After much hesitation, Felix finally couldn't resist his curiosity and followed the footsteps of a group of top adventurers towards the other side of the lake.
At this moment, Felix had some guesses in his heart, feeling that he roughly figured out the destination of the adventurers. However, he wanted to follow and see if his deductions were correct.
The footprints began to fade at the outskirts of the lake. In the area overgrown with weeds, they disappeared completely. However, there were still signs of people having passed on the ground, such as trampled grass and bushes cut by swords.
Felix followed the traces left by the adventurers for over half an hour, only slowing down when the ground began to turn barren. What he saw then was a colossal monument, stained dark red with the blood of orcs.
At the very bottom of the monument, there was an epitaph written by an orc swordsman who had resolved to die in his final battle against the abyssal demons. As time passed, the words on the epitaph had become blurred. Adventurers who had been here could only make out one line: "For the glory of our ancestors!"
The name of this orc swordsman had vanished into the dust of history, but the war that completely drove the abyssal demons out of this material plane was recorded. Devil’s Cliff was the last stronghold of the abyssal demons in this material world.
With a deep sigh, Felix looked at the starkly contrasting piece of land a few dozen meters away. The land within the boundaries of Devil’s Cliff, marked by the giant monument, was barren, devoid of any grass! The dense, chaotic energy that filled this land, which was once a portal to the abyss, was still present.
Although the portal had been sealed by the powerful beings of the Delrano world thousands of years ago, the sporadic leakage of chaotic energy had turned the elemental forces that once existed in this land into a mess.
Just approaching this elemental energy, Felix couldn't help but feel irritated and oppressed!
"So, their target is indeed Devil’s Cliff!?" Felix's guess was not wrong. The adventurers had indeed entered Devil’s Cliff as he had surmised. However, what puzzled him was that Devil’s Cliff was a forbidden zone for the living.
Even though there were no longer large groups of abyssal creatures, some occasional monsters and lower demons that were lucky enough to pass through the portal still arrived at Devil’s Cliff. These creatures were trapped by the earth's Barrier. Although they had reached the material plane, they couldn't leave the confines of Devil’s Cliff.
The wood elves settled in Mistwood Forest largely because they needed to guard this connection point to the abyssal plane. Felix had learned from certain secrets that the wood elves would strengthen the Barrier energy of Devil’s Cliff every ten years and every hundred years, they would send three elders, each over six hundred years old, to reactivate the Barrier energy, preventing any loopholes due to the passage of time.
For adventurers, Devil’s Cliff was a dangerous place with low return on investment. Even entering here might earn the hostility of the wood elves and make one a target of the forest hunters!
It was a lose-lose situation.
"Why do these adventurers want to enter Devil’s Cliff? What are they after? Wealth? Or power?" Felix couldn't figure out what these adventurers wanted or why they would enter such a dangerously forbidden place.
However, Felix could see that these adventurers were exceptionally strong and were not lacking in funds, as they only took the magic core of the bugbear and left everything else untouched.
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The possibility of them being after wealth was low, so they might be seeking power, or perhaps something even Felix couldn't guess.
But if it was for power, things could get complicated.
Seeking power in a place like Devil’s Cliff, Felix couldn't think of anything other than making soul contracts with those demons from the abyss. If that was indeed the case, then the situation was quite serious. He might even need to inform the wood elves living in Mistwood Forest!
After a long silence on the outskirts of Devil’s Cliff, Felix finally decided to return the way he came. The abyssal energy emanating from Devil’s Cliff made him feel extremely irritable and oppressed.
He feared that entering Devil’s Cliff would intensify these emotions, potentially driving him to madness – a scenario Felix definitely did not want to see.
Felix retraced his steps back to the bugbear's cave. After looking around and ensuring there was nothing of value left, he hefted the bugbear's body, weighing over eight hundred pounds, and headed towards the outskirts of Mistwood Forest.
His mission was accomplished. Although he might not have the anticipated amount of gold, it also saved him the trouble. Even without the magic core, exchanging it for about a hundred gold coins was certainly no problem.
This money was enough for him to reach the human world and support him for a while.
The journey back was much simpler than the way there. While finding the route was a challenge on the way in, heading back was less troublesome. Felix just needed to set his direction straight and he could walk in a straight line out of Mistwood Forest. Once out of Mistwood Forest, finding the way to Snowdrift Hollow would be much easier.
By evening, Felix finally reached the outskirts of Mistwood Forest, but he encountered someone beyond his expectations.
It was a wood elf, a tall and impressive forest ranger, a strikingly beautiful wood elf woman. She was 116 years old, which, in human terms, would be roughly equivalent to a human woman in her thirties.
The average human lifespan is about seventy years, and it's longer for professionals. If one could integrate elemental forces into their body, their lifespan could surpass even that of the average elf. Epic beings, on the other hand, could live for thousands of years if they chose to.
The lifespan of wood elves is considered medium among the elven races. A typical wood elf lives between 300 to 500 years. Their youth passes quickly, reaching mental maturity in just thirty years.
With some exceptions, wood elves usually mature mentally around the age of forty, making them one of the faster-maturing branches of the elven race. Like other elves, wood elves have a long adulthood, lasting nearly two hundred years, during which their physical qualities are at their peak.
The creator is fair; the more superior the race at birth, the more difficult it is for them to reproduce. For example, the breeding success rate for dragons is once in six hundred years. This means it might take six hundred years for a successful mating.
This was figured out by a group of bored dark wizards with long lives and too much time on their hands. The figure was derived from the fact that it takes at least three hundred years for a mature dragon to produce an egg, and in slower cases, even a thousand years.
The six-hundred-year theory came from a bored dark wizard who calculated the reproduction time of twenty dragon pairs and divided it by the number of pairs.
Apart from dragons and other exceptionally difficult breeders, the breeding success rate of lower creatures is quite high. Only orcs have a reproduction rate comparable to humans.
Basically, the fertility rate is proportional to the lifespan of the creature. The longer the lifespan, the lower the chance of reproduction. Creatures like the Blood Race, who are almost immortal, are highly unlikely to reproduce. However, if a Blood Race accidentally produces an offspring, that's a big deal. Such a child could become either a lord of hell or a deity of some realm, but only if they survive to adulthood.
It took Felix almost half an hour to explain his situation to the impressive wood elf ranger using his broken Elvish, which he learned during his two-month stay at the Snowcharm Inn from the beautiful proprietor, Lydiana Anya. He could only speak some somewhat accurate phrases.
After struggling to understand Felix’s mix of common and broken Elvish, the impressive wood elf ranger casually patted his shoulder, indicating that there was no need to worry. Over the years, countless adventurers had entered Devil’s Cliff, but to break the Barrier sealing the planar gateway there, at least an epic-level power was needed. If such a being were to break the seal on the portal, not just Mistwood Forest, but the entire Delrano world would sense it.
Felix felt a bit frustrated after hearing this, as it seemed he had been overly anxious for nothing.
Still, deep down, he was relieved. Even though he had forgotten his past, subconsciously, Felix still harbored a strong aversion to demons from the abyss. It was a simple, instinctive feeling.