Chapter 125: The Deathly Silent Harbor

Snow began to fall.  

The sleigh was parked on a slope, the pale bone beasts standing erect in the white snow. Wade stood on high ground, from where he could overlook the three warships docked by the harbor.  

But rather than docked, it was more accurate to say those three ships were frozen into the sea. Thick layers of ice had formed on the parts of the hulls in contact with the water, and Wade could hear the faint, crackling sounds of natural ice fracturing.  

Beneath the ships were several battle camps constructed from heavy hemp cloth, but there were no bonfires in front of the camps, nor any soldiers standing guard.  

An eerie silence.  

In this harbor, aside from the sound of the wind and the falling snow, Wade could not hear a single sign of living people.  

Within his sight, there was not even a flicker of a living flame; it was as if the harbor had been completely deserted.  

On the ships and in the harbor’s battle camps, only deathly silence reigned.  

How could this be? Not even a single soldier guarding the ships?  

Could it be that the Icelanders had abandoned their warships?  

Without their ships, where else could they possibly go?  

Wade sensed something unusual was happening. This was beyond the Dragonkin’s expectations, and beyond his own as well.  

He suddenly realized that the Dragonkin had no experience fighting demons and had always been calculating events from a human perspective.  

The pros and cons she had outlined to Wade all assumed that this incident was led by the Icelanders rather than the demons.  

The surface facts seemed to support this. When the Icelanders moved around, they never brought demons along. Unlike the frontline knights who marched with Flame Imps, the Icelanders showed no signs of demon involvement.  

At least, nothing was found in the testimonies of the three captured Icelander slaves, all of whom claimed they had never seen demons aboard the ships.  

The Icelanders’ massacre of the demi-humans was carried out by themselves and the Viking pirates they hired, with no traces of demons involved on land.  

But this was just a deceptive facade.  

Wade descended from the snow, drew his sword, and had Mia hide in the cavity of his ribs.  

He was armed with more than just one sword; several Viking swords were strapped to his waist and back.  

Carrying these swords, Wade silently advanced through the snow.  

He entered the harbor alone, and in that deathly silence, his footsteps suddenly stopped.  

On the ground ahead lay a man.  

The man’s face wore an expression of supreme happiness, but he was already dead—just a cold corpse.  

His face was frozen a purplish blue; from his chest down, only bones remained. Thin strands of flesh and fascia clung to the white bones, and his cashmere thermal clothes had dried to a shriveled husk, revealing blood-red bones beneath.  

A black worm crawled over the corpse, feasting on it. Using its sharp mouthparts, it scraped the flesh off the bones from bottom to top.  

It was an extremely unsettling scene—the corpse was reduced to just a skull, yet the face showed no fear or unease, only that same happy smile.  

While Wade was stunned, the black worm wrapped around the man’s neck and climbed to his head. It tore off the man’s facial skin, destroying the eerie smile.  

Wade didn’t know what the creature was, but he could see no “flame” on it. He approached, and only then heard the sound that made him aware of the worm’s presence.  

A shadowy aura enveloped the worm’s tail. It was semi-corporeal—not because it lacked life, but because it possessed a natural camouflage that concealed its aura.  

This was unlike any creature of the material world; its strange behavior resembled a demonic insect from the shadow realm.  

The worm showed no reaction to Wade’s approach. It seemed blind to him, ignoring him even though he stood right beside it, busy devouring its meal.  

As it bit into the flesh, its soft, sunken shell slowly expanded and hardened, shining with a metallic luster under the moonlight.  

It was rapidly growing, its body enlarging.  

Suppressing his discomfort, Wade observed its behavior carefully. Faced with an unknown creature, he did not attack rashly but watched silently.  

When the worm finished devouring the corpse, countless segmented legs crawled over its body as it left the corpse.  

It leapt into the snow, burrowing underground without leaving a hole in the snow. It moved within the shadows, diving in and then leaping out like a snake swimming in water.  

Just as it was about to escape, Wade seized the moment when it leapt from the shadows and struck with his sword.  

He did not hold back; his first strike was a battle technique.  

The sword tip aimed at the worm’s head, and in an instant, burning soul fire erupted. He crossed several meters in a flash; the Viking sword pierced the worm’s head like a harpoon.  

The steel blade vibrated and hummed; green fluid leaked from the black shell.  

The worm emitted a piercing, shrill screech that made the snow tremble.  

Wade’s bones vibrated along with the sound. As an undead, he perceived sound through vibration.  

The sound seemed to contain a certain power, somewhat like a battle cry. Perhaps it could stun living creatures, but it had no special effect on skeletons. Wade only found it a bit noisy.  

He hadn’t expected the worm to withstand his Charge. The power of that strike could shatter a rock, and Wade was confident it could pierce or crush a solid iron block.  

After all, it was a soul battle technique fueled by soul fire. Wade thought his strike would smash the worm’s head to pieces, but it only punctured a hole in the shell.  

Only a small part of the sword tip penetrated the worm’s brain, and that part was bent and dented by the powerful impact.  

It wasn’t that the technique lacked strength; the worm’s shell was simply too hard. That shell was harder than the steel sword. Wade had not pierced the worm’s head but instead used an insufficiently sturdy “iron shard” to smash open its shell.  

After being pierced in the head by Wade, the worm struggled for quite a while before stopping.  

Its vitality was terrifyingly strong. It possessed shadow abilities and some kind of unique howl. This was no ordinary demon beast—at least a silver-rank monster.  

If it had attacked Wade first, he might have had to put in quite some effort to defeat it.  

Wade shook the sword tip, switched to a new Viking sword, and entered the camp.  

His heart suddenly sank. Hundreds of skeletons lay in the snow throughout the harbor and camps.  

Yet the black worms were nowhere to be found. Their whereabouts were unknown.