Chapter 76: The garden

I watched them walk off in their respective directions. Then I turned and headed from the garden.

As I walked, I was extra vigilant.

My eyes scanned the area thoroughly, better safe than sorry.

If the portal was truly close to the textile section, then every moment we spent here, we all stood huge chances of running into the beast monsters.

What made it worse was the fact that we could run into those human looking beast monsters.

I wondered how strong they were compared to ordinary beast monsters.

They seemed sentient, like they possessed some level of intelligence.

They were obviously senior ranked in the army, since we had only seen few of them.

That meant they were probably stronger than normal beast monsters.

Suddenly I found myself agreeing with Emily. It was not so bright to split up. Sёarᴄh the novёlF~ire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Still, we didn't have the time advantage and we had to do with whatever we had.

There was no other way of doing this as fast.

We played the cards we were dealt and now we had to hope we wouldn't regret it.

The market place in the city was divided into sections, for easy navigation and overcrowding.

That way, people who wanted to buy fruits would be divided from those who wanted to buy other things like accessories.

I was now leaving the textile section and entering into the accessories section.

As I walked, I continued watching the disarray of the market.

There were scattered stools and tables as many of them had been overturned as the traders and buyers ran away when the beast monsters appeared.

As I walked over into the accessories section however, I noticed that the disarray was greater and there were a lot more scattered goods on the ground.

It was almost as if the people at this end didn't have enough warning or time to pack their stuff and run, so they just dumped it and ran for their lives.

However those in the sections behind had more time to see what was happening and managed to either lock their shops or salvage their goods.

That must mean the beast monsters had first appeared in this area before going to the other ones.

The portal must be at the garden! I realized.

I wanted to turn back to tell the others about my discovery but I remembered that I hadn't actually seen the portal.

I had only seen signs that the beast monsters appeared here first but I didn't have any concrete proof that the portal was in the garden itself.

I couldn't possibly go back to the others based on such flimsy conviction, not when they would go all the way to theirs.

Besides if I went back now, I would just waste a huge amount of time waiting fo them to come back.

I decided to go check the garden out to be sure.

I continued walking, watching as the level of damage and panic on the roads became higher.

I was sure by now that the beast monsters appeared here first before the other places.

This meant that for sure, the portal was somewhere in the garden.

All that remained was to find the portal physically and return to tell the others.

I reached the forked path she told me about and followed the tarred road.

Within a few minutes, I had gotten to a medium sized gate with a sign on top that read 'WELCOME TO THE HANUL GARDEN'.

I had gotten to my destination.

The gate itself was nothing to write home about. It probably was beautiful once, majestic even.

It was painted a brown color that when you peered closely, you saw the vibrancy and shine it once had.

On each half of the gates, there was a large eagle that opened its beak in what looked like a loud screech.

There was one problem however, the gate was wide open.

Emily told me I was most likely to find the gate locked and Aaron suggested I might have to scale it or break the locks.

So why was it unlocked and left wide open?

I brought out my fans and took a deep breath.

Then I walked past the gates and stepped into the garden.

The waning sunlight streamed into the garden, giving it a certain golden hue.

The smell hit me first. It was a mixture of a variety of flowers. The flowers' scents mixed not only with themselves but with the scent of healthy leaves.

The soft crunch of dead leaves punctuated my movements and i was a little worried that I would give away my presence.

There were different bushes on either side, all blooming with different flowers.

Roses, hibiscuses, etc all grew on the bushes and it was a beautiful sight.

All the garden had been abandoned, it wasn't dying at all, it had managed to sustain itself all this while.

As I looked around, I saw no portal.

Neither did I see any beast monster. I continued to walk deeper into the garden.

My heart pounded loudly in my chest as I took each step and all my senses were on high alert.

If I detected the slightest change around me, I would not hesitate to fire a vortex in the direction.

As I walked further into the garden, small bushes gave way into trees.

The leaves on the medium sized trees waved at me happily as I walked by.

I couldn't understand why such a beautiful and therapeutic place would be shut down.

Even if another one was provided, it would have been better to open that one while keeping this one better.

It was too suspicious.

I needed to investigate he empress and exactly what role she played in this town.

There was no way to get information on her though.

No one seemed to know anything about her and when I tried to read anything relating to her past and who she was before the mask, I realized all the books and articles that could give any information on it were gone.