Chapter 88: Ahoge
The distance was too far; even with a telescope, he couldn’t see clearly.
Anse didn’t dare look too much, lest he be targeted by a wyvern, which would be very troublesome.
According to Giant Tail, the Green Dragon Queen’s Wyvern Guard had about ten teams, each with 3-5 wyverns, scattered in various places, with poor discipline, and the tribes around their headquarters were just on the menu, catching and eating whoever they could.
A wyvern’s challenge rating is 6, but it was much stronger than those watered-down dinosaurs that relied entirely on size with no extraordinary abilities; just its super-fast flight speed and highly toxic tail stinger alone made it extremely tricky.
It wasn’t that dinosaurs weren’t strong; in the natural world, large size was generally the most practical advantage, very effective against warrior class professions, shrugging off a sword strike without pain or itch, ordinary arrows like toothpicks, but they were very ineffective against a spellcaster’s area spell damage, unable to dodge, no resistance…
Anse dove down, landing lightly on the deck like a seabird.
“Dusk City is under attack, I saw wyverns…” He waved to Salian and the others, quickly describing the situation.
He spoke in Faerun Common Tongue, deliberately omitting Giant Tail. There was no other way; Giant Tail was a native of Abel World, one side was a foreign land dominated by humans, the other was the homegrown Emerald Kingdom—who knew which side he would choose.
“We have to abandon ship.” Salian gently stroked the gunwale, his eyes full of reluctance.
“This river veers east, then along the edge of Claw Peninsula south, joining the bay at Dusk City; going straight there definitely won’t work, better to find a place to land on the peninsula coast.” Anse pondered.
“Claw Peninsula and Bay have a lot of people, travelers to Beregost and Candlekeep also stop here temporarily, it should hold out for a few more days; do we enter the city to organize defenses or just leave directly?” Salian looked at Anse.
“Claw Bay borders Abel, the situation might be more dangerous than imagined; going inland might be better.” Anse wanted combat experience, but didn’t want to face a dragon.
“Alright, I’ll have the crew pack their bags.” Salian made a decisive call, then lifted his chin, gesturing toward Giant Tail, “You go talk to that one, probe his attitude.”
“Okay.” Anse agreed.
No one expected the situation to change so quickly; Giant Tail, the guide, had just worked one day and was forced to be let go.
He pulled Giant Tail to a corner, briefly explained the situation to him, while quietly observing his expression.
Giant Tail was stunned for a moment, then hesitantly said: “Are you chasing me away?”
“That depends on your attitude; the Green Dragon Queen wants to kill us, I naturally have to resist.” Anse said calmly.
Giant Tail’s eyes widened round, his voice excited: “Emerald Kingdom… will it be overthrown?”
“Uh, hard to say; war, anything can happen.” Anse thought no one could threaten the Green Dragon Queen in the short term, unless a Faerun big shot intervened.
“I’ll follow you.” Giant Tail grinned, not worried at all.
“Good.” Anse laughed heartily.
He had figured it out; the “benevolent” Emerald Queen was not popular, her methods not secretive, most sentient races only submitted under high pressure.
No matter how chaotic Faerun was before the catastrophe, compared to the disorderly Abel, it was like paradise.
“Get a hooded robe from the first mate to temporarily hide your identity, so as not to implicate your tribesmen.” Anse patted his arm.
“Mm.” Giant Tail was stunned, not expecting Anse to think so thoroughly.
Actually, the races of Abel World all existed in Faerun too; 【Quesser】 had a diverse crew, one more lizardfolk wouldn’t stand out.
Anse went alone to the cargo hold, finding the two compsognathuses locked in a cage.
They were about to leave soon, many food items couldn’t be taken, let alone two disobedient little dinosaurs.
Over these two days, his Animal Friendship had succeeded several times, but once the spell effect wore off, they quickly reverted, just no longer baring teeth at him or resisting his feeding.
‘Could it be their intelligence is too low?’ Anse was puzzled.
Lizardfolk tribes had tried domesticating dinosaurs, with extremely poor results; carnivorous dinosaurs were highly aggressive, herbivorous ones even more like idiots, with very low obedience.
Sometimes beaten half to death without knowing why they were hit.
‘A compsognathus’s intelligence should be comparable to a parrot or crow, right?’
Anse stood in front of the cage; the two compsognathuses thought he was about to feed them, both crowding over, tilting their heads to look at him.
“I’ll give you one last chance.”
With that, he cast Animal Friendship on one of them, very smoothly, because it… was used to it.
Anse opened the cage, grabbed it out, and tried commanding it with words and gestures.
Though it was dumb, it always tried to understand Anse’s intent and do it.
But as the Animal Friendship effect faded, it became lazy and scattered again, even resisting Anse’s touch, and after Anse opened the cabin door, it quickly flew outside.
With a hiss, the compsognathus plummeted from midair, already rigid upon landing, covered in a layer of frost.
The other compsognathus was frightened, covering its head with its wings, shrinking into a corner of the cage, trembling.
Anse had lost patience, grabbed it out and cast Animal Friendship right in its face; this time without even a check, extremely compliant.
This compsognathus was a bit smarter than the other, with good comprehension and very cooperative.
A few minutes passed, and it still stood obediently on Anse’s shoulder, posture perfect, as if this was its home.
“Heh, good.” Anse reached up to pet its head, leaving his mana mark on it, “You have a tuft of cowlick on your head, so you’ll be called Cowlick.”
Cowlick chirped lightly, not sure if it understood.
——
The elf ship continued along the river, but the atmosphere on board was no longer as relaxed as before, heavy and suppressed.
The crew’s gazes kept unconsciously turning to Anse and Salian.
From high altitude, the peninsula looked close, but the actual distance was still far.
Until evening, they followed the river to the west side of the peninsula, still at least twenty or thirty miles from Dusk City.
Here the river crashed into the peninsula’s rock mass, then veered south, surging southeast along the coastline, with fast currents and a river over a hundred meters wide.
In the captain’s quarters, Salian pointed at the sea chart, analyzing the current situation.
“No good landing spots nearby; better to continue south. There’s a small port city in the middle of the peninsula called Cliff City, belonging to an ancient noble, with very high city walls…”
He had run ships for decades; there was no place along the Sword Coast he didn’t know.
“That works; the war probably just broke out, they couldn’t have advanced this fast.” Anse recalled the daytime scene and agreed.
“But we can’t stay here long either, right?” Kalenno asked.
“Right, temporary stop; leave the peninsula at first light tomorrow—nights are too dangerous.” Salian affirmed.
Emerald Kingdom’s siege main force was kobolds, followed by dragonborn; high-end forces were wyverns and half-dragons, all races with darkvision.
Kobolds didn’t like daytime with sunlight, but as expendables, the Green Dragon Queen liked sending them to lead the way for everything.
【Quesser】 continued sailing until nightfall, then turned into a bay—no, a river bay.
Called a river bay, it was actually a small lake indented hundreds of meters into the riverbank, entrance only a hundred meters wide, flanked by sea cliffs, forming a natural sheltered bay.
The elf ship extinguished all lights, quietly entering the river bay, immediately spotting scattered lights.
“Good.” Salian breathed a sigh of relief.
“Looks like a mountain city.” Anse remarked.
Under moonlight, Cliff City had almost no flat ground over a hundred meters, layered like terraces, very structured.
At the highest point sat a small castle, its mottled city walls full of repair marks, with a thick sense of aged accumulation.
