After more than a week, the two of them had finally arrived at their destination. The Thundering Valley could be seen in the distance.
What they saw left them speechless.
A dark sky. One that nearly embodied the concept of night.
An even darker valley. It was the abyss of abysses.
Yet it was the myriad of streaks of blinding light connecting one to the other that truly stunned them into silence.
It was such a surreal sight that it hypnotized those who gazed upon it. The countless flashes of light were bright, capable of lighting up the entirety of the valley even better than the sun could. Rui could scarcely imagine the sheer amount of current flowing through each lightning bolt. The sum totality of all the power within the valley was so great that it would probably vaporize any Martial Squire on the continent!
It was a magical sight.
No words could possibly do the beauty of the dance of lightning any justice. No one could ever fathom what it was like unless they stood where they stood and beheld the magnificence of one of the most exotic phenomena in nature that Rui had ever seen.
The Thundering Valley was loud. Each flash of lightning was followed by thunder. Considering that they were quite some distance from actually reaching the valley, it was quite surprising to Rui that they could hear it quite clearly.
In fact, he suspected that it would end up being even noisier than the Umiana Trench once they actually entered the valley!
"Man…" Kane finally managed to squeeze out a word. "This… This is beyond anything I had imagined."
Rui nodded. The Umiana Trench had left them feeling in a similar manner, however, the difference was that the Umiana Trench was a man-made phenomenon. Furthermore, it was a man-made phenomenon created by a Martial Sage of all people.
The Thundering Valley, however, was a natural phenomenon. The climate of the region that they had entered was extremely stormy. The sun was seemingly perenially covered by the sun all the time, the environmental factors of the region were such that massive dense clouds were a staple.
The region received heavy rains most of the year while receiving light rains when it didn't receive heavy rains. On top of that, the valley was allegedly lined with an esoteric ore in land and soil that was extremely conducive to lightning bolts, every inch of soil served as a powerful lightning rod that pulled at the electrical charge in the cumulonimbus clouds, urging for the lightning bolt to fall.
These two factors combined resulted in an unprecedented phenomenon where a gigantic potential difference between the clouds and the valley created countless channels for electrical flow, resulting in countless lightning bolts that scarred away at the valley.
The Thundering Valley was so dangerous that ordinary humans could not survive stepping foot in the valley. Some humans could survive being hit by one lightning bolt.
Few may even be able to survive being hit by two. However, the Thundering Valley was infested with more than just a few lightning bolts or even a million of them. There were billions of lightning bolts across the entirety of the valley. Each lightning bolt was so close to each other that from a distance, it was too difficult to tell them apart! It just looked like it was raining lightning instead of water!
Rui doubted that even Martial Apprentices could safely navigate the Thundering Valley. Perhaps they could handle being near the exteriors, where the lightning was said to be less, compared to the core where the intensity was too great even for Martial Squires.
"Let's get some rest in the closest town to the Thundering Valley," Rui told Kane. "We can come back after we have gotten some rest. We have been traveling all day, after all. I'd rather we be at our peak than not. I don't want to waste potions frivolously now that we no longer have our wealth."
Rui and Kane could have quickly regained their stamina with physical rejuvenation potions and some nutritious food pills, but Rui had no interest in using resources that were growing more scarce. It was at times like these that losing the wealth that he had gathered hurt. He had retained some of the money he made, but almost all of it had gone into purchasing protection for his family and the cooperation of Guildmaster Bradt.
"Sure thing," Kane replied, never once taking his eyes off the Thundering Valley. "I wanna make sure I'm at my peak too… I may have underestimated how difficult this thing is."
It appeared that witnessing the power of the fastest and quickest natural phenomenon had had a profound effect and impact on him. He had been very eager to test his evasive maneuvering prowess against the lightning, but having finally witnessed it up close had shown him that he was still sub-par.
Rui knew that, of course. Lightning moved hundreds of times faster than sound. They were no match for its speed at the moment. Perhaps Kane could close the gap significantly with Godspeed, however, Godspeed was not an evasive maneuvering technique, and he couldn't use it to dodge continuously.
On top of that, the reflexes needed to react to lightning were extremely also extremely high, which the Godspeed technique did not help with. That meant that both Rui and Kane were going to be put through the wringer when it came to evading the lightning bolts.
It was quite likely, that at least at the start, they were going to have to remain stuck on the exteriors of the Thundering Valley, before slowly trying to make progress to the inner lands of the Thundering Valley.
Rui suspected that their time in the Thundering Valley would not be nearly as straightforward as their time in the Umiana Trench. For one, the freedom that they would have in the Thundering Valley alone meant that Rui and Kane could choose to train in any manner that they deemed fit.
