The next day.
The rough trail narrowed as the team progressed deeper into the Black Forest. The further they went, the thicker the fog became, twisting through the trees like smoke. The world dimmed, and the light of their lanterns burned even fainter as the haze continued to thicken.
Before long, the visibility had dropped under twenty meters.
The forest was mostly silent, except for the dull sound of heavy boots pressing through wet soil. The Westwood Trees loomed over the party, their trunks withered and black, and their bark flaking off with the aura of time.
No one spoke.
It was a silent advance.
Such precautions were necessary to avoid unwanted attacks.
Even the veterans among the team kept their eyes sharp and their voices low as they continued ahead.
Lethra and Lithra walked in the front, their faint white glow flickering through the mist. Their presence was quiet, but somehow still reassuring. They almost embodied the concept of 'the light in the dark', walking ahead like a lighthouse.
Every few minutes, they'd stop, raise a hand, and let the scouts check the ground ahead for unstable earth or any unseen threats that were waiting in ambush. Such things were common before the calamity, and now it had only gotten worse. The number one reason why many of the smaller teams failed to bring back the refugees was that they were caught by surprise by one of the many changes that started to appear after the western region reformed.
Ahead, the path turned sharply, revealing a massive crack that tore through the forest floor, stretching as far as the eye could see and forming a fissure that blocked their path.
The carriages halted following the signal of the captain.
The group spent nearly an hour circling the fissure, finally finding an interwoven section of tree roots that connected both sides and was wide enough to cross. It took them another hour to climb over it with all the carriages. The bridge itself was thicker than a house, and its black surface was rough like stone, yet still somehow warm to the touch, pulsing faintly beneath their boots with an orange glow.
This 'orange glow' was so faint that it was almost indetectable, but none of them could forget the initial upheaval, when the roots were all flowing with a molten red light.
At that time, the cold air produced a dense fog that spilled over into the western region when confronted with the boiling roots.
For that very reason, none of them lingered, the endlessly extending roots of the corrupted world tree brought almost as much tension as the constantly stretching black sky overhead.
-
When they finally stopped to rest, the light had already begun to fade for the day.
The group built a small campfire between the rising roots and black trees, its orange light quickly swelling and pushing back the spiraling fog.
The soldiers sat close together, their faces slightly pale under the flickering light.
Steam rose faintly as the smell of food quickly swept out.
Petra sat among them quietly, the little ant girl quietly adjusting her cloak. She didn't speak, she couldn't, so she simply listened to their conversations.
The others had already accepted her silence as something natural, so nobody questioned her.
They simply assumed she was a mute, and she didn't correct them. This was a misunderstanding that came from the lack of insect-type Beastmen on the cross continent.
Even so, she still fit in strangely well, a bit like a shy little sister.
One of the scouts, a tall man with short hair, offered her a cup of boiling water. Petra tilted her head, then took it carefully with both hands.
The ant had three fingers, so it was slightly awkward, but Petra managed to get used to it quickly.
The man smiled faintly and nodded.
She blinked, then sipped the water without a word.
She could still eat, even as an ant.
The others chuckled softly, the sound almost foreign after so many hours of walking in this ominous silence. The twins sat apart from the rest, their faint glow reflecting through the fog. They didn't eat or drink, they simply watched the forest in silence.
Lethra finally turned to the captain. "Dusk will fall soon."
The captain nodded. "We'll move before it gets too dark."
Soon, the group extinguished the fire, packed their supplies, and prepared to continue.
-
As they continued to move again, the mist thickened.
What was once twenty meters had become fifteen.
Shapes began to shift near the edge of their lights, forming flickering figures that vanished whenever someone turned to look.
"Poison plants," one of the scouts called out from ahead.
When they approached, they found a dense patch of flora. The ground was dotted with pale stems topped with translucent bulbs, glowing faintly with blue and purple light. They shimmered in the wind, almost as if they were encased in a shell, releasing threads of thin mist that curled through the air like spectral hands.
The team quickly consulted the poison master that was allocated to their team. "Don't touch them," she said softly. "They release a vapor that burns through skin and sticks to clothes."
The group stepped carefully around them.
Petra paused, tilting her head towards one of the flowers.
Even through her avatar, she could feel the faint hum of poison. Her fingers twitched slightly, but she refrained from collecting it in front of so many people.
As they passed, Petra discreetly reached down and touched the flower.
To her surprise, although she couldn't send poison from her main body to one of the avatars, she could absorb poison from one of the avatars and store it in the main body.
Her eyes widened slightly.
This wasn't how the physique was supposed to work… right?
It shouldn't be able to do this.
Petra hummed to herself, because there was no point in thinking about it.
They continued onwards.
As they walked, the forest grew darker and darker, and the trees began to lean inward, almost like they were being weighed down. The light dimmed, the shadows stretched, and the world began to fade, even though the sun hadn't fully set.
Then, the wind changed...
It came as a low and cold chill, carrying the faint sound of whispers.
The fog rippled, shifting unnaturally against the ground ahead.
"Stop," Lethra said sharply.
The procession froze, gripping their weapons all within seconds of each other.
Whoosh!
Something moved within the mist.
Slowly, dozens of black figures emerged from the surrounding darkness. They were drifting humanoid silhouettes formed from ash and shadows. Their thin bodies were three meters tall, cloaked in black clouds that followed their form like water. Their faces were hollow, and their eyes were massive, empty sockets that led to the abyss. Concealed within their emotionless gaze, two lantern-like lights ignited where their eyes should be. They floated more than they walked, their movements jerky and soundless. They extended extra arms and legs, using them like spears to cling onto the surrounding forest and pull themselves closer, almost like a spider.
"The Dusk Dwellers…" someone whispered.
They were different from what Petra saw before. If what she first encountered on the mountain road was a melting body covered in black soot, then these things were like a black cloud formed from magnetic dust so thick that it concealed what was within.
Whoosh!
The first soldier lunged.
The blade he held met its target, then passed straight through and scattered its form like smoke, emitting only a small crack, almost like snapping a twig.
The fragments reformed a moment later, coalescing into their original shape again. Where the man had lunged and passed through, his body was left stained by an oil-like substance.
A sharp hiss rang through the air, and the man screamed.
He backed away, tearing at his sword arm.
"Don't get close! Magic only!" Lithra called out, her voice calm and sharp.
"Normal weapons won't work!"
Dusk dwellers had only recently started to appear, but they were already causing a large number of incident reports. The information was chaotic, so it was difficult to receive correct information pertaining to any strategy when facing these things.
In short, they had to brute force it.
Spell circles flared across the field as the mages raised their wands. Spells burst through the fog, burning the Dusk dwellers into flat stains that stretched across the ground.
One by one, they dispersed with a hiss.
Unfortunately, for every one that was destroyed, one more appeared.
They came crawling from the mist, climbing from cracks, and pouring out of the darkness like spilled ink.
The situation was bad.
Even Petra was slightly surprised by the seriousness of the situation. She had read about Dusk dwellers in an old book, but these guys seemed more aggressive.
It was almost like they were focusing on attacking, not surviving.
The air itself screamed as magic collided, filling the forest with flickering flashes of chromatic light.
Petra stood in the middle of it all, unmoving. She just watched with her big black eyes, occasionally performing a comical little hop away from the incoming attacks.
While she was avoiding the fight, she scanned the Dusk Dwellers.
Through the link, she could feel their composition clearly. They were the same as the Duskwood Dust that they encountered shortly before the second calamity began.
Petra was correct when she guessed that these things had something to do with the second calamity.
Judging from the way that they were emerging from the ground, it was clear that they were sprouting from the corrupted world tree. That could only mean that the world tree was somehow resurrected using Duskwood. If that was the case, it also meant that the corrupted world tree was drawing power from something, not producing its own.
Duskwood, while not during dusk, required something like a 'host' to draw power from to survive.
This was how this ancient parasitic tree spread.
Petra immediately suspected that there was some even greater secret hidden directly below the corrupted world tree.
Such a thing made her mouth drool.
Turning back to the fight.
She raised one hand slightly, her three fingers spreading apart. A faint wave rippled through the air, and the nearest Duskdweller froze mid-motion, its shape unraveling into black threads that twisted apart and vanished like wet soot.
Her black eyes flickered with green light for just a moment.
No one noticed, but Petra was very satisfied.
As contradictory as it may seem, Petra actually had more control over her mental energy while using a weaker 'vessel'. It was like giving two children two different hoses. One child held a simple garden hose, while the other held a fire hose. Right now, Petra felt exactly like the first child, happily whipping her little garden hose around.
The Ant Avatar, as long as it didn't break, restricted her fire hose down to a garden hose.
The twins fought side by side at the front, light slicing through the fog like twin blades. Their movements were perfectly mirrored, their spells weaving into one another until the entire clearing was wrapped in silver light.
Petra nodded again.
She already had an interest in the Tibon Family, and seeing two youths from their family fight, she felt her interest only continue to rise.
The twig-like creatures screamed as their forms disintegrated, dispersing into fine ash that the wind scattered away.
Slowly, the forest fell quiet again.
Only the faint sound of breathing remained.
The captain lowered his sword. "Is that… all of them?"
No one answered.
The mist, momentarily pushed back, began to encroach again, and the aftereffects of the battle disappeared into the forest. Petra stood near the back of the group, flicking black dust from her sleeve. She looked out past the fog, her eyes narrowing faintly.
For now, it was over…
But she could still feel it, the faint wave of 'greed' dwelling deep within the Black Forest, just waiting for a chance to reach out and claim its target.
-
They advanced through the Black Forest in the dead of night.
The fog hadn't yet lifted, still lingering from the wave of dusk. It pressed against their torches like a living shadow, swallowing the light as fast as it formed.
The forest breathed with the wind, slow and cold, its thick, dark green canopy swaying in the wind.
The long procession moved quietly.
The road curved through the trees in a narrow path that almost looked to be carved by beasts instead of men. Once or twice, the scouts in the front waved to demand silence, listening to something in the distance.
They continued.
-
Hours passed in that same rhythm, walk, pause, listen, advance.
Eventually, they began to see movement in the mist ahead. Shapes stumbled between the trees, figures with torn clothes, half-collapsed tents, and the faint light of dying lanterns spilled out from the fog.
They were… refugees?
The group slowed down, preparing themselves.
This could be tricky.
As they approached, the 'survivors' looked up to meet their eyes. Many of their faces were pale, and all of them were dishevelled and exhausted. They were indeed a group of wandering refugees, clearly with no escort.
One man, clearly some kind of leader, reached toward the light of the torches, his lips cracked, and his voice leaked out as a low whisper. "Help… the others… please…"
After a moment to discuss…
Lethra raised a hand and motioned for the doctors to move.
Lithra's glow brightened slightly, flickering like moonlight, washing over the shivering group like a veil of light. The faint white that bloomed around her hands drove away a thin layer of unseen poison that clung to the ground.
"Half of them are infected," someone muttered.
Petra nodded.
She had already realized that the group she swaggered into was quite elite, so she wasn't surprised that someone could tell at a mere glance.
These people were probably doomed.
Petra stood a few steps behind the others, silently observing. Her hood hid her expression, though her eyes flickered faintly as she looked at the refugees. Their blood carried traces of the same corruption she had seen before, the Duskwood Dust.
She wondered what the sisters would do.
At the end of the day, this wasn't their destination. After giving the group of refugees some food and a few antidotes, the convoy moved on.
The refugees stayed behind, too weak to travel.
-
The Black Forest stretched forward endlessly.
Sometime later, they encountered another team.
Two dozen soldiers bearing the crest of the United Army emerged from the fog, their armor scratched, weapons cracked, and many of them injured. The captain of Petra's group greeted them, asking for a report.
Unfortunately, the answer was a bit grim.
"We were ambushed east of the northern swamps front line," the man said, his voice exhausted. "Half our people are gone. The ground opened up… and something came out."
"What kind of 'something'?" Lithra asked from behind.
The man hesitated, then said with a bit of uncertainty, "It was… a centipede. But not a normal one, it was as long as a city wall, just like the rumours."
The team fell silent.
Lethra's expression didn't change. "Did you kill it?"
The man shook his head. "We had to run. Our team wasn't prepared for that kind of battle."
The two groups exchanged supplies, then parted ways.
The air after that conversation grew colder, more tense. Everyone kept glancing toward the trees as they walked, squinting just a little bit more, almost as if they were trying to see through the wall of fog.
After another few hours…
It was around midnight when the first tremor hit the camp.
The ground shook beneath their feet, sending ripples through puddles of dark water. The horses turned, their cries echoing through the dark.
The captain shouted for everyone to hold their formation as he scanned for the source of the tremor.
Then, from beneath one of the larger roots ahead, something surged…
The soil cracked, the trees bent, and in an instant, the ground over there erupted.
BOOM!
A massive figure surged upwards, breaking out of the ground and tearing through the earth in a spray of mud and stone. Westwood trees were toppled, and the surrounding root was gouged out from the collision of its claws. Its body was long and jointed, its pure black exoskeleton flickering with a thin veil of purple light. Dozens of clawed legs unfolded and scraped against the massive root, as a set of serrated mandibles split open with a shriek that made the air shake and the torches flicker.
Wreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The centipede appeared, clinging to the roots and rising above the treetops.
It was easily forty meters long.
"Formation!" the captain roared.
The soldiers scrambled into smaller formations, drawing their weapons and reinforcing their bodies. Mages began casting spells, their magic circles and forming runes glowing in the dark night.
Whoosh!
Bolts of fire and arcing lightning slammed into the creature's shell, but it barely flinched.
Its claws tore through the ground, crushing two soldiers before they could even scream.
The monster lunged, carving through the earth and slamming its body against the nearby trees, sending them flying in a storm of splintering wood that shot towards the soldiers.
Lethra and Lithra raised their hands in perfect sync, white light flooding the clearing and wrapping around the surrounding forest like a sea of spectral tentacles.
Petra's eyes flashed.
It would seem that she had made a mistake…
She realised that not only was that attack the same as the strange glow that surrounded the girls, but it was also directly related to the soul. From what she could tell, these girls had a connected soul, and it seemed to be almost overflowing from their bodies.
Was that… really ok?
For a moment, the monster hesitated in convulsions, its skin sizzling where the white shadow wrapped around it. It was not alone in this aspect, the whole forest surrounding the girls was almost 'burning', as the white light enveloped it.
"Now!"
The soldiers attacked from all sides.
The forest flashed with an aurora of colors. Dozens of spells erupted at once, all blasting against the underbelly of the massive centipede.
Petra stood in the back, her big eyes sparkling with starlight.
Not at the magic arrays, nor from the sister's display, no, all her attention was locked on the massive black centipede.
The reason?
Her instincts were screaming at her, telling her that 'the missing piece' of the evolutionary medicine that she had been searching for had finally started to show its tail.
The monster's body was strange, half organic and half corrupted. Poison ran through its veins instead of blood, causing a rain of death after every injury.
Despite this, Petra couldn't help but feel excited.
This species of centipede had no right growing that big, and that could only mean one thing…
When one of the twins tore open a section of its carapace, Petra raised her hand slightly. The air trembled, and a thin line of green energy wrapped the dripping poison and drew it toward her, where it quickly vanished into the shadows of her cloak.
In an instant, she knew her guess was right.
Petra didn't even need to send the poisonous blood back to her main body. She could already feel the effects that the poisonous blood was trying to apply to her Ant Avatar.
Her lips curled into a faint smile beneath her hood.
The centipede screamed, thrashing around wildly. Its segments cracked under the combined barrage, black blood spilling from the wounds like thick ink. Finally, after one last shuddering roar, it collapsed with a thunderous crash that shattered the ground.
There was a long pause.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Everyone just stared at the massive corpse, its body still twitching.
Many had lost their lives, but just as many had survived.
Such a disastrous attack was a very rare occurrence so close to Harnlum.
"My god…" someone whispered. "They're getting bigger…."
His voice disappeared into the forest.