folded her wings and shifted back into her human form.

Her voice lacked its usual composure, replaced instead by a hint of unmistakable shock and bewilderment.

“The further south we go, the more terrifying the sky becomes...”

“I just saw that a hundred kilometers ahead, everything is already blood-red. The ground is crawling with crimson veins and tumors; there’s almost no normal living vegetation or animals left.”

“How... how could it have become like this here?!”

She looked up, the withering of all things reflected in her emerald eyes, which were filled with an irrepressible sorrow.

“Oh, gods... do the gods truly turn a blind eye to everything here?”

Ansu's gaze fell upon her.

At that moment, Altina slowly raised her hand, and a faint orb of emerald light glowed in her palm.

It was the nature magic she was most familiar with, capable of reviving withered plants and healing injured life.

The orb of green light gently covered a shrub by the road. The light flickered slightly in her palm a few times before silently extinguishing.

She stared blankly at her hand, her lips trembling slightly.

“It shouldn't be... not even a single new bud sprouted...”

Altina had fought on the front lines against the mana plague for centuries, but those disasters, no matter how tragic, were always localized and temporary.

After a catastrophe, new life would always grow back, and living creatures would eventually return to that land.

But now, she had a faint intuition.

She could no longer see that hope. This was the prelude to a true apocalypse.

All things would eventually wither.

The carriage team stopped near a dilapidated village.

It was already a ghost village, as not a single living person could be seen. Corpses were scattered haphazardly among the collapsed houses, most of them highly decomposed. A few lunatics who weren't quite dead yet wandered the ruins; upon seeing the team, they let out shrill howls, bared bone-white claws, and lunged forward like savage beasts.

However, they were all dealt with efficiently by the patrolling battle mages. Magic and warhammers smashed these infected into fragments.

Once the camp was set up, Ansu swept his gaze across the surroundings.

Vera was holding the Elven shortsword she couldn't bear to part with, standing under a dead tree while flipping through a sword manual, ready to practice at any moment.

Altina stood alone at the edge of the camp, her brow furrowed as she observed the dark red moss on the ground, holding her notebook and recording her observations at a rapid pace.

Ansu walked over slowly.

As he approached from behind, those emerald eyes beneath the hood slowly shifted toward him, revealing a hint of confusion.

She didn't seem to understand why Ansu had specifically come to find her.

“By the way, Altina, there is something I should tell you now.”

Ansu thought to himself that this poor elf lady had finally enjoyed a few days of happiness and made new friends. Telling her this now shouldn't completely break her, right?

But since they had reached this point, she definitely needed to know.

Altina put down her pen and asked softly, “What is it?”

Ansu didn't beat around the bush.

“Your god—the one your elven race believes in, the God of Nature, the Eternal Tree - Aiseweida—is dead.”

Her emerald eyes stared straight at him. She blinked first, and then a somewhat unnatural curve formed at the corner of her mouth.

“You... you’re joking, right? Ansu?”

How could a god fall? That was the chief deity who had protected the elves, the forest, the Druids, and all the Children of Nature for two entire eras. He was one of the five most powerful righteous gods in this world.

Ansu said no more.

But the incredibly solemn expression on his face told her more clearly than any words that this was no joke, nor did he have the leisure to joke at a time like this.

The smile on Altina’s face vanished bit by bit.

“I...”

“I see. Th—thank you...”

It wasn't a breakdown following a sudden blow. She simply closed her notebook in silence, stood up, walked to the campfire in the center of the camp, and slowly sat down.

Altina stared numbly at the flames, motionless, lost in unknown thoughts.

She sat there for a long time.

Ansu turned around and walked back to the carriage.

Vera came to meet him. She looked at Altina’s lonely silhouette and then at Ansu, her face full of confusion.

“Brother... what did you say to her? Why did Altina become like that?”

Ansu told her the news of the god's death.

Vera didn't have a very deep concept of gods, but she knew this must be very important to Altina, because she often saw Altina kissing that mysterious amulet and praying alone at dawn.

The God of Nature was the chief deity of the elven race. Given that, her reaction was actually quite calm.

“Then... what do we do?” Vera looked at Altina’s back.

That figure sat motionless before the campfire like a statue abandoned in the wilderness, looking incredibly lonely and pitiful.

“Go and comfort her,” Ansu said. After all, Vera was the one who had spent the most time with Altina recently, and the two of them were on quite good terms.

“Mm, okay!” Vera nodded, put away her shortsword, and walked toward the campfire.

In the distance, Vera sat down beside Altina. Vera asked a few questions, but Altina remained silent.

Ansu turned his head. Celia had appeared beside him at some point, her arms casually crossed over her chest as she watched the two figures by the campfire with him.

“Why don't you go comfort her?” Celia asked with a smile.

Ansu shook his head. “Why would I go? I’m not that close to her.”

Celia tilted her head, her deep purple eyes watching him meaningfully. “...Oh?”

Ansu nodded seriously. “Really!”

“Hmm...” Celia curled her lip. “Forget it, I won't make it hard for you.”

Of course, while she said that, she didn't believe it for a second.

His level of friendliness toward this elf far exceeded how he treated people like Duke Berry. Who would believe him when he said he didn't have something on his mind?

After all, from the very beginning, Ansu had seemed to possess prophetic foresight, as if he had long known everything about Altina... That kind of understanding wasn't something that could be gathered through casual investigation or inference.

Ansu had far too many secrets.

Celia sighed inwardly, her gaze drifting toward the crimson sky in the distance. That faint sense of anxiety and irritability churned and surfaced once again.

Ansu didn't fully trust her, so of course he wouldn't tell her everything.

After all, Ansu had fallen in love with her bit by bit while in the process of deceiving her, and she had put so much pressure on him back then... How could Ansu truly trust and rely on her one hundred percent?

But he still loved her.

So.

Isn't this also quite good?

...

Is it really all right?

...