Chapter 24: The Stalker
Priest Miller watched the circus leave from the balcony on the third floor of the prayer hall, and he watched Diarlando's figure disappear across the stone bridge, lamenting the impermanence of the world, and did not expect that there would be a day when he would live to see his old man. A sharp knock on the door drew his attention back. The old priest replied as he walked over and opened the door. He thought it was his priest trainee Terry, but when he opened the door, it was a young woman he had never seen before.
The woman was dressed in a dark green travel suit, with short straight black hair, a porcelain-white goose egg face, and dark reddish-brown eyes.
"Are you ......" Priest Miller didn't finish his words as a slender dagger pierced his ribs and sliced through his heart. The sharp blade was barely bleeding when it was drawn, and the old priest's throat let out a sigh-like breath before he fell to the ground and died.
The five fingers of the woman's left hand all began to deform and elongate, as if a hose with spikes, suddenly protruding from the old man's slightly open mouth. Her head tilted back, her eyes rolled up, and her originally dark pupils seemed to suddenly expand, and her entire eyeball turned a dark red color.
Fei Karen was in front of the magic mirror, looking at the information that came through his subordinates, the old priest's mind was stuffed with too many useless things, and Zuihou only got a little bit of information. Diarlando had been in contact with this person in the village, and he thought he was an important person, but he turned out to be an irrelevant bystander.
"Master, what to do with the corpse?" the woman seemed to ask into the air, the magic chain on her body connected to Fei Karen dozens of miles away, and she could contact Fei Karen anytime and anywhere.
"Tata, get where no one is, clean it up, and keep following the target. Faekelen gave a brief order, and then cut off the connection between the two.
Tiny ant-like bugs swarmed in from all directions, Tata's sentinels had just sniffed the entire village to check on Dierlando's whereabouts. At this moment, these insects returned to the woman's body, and then the woman's appearance gradually collapsed like a ball of melted butter, and poured into the old priest's body through the skin of her original left hand.
A moment later, the dead old priest rose from the ground again, and it moved a little, adjusting to the new skin, accustomed to the clumsy and slow movement of its aging body. After packing up the equipment he had left behind, he slowly walked down the stairs.
The obese old man hadn't left the village for more than a decade, and the prayer hall didn't usually have much transportation, so Zuihou found a small dark gray donkey in the shed on the side. Probably usually used to pull goods. Tata untied the reins, climbed up with great difficulty, and staggered out of the prayer hall.
Trainee Priest Terry saw him from afar and asked aloud if he needed any help? Priest Miller waved away the red-skinned young man and directed the donkey in the direction the circus had left.
As he passed the stone bridge, the old man's heart, which had been punctured, tightened inexplicably, squeezing out more blood, and Tata looked at the dark blood coming out of his chest and mouth in disgust, and jerked it on the donkey's ass, urging the brute to hurry up.
Not far from the village, it found a secluded place and got off the donkey. The old priest's skin seemed to be tumbling with hundreds of insects, muscle, fat, and loose skin converging inward, as if something had eaten them from within. Short black hair appeared on the top of his bare head, his pale gray eyes, which had begun to be cloudy, deepened, his smooth and elastic skin replaced his original ones, his bones adjusted rapidly, and it was not long before a young woman in a priest's uniform reappeared in the woods.
With a wave of his hand, Tata let the "sentinels" fall from the donkey's body, and the tiny insects quickly broke through the donkey's skin and silently burrowed into the donkey's body. The hapless beast took only a few gasps before falling to its knees and dying silently. The same devouring process played out, only this time faster and cleaner. By the time Tata got dressed again, there wasn't a single donkey's hair left on the ground.
The "sentinels", who ate a large amount of food and thus split into more individuals, did not return to their hosts, but scattered to the northeast in pursuit. They all sniff out the scent of Dearrando in the air, and they won't miss any of the targets that pass by.
The female assassin went straight up to the nearby tree, moved some distance through the canopy, found the horse that had been tied to the neighborhood, and jumped lightly. The "sentinel" in her body formed a slightly raised arrow under her skin, telling her the approximate distance and direction of the target by its length and angle.
Dino was quiet for a long time, then suddenly pointed to the side of the road and asked, "Diel, there are a lot of beautiful flowers over there, can I pick them and give them to Luna?" Diarlando took a look, and there was a vulture orchid growing in the woods by the roadside, and the large pink and yellow flowers were really beautiful, so he pulled the horse and walked in.
Before he could stop, Dino threw the core of everything to Deirlando, slipped off his horse, and rushed into the flowers, where he picked them for a while. "Oops!" he suddenly screamed softly, then put his finger in his mouth and sucked. Dierrando immediately leaned over to see what was wrong, it turned out that there were some black bugs in the flowers, and one of them had bitten Dino just now. Don't look at the insects, they are still very painful to bite, Dino's index finger seems to have been poked by a nail, and there is a hole the size of a sesame seed.
Diarlando grabbed a bug and gently pinched it in his hand to look at it, and found that it seemed to be an ant, with huge teeth and a red blood line on his stomach. Pinched in his hand, the pair of teeth kept biting, as if he wanted to give Dierlandor a bite too. There are almost all insects in the grass here, and they seem to be increasing. He snatched the flower that Dino had picked and threw it on the ground, picked him on his horse and drove out of the place.
Since Fayer had introduced some of F'Karen's methods, seeing that the bugs Deirlandor was a little allergic, and leaving the grass, he released Ryses to see if the baby dragon would react to the bugs. As soon as Ryses opened the lid and burst out, he opened his mouth and spewed a fireball into the woods, and the flames rolled through the grass, instantly scorching the vegetation. It sprayed a few more fireballs, burning about dozens of square feet of turf, and it still couldn't get enough of it, and it seemed that there was something wrong with these bugs.
"Dill, what's wrong with Reseth?" Dino asked curiously, looking at the young dragon's actions.
"Remember when I said we had an important mission?"
"Well, raise Reses and let him fight the Dragon King. Dino nodded, repeating the simple and concise task that Dirlando had told him.
Dearlando showed Dino the bug in his hand, and then explained, "This bug was released by the Demon Dragon King's men, because it has an evil aura, so Reeth will destroy them when he finds it, and it seems that we are being followed." ”
"Ahh
"yes, I can't let him follow him like that, so can you bring this bug to Fayle? I'm going back to catch the bad guys. Diarrando flipped over his body, and there was nothing to hold the sample, so he simply threw the black ant into the star box, and then untied the star box and put it in Dino's hands.
He then recalls Ryses and has the young dragon perched on Dino's shoulder. "You go to Fayle, Rieseth, you have to protect Dino, I'll kill the trackers and come to you, okay?" Ryses tilted his head, and then quacked in agreement, and Dino also looked serious and nodded vigorously in agreement.
Diarlando jumped off his horse, slapped Pito on the buttocks, drove the horse out, and then turned around and ran back after the colony on the ground. After untying the elven gauntlets, Dearlando turned the dragon's gaze, and dark red points of light covered the ground, revealing the source of the swarm.
Tata suddenly felt the swarm in his hand stir, and looked down, the tip of the arrow on his arm suddenly collapsed, and then the arrow began to shorten, apparently the target found himself and turned back to look for it.
Fikaren's order was to follow and observe, not to include face-to-face contact, and Tata thought for a second and immediately decided to avoid it. She wasn't sure how the other party was tracking her, so she turned around and retreated to the side and back first, thinking that the other party might not be able to catch up even if she was on horseback.
Unexpectedly, after running for a while, the length of the arrow not only did not lengthen, but became shorter and shorter, no matter what means of transportation the other party used, it was obviously faster than his own horse speed. Tata was starting to feel a little curious about this opponent, she had come out of the cultivation tank, she had not seen any creatures that could match her, and although Fikelon had warned of the dangers of Diarlando, the habit of following orders was not as curious as the curiosity to find out. Zuihou smiled and took a compromise.
Dearlando chased the swarm and didn't see anyone when he found the brown steed by the river. The horse was an ordinary plain horse, with no markings, and the harness was the most ordinary, and it didn't even look like it had been used, and it smelled of new leather. The surrounding trees and grass were densely packed with small dark spots of light, obviously covered with red black ants, but there were no people, and there were no large creatures.
His intuition made him feel like something was watching him, as if he was in the middle of a stage, surrounded by sight. But the dragon's perception told him that there was only one source of mana here, and that there should be no more than one enemy. The white magic sword appeared silently in his hand, and Diarlando gently held the sword, checking around the grove by the river. The feeling of being watched is always lingering and irritating.
Tata was overjoyed that her skin was safely placed at the bottom of the river and pressed against stones, and her whole body became a "sentinel", surrounding the enemy layer by layer. The speed of the "human" gallop was astonishing, faster than a horse, the way it moved was full of coordination and rhythm, and the toned physique looked very delicious. Thinking of this, all her bodies couldn't help but smack their lips, and the sound of grinding teeth was remembered in the woods, as if a wind was blowing through the treetops.