"That's Styria ahead," Jhaben said, pointing to a vague dark mass in the distance.
After more than two hours of flight, they passed through the labyrinthine Abyss Canyon and finally arrived at the outskirts of Styria, the corpse city.
In fact, Lynd already knew they had reached Styria without Jhaben's prompt, because he could see through his special vision that a massive amount of magic power, like smoke, was swirling in the canyon ahead.
Deltos also felt that the magic power was very dangerous, like a volcano poised to erupt; the smoke visible outside was just the tip of the iceberg, and the truly terrifying part was buried underground.
Deltos immediately conveyed his feelings to Lynd, and Lynd did not let Deltos get any closer, but instead landed in a relatively open spot by the Ash River, still far from Styria.
Upon landing, Deltos released Jhaben from his hand; two hours of high-altitude flying had left him extremely fatigued, his body aching and unable to stand, so he could only crawl to a nearby stone and sit down, while pulling several bottles of potions from his pouch, mixing them together, and drinking them, which made his complexion look a little better.
Lynd dismounted from Deltos's back and stood by the Ash River, looking at Styria at the end of the river.
After removing his special vision, Lynd used his ordinary eyes to gaze at this city, which was considered the most terrifying in various legends of the Ice and Fire World.
Only a portion of the buildings in Styria were constructed from polished bricks, while the vast majority, including the main body of the city, were directly carved out of a massive piece of obsidian. Even the bricks were made from obsidian material left over from the carving, so the entire city of Styria, like Asshai, was built with obsidian as its construction material.
Asshai's obsidian foundation and Styria's obsidian are completely different; Asshai's obsidian is huge and flat, and although it is also embedded in the ground, it is not very deep, only less than five meters. Styria's obsidian, however, is prismatic, with one end completely plunged into the ground for hundreds or even thousands of meters, with only a pointed tip exposed above ground, forming the current city of Styria, while the underground portion remains deeply buried beneath the earth.
It is precisely because most of the obsidian is buried underground and has not been utilized that the power contained within it remains intact, unlike Asshai where it has largely dissipated. The volcanic-like magic power Deltos felt originated from the obsidian buried underground.
"Even looking at it with your eyes makes one feel inexplicably disgusted," Jhaben, having recovered some strength, stood up from the ground, leaned against a stone, looked towards Styria, and said with a sigh.
"Disgusted?" Lynd was stunned, turned to look at Jhaben, and said with a smile, "Master Jhaben, you are an Asshai native."
All the buildings in Asshai are made of obsidian, which would definitely make ordinary people feel disgusted, but for spellcasters who live in Asshai year-round, there would be no such feeling of disgust.
"I'm just telling the truth, it has nothing to do with me being an Asshai native." Jhaben did not mind Lynd's teasing, and after carefully sensing the creatures inhabiting the surrounding cliff caves, he said with a puzzled expression, "What's going on? Where did the demon groups that inhabit this place go? Why are all the surrounding caves empty?"
"Were there many demons inhabiting here originally?" Lynd turned and asked.
"Yes," Jhaben nodded and said, "I came to Styria once more than ten years ago, and at that time, a large number of demons inhabited the area around Styria." He then pointed in the direction of the Ash River and said, "Their habitats extended very far, and those demons were difficult to deal with, so I stopped outside the demon-inhabited area and did not go deeper into this place."
Lynd speculated, "Could they have migrated to other places?"
"Impossible," Jhaben said with great certainty, "These demons have been inhabiting here for countless years, perhaps even since the city was first built. It's absolutely impossible for them to migrate to other places."
Lynd did not ask further about the demons. He looked at Jhaben and asked, "How are you feeling now? Can you stay here alone?"
"I feel very well now, you don't need to worry about me," Jhaben said, taking out several black pearls from his waist pouch, "Even if demons come back, I can protect myself. You go do your business! You don't need to mind me."
After confirming that Jhaben was fine, Lynd said no more, instructing Deltos to fly into the air and circle around, protecting Jhaben while accumulating power. Once he received his signal, Deltos was to assist him in attacking the ruins of Styria.
After seeing Deltos fly back into the air, Lynd set off along the gravel path on both banks of the Ash River, walking towards Styria.
Jhaben also found a suitable place to sit, placed the black pearls in his hand around his body, and wrapped himself in his black cloak, completely disappearing into the darkness.
Although the path Lynd walked was full of gravel, a closer look revealed that these gravel pieces, when put together, could form complete flagstones. This path was a meticulously constructed flagstone road, and when Styria was first built, it must have had connections with the outside world, and very close ones at that.
Because from the various traces at the bottom of the canyon, the current Ash River should have appeared later; originally, the entire canyon bottom should have been paved with flagstone roads, wide enough for seven or eight carriages to travel side by side.
It was just that later, for some reason, the entire city of Styria encountered some anomaly, turning into a dead city, and the surrounding rivers and streams were also polluted, becoming the Ash River.
The Ash River flowed through the valley, gradually eroding the ground, eventually forming the current Ash River channel.
As he approached the Abyss Canyon where Styria was located, with a sliver of light falling from above, Lynd was able to see the full extent of Styria.
The Abyss Canyon where Styria is located was not naturally formed, but rather created by high-temperature dissolution. It is likely that when the obsidian used to build Styria fell, its surface had an extremely high temperature, and then, like a hot knife through cheese, it plunged into the ground, continuously heating the surrounding ground and rocks, turning them into lava, which then collapsed, gradually forming a massive Abyss Canyon.
Lynd came to this conclusion because the surrounding cliffs of the canyon showed extensive traces of lava, as well as some solidified lava hanging down. Additionally, the surface of the lava was embedded with a large amount of obsidian, known as Dragon Crystal.
Standing close, Styria was much larger than expected. The entire city's structure was a spiral pyramid, with different styles of buildings constructed on each level, culminating in an obelisk at the top. Sunlight from the cliff edge perfectly illuminated the obelisk.
The houses on the city's surface were only the outer part of the entire city's architecture. The true core buildings were inside the obsidian. The original builders hollowed out the exposed part of the obsidian, creating more than a dozen internal levels according to the positions of the outer spiral steps. Each level had a large number of buildings and houses. Because these houses were carved out, they were completely different from the various styles of buildings outside.
Lynd arrived at the stone bridge leading to the city, preparing to cross the Ash River and enter the city to see if Euron Greyjoy had already arrived.
However, a sudden message from Deltos directed him to the confluence of the Ash River and another tributary, where it had discovered an anomaly.
Upon hearing this, Lynd immediately rushed over. When he arrived at the small river beach formed by the confluence, a serious expression appeared on his face.
On the river beach lay piles of monster corpses, roughly fifteen or sixteen in number. These monsters were all humanoid, with bat wings, and distinctly different horns and fangs on their heads, while their bodies were covered in black scales.
"These should be the demons Jhaben mentioned, right?" Lynd saw these humanoid monsters, walked over, and knelt down to examine their corpses.
Soon, all the demon corpses were examined by him. Just as Jhaben had guessed, these demons indeed could have been a new race formed by the mutation of Styria's people, because the internal organs, muscles, and bones of these demons were not much different from humans. The only difference was that the hearts and brains of these demons had some stone-like substances, similar to gout stones, and these substances continuously emitted obsidian magic power, which shows that these demons should be able to use some magic power.
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