After 2 hours of training, Zhao Wei was absolutely swamped, and rightfully so. In the past three days all his focus and stamina was put into controlling the energy that courses through him. He hadn't eaten or slept at all. Even if the energy from the world courses into his body like a torrent, the benefits he received was but a trickle.
It didn't nourish him at all, especially with the low purity which actually required his strength to extract. Now the thing that bugged him the most was what was going on with his throat. During this time, he felt it, the energy was always being funneled into his throat naturally. He didn't feel any difference there. And the book didn't really say anything.
There wasn't a trace that anything had ever happened. There was definitely something there, he just didn't know what.
But he didn't forget about the state of the energy in the air. After discussing it with Pitka, he was sure something was there as he was just replied with a sigh as Pitka turned and moved away.
Following him, they both arrived at the border of the kingdom, the walls of the rock formation that curved inwards, acting like both a wall and a prison to the people inside. For Pitka, this was child's play as he slithered up seemingly slow but reached the top in less than a few minutes.
Zhao Wei was way flashier as he climbed, a exhibition of proffesional acrobatics all the way to the top, and yet he arrived three minutes after the old man. "Boyo, you know that for this kingdom, it's death for us to stay here for too long right?" Guru questioned him.
"Yeah that sounds about right." He replied.
"Why do you think we stay then?" He posed another one.
"Maybe you're afraid to lose a lot going through the entrance?" He took the bait, something wasn't right here, and he really felt like he had to know. Not until it was too late like the White Ape village again.
"If we all go through it once, to move away from here, worst case scenario we lose a quarter of those leftover in this wasteland.... they might even be better off buried under these here sands." Pitka explained. "But what's out there, none of us could survive if we're caught by it.
As he said so, he turned to look at the horizon beyond the rock formatio, somewhere within the vast sandy dunes. Zhao Wei tried to look as well, but all he saw was sand, sand and more sand.
Just as he wanted to question Pitka, he stopped, looking at Pitka's face showing a little distress for the first time since he met him. He turned and looked. A few minutes pass and he wasn't sure thing hat ever Pitka saw was still there.
And then he saw it.
A long slender body was curving upwards and diving back into the sand. It was quite far away but Zhao Wei could distinctly see its the scales which may as well have been craggy rocks that jutted out from the sea of its glistening black body.
And he couldn't not see it, not with that size. Each scale was as big as a car. And even as it moved along its path for sometime, Zhao Wei had yet to see a tail. But he was sure he knew this beast. It was definitely the one which hurt the Colossal whale, and judging by it's current size and the wound he'd seen on the Whale, it'd grown bigger.
If they fought again, he doubted the whale would've gotten off with just a scar, if it could even get away from this thing again the next time. Then again, he didn't really know what happened the last time and he wasn't sure what the Whale could do besides crush everything with it's body.
"We call it the Jormugandr." Pitka said.
"The 'World Serpent'... makes sense" Zhao Wei said after contemplating the name. It came from Norse mythology about a serpent who grew so big it could circle the world and grasp it's tail. When it rises up will mark the beginning of Ragnarok, the world's end.
It wasn't that big yet, but nobody could tell him honestly that it wouldn't. For all he knew, all the giant beasts he'd met might just be the young of their species, who could really tell.
"When we first moved here, this land wasn't so desolate... and that thing wasn't that big... we could've killed it then... we should've," Pitka said with regret, "Now it is slowly pushing us to the brink, and at this point, facing it's just plain genocide for my people."
He sighed a final time before taking his leave, he hadn't joined the council for negotiation for some time, and God knows what the children were doing while the parents were away.
Zhao Wei stayed, he needed time to think about this. It wasn't his responsibility, they... weren't his responsibility. If it was a big group, they probably wouldn't be able to escape. But if he moved alone, he was pretty sure he wouldn't be noticed. He'd already given these people a lot by opening his storage to them, whatever happened to them, was their own fate.
But he couldn't sit right with it, he'd met them, or at least some of them. He couldn't just leave it alone knowing that he left them to die without lifting a finger.