493 The Three Statues

"How much for all the hexes?" Ren asked. Who knows, he might need it in the future.

"The Hexes are 20 000 gil each," she said.

". . ." That was expensive for solo players and small guilds.

Ren was contemplating before he decided to buy those spells in preparation for his trip into the Fey Realm.

"Thank you." Viscendra sweetly smiled.

Ren didn't need those magical items, so he quickly went on his way back to Eldermill after his short talk with Viscendra. In the village, he reported about what happened to the hunter, Tomas, to his family and said the location of his corpse.

He got some items for it, like HP and MP potions as well as Tomas Hunting Knife which he sold because he couldn't use it.

Ren then proceeded to his next destination.

The Yil'Quessir Ayin was a sacred elven monument that lies about more than one kilometer west of Eldermill on an outcropping by the Timber Gully.

Ren could reach it in 2-3 hours of travel from Eldermill, but he opted to hire a hog rider this time to cut his travel time short.

Though the pigs were asleep in the wee hours of the morning, so Ren had no choice but to ride on the back of a giant lizard. The only available transportation at this time.

Ren slithered all the way to the monument. As he approached the trees around him become increasingly rot-infested, their naked branches seemingly like claws reaching out toward him.

After a while, the ground became harder and the forest less dense, and Ren could see a wide ravine up ahead. On an outcropping over the steep cliff, Ren saw three weathered stone statues facing each other.

The three statues were carved to depict some of the most important elven deities:

The Father of Elves (God of Light and Magic). A stern elven man who peered into the distance.

The Wise Mother (Goddess of Life and Wisdom). A stately elven woman was holding a long staff.

Goldenheart (Goddess of Love and Beauty). A smiling elven woman with long flowing hair.

As soon as Ren was there a prompt appeared on his screen.

[The Yil'Quessir Ayin was built not just as a monument but also to help nourish the Verdant Woods and the Maze Forest as a whole. When activated through a magical ritual, the monument would weaken the barrier between the Material Plane and the Fey Realm, where nature flourished, and even allow passage between the two realms.]

Wait a moment . . . Ren thought and retrieved the map that Queen Eleanor gave him. This was the exact spot on where he should be going if he wanted to go to the Fey Realm.

So this was the portal. Ren thought.

But now, the portal was corrupted, and instead of connecting to the Fey Realm, it now connected to the Shadowmire, a dark and twisted mirror of the Material Plane.

Ren guessed that he still would have done the quest regardless he liked it or not if he wanted to enter the Fey Realm. Now he was glad that he had done the quest in the first place.

This would serve as a lesson to him to check the portals from now on if there were accompanying quests with it. It would be a problem if he led a group of players in here and be caught surprise that there was a quest before they could be transported into the Fey Realm.

Nearing the statues, a description was prompted on Ren's screen.

[When El'athal was murdered near the monument, the monument's magic was corrupted by the twilight's darkness, El'athal's death, and Aimon's bitterness. As the veil between the worlds is kept thin by Aimon's hatred, dark energy from the Shadowmire now spreads from the monument to corrupt and darken the Verdant Woods.

The monument's corruption must be undone at its source: Aimon, who is trapped in the Shadowmire. To reach him, the players must first activate the monument's magic and travel to the Shadowmire.]

So Aimon and El'athal was here. The prompt must have automatically appeared because Ren had talked with the necessary NPCs and updated the quest to this point.

So Ren was a bit relieved that he was doing something right to trigger this notification. He didn't know what he would do if he did not get any response from the monument after doing all that back and forth.

Upon inspection, Ren noticed a large patch of dried blood between the statues.

Another prompt was activated and appeared on Ren's screen.

[Before the monument was corrupted, the monument's magic was activated by bringing the statues the three gifts that elves treasure most and which each god is the respective deity of light, life, and love.

During the sacred ritual, elven priests might cast a magical light spell upon the Father of Elves's statue and present their newborns to the Wise Mother's statue, while lovers danced by the Goldenheart's statue. The monument's magic can also be activated accidentally – sometimes, when Aimon and El'athal recited poems to each other under a fallen sun, the Yil'Quessir Ayin would let a little magic of the Fey Realm slip through.]

Hmm . . . after reading, Ren recalled Kail'ithal's words.

"Bring us three gifts of great worth,

That all have, but none can own.

One is seen but never heard,

Grows trees and pales bone.

One is the Mother to give,

But shared freely by all.

One is the reason we live,

Or why we choose to fall."

So the second verse was light. The third was life, and the last was love.

Made a lot of sense. Ren thought.

And he also recalled what Viscendra said about the monument being inversed. Meaning . . . he had to offer the opposite.

Ren wasn't sure, but that was the only conclusion he came up with from all the information he had gathered.

Darkness instead of light, death instead of life, and hate instead of love.

And if he was right, he had to offer it to the right statue. He didn't know how, but he had to try.

Ren cast [Death Cavalry] a dark spell upon the statue of the Father of Elves, hoping that it would work.