Wendell was a Lightseeker. He might be the last Lightseeker. As a person who was searching for the remnant light in the Nine Worlds, his age had far exceeded the requirements. His body was too old, and his spirit was dispirited. Every part of his body was constantly reminding him that he was no longer fit to participate in this expedition. If he persisted, he would only end up dying in a faraway land.
However, he still resolutely left the warm and comfortable Twilight Capital and embarked on this journey of no return.
And it was his second departure.
Wendell once challenged a light-seeking journey with 28 partners. Half of them died of the fatal disease of magical energy erosion shortly after crossing the first Bifröst due to carelessness, and the rest died one after another in the deadly poisonous fog of Niflheim. That light-seeking journey was almost wiped out in less than half of the journey. In the end, Wendell and the only remaining teammate in the team dragged their broken bodies back to Twilight Capital. The only teammate died tragically in nightmares and convulsions on the third day after returning home.
But the ancestors had mercy on Wendell, and he had been living healthy to this day.
Since the collapse of heaven and earth, the light had fled, and the world had been shrouded in scorching darkness. Hundreds of Lightseekers embarked on the journey in the long night. They sneaked into the darkness and searched for the remnant light after the doomsday in the devastated wreckage of the world. However, no one had ever brought back real good news. Most of the Lightseekers, like Wendell's friends, became rotten corpses in the twisted wasteland, and it was difficult to preserve their whole bodies. A very small number of Lightseekers were lucky like Wendell. They fled back to the shelter before being completely swallowed by the darkness. For the rest of their short lives, they trembled and told others about the deadly shadows in the darkness and the painful magical energy radiation. No one would laugh at those Lightseekers who were scared out of their wits and fled back, because it took a lot of courage just to step out of Twilight Capital. Those who could experience an adventure in the long night and come back alive, their survival itself was a commendable feat.
Among all these Lightseekers, Wendell was the only one who returned alive from the night and embarked on the journey again.
Some said he was a madman, and some praised his courage, thinking that his almost irrational spirit of challenge was comparable to the Einherjar of the ancient times. But Wendell disdained all these comments. There was only one reason for him to embark on this journey, and that was to fulfill a promise he made to his wife when he was young: to find the remaining glimmer of light in the long night.
So when he realized that he had only one chance to challenge for the rest of his life, and that there would probably be no new Lightseeker team in Twilight Capital, he volunteered to join the last expedition team. In the eyes of others, he was a madman. He set off with the blessed amulet.
This last team set off from Twilight Capital with only twelve members — the smallest Lightseeker expedition in history. They walked through the wreckage of the Nine Worlds, following the route left by their predecessors, and did everything possible to search for vitality and signs that the long night was about to recede.
However, no matter where they went, they could only find rotten and twisted earth and magic-filled air. The remnants of Yggdrasil grew in these terrible wreckage of the world, but there was no Elven Spring water flowing from these branches. As the Doomsday Book said: the branches of the World Tree had become diseased and dying, the Nine Worlds had collapsed, the entire universe had long been extinguished, and the lingering human beings could not change their fate.
His teammates fell one by one. The most robust Bonem was killed by radiation because he accidentally lost the amulet. The brave Andrew fell into the depths of the crack in the earth. Helena also died. When crossing the Bifröst of Jotunheim, she disappeared into the gate and never appeared at the other end of the gate: the space storm had swallowed her. In the end, only Wendell and Tanarossa were left in the team, but Tanarossa did not survive the day.
"Maybe I can't make it either." Wendell curled up in his small camp, his old body wrapped in leather. He felt that his heart was being roasted by flames, but his skin was bitterly cold, which was a sign of magic energy invading his nervous system. He felt a little ironic: he was the one who made it to the last step in the team. Those who were younger, more flexible, and stronger than him had died one by one in front of him.
Perhaps the experience and adaptability to magic energy brought by his participation in a light-seeking journey had allowed him to live a little longer, but that was it.
Another chill spread, and Wendell subconsciously wrapped the leather around his body. He looked at his threaded cane and the compass hanging on it. The needle on the compass was spinning wildly, and the threaded cane was full of cracks. He knew that he was lost, lost soon after burying Tanarossa, which made him a little regretful: if it were not for this last obstacle, maybe he still had hope to reach Asgard. Although he was sure that even if he reached Asgard, he would die of radiation disease in a short time, he could at least see the legendary kingdom with his own eyes to confirm the fact that had supported him all the way here:
Whether Asgard had survived or not.
Wendell struggled to take out the piece of blackened parchment from his arms. There was only one sentence scribbled on the parchment:
"… Asgard … There is light."
This piece of paper was found by his team when they passed through Svartalfheim. It was held firmly in the chest by a mummy in Lightseeker equipment. Tanarossa thought that the Lightseeker was a member of the annihilated expedition a hundred years ago: the group of Lightseekers who set out a hundred years ago was considered to be the most likely elite in history to successfully search all the kingdoms. Twilight Capital put almost all their last hopes on them, but in the end, none of the team survived, which indirectly led to the end of the special group of Lightseekers.
According to the contents of the note, Tanarossa speculated that the Lightseekers who disappeared a hundred years ago had successfully reached the last wreckage of the Nine Worlds, Asgard, and found evidence of survival there. However, the team did not survive to bring the good news back to Twilight Capital.
It was the contents of this note that made Wendell persist until this moment. He no longer expected to return to Twilight Capital. He only hoped to at least see Asgard, even if he had to crawl over it. That would be the regret of his life.
But now it seemed that the regret would eventually become regret.
Another illusory chill came from all directions, and Wendell felt that his mind was gradually sinking into a bottomless abyss. He tried to wrap the leather around his body again, but this time he could not even control the movement of his fingers. As his eyelids gradually became heavier, he felt as if he had returned to Twilight Capital, back to the narrow city covered by a layer of pale yellow light film, full of the smell of engine oil, and full of steam and smoke. His small workshop appeared in front of him again, and his dear Sasha also came back to life. She stood at the door of the workshop, wearing an old apron, looking at this side with a sad face.
He struggled to stretch out his hand, but felt that his vision gradually narrowed and darkened. Finally, everything was far away.
However, at the last second before he completely sank into the darkness, a glimmer of light appeared in the distance.
A detection probe found the lost person, and Hao Ren and his team finally arrived before it was too late.
They found this inconspicuous small camp in the wilderness hundreds of kilometers away from Bifröst. There was only one old man in the small camp, wrapped in shabby leather, bent and weak. The old man was having a high fever at the time, his skin was abnormally pale, and his breathing was so weak that it seemed to disappear at any time. The old mage Anthony immediately judged that this was a serious symptom of magic energy erosion.
"He's dying," Anthony said as he set up a magic barrier around the camp. "But he's not completely dead yet. Give me some time, and I can pull him back from the brink of death."
When the magic barrier was established, the weak and unconscious old man's condition immediately stabilized. Although it was far from getting better, at least he was temporarily out of the threat of death. While the old mage was busy setting up various purification circles, Vivian stepped forward to check on the old man and was surprised to find that he was a human.
Although there were some differences from the humans on Earth today, which may be a mutation caused by living in a mutated environment for a long time, this old man was indeed a human.
"How did he survive in this environment until now?" Vivian felt incredible.
Galazur searched around the old man and found something that emitted magic fluctuations. "It's probably the effect of this amulet. I just sensed that this thing has formed a barrier, continuously filtering the magic energy and poisonous gas in the air, but its effect seems to be coming to an end. The filtering effect is very poor."
Hao Ren took the amulet and said casually, "It seems that this is the Lightseeker."
At this moment, under Anthony's full treatment, the dying old man finally gradually recovered and slowly opened his eyes.
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