The devil started talking in a crazy language that no human could understand.

Maybe… it was not crazy talk?

The two siblings looked at each other. Both Gus, who believed in iron fists, and Grey, who believed in machines and steam, felt that their beliefs were shaken.

For a moment, the boy even wanted to scream and throw the demon’s lurking steam ball into the cliff.

But when he saw the super mechanical crossbow that had been modified by the devil and boasted unlimited bolts, he fell silent again when he thought of the pursuers.

Whatever the purpose of the devil was, it was their only savior right now.

After cleaning up the dead bodies on the ground, the siblings continued their journey.

Around midnight, they reached the Gloomy Eagle Cliff deep inside the Red Phoenix Mountain.

The two cliffs, which were as smooth as a mirror, faced each other. A collapsed rock was right in the middle, forming a natural bridge that connected the two sides of the cliff.

Corroded by billions of years of wind and rain, the arch bridge was extremely narrow, fragile, and unstable. Green moss was growing all over the bridge, too. There was no trouble at all.

One moment of carelessness, and they would fall off the bridge into a bottomless abyss wreathed in mist.

Even the eagles in the mountains wouldn’t land in this place when they were resting, in case they were blown away by the wind and crashed into the cliffs on the two sides. That was how ‘Eagle’s Sorrow Cliff’ got its name.

It was the boundary between the hunting area and the World of Deadly Beasts.

The hunting team of Red Gold Town should’ve gone home when they reached this place.

Only the few tough, determined ascetics who did not care about their own life and death would continue moving forward. It was quite possible that they would never return.

“Go!”

Grey patted Gus on the shoulder.

Dumbfounded, Gus stammered, “Sister, are we really going there?”

“Yes.”

Grey simply replied. Seeing her brother’s fear, she took out a rope and tied the two ends to her and her brother’s waists, tying them together.

“Sister, what are you doing? If—if I fall down, you will be implicated!” Gus exclaimed.

“Then be careful not to fall. Go on!” Grey pushed Gus and the two of them walked onto the bridge.

Gus had heard about the horror of the Mournful Eagle Cliff from the hunters in the town.

However, it was not until he reached the bridge that he learned that the vivid and even exaggerated stories of the hunters were still not enough to describe one tenth of the horror of the Mournful Eagle Cliff.

The giant rock in front of the two cliffs was moving.

Although it was not an exaggerated shaking, the slight shaking when it was stuck in the crevices on the two sides of the wall, with the enhancement of the raging wind, was still transmitted to one’s feet and spine. It was still as terrifying as an earthquake.

The slippery moss was squeaking when he stepped on it. The sticky sap that leaked out made Gus think of the rotten corpses of insects.

After only a few steps, his calves were already shaking. He could not help but want to look down.

“Don’t look,” Grey shouted from behind. “Open your hands and keep your balance. Move forward. We can make it!”

His sister’s shout gave Gus courage.

Since childhood, he had admired and listened to his sister the most.

One step, two steps, three steps. Gus opened his arms to maintain his balance and took deep breaths to keep calm. He imagined every step as crossing an arch bridge. He had successfully crossed 27 arch bridges!

Then, the ferocious birds arrived.

It looked like a hybrid of a vulture and a bat. It had no feathers, but it had a pair of broad wings, an ugly head that looked like that of a mouse, and a bloody mouth that was full of teeth. It was a creature that only appeared in the depths of nightmares.

Maybe, the birds had suffered a great loss at the hands of the hunting team of human beings and hated them deeply.

As soon as they saw the two siblings, they screamed and dived down.

The shriek of the ferocious bird pierced through his brain like a devil’s voice, giving Gus a splitting headache. He lied in his heart and his footsteps became chaotic. He waved his hands like chicken wings and almost fell off the bridge.

“Careful!”

At the critical moment, Grey pulled the rope on Gus’s waist and helped him regain balance.

The young girl took off her shoes and socks. Her toes pierced deeply into the arch bridge like the talons of an eagle. She held two super mechanical crossbows in her hands. “Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!” She aimed at the vicious bird and shot left and right.

One by one, the ferocious birds turned into fireballs and slid down from the sister’s side, turning into fireflies in the abyss of mist amid screams.

“Go, go now!” Grey urged.

“Ah!” Holding his head, Gus screamed and rushed to the other side of the bridge.

Several times, he almost slipped and fell into the abyss.

But when he thought of how his own death would affect his sister, Gus still gritted his teeth. For the first time in his life, he mobilized all the muscles and joints in his body and vividly displayed the martial arts taught in the Iron Fist School, pulling himself back from the edge of the cliff time and time again.

More and more vicious birds appeared above his head.

One fireball after another fell around Gus.

Some of the birds even lost control and crashed into the arch bridge after half of their bodies were blown up by the arrows. The rocks that were not stable in the first place were shaking and shaking.

“Ah! Ahhhhh!”

Gus roared desperately to drive away his fear.

He even closed his eyes and strode forward despite the bumps and slippery ground.

When he was about to slip again, he took a risk and jumped more than ten meters to the other side of the lake miraculously.

When he looked back, Grey was still struggling on the bridge. The ferocious birds hovering in the sky gathered into a raging cloud.

“Go to hell, you animals!”

Gus roared and drew two super mechanical crossbows from his back. The bolts rushed out like fire dragons and blew the dark clouds in the sky into fireworks.

The bird that had been burnt to a crisp fell to the ground.

The ferocious bird whose wings had been set on fire, on the other hand, flew to a higher place resentfully, not daring to provoke the pair of ferocious siblings anymore.

Grey finally crossed the arch bridge and fell next to Gus. She breathed heavily and looked at the abyss that they had conquered.

“We—we made it!”

The sister punched her brother hard, with a relieved smile on her pale face. “Do you see it, Gus? We are here!”

Gus nodded, feeling more delighted than ever.

As trash, he had finally accomplished something that few people in the entire Red Gold Town could do.

Maybe, he was not trash.

However, he had not awakened his… true strength yet.

“Sister, where are we going exactly?”

Gus asked, “You seem confident enough to cross such a dangerous place. You must have a destination. Tell me where it is. I will go with you.”

Grey hesitated for a moment. Looking at the abyss and the arch bridge behind her, she finally said, “The world may be a big place, but we have nowhere to run to now that we’ve betrayed the path of the iron fist. There is only one place that can shelter us, and that is the ‘steam army’ in the south.