Chapter 458: The Goddess And The Bird [Bonus - ]

Chapter 458: The Goddess And The Bird [Bonus Chapter]

As she reached out her delicate hand, the beast’s instincts flared.

"Gra!"

It didn’t recognize the divine scent of the Saintess... The wolf bared its yellow fangs, letting out a deep vibrating snarl that shook the snow from its mane; however Aurelia didn’t flinch.

’I’ve dealt with worse...’

She didn’t draw back her hand, nor did she reach for her weapon.

"Haah..."

Aurelia simply stopped, lowered her chin slightly, and opened her golden eyes wide.

For a single fleeting second, the terrifying weight of the Argent Flame flared within her pupils... a fraction of divine authority that carried the silent promise of incineration.

’There won’t be anything left of you.’

The wolf instantly clamped its jaws shut.

A high-pitched, pathetic whimper escaped its throat as it immediately dropped onto its belly in the snow, rolling slightly onto its side to expose its throat in an act of unhesitating submission.

"Good boy," Aurelia murmured with a serene angelic smile, gracefully sweeping her leg aside as she mounted the beast side-saddle, sitting with the perfect posture of royalty.

"Alright, the cavalry is formed!" Silas shouted, drawing his golden sword and pointing it directly toward the southern horizon. "Full gallop! Next stop, the Steel Weave walls of Blessed Land!"

"HOO-AH!"

With a thunderous earth-shaking roar of over fifty massive paws hitting the permafrost simultaneously, the newly formed cavalry corps exploded into a dead sprint.

They tore through the blizzard like a unified unstoppable spearhead, leaving a massive trench of churning snow in their wake as they charged back toward the safety and warmth of their home.

High above the treeline, clinging desperately to the frozen, swaying branch of a deadwood pine, a very peculiar bird watched the cavalry depart.

It was not a normal avian creature of the basin.

Its feathers were completely devoid of color, resembling jagged shards of dark obsidian, and it possessed a strange elongated beak that curved like a wicked scythe.

Its beady intelligent black eyes tracked Silas and his army until they completely disappeared into the whiteout.

The bird tilted its crested head, letting out a low clicking sound that resembled grinding gears.

Then, with a sudden, silent snap of its wings, the bird launched itself into the freezing updrafts.

It did not fly south toward the plains.

It banked sharply against the gale, flying like a silent obsidian rocket directly north, heading toward the deepest and most treacherous depths of the Umbral Basin.

As the bird soared over the jagged mountain peaks, the atmospheric pressure began to drastically change.

The chaotic blizzard below gave way to an area of suffocating stillness.

This was the forbidden sector of the Basin.

In these lightless valleys and plunging canyons, several monsters of Tier-3, Tier-4, and perhaps even rumors of ancient Tier-5 calamities slumbered.

The aura radiating from the deep trenches below was enough to crush a mortal man’s heart.

The bird had never actually encountered these titans, and it had no desire to.

It kept its altitude high, navigating through a narrow plunging crevice tucked between two massive cliff faces.

It dove into the underground fissure.

The descent felt endless.

The light faded entirely, replaced by a strange ethereal blue luminescence emanating from the walls.

The temperature plummeted past the point of freezing, dropping to an absolute zero that defied normal thermodynamics.

The bird finally flared its wings, coming in for a landing on a wide platform of solid permafrost.

SKRRR-SLIP!

The bird’s talons found absolutely no purchase.

It skidded comically across the frictionless ice, tumbling beak-over-tail feathers before crashing into a jagged ice stalagmite with a pathetic thud.

Shaking its head dizzily, the bird scrambled upright, ruffling its obsidian feathers, and looked upward.

Towering before the tiny avian was a massive ancient glacier that filled the entire chamber.

And suspended dead-center within the impenetrable block of absolute ice... was a woman.

She was completely entombed, frozen from her toes to her collarbone.

Only her head and the very tops of her pale shoulders were exposed from the flat surface of the ice wall.

Long, matted, midnight-black hair cascaded over her face, obscuring her features, caked in centuries of unmelting frost. She appeared entirely lifeless like a tragic statue forgotten by time and gods alike.

The bird hopped forward, clicking its beak nervously.

"Squawk! Squawk! Krrr-caw!"

For a long, terrifying moment, nothing happened then, the midnight-black hair shifted.

The woman’s eyelids fluttered, cracking the layer of frost binding her lashes.

She slowly opened her eyes.

Beneath the matted hair, her irises flared with an overwhelming divine green hue.

KRA-RUMBLE!

The instant her eyes opened, the entire chamber violently trembled. The shockwave of her awakening aura cracked the surrounding stalagmites and caused the bedrock to groan in agonizing submission.

Yet... the glacier entombing her body did not crack.

It did not melt and it did not yield even a single millimeter either. The ice binding her was a prison of conceptual cold, forged to hold a being of apocalyptic power.

The woman drew a slow ragged breath, the freezing air whistling through her dry cracked lips.

"Gah!"

She coughed violently, a wet rattling sound that echoed through the chamber, before slowly tilting her chin down to glare at the shivering bird.

"Did you say..." the woman rasped, her voice dry yet carrying a resonance that made the bird’s hollow bones vibrate in terror. "...there is a being... currently marching through this Basin... that possesses enough power to shatter this conceptual ice... and free me from this prison?"

The bird flapped its wings frantically, nodding its crested head in rapid succession.

"Squawk! Squawk! Caw!"

The woman stared at the bird, her divine green eyes narrowing into sharp terrifying slits of rage.

She inhaled deeply, drawing a massive pocket of compressed air into her lungs.

PTOO!

The woman forcefully spat a concentrated hyper-pressurized glob of saliva straight at the bird.

FWHOOOOOOOSH!

The spit shot through the air with the aerodynamic velocity and concussive force of an artillery shell.

The bird let out a terrified shriek, throwing itself flat against the permafrost barely a microsecond before the spit-rocket screamed over its head.

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

The saliva slammed into the cavern wall behind the bird, detonating with enough force to blast a ten-foot-wide crater into the solid bedrock, showering the shivering avian in crushed stone and ice shards.

"WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL SITTING HERE, THEN?!" the woman roared, her voice exploding with furious divine volume that threatened to collapse the ceiling! "GO BRING THE BEING TO ME! YOU BIRD BRAIN!"

"Squawk! Squawk! Krrr-caw!"

The bird flapped its dark wings frantically, hopping backward on the frictionless ice and clicking its scythe-like beak as it desperately tried to communicate the peril of the situation.

It mimed a slashing motion with its wings, puffing out its chest and pointing upward toward the surface.

The woman’s blinding green eyes blinked slowly, the thick frost clinging to her eyelashes cracking with the subtle movement.

Her anger simmered down into sharp curiosity.

"The being would kill you if you came close?" the woman rasped, her voice dry and echoing with the weight of centuries, translating the bird’s frantic gestures with ease.

She tilted her chin a fraction of a millimeter within her icy collar. "He travels with an army, commands authority, and slaughters anomalies without hesitation... So, it is a Lord. A Sovereign who commands a territory if you will."

"Squawk!" The bird nodded its crested head vigorously, letting out a rapid succession of clicking sounds that vibrated through the freezing air.

"And what is the name of this territory he commands?" the woman asked, her green eyes narrowing slightly.

The bird puffed its chest out, letting out a melodic and surprisingly soft series of trills and whistles that contrasted sharply with its usual deep caws.

"Blessed Land?" the woman repeated, the words tasting strange and foreign on her cracked parched lips.

A faint and almost imperceptible smirk touched the corner of her mouth, momentarily softening her terrifying aura.

"Blessed Land... In a dark, miserable place like the Umbral Basin, a name like that sounds rather nice."

She closed her eyes for a moment, the divine green glow fading slightly as she let out a long foggy breath that immediately crystallized in the air.

"You said he is a Lord, right?" she asked, opening her eyes once more.

The bird nodded immediately.

"Then the solution is simple," the woman stated matter-of-factly, her voice echoing off the frozen stalactites. "A Lord is inherently greedy... They constantly seek power, resources, and formidable combatants to expand their borders. He would be immensely more interested in me if I simply agreed to submit to his authority and become a part of his territory."

She let out a dry, rattling chuckle that shook the foundations of the bedrock.

"I truly do not mind. I have been sealed in this frozen prison for centuries. My pride eroded away a long time ago. As long as this Lord can provide me with a warm hearth, a soft bed, and some genuinely good food... specifically roasted meat... I am perfectly fine with bending the knee. Tell him I will become his Hero."

She looked down at the obsidian bird, her eyes flashing with renewed impatience.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Fly to the surface and relay my terms to him immediately!"

The bird did not move.

Instead, it stood firmly on the permafrost, shivering slightly as it looked up at her, its beady black eyes blinking in complete silence.

"Did you not hear me, you useless pile of feathers?!" the woman complained, her voice rising in pitch as her divine aura flared once more, causing the ice chamber to tremble. "Go! Fly! Bring him here before he marches out of the Basin entirely, or I swear upon the heavens I will pluck every single feather from your body and roast you over a spit the moment I break free!"

"Krrr-caw! Squawk!"

The bird frantically hopped in a circle, squawking loudly and tapping its beak against its own chest, then pointing a wing at the woman, and finally dragging a talon across its throat in a dramatic, universally understood gesture of execution.

The woman’s green eyes widened slightly as the realization struck her.

"Ah..." she muttered, her anger evaporating into genuine, sudden dread.

What the bird was saying was true.

She could understand the avian creature because of her unique divine affinity with beasts.

But that did not mean this human Lord would be able to understand a single squawk.

To a Lord commanding an army in a hostile environment, a strange obsidian bird flying directly at him and squawking aggressively would not look like a messenger... it would look like a Tier-2 anomaly initiating an ambush.

"He... he wouldn’t understand a word you’re saying," the woman realized, a cold sweat breaking out across her frozen forehead. "He would see you as a threat. He would draw his blade and slice you out of the sky before you could even land... and then he would march away, leaving me down here for another five hundred years."

A deep sense of panic settled into her chest.

"Squawk?" The bird tilted its head, miming a writing motion with its talon against the ice.

"A note?" the woman asked, her eyes lighting up with desperate hope. "Yes! A written note! He is a human Lord... he can read! That is a brilliant suggestion! Bring me some paper and ink, quickly!"

The bird merely shrugged its wings, looking at her with a blank uncomprehending stare.

...It had absolutely no idea what paper or ink was.

However, it quickly turned around, waddling over to a pile of loose rubble near the edge of the cavern.

It pecked around for a moment before returning with a large and perfectly smooth slate of dark gray stone clasped in its beak.

It dropped the flat stone tablet onto the ice at the base of the glacier with a heavy clack.

"Good enough," the woman praised the bird, her voice trembling with excitement. "You are a remarkably clever creature.. Now, take a sharp rock and carve exactly what I dictate into that tablet!"

She cleared her dry throat, her divine green eyes glowing with sincerity as she began to dictate her plea for salvation.

"Write this," she commanded. "Dear Lord of Blessed Land, I am in urgent need of your help. I have been sealed for centuries in this exact position deep within the Umbral Basin, and you are the only one that possesses the power to free me. After you shatter this ice and free me, you can have me. I will gladly submit and allow you to add me to your collection of Heroes, as I am quite special. You could call me a Goddess of Beasts..."

She paused, licking her dry cracked lips as a loud embarrassing rumble echoed from her frozen stomach.

"...Please be quick. And please, bring meat."

She let out a long satisfied sigh, incredibly proud of her diplomatic composition.

"There," she smiled, looking down at the base of the glacier. "That should perfectly convey my value and my urgency. Have you finished carving the text?"