Chapter 562 - Stench
The mere myths passed down by the elves were enough to scare generations upon generations of elves. Finally giving in to his curiosity, Ed decided to ask a question.
“What exactly did you all hear about the bloodhaven?” Ed previously decided to ask for information from the source by contacting Sudryal but the old man was rather needlessly tight-lipped.
Thinking about it again, since everyone was so frightened, they had to have some information passed down through the village or their family to share with him. Whether or not the folktales could be trusted was up to debate but it never hurt to be informed.
Very quickly, the quiet sobs of the elves quietened and a tense atmosphere ensued. Who would break the silence? All the elves stole glances at one another.
‘Is it some sort of important secret?’ Ed wondered quietly. Thinking about it one way, if the information was reliable it could be the difference between an elf and their family living or dying.
But thankfully this worry was needless, it was no secret and a young elf no older than 50 opened their mouth to speak. With much trepidation, they let out their words.
“I’ve heard… I’ve heard the place is alive” The elf said with a mean shudder. The notion was disgusting! A living place?!
“No! The whole place is the cadaver of a giant monster!” Another pitched in with a shout.
“What? I’ve heard it’s the corpses of millions of monsters! This was passed down to my family by our great great grandfather!” Another said nodding fervently. With that much confidence, his words had to be fact!
But a friend beside him quickly disagreed.
“I heard that it is not the corpse of a giant monster… but a living breathing monster! And to hydrate itself, it created the great desert we now live in. Still seeking more hydration, it sends out parts of itself as scouts to gather resources” The elf said with much detail capturing Ed’s intrigue.
But very quickly Ed realized that the details were not enough on their own to warrant this elf’s validity. Many other elves started to speak up each with their own detailed accounts of the whys and hows of the bloodhaven.
Eventually, the elves were all back to square one of simply being afraid of it.
“Aaah! I don’t care what it is! I don’t want to go anywhere near it!” An elf shouted frightened.
Ed tactfully ignored the scream and formally resumed the journey.
“Let’s start walking” He said before opening a door out of the room. If he exhausted the elves there would be no room for being scared!
The elves nodded weakly and exited slowly from the comfortable room. The moment they were buffeted by the hot air of the desert they made quiet groans of displeasure and shed silent tears but nonetheless didn’t falter and continued to march forwards.
After everyone was out, Ed returned the room to his system space and marched on behind them. This was a pattern that would continue for numerous days.
The elves would march for hours and then be allowed a break in the room before walking once more on the hot desert sand. It sounded torturous but if there was one upside, it was that Ed had really good food in his system space!
Although the elves didn’t need constant sustenance, perhaps a result of their constant starving, they did still need to eat food occasionally.
Ed’s feasts ranged from fruits to boar meat all carefully prepared by the orc chef, Gorgo. One had to admit Gorgo had come a long way since their humble start as an orc farmer. The fact that the usually proud elves could enjoy his food was a testament to that.
…putting aside that these were starved elves who were used to eating next to nothing of course.
Eventually, however, the pattern was broken by a stench.
“Hm?” Ed was the first to take note of it as all of his base attributes were better than his non-champion counterparts.
The smell was an odd mix of burnt and rotten meat. Overall, truly nauseating.
‘They walked through this place?’ Ed shot Sudryal a glance that suggested he and his kin were crazy. The elder quickly noted the weird glance and was left confused until his nose too was struck by the stench.
“Urgh-!” It was far worse than Sudryal remembered it!
Those that were not accustomed to it were hit the hardest however as one by one the elves started to cover up their noses and drop down on the ground in an attempt to somehow mask the stench.
“God-! Ah, it’s in my mouth!” An elf who spoke carelessly shouted out before breaking out into a retching cough.
Ed frowned deeply as he gazed towards the horizon and saw absolutely nothing worth taking note of.
‘This smell sure travels far’ Ed could only comment on this before seeing Sudryal come to a realization. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Masks! We had masks!” Sudryal shouted. When sudryal went out on that fateful expedition everyone was well geared to deal with the blood haven’s quirks. That included its disgusting smell.
“Hm? What kind of masks?” Ed asked curiously. A simple cloth mask would fail to completely mask the scent and the elves also had little to no clothing on a day-to-day basis.
Of course, the elves weren’t naked but without any resources to make cloth out of, they might as well. What they wore could all be described as rags.
In fact, it wasn’t at all unusual to see elven males wearing no shirts to allow for their wives and children to have something to be clothed with.
‘I should probably give them clothes…’ Ed thought getting sidetracked from the matter at hand. It wasn’t a hobby of his to always be welcomed by the muscular sights of barechested elves.
“We were just using anything that could cover our faces. Some earthen mages even made masks out of dirt!” Sudryal said.
“Dirt?” Ed asked back somewhat taken aback by the response.
“Yes, the smell of dirt even helped mask the stench of the place” Sudryal said affirming this to be true.
Hearing this answer Ed almost wanted to ask how long those elves lived, it couldn’t be healthy to have dirt in your lungs, right?
‘Well, maybe it helps earthen mages…?’ Ed thought to himself chancing upon a ridiculous notion.
“In that case, I’ll make you all masks. Give me a moment” Ed did not have any sort of silk to make masks out of, at most he had boar leather, but he did have one abundant resource.
‘Mushrooms!’ The use of mushrooms as face masks might initially seem farfetched but in truth, it was fairly reasonable. That was because there was a process to making nice and durable mushroom leather.
…This was a method Ed lacked. Which was why he jotted it down as an idea for a future utopia and simply went into his storage room to forage for adventurer items.
Among the wares, he did find a couple of masks but they weren’t of particularly great quality.
[Breath of The Wild (Cloth Mask)]
[ A mask that makes your breath smell like that of freshly cut grass ]
‘…That could not be further from the wild’ Ed thought before shaking his head. As a person that had never technically matured and saw enough of the world, it was very well possible that grass cut itself somewhere in the wild.
[Darkness Wrap (Magic Scarf)]
[ A scarf made out of a cloth containing traces of death, can suffocate or strangle the user ]
Not particularly great in quality turned out to be in fact praise for these items. Did the person wearing the darkness wrap get scammed?
Ed decided to repurpose the items to get rid of their erm… questionable traits…
In a matter of a few minutes, Ed exited the system space with a satisfied smile.
He managed to create a filtered cloth that depending on the size could be used as either a scarf or a mask, it was up to user preference.
[Cool Cloth (Magic Cloth)]
[ Using the filtering powers of water, the mask purifies the air and keeps the face fresh and cool. Has a minuscule chance to drown the user ]
Ed decisively ignored the final sentence of the assessment and immediately started to distribute these masks.
“Here” He said as he handed Alolvi one of the masks. The experienced warrior inspected the weird cloth which had a blue hue with some doubts. Where was Ed getting and making these sorts of things at?
Unlike the orcs who were in the know of Ed’s antics and the lizardmen that worshipped Ed, the elves didn’t know what to make of Ed’s mysticism. Some thought it to be some sort of demonic art thanks to their initial impression of him but… what demonic art dabbled in producing items?
“Now that we have masks, let’s quickly get to our destination and finish this trip” Ed said with some expectation. They were finally close to the bloodhaven! Ed might be able to learn something new about the dungeon at last!