Chapter 450 - 450: Entering the Dreadland Depths

She didn't expect that Jolthar would really kiss her, not even showing a hint of fear in front of a deity. But she didn't get angry because, in a way, she was starting to like this young man. She had been absorbing him for quite a while and she had developed a profound interest in him, which made her give in to the desire right now pulsing between them.

She kissed him back with a desperation that shocked her, lips parting wider, tongue meeting his in a slow, sensual duel that made her knees weaken. Her hips rolled once, instinctively, seeking more of that hard pressure against her.

The movement drew a low growl from deep in his chest, and the sound vibrated straight through her core. Her divine power, usually so steady and contained, surged in erratic pulses. Golden light flickered faintly beneath her skin.

The air around them warmed. A soft wind stirred the deck, carrying the scent of smoldering cedar and something sweeter—her own rising arousal.

She was losing herself.

For one dizzying, terrifying, exquisite moment, the goddess of the hearth forgot she was divine. She forgot the veil, the Dreadland Depths and the careful distance she always maintained between herself and mortals.

There was only Jolthar—his mouth, his hands, the way he kissed her like he meant to brand her soul, the way his body promised both shelter and ruin. Her thighs trembled. Her nipples tightened painfully against the fabric.

A deep, liquid ache throbbed between her legs, hot and insistent, demanding more. She almost—almost—let go completely. Almost let the kiss become something far more dangerous. Almost let her robes fall open right there beneath the open sky so she could feel his skin against hers, his hands on her bare flesh, his cock—

Then a sound cut through the moment—a strange, discordant noise that didn't belong to the sky or ship or natural world. It was a low, thrumming vibration that carried wrongness in its very essence, a sound that made survival instincts scream danger.

They broke apart, both turning toward the source of the sound, and what they saw made the romantic moment evaporate instantly.

Ahead of the ship, the landscape was changing.

The healthy greens and browns of normal forest land were giving way to something else—colors that were wrong, twisted, as if the very pigments of reality had been corrupted into shades that shouldn't exist. The sky ahead was darker despite it being midday, clouds taking on bruised purple and sickly yellow tones that spoke to fundamental wrongness in the atmosphere itself.

And stretching across the horizon like a curtain between worlds was the Veil.

It appeared as a shimmering barrier of translucent energy, extending from ground to sky and disappearing into the distance on both sides as far as the eye could see. The Veil pulsed with power—not the clean, refined energy of cultivation or magic, but something raw and barely controlled, a desperate measure to contain what lay beyond.

Behind the Veil, they could see the Dreadland Depths.

The land was twisted, corrupted, fundamentally wrong in ways that made the mind rebel against perceiving it clearly. Trees grew at impossible angles, their bark blackened and weeping substances that might have been sap or might have been something far worse.

The ground itself seemed to writhe and pulse as if alive and in pain. The air was thick with foul miasma that created visible distortions, making everything behind the Veil appear to shift and waver like heat shimmer over desert sands.

And pervading everything was a sense of malevolence—not conscious exactly, but present nonetheless, as if the very land itself had developed a hatred for anything living and pure that dared approach it.

"That's..." Jolthar started, then stopped, struggling to find words adequate to describe what he was seeing.

"The Dreadland Depths," Haryntha finished, her voice serious now, all traces of earlier playfulness gone.

"The corrupted zone where reality itself has broken down under the weight of accumulated malice and suffering. Where nynthralls breed and thrive, feeding on the wrongness that permeates every particle of existence within those boundaries."

She moved to the ship's controls, beginning to guide the vessel downward toward the forest land that existed just before the Veil, the last stretch of healthy territory before corruption took hold.

"We'll land here and proceed on foot," Haryntha continued, her tone shifting to professional efficiency.

"The ship can't cross the Veil; the energies would tear it apart. And we need to be ready for immediate combat the moment we pass through. Nothing beyond that barrier is safe or friendly or even comprehensible in normal terms."

Not only the ships, but even the horses or high-level beasts wouldn't be able to move through the depths. The land itself was like a poison that will destroy everything that treads through it.

The empire had developed a counter magic to deal with the depths and to move through the depths. It was purification magic that the temple had bestowed on the empire. Every army that comes to the depths consists of a battle priest who performs the purification magic.

Right now, Jolthar has a deity by his side so it wouldn't be too hard to pass through the lands.

The ship descended smoothly, touching down in a clearing at the edge of the healthy forest. Even here, perhaps a quarter-mile from the Veil itself, they could feel the wrongness radiating from the corrupted zone beyond.

It created a pressure against the mind and spirit, a constant low-level assault that would wear down resolve and sanity over extended exposure.

If a normal human were to come close to this Veil, they would go mad or die from the malice spreading through the body. It would require constant guarding to stand against the Veil.

Jolthar and Haryntha stepped off the ship onto solid ground, both of them immediately adopting more defensive postures and heightened alertness. The romantic moment in the clouds felt like it had happened days ago rather than minutes, pushed aside by the immediate reality of where they stood and what they were about to attempt.

Though she had a hard time focusing, and she was giving him subtle glances.

Ahead of them, perhaps a thousand feet away, the Veil shimmered and pulsed. Beyond it, the Dreadland Depths waited—a place of nightmares and corruption, filled with Nynthralls and Nyphorites.

"Once we cross that barrier," Haryntha said quietly, "there's no turning back until we've completed the mission. The Veil is one-way from this side—designed to let things in but not out, preventing corrupted entities from escaping into healthy lands. We'll need to fight our way through to the far side where exit points exist, and finding those three dukes will be like finding a needle in a haystack."

"Sounds straightforward," Jolthar said with dark humor.

"It's anything but," Haryntha replied seriously.

"Stay close to me. Follow my lead. And whatever you see or hear beyond that Veil, remember that not all of it is real. The corruption plays tricks on perception, creating illusions designed to break will and spirit. Trust only what you can verify through multiple senses, and don't believe anything that seems too convenient or too terrible to be true."

"Also prepare to defend yourselves and don't start a fight unless it's urgent. Because once we attract their attention, they will keep coming until they are done ripping us apart and eating every little piece of our body."

Jolthar looked at her with a strange gaze. She was giving him a detailed report of the depths and seemed to show concern for him. He just stayed silent and followed her lead. He can get his answers when the time is right.

With each step, the sense of wrongness intensified. The air became harder to breathe. Colors seemed to shift and change at the edges of vision. Sounds from the forest behind them became muffled and distant, as if the corrupted zone was already trying to cut them off from everything normal and safe.

The land they walked had also started to change color, giving way to the depth floor. The amount of malice present in these lands can kill any life form of low levels.

They reached the Veil itself, standing before the shimmering barrier that separated healthy reality from corrupted nightmare.

Haryntha looked at Jolthar one last time.

"Ready?"

"No," Jolthar replied honestly.

"But let's do it anyway."

They stepped forward together, passing through the Veil.

The sensation was immediate and overwhelming—like being plunged into ice-cold water while simultaneously being burned, like having every nerve in the body scream contradictory sensations, like reality itself rejecting their presence and trying to expel them from existence.

Then they were through, standing on the other side.

In the Dreadland Depths.

Where nightmares were real, corruption was law, and three ancient malevolences waited to be challenged.

The mission had truly begun.

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