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/A few minutes later…/
Dale finally arrived at the Inn, and after saying hello to Illia and her family, he climbed to the second floor and opened the door to his room.
"Make yourself comfortable… Although there isn't much here to help you with that…" Dale said with a small smile
Testros shook his head.
"No, this is fine…"
'Although... It's been many years since I entered this house... Its condition is as bad as I imagined...'
'We need more materials ASAP so we can fix these things... They're the few relics that stood the challenges of time.'
He pulled a small table in the corner of the room towards the sole bed in the room before using a wooden box as a chair, saying:
"There is a lot to go through regarding our 'Little adventure', so let's start with my investigation."
Dale nodded, he went to his bed and sat in it, waiting for the old man to continue.
"So… Let's start by when I left the Corps… This is a story of 90 years ago…"
"Wait!"
Dale immediately opened his mouth, shocked!
"9-90 years?!"
He took another look at Testros, but he didn't seem to be that old!
From what he understood, he left the Corps around the time when he started to climb the ranks of the soldiers after finishing Cadet school...
That was when he was 17 years old...
"But you look…"
Testros cut Dale, saying:
"I look like I'm in my 70's right? Well, I'm over 100 years old." Testros said with a small smile
"In fact, apart from some of the teenagers and kids, everyone in Resko is older than they look…"
"Old Tina for example should be well beyond her 130s as she grew up in a time Resko could still be considered a town..."
"But I never said that ok? If she asks, I told you she's 65..."
Dale couldn't help but ask:
"Why?! How is this possible?"
Testros smiled, but then his expression changed to a more serious one as he started his explanation.
"You already know that Resko is located… Or was once located within an area of boundless resources, right?"
Dale nodded, he heard this story many times, the famed tales of the riches that surround this place...
But only for the capable as those riches aren't without their own share of dangers...
"Not only minerals, but its Fauna and Flora are also extremely diverse."
"In the past, we had Yumi's father, old man Dudencell, to make us potions and alchemical products based on these…"
"The result was obvious: from birth till adulthood, the children of Resko grew up with all sorts of things made up from these extotic plant and animal life…"
"Didn't you have a taste of it? An Iron Apple… I doubt it has any effect on you, but when properly processed with other side ingredients, it creates a Potion that greatly increases the physical qualities of a normal person when used over a certain period of time."
"But it isn't only that, our crops, the animals we raise, our environment… Everything contributes to that."
"And even though over the years, we lost access to several of these things, the only generation affected is the most recent one..."
"The very same generation that has yet to grow old enough for aging to take its effects."
"... So Illia... She's old as well?" Dale asked as he remembered the kind Inn owner that cooks for him every once in a while
"She's 28... Or is it over 30 already? I stopped counting these things long ago..."
"..."
'I thought she was in her early 20's though... It's so misleading...'
Dale finally understood the reason why these Villagers were so strong…
It was on his face all along, he should've thought about it… It made him feel funny.
The Villagers grew up consuming those overly strong and special crops, it was very slow, but over the decades, their stats increased little by little...
Not only that, there were the products of those farm animals, each strong enough to become Raid bosses…
Dale once touched one of those Crops, curious as to what they looked like.
He immediately found out about their horrendous vitality, and how much effort it took him to pull one apart…
It was the same level of difficulty that someone would have to rip apart a plastic string, and considering his previous strength prior to today, that was quite significant.
As for the farm animals, there isn't much to be said about it.
Their Bulls are Ignition Bovines, and their cows are something similar, even the smallest of those calls is 3M tall.
They're hulking masses of flesh…
"..."
Noticing Dale's expression, Testros continued:
"Thanks to all of it, I'm now here talking with you, otherwise I would've been gone long ago…"
"That's quite the story…" Dale said with a half-smile
In these medieval conditions, being able to live past your 120s is almost the same as doubling your total life…
"Also, it's not like we can live this long just because of all of this Dale, it took an extreme amount of training for both me and Tina to live that long, even if she isn't' the same as she once was, she was once a very powerful warrior…"
"But that is another story…"
He took something from his pocket, it was a small grayscale, discolored over the passing of the seasons.
"I found this stuck on the floor during my investigation, and I believe it was once part of the monster that took the Commander's life…"
Testros took a deep breath.
"I think this is what happened…"
"In a last act of resistance, the Elite soldiers and the Commander retreated to the Inner facilities of the Wall, where their final fight took place."
"Most died outside, while some of the strongest died within that corridor… Their bodies and the condition of their equipment speak loads of what happened…"
"However, I believe their purpose wasn't to survive but to buy time."
"As we saw in the Office, there were two long lines of blood on the ground coming from the door, one from a Human, another from something else."
"The commander had been hurt prior to entering his Office, this points out the possibility of him being injured before this resistance was even mounted in the first place…"
"Of course, in the heat of battle, getting hurt is inevitable, but we're talking about a heavy injury on none other than the Commander…"
"And second, the monster that killed him must've arrived after the Elite Soldiers were exterminated… Perhaps he delivered the last blow to each of them…"
"But what's important is how he is connected to their current conditions… Since you see, if they had died in a monster-infested battlefield, there wouldn't have been a single piece of bone left… Or at least, everything would've been messier."
"I believe this monster's presence was strong enough to impede any monster from approaching that area even after he left…"
"Monsters tend to be extremely territorial after all."
Dale nodded, thinking…
'I wonder what motivates these monsters to walk further North from the South in the first place...'
"Since we now know what happened to the soldiers outside, let's go back to the Commander…" Testros said deeply
"As his soldiers died one by one, the Commander probably tried his best to recover… Or so is how it should've gone, but as we saw, there were no signs of him even trying to recover…"
"There was no recovery item in the Office, nor any sign of one ever being there…"
"The Commander knew he was going to perish, so he acted based on that, and instead, he prepared many things such as hiding those things in the secret safe…"
"But what matters is what he did in between… Because I felt it. The Wall's defensive systems are still working even to this day."
"I find it difficult that someone is maintaining that, so what happened is that the Commander must've done something…"
Testros dropped his head in frustration.
"Unfortunately, I cannot say much more than that…"
"However, what I can say is that his actions were the sole reason why monsters haven't invaded from the other side in large droves."
"Yet, I cannot say for how long those actions are going to last. If that was enough to hold the monsters off, then the Wall would have never fallen in the first place."
"So instead of blocking them, I think the Commander made it so they couldn't pass through the Wall, trapping them inside."
"This could also explain why the forest is in disarray… It must be because those same actions the Commander did in the past are finally starting to fade away…"
"There's the possibility that the stronger monsters from the outside are making their way inside, offsetting the balance of the Inner forest and forcing other monsters to relocate."
Testros said after a slight pause:
"Monsters that, although much weaker than what came after us in the Wall, are still a big problem on their own."
"..."
'I had already imagined the creatures from the forest would be problematic to deal with, but if it's true they are from the outside, and that Testro's predictions are correct, then this means another big fucking problem is underway…'
'If everything else wasn't enough, now the Wall in itself is another addition to this ever-increasing list of problems I have to deal with… '
Dale let out a small sigh before looking at Testros and asking:
"Alright, what else did you find?"
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Notes