Chapter 1: Tribute

Chapter 1: Tribute

Third Person’s POV

Vibrant green leaves fluttered down the lush branches of the towering trees common in the territory of the Emerald forest. The rays of light from the three daystars of the planet sprinkled down their canopies and reflected a bright emerald sheen like precious jewels crowded inside a treasure box.

These trees are called the Emerald tree by the locals and visitors of this place, but their real name was termed by the ancients as the mother tree, mainly because it towers all the living beings in the Emerald forest. The oldest Mother tree in existence towers over one hundred meters, and the young saplings range over five to fifteen meters tall.

All the weird, unknown and common living and non-living things in the forest could only reach the lower parts of its trunks, and resemble little kids in front of their mothers, obedient and well-behaved.

Raimere intently watched the falling leaves flowing with the breeze. The stillness felt so unreal that unease took root inside her.

She leaned against the trunk of the tree and looked down at the almost thirty-meter drop beneath her dangling legs. Small beasts could be seen loitering and hiding around the grass-covered thick roots of the emerald trees. This place is just near the clan’s territory and is avoided by the bigger and fiercer beasts of the forest. Only those small beasts with nary a sense of crisis would venture into the borders of a werewolf clan’s territory.

Her eyes followed the leisurely small beasts and felt that they seemed freer than her.

At this time of the day, those proud and arrogant direct descendants of the main family, who are also her cousins, should have been bullying her now while being accompanied by their minions from the branch families.

When was the last time that she felt so peaceful like this?

There must be something wrong. Her life has never been peaceful since the moment she was born.

She was and has always been an unwanted child, and those pure-blood cousins of hers would never fail to always make that point to further degrade her existence.

Raimere’s train of thoughts got broken at the sudden sound that reached her ears that was coming from the direction in front of her.

The sound of disordered footsteps accompanied by the crinkling of rotten leaves and the snapping of broken branches on the forest floor seems so close, but there is still no one entering her view covering almost one thousand meters of distance from her position.

 A sense of unease permeated Raimere’s thoughts.

The approaching sounds grew louder, and without seeing anyone in her field of vision, panic settled in.

She hurriedly stood up with the support of the branch on her right.

Sweat soaked her back as the relaxing breeze instantly turned chilly, as if she was falling inside an ice cave.

Without a second thought, she wrapped her arms around her head and slid down the trunk of the tree.

Falling down a thirty-meter-tall tree will be life-threatening, and she doesn’t have the time to go back down the way she climbed up with the rope ladder that she painstakingly built for her hideout. But it is a good thing that the mother tree that she as her leisure camp has a winding trunk that can barely be used as a slide.

Sharp trunk edges pricked her porcelain-white skin, green tree juice and drops of blood stained her white dress into a mess, but she couldn’t be bothered with the pain and the reprimand that she will face once she returns to her quarters with dirty clothes.

Her mind is wholly preoccupied with escaping, escaping far away from that invisible beast.

Although there is a low chance of big and terrifying beasts treading inside the werewolf clan’s territory, there has always been a precedent for anything.

And it seems like she is the unlucky one that will get to experience such a horrifying precedent.

Enduring the prickling pain from all over her body, Raimere bit her lower lip as the tears threatened to fall.

The moment her bare feet touched the forest ground, and felt the menacing aura rushing from afar, she propelled herself up as she used her weakened legs to run in the direction of the clan’s grounds.

If she remembers it correctly, then the invisible beast chasing her was called the Void hounds, and being killed by them isn’t something that she wishes to experience. Void hounds kill their prey and drag their lifeless bodies into the void, in a way that the victims would also be invisible and their bodies would be lost, seemingly drifting in the void, denying any form of reunion with their families, even after death.

She might be an unwanted child, but she doesn’t want to die alone. At least the clan would still mourn for her as a form of going through the motions, but if she gets killed by the Void hound, then even in death, she will also be alone, like the rest of her life since she learned how to think.

Ragged breaths echoed in her eardrums, and only the stinging pain from the mix of her sweat and blood kept her mind alive from shutting down due to the extreme fear taking root in her heart.

The sound behind Raimere kept inching closer, and the menacing aura of the Void hound swept down on her thin shoulders like a tsunami intending to swallow her whole.

The scenery around her melded into blurry lines as her weak legs kept on moving against the forest floor littered with shrubs, rocks and above-ground roots that tried to hinder her escape.

Raimere almost fell a couple of times, her bare feet are now mangled with bruises and open wounds from the sharp rocks and hard roots of the mother trees.

The sound of a leering growl crept up on her heels, seemingly mocking her pitiful strides, but the Void hound only chased her while keeping a distance that it could clearly close with just a few steps.

‘It’s toying with me.’

She gritted her teeth, her eyes dripping with tears as she opened her mouth at seeing the fluttering flag of a silver sword encircled with a glittering blue crescent moon in the distance.

That was the crest of the Celeste werewolf clan.

“HELP!”

Her cries reverberated in the distance, reaching the walls circling the clan’s territory that was over five hundred meters away.

The guards stationed on top of the wall simultaneously looked towards the source of the sound. Their ears twitched at hearing the disordered beastly steps following the weak steps of the one crying for help.

The captain of the guards stationed at the clan’s wall hurriedly signaled his four subordinates to go down as he took out a small porcelain-white horn carved out of a glutton fanged beast.

He instantly recognized the young girl being chased by the invisible beast. That was the youngest daughter of the young clan heir, the oldest son of the patriarch of the clan. Although that young girl was known for being neglected by the main family due to her existence as a half-breed, he is but a small captain that was not even part of the branch families, so he did not hesitate to order his subordinates to save her.

He took a breath and blew at the horn.

A resounding and sharp bellowing sound echoed across the entire Celeste clan.

It was the horn warning of an attack.

The four guards that were tasked to save Raimere were also just small servants that only aim to do their job well. They will let the main family duke out their calculations against each other, but they will do their job to avoid being used as scapegoats.

The guards of the Celeste clan are all top-notch, and they were all trained to be ready to face a siege at any given moment.

They instantly arrived in front of the running Raimere as they took out and brandished their silver swords in the direction of the foul smell and growling sounds that keep on battering their senses.

Two men at the back jumped to the side and circled to flank the beast, while the two at the front positioned themselves to hide the figure of the still running Raimere.

Void hounds are hard to fight against due to their inherent invisibility, but the sounds they make and the smell they exude could not escape the sharp senses of a werewolf.

A sharp clang of collisions between two swords and a claw rang in the surroundings as sparks flew.

The two men at the front dug their feet to the ground as the veins on their arms bulged from the sheer force that they are exerting.

The horrifying strength of the Void hound could not be stopped by just two werewolves.

The two men felt their feet digging deeper into the earth as their backs slowly bent backwards at trying to stop one measly claw of the Void hound.

The other two that were flanking the beast did not hesitate to raise their swords to plunge at its back, but their swords were met with a fierce resistance from its thick hide, the sharp ends of their weapon only pricked three inches in its flesh before being stopped by its metallic muscles.

The clash between the four wall sentries sounded behind her, but Raimere has already been running on through sheer will, and her mind has already gone in an overdrive.

She only stopped the moment her body crossed the gate threshold of the clan’s territory. Her knees weakened and buckled down the dusty ground as her thin figure trembled from the bombardment of fear, pain and tiredness gushing all over her body.

In her hazy state of mind, blurry but familiar figures came running from the clan’s grounds.

Her heartbeat quickened at recognizing the figure at the front dressed in the white combat suit of the Celeste clan emblazoned with its crest.

“Fath-…”

The words got stuck to her throat the moment the words of the figures reached her ears.

“Father, we must not let anything happen to that half-breed! You promised me that you will help me placate the Valerius clan!” A sharp mean voice that has been ingrained in her memories made the blood in Raimere’s body run cold.

“I know my dear eldest daughter, you don’t have to remind me a second time. I didn’t think that we’d have something to use that half-breed other than wasting food, but it seems like it was a wise decision to keep her alive.”

The figure of her father patted the head of her elder sister with a doting look in his eyes.

Raimere’s breath hitched and her body trembled more from anguish, than from the fear and pain that she felt at encountering a life and death ordeal.

“Don’t worry, the Rogue Kingdom’s yearly tribute is just a week’s away, and it’s the perfect time for our clan to give tributes while helping you apologize for your offense to the Valerius clan.”

Her father gave a satisfied smile that seemed to portray that everything worked out well.

“We will give that half-breed as an extra tribute to the Valerius clan, and they will surely accept it willingly, cause even if she is a half-breed, that bastard child of mine was still born with a lunar gift.”

“Yes, thank you so much, father.” A wicked smile curled up from the corners of her elder sister’s lips, and the color on Raimere’s face just faded into a pale white sheet.

The joy and hope in her pupils the moment that she saw her father and elder sister hurrying from the clan’s grounds to her direction vanished and turned to dust.

‘What am I even hoping for?’

Eyes completely devoid of the lingering and longing emotions that she has for her family, Raimere felt her mind go blank as she lost consciousness.