Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Wendell was a Lightseeker. He could also be the last Lightseeker. As a man searching for the remnants of light among the Nine Worlds, he was too old for the task. His body was weak and his mind was flagging. Every part of his body was constantly reminding him that he was no longer fit to take part in the expedition, and his insistence would only lead him to death.
Nevertheless, he resolutely left the warm and comfortable Twilight Capital and embarked on the journey, which he had little chance of returning.
This was his second time.
Wendell once challenged the journey of light searching. He was traveling with 28 partners at the time. Half of them died of the deadly disease of magical energy erosion shortly after crossing the first Bifröst while the rest of them died one after another in the deadly poisonous fog of the Niflheim. In the end, Wendell and the only remaining teammate dragged themselves back to the Twilight Capital, and the only teammate died tragically in nightmares and suffocation on the third day of his return.
But Wendell survived and lived healthily to this day.
Since the collapse of the world and the light had gone, the world had been shrouded in scorching darkness to this day. Thousands of Lightseekers had embarked on the journey in the long night. They sneaked into the darkness, searching for the remnant lights in the remains of the devastated world, yet no one had ever brought back great news. Most of the Lightseekers, like friends of Wendell, had become rotten bones in the waste soil. Few of them were lucky enough to survive. They fled back to their home before the darkness engulfed them thoroughly, and for the rest of their short lives, they told others about the Doomshade in the darkness and the excruciatingly painful radiation of magical energy. No one would laugh at the Lightseekers who were too scared to continue and fled back because it took a great deal of courage just to step out of the Twilight Capital. And for those who could go through the adventure in the long night and come back alive, their survival was already a commendable feat.
Of all these Lightseekers, Wendell was the only one who returned alive from the darkness and set out on the journey again.
Some said that he was crazy, and some praised his courage, thinking that his near-irrational spirit of confronting a challenge was comparable to the Einherjar of the ancient times. But Wendell scorned all these evaluations. There was only one reason why he set foot on the journey, which was, to fulfill his promise to his wife when he was young: to find the remnants of glimmering light in the long night.
So when he realized that he had only one chance to challenge for the rest of his life and that there might never be a new team of Lightseekers in Twilight Capital, he volunteered to join the last expedition. In the eyes of others who saw him as a crazy man, he set off with the blessed talisman.
The last team started off from the Twilight Capital with only twelve members, the smallest ever Lightseeker expedition. Following the route left by their predecessors, they traveled among the remains of the Nine Worlds and did everything possible to search for life and to look for signs that the long night was about to recede.
No matter where they go, however, all they can find is the rotten, twisted earth and the air that filled with magical energies. The remnant branches of Yggdrasil grew in this terrible world, but the spring water of elves no longer flowed from these branches. As the Doomsday Book said, the branches of Yggdrasil was dying, the Nine Worlds collapsed, the whole universe had long since extinguished, and the men lingered on with their last breath of life could not turn their fate around.
The teammates fell down one by one. Bonem, the most robust one among them, was radiated to death because he accidentally lost his talisman. The brave Andrew fell into the depths of the earth’s cracks. Helena was dead, too. She disappeared in the gate as she crossed the Bifröst of Jotunheim, but never appeared at the other end of the gate: the space storm engulfed her. In the end, only Wendell and Tanarossa were left in the team, but Tanarossa did not live to this day either.
“Maybe I can’t get through it.” Wendell curled up in his small camp, and his old body was wrapped in leather. He felt that his heart was being roasted by the flames, but his skin was chilled with cold. This was a sign that magical energy had invaded the nervous system. He found it a bit ironic: he was the last man in the team. Those who were younger, more flexible, and stronger than him, died before him.
Maybe it was the experience of the light-seeking trip and the adaptability to magical energy that made him live longer, but that’s it.
Another cold spread over his body and Wendell wrapped the leather around him tight. He looked at his threaded cane and the compass on it. The pointer on the compass was spinning wildly, and the threaded cane was full of cracks. He knew he was lost, not long after he buried Tanarossa. It made him a little sorry: had it not been for this last bit of obstruction, maybe he would have arrived in Asgard. Although he was certain that he would die of radiation disease in a short period even if he arrived at Asgard, he could at least see the legendary country with his own eyes to confirm the fact that had supported him all the way here:
Did Asgard survive?
Wendell struggled to remove the blackened piece of parchment from his arms. There was only a sentence scribbled on the parchment:
“… There’s light… in Asgard.”
The paper was found by his team as they crossed Svartalfheim, secured in the chest of a Lightseeker’s corpse. Tanarossa believed that the Lightseeker was a member of the failed expedition a hundred years ago: the group of Lightseekers who set out a hundred years ago was considered to be the most likely to succeed in searching all kingdoms in history. The Twilight Capital almost put all the last hope on them, but none of them survived in the end, which indirectly led to the end of the ‘Lightseekers’.
According to the note, Tanarossa speculated that the Lightseekers who disappeared a hundred years ago had successfully arrived at Asgard, the last remnant of the Nine Worlds, and found the evidence of survival there. However, the team failed to bring the good news back to the Twilight Capital.
It was the content on this note that allowed Wendell to hold on to this moment. He no longer expected to return to the Twilight Capital. He only hoped to see Asgard, even if he had to crawl there.
However, it seemed that regrets would eventually become regrets.
Another cold struck from all directions. Wendell felt that his sanity was gradually sinking into the bottomless abyss. He tried again to wrap the leather around his body, but this time he could not even control his fingers. As his eyelids were getting heavier, he felt as if he were back in the Twilight Capital, the narrow city that covered with a yellow light film, filled with the smell of oil and gas, and full of steam and soot. His little workshop appeared again in front of him and his dear Sasha came alive, too. She stood at the door of the workshop, wearing an old apron, and looked at him sadly.
He struggled to reach out, but he felt that his vision was narrowing and darkening. Eventually, everything was far away.
However, in the last seconds, before he completely fell into darkness, a glimmering light appeared in the distance.
A detection probe found the lost man. Hao Ren finally arrived before it was too late.
They found the humble little camp in the wilderness, which was hundreds of kilometers from the Bifröst. There was only one old man in the small camp, wrapped in ragged leather, lying bent and weak. The old man was having a high fever. His skin was glowing with an abnormal green and white luster, and his breathing was so weak that it was about to stop at any moment, and Anthony immediately judged that it was a serious symptom of the erosion of magical energy.
“He’s dying,” Anthony said as he set up a barrier around the camp to keep away magical energy. “But he’s not dead yet. Give me some time and I can pull him back from the death line.”
When the barrier against magical energy was set up, the weak and unconscious old man’s condition immediately stabilized. Though far from improving, he was at least temporarily out of the threat of death. While the old mage was busy arranging various purification enchantments, Vivian went forward and examined the old man’s condition, and she was surprised to find that he was a human.
Although somewhat different from today’s humans on Earth, which might be the result of long-term living in a mutant environment, the old man was indeed a human.
“How did he survive in this environment?” Vivian found it unbelievable.
Galazur searched around the old man and found something that emitted magic waves. “Probably the efficacy of this talisman. I just sensed that this thing formed a barrier to continuously filter the magical energy and poison gas in the air. But its effectiveness seems to be almost over, and the filtering effect is bad.”
Hao Ren took the talisman and said, “It seems that he is the ‘Lightseeker’.”
And at this moment, with Anthony’s help, the dying old man gradually recovered, and slowly opened his eyes.
