Villain Ch 1783. The Whispering Tree [Part 1]
The wind here wasn't biting like the glitched-out snowfields. It was alive—warm where it needed to be, cool when it touched skin too long in the sun. The scent was earthen, wild, full of decaying pine, cracked soil, and something older. Almost like charred parchment or burnt offerings.
Blackpike Fields opened before them like a war-torn canvas—rolling hills of shadow-grass, skeletal trees reaching to the blood-orange sky, and ruins twisted into long-forgotten altars.
Allen didn't say it aloud. But this? This was already better.
Maybe it was the open field—the freedom to move, to see the horizon, to breathe.
Maybe it was the fact that the monsters here felt real.
Not code-glitched neon monsters.
Not weird AI clones or bugged event mobs. Just high-level beasts with armor, patterns, and satisfying death animations.
Or maybe… maybe it was because here, in this secluded, side-quest locked region…
They could just be players again.
