A moment later, the squad approached Hirlow, and they all stopped when they were about to attack.
The leader of the squad heaved a breath of relief and said, “Hahaha. It’s you, Young Master Hirlow.”
The short creature who was speaking had green scales all over his body, which was the shape of a human’s. He also had a fish head. When he talked, transparent mucus dripped from the sharp teeth behind his lips.
The murloc was a vassal race to the vulpera.
Because of their hideous appearance, the murloc’s social status among the hybrids was quite low. They were no better than kobolds.
Nobody was willing to live with them except the vulpera.
The vulpera’s reasoning was simple. They didn’t care if their vassal races were beautiful, because none could be more beautiful than themselves.
With that logic, the vulpera was the only advanced hybrid race that was willing to accept the murloc.
“It’s been a while, Chief Uluru.” On the gigantic wolf, Hirlow smiled gently. “How have your people been doing?”
“They’re fine.” When the murloc talked, there were bubbling sounds from his throat.
The murloc all looked similar to other races, but thanks to their keen noses, the vulpera could distinguish them by scent.
Hirlow looked around and found that the population of the murloc had increased a lot. He said, “A human Mage arrived at our city a while back and fled soon after.”
“A human Mage?” The murloc’s bulbous eyes widened even more. “They’re here again?”
Hirlow nodded. “So, I want you to patrol on the shoreline and contact us if you find anything.”
The murloc nodded quickly. “Okay, got it. All humans should die. We’ll try our best to defend the shoreline.”
Hirlow was reassured after receiving Chief Uluru’s promise.
What he worried most was that the Mage would escape from the shoreline.
The smell from the sea would cover the smell of a human. It would be difficult even for the vulpera to track a human next to the sea.
But the murloc were different. They were familiar with sea scents and sensitive to foreign smells. So, they were the best guardians of the shoreline.
After that, Hirlow led five hundred wolf-riders to the wood in the west, leaving a trail of smoke and dust rising to the sky behind them.
When they were some distance from the wood, the rider in the lead slowed down, and when Hirlow caught up to him, the handsome vulpera archer said, “Young master, I smelled the human. He must be in the woods.”
“Then let’s get closer—don’t let him escape.” Hirlow was quite excited, as the prairies and the mountains were the home of the vulpera. Essentially, they were the hybrid version of elves, except that they did not have the longevity and talents of the elves. He said, “Wind Soaring is very exhausting. This Mage must’ve used up half of his mana during the flight. He can’t cast many more spells now.”
Then, Hirlow raised his hands and roared, “Everybody, speed up, and don’t let the human escape!”
The five hundred wolf-riders echoed him at the same time.
At this point, Roland was taking a rest at the mountaintop.
He had hidden himself inside a two-storied tower that only had ventilation holes.
However, Roland had learned his lesson and released three magic spiders in advance as his sentinels.
One of the spiders crawled to the top of the tallest tree and observed the environment.
Soon, the dust raised by the wolf-riders caught the spider’s attention. After that, the images were transmitted to Roland’s brain through their mental connection.
Roland opened a gap in the building’s wall and reduced his weight with Slow Landing, allowing him to climb the tree easily. Then, he saw the wolf-riders.
Were they here for him?
Roland did not want to cause any trouble during his search for the Magic Tower.
But things didn’t go as planned. Roland saw that the riders got off from their mounts and surrounded the hill he was on, before they pressed uphill.
As hundreds of people disappeared into the woods at the foot of the hill, Roland knew that he had to react.
Though he didn’t know how they found him, he couldn’t stay here anymore.
He didn’t consume much magic power this time. After two hours of rest, he was almost fully recovered.
Since those people dared to search the mountain, they had probably prepared magic restrictions or special gadgets to deal with him.
If he was surrounded by them, the consequences would be terrible.
Roland turned the building back into mud. Then, he swooshed himself to the sky and projected himself to the sea.
It was quite noisy when Roland was flying. Besides, the magic waves from the spatial bubbles were obvious too.
The dozen vulpera who had been aiming at Roland since the moment he took off dropped their bows helplessly.
Roland was too fast. They couldn’t predict his trajectory at all, and even if they could, their arrows couldn’t catch up with him.
Hirlow knew a thing or two about Mages, but when he saw Roland passing him by from above and disappearing into the horizon, he was dumbfounded. “What’s that?”
It took Roland four minutes to reach the sea.
He really hated to give up halfway, not after he had already made it here. It was possible that he could find the Red Magic Tower after he crossed this sea.
However, the problem was that he couldn’t cross it at this point.
The sea was quite vast. In order to fly across it, he would need places to rest on his way.
Though it was possible to freeze the seawater with Ice Ring, a tiny piece of floating ice would be useless on the sea, because the waves on the sea were almost two meters high even without wind and could easily flip the ice.
As for bigger ice… How much magic power would it consume?
Creating ice in the sea was meant for him to recover his magic power. Wouldn’t it be self-contradictory if he wasted a lot of magic power on creating the ice?
Besides, the weather on the sea could be fickle. Should he be caught in a storm, even a large piece of ice wouldn’t be safe.
Standing next to the shoreline, Roland was quite gloomy.
While he was sighing, he suddenly saw a squad of green human-shaped creatures running toward him with a weird gait from his left. He even heard their cries.
Observing them more closely, Roland found that they were fully green and had big eyes that looked like light bulbs. Together with their imposing chins, they were so hideous that they were like aliens.
“What’s that?”
Roland made exactly the same remark as Hirlow did earlier.
