Fors's gaze met Xio's in midair, but neither of them spoke.
After a while, Fors laughed dryly: "Haha, you're not asleep?"
Xio frowned slightly and asked: "What happened to you just now?"
"Nothing. Didn't I tell you? I never feel great during a full moon, and a blood moon makes it even worse." Fors answered, trying to sound normal.
Xio looked her up and down, pulled the covers over, and said: "I remember you brought some sleeping medicine?"
"Not now. I've already adjusted." Fors breathed a sigh of relief inwardly when she saw Xio wasn't pressing the matter. "Sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow to head into the forest."
Xio said nothing more. She turned over, hugged the covers, and closed her eyes. Before long, her breathing deepened, long and even.
Fors stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in a jumble of thoughts, and at some point, she too drifted off to sleep.
…………
The next day at noon, in the heart of the Delaire Forest, in front of a half-collapsed old castle covered in green vines.
Fors wiped the sweat from her forehead and let out a long sigh of relief: "Finally made it..."
Xio cast her a sidelong glance: "The innkeeper told me it only takes two hours to get here."
They had set out before six in the morning and spent nearly seven hours on the journey.
Fors twitched the corner of her mouth: "The theoretical state and the actual situation are completely different! Later on, there was no path left, we had to find our own way, to blaze our own trail!"
Xio took out her triangular bayonet and nodded: "You should have foreseen this from the very beginning. Yet you still refused the innkeeper's suggestion to hire a guide."
"As an 'Astrologer', I didn't think such a small matter would cause any trouble. See, we're already here, aren't we? Besides, the timing is perfect. The wraiths and specters are definitely at their weakest." Fors forced a smile, holding 'Lyman's Travel Notes' in one hand and pointing ahead with the other. "I didn't think much of it before, but the more I think about it now, the more puzzled I am."
"Puzzled about what?" Xio also turned her gaze toward the abandoned castle almost entirely covered in vines.
Fors improvised an excuse on the spot: "Tell me, who would build a castle in the middle of a forest? And not even bother to build a road leading straight to it..."
Before she even finished speaking, she truly realized that it was indeed a bit strange.
Xio thought for a moment and said: "Maybe there was a road originally. After the castle was abandoned, the long passage of time erased all traces of it."
Fors tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and shook her head: "Then why was it abandoned? If they had considered safety factors when building it, the center of an uninhabited forest far from towns is even more dangerous. If it was for a vacation retreat, given the ways of the nobility, they wouldn't have abandoned it no matter how hard the maintenance was."
Xio blurted out: "Because it's haunted?"
Fors pondered for a few seconds: "Could someone who can afford to build a large castle not be able to hire a Beyonder to deal with a haunting? I suspect the three major churches and the kingdom's government don't even know about this castle. Otherwise, they wouldn't have left the Beyonder materials inside untouched..."
Having said that, she posed a possibility: "A vampire castle?"
This kind of supernatural creature likes to live in remote places and is often associated with gloomy old castles and the like. Besides, the information on this castle was itself provided by vampires.
"Possible." Xio first agreed, but then offered a different opinion. "Would vampires be afraid of ghosts? They definitely have the ability to deal with the ancient spirits here."
That makes sense... Could it be that vampires don't like money or don't care about collecting Beyonder materials? Fors thought about "Mr. Moon"'s behavior and dismissed her own guess, choosing her words carefully as she spoke: "Unless there are other troubles here that aren't easy to solve, making high-level powerhouses choose to avoid it instead."
If so, her mission would be more dangerous than she had predicted.
Xio hummed in acknowledgment: "While the sun is still strong, let's do a preliminary exploration right now."
"Alright." Fors, holding 'Lyman's Travel Notes', approached the half-collapsed castle step by step.
They quickly arrived at the entrance, which was two-thirds blocked by rubble, and found that beneath the green vines, the stone walls were mottled and severely weathered, as if they had stood there for a very, very long time.