198 Descent Into Darkness III : The Canyon Pass

Due to the extensive hunting that was carried out over a few months by the hunters and other vampires, a well worn path from the Black district to the Blue district was made. So we came out of the blue district in the same place where I had, the first time I came here. It made finding the other vampires a lot easier than I expected. The black district was not exactly pitch black, but it was dark enough that normal eyes could never see in it. So this is where we thank God for night vision.

I could see clear as day, and so could the other vampires that followed. The first zone of the black district, the place where we had hunted stone rats to kingdom come was desolate. There were still tiny litters of stone rats here and there, but the amount was too small to be of any consequence, and they were to tiny to be filling. If I had to hazard a guess, we've hunted every stone rat in this area, so the only thing we can do is let them breed and repopulatetheir zones. And when they've grown to an acceptable number, we will cull the population again, using the older one's as a blood supply, and letting the younger ones grow up to continue the circle. It was monster farming at it's best.

Driving through the black district was not that much of a problem, there was barely a hint of earth origin towers around, and the few that did exist, served as the home for dungeons and a breeding ground for monsters. Call me arrogant, but I like to call those places breeding pens, over the course of time, the old hunter squads spent in the black district, they had come up with a system for their hunting, and not just that, they had labelled areas, both those explored and unexplored, and also listed danger zones that shouldn't be trespassed into without a proper team around. All in all it was impressive, and when I read the report before leaving, I could not help feeling proud. The vampires, have really come a long way.

So far the hunters have only been able to properly canvass two zones, and that's the stone rats zone, and the lava wolves zone. After that, there was a huge canyon, or to be more precise, it was a mountain range that divided the black district, going from one end of it to the other. So far we've only been able to find one path through...…well multiple paths were found, and all in the shape of canyons that cut through the mountain. Five such paths were found, and they were each guarded and protected, by a monster at the strength of mama Ratzilla who died many months ago, to the awesomeness of me and my team. But there were also monsters a lot stronger than she was, and the former guardian of this path had already been killed by Asare.

So we can march forward from here, but things wouldn't be that easy. The canyon pass was wide enough for thirty men to walk side by side with ease, but it was also infested with a variety of wolf like monsters. They protected the canyon pass, and since there was a lot of them, it has been really hard to get through. No one knows how long the canyon pass really is, but with the wolves around, it would tale a full on confrontation for us to make any progress. We have to completely decimate the population of all monsters within the canyon.

It took us another fifteen minutes, even with our speed to finally get there. A temporary camp of sorts had already been built in front of the canyon, and as if that wasn't enough, there was pair of huge metal gates covering the mouth of the canyon. Those gates were ugly as fuck, and they seemed to be there more for their functionality, than their aesthetic value. The camp that had been built, were all cube shaped houses, built from earth. It was as if an earth mage had made individual rooms from the earth beneath our feet.

We made a lot of waves with our arrival, but there was not much time to waste showing off my upgrade, even though I wanted to so badly. It was totally unbecoming of a leader to act like a teenage boy, or a young adult who's naïve to the ways of the world.

"Master Kael, welcome to Wolf's Grief." Kodak greeted as he came closer to me.

I raised an eyebrow in surprise at the rather eccentric sounding name. I'm sure there was a story behind it anyway.

"You named the place Wolf's Grief...…seriously?"

"That's all on Teluna,not me. And Asare agreed with it, so the name stuck." Kodak explained.

"Alright kid, give me a run down of what we're dealing with here, and how far we've progressed into the canyon. Tell me what we've gained, and what we've lost." I said to him as I made my way towards the gate. Queen was behind us, following and keeping close, maybe a little too close.

"We've been making slow progress, but it's at a steady pace. It's almost like there's an endless stream of wolf monsters, and if we kill one, there's always three stronger ones to take it's place. But either way, we've taken almost six kilometers of the pass, since we don't know how long the pass is in the first place, we can't be sure about how much ground we've gained.And a for our losses, there's been a few lost limbs, gouged out eyes and a few broken bones. Thankfully no life has been lost, so the damage taken can be managed and fixed."

Well that was all fine and good. As long as the damage we're taken can be managed and mitigated, we can keep on going for quite a while. However such a method gets old real fast, and keeping a status quo for too long wouldn't do us any good. This was just like two armies fighting for a border, one wants to go in, the other wants to stop the enemy from coming in. Regardless of how far we've moved in, we're at a stalemate since there's been no real progress as of yet.

"Why don't we try scaling the mountain, or at the very least going over the monsters in the canyon pass. You say they're wolves, so it should not be a problem for many of you to fly over their heads." Queen said from behind me.

Kodak had only seen Queen once, and that was on the battlefield, the day we won the blue district. He was not privy to any other prior arrangements, so when she asked him the question, he was not too eager to answer. I gave him a nod, telling him to go ahead and speak.

"Therein lays one of the mysteries of this Canyon. So far we've noticed that it has two very weird characteristics, characteristics that we've seen so many times before. The canyon pass moves, in much the same way as the dancing caves of Noxis Nyx."

Well that was surprising, but it seems that was barely just the half of it. Kodak has been here for only a few days, but he's learnt quite a bit about the canyon, and prepared a detailed report. I couldn't help but praise his efficiency, I guess it runs in the family, because he's brother Gus was just the same. Though I'm not sure about his mom and two sisters.

"The width of the pass never changes, and as far as we know neither does the length. However it's form does. It could be a straight path at one moment, and the next it becomes a twisting path or a zig zag with sharp corners. Sometimes the path elevates, and it seems as if we're climbing a hill, or declines in much the same manner. It's part of the reason we've not been able to gain much ground. The monsters are used to fighting in the pass's different terrains, and while vampires are quite adaptive to different situations due to our sheer power and speed, it's not been easy getting used to a battlefield that actually fights you and favors your opponent.

And finally our feet can't leave the ground for more than two minutes, or else the same pressure that's synonymous with the mineral mountain would slam into your body. And more often than not, when that happens, the soldiers find themselves swarmed by the monsters and incapable of putting up a fight due to the sudden pressure attack.We've not been able to pinpoint where that pressure is coming from, so we're not so sure about a mineral deposit similar to the mountain in the mine."

I couldn't help but feel excited about the news. Even if Kodak said they've not been able to see or identify any sort of mineral deposit that was causing the pressure, I had a feeling that the story would be a little different after we've come out of the canyon pass. It might be much easier to find that deposit when we're notbeing attacked by monsters. But this more than proves a lot theories that's been going on about the black district. It was special and had it's own secrets, after all I knew with a certainty that this pass was just an extravagant gateway into the old vampire's kingdom. It made the place very defensible, and if there's something like this just at the border,then I can't begin to imagine what's inside of it.