Chilled exorcist.

Chapter 29: "The Restless village of the Bubbling Basin"

I was driving and saw the silhouette of a black bird on the road ahead, emerging from the dust swirling around…

Right in the mud, in front of the guiding stone, lay the corpse of a hunter. Even from a distance, I noticed the reason and jumped off my filly. His antique alchemist mask with an elongated nose resembling a raven's beak was torn and completely unusable. I turned it over and looked at it and recognized it. It was one of those funny ones who lost his horse to the fish. It seems that he forgot to ask for a renewal from Count Feanoth. What a ridiculous death!

After pausing for a moment, I picked up the cold killer's sword, and then bent down and looked at what was in his bag. I dug around there looking for a magmabomb. Accidentally touching the hunter's body, I realized that it was warm. I didn't have time just a little bit. What a pity! You can't leave him here. The marks of the black earth have already appeared on it. The fingers were already beginning to move gradually, we need to act quickly. In the bright lands, the bodies of those infected with greyness are burned; here, more terrible things are avoided. The marks from wounds received in the lands of Zagorye throbbed more and more strongly on the hunter's body. Finally, I found the right item. Inside the bag there was a charge of a Blue Mountains tunneler. "A checker. Apparently, he had already spent his magobomb somewhere. Most likely, Count Myrtel gave it to him in return for the spent potion," I shook my head, agreeing with this version as the most plausible, and then took wildfire out of my bag and dropped a drop of fiery liquid on the body. The flames flared up and caught fire, engulfing everything in the blink of an eye.

I recoiled from the heat and looked around. There were two markings at the previous intersection. There's only one Arsa ribbon here. It curled in the air and blocked the way to the left, but I didn't need to go there. The professor asked me to deliver the bone plates, so I went to the Bubbling Basin in the opposite direction.

The Bubbling Basin is famous for its haven for mercenaries. There is a convenient point in the middle of the route of the frontier highway, which is responsible for protecting local villages and roads. Travelers and rare caravans to Kostegrad stop there to replenish their water supplies. Groups of adventurers also flock here to travel around the neighborhood later. And in autumn, a Gift Fair is also held here. It is a very famous and perhaps the most densely populated place in the whole North.

All the remaining crowds of mercenaries became both a blessing and a curse for the settlement, which was so conveniently located on the way between Kostegrad and the Fortress of Feanoth. Here, in the glorious days, once upon a time, when there was much less settlement, there was another road south to the Red Port, but now they prefer not to mention it in the Bubbling Basin. Creepy swamp creatures have become even more dangerous, having tasted the gray earth. On the other hand, all gold and goods in the Costegrad always passed through this route. Therefore, due to the gangs of thugs that appeared over time and those looking for easy money, the Bubbling Basin constantly lived, in fact, under martial law. And even the main authority here was not the elder, but the Captain of the Guards who ruled the settlement.

When the King's entourage, mute from birth, spoke and uttered that fateful prophecy about the infection of the creatures of the canopy, about diseases and hunger, no one thought about what fate awaited the Bubbling Basin. I didn't think about it either, going on horseback to this fortified settlement.

I yanked on the horse's harness and jumped on it in one swift leap, pointing it in the right direction. The Bubbling Basin is not a simple settlement surrounded by a palisade; hot springs are beating from the ground here, but only one of them is with drinking water. Here it will also be possible to feed my tired horse, which almost ate some gray muck on the road, as soon as I stopped and was distracted by the hunter's body. This place was once quite extensive; it was prophesied the glory of the Fortress of Rukh, Feanot, or at least the Red Port. But with the spread of bullying, everything has changed.

Will you ask why there is no milchemist's armband on the horse? A good joke, because a horse with a beak would look really funny. In fact, everything is quite simple. Large animals, unlike the same lemmings of the Darkwood, do not fall under the influence of precipitation so quickly, and it acts on them differently than on humans. In general, a horse can travel great distances by quietly inhaling it. But if she eats it, she'll go crazy. Foam will flow from the mouth, and it will insatiably absorb until it is completely filled; the belly will swell to enormous sizes. And then she will look for a predator to infect him already. For me, it would mean that I lost my horse.

The main danger of precipitation is for people. But the black earth is dangerous for everyone. The ashes from the hunter's body scattered, and I gave the horse a tsk to accelerate. The fire died out as quickly as it appeared; the heat had already drained away.