The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive Chapter 145 : Chapter 145

Chapter 145: Giant Tree Maze

The world spun around him.

Ryan dropped to one knee and waited for the dizziness to pass. His stomach churned as though he had been thrown into a whirlpool, spun around a dozen tis, and then flung back out.

He drew in a deep breath, forced down the nausea, and opened his eyes.

Light filtered down from overhead and fell across his face, but everything around him was shrouded in dim, grayish shadow.

He looked up and saw trees.

Tree canopies. More tree canopies. Still more tree canopies.

They were absurdly tall, their massive trunks stretching upward until they vanished into the layers upon layers of branches and leaves overhead. Sunlight had been shredded into countless tiny flecks, slipping through the cracks and scattering across the moss like bits of gold strewn over the ground.

But there was no sky in sight.

Ryan got to his feet and surveyed his surroundings. Beneath his boots lay a thick carpet of soft moss that made no sound at all when stepped on.

The air was damp, heavy with the sll of earth and rotting leaves, mixed with the faintest trace of sothing oddly sweet and fishy. It was so faint it was almost imperceptible, but it was definitely there.

He was alone.

He stood still and waited for several breaths.

No human voices. No footsteps. No breathing but his own.

Only the steady thud of his heartbeat, loud in the silence.

Ryan did not move right away.

He checked himself from head to toe. His backpack was still there. The small case was still there. The short blade at his waist was still there. The dagger hidden in his boot was still there. He crouched and pinched a bit of moss between his fingers.

Wet, but not muddy. Underneath it lay a thick layer of humus.

He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed it. Other than the scent of damp earth, there was nothing.

He stood and started walking.

There was no direction.

Or rather, there was no way to determine one.

Every tree around him looked the sa. The bark was silver-gray, rough with ridges and fissures. So trunks were wrapped in vines. Others were covered in moss.

Sunlight filtered down from overhead, but there was no telling whether it was morning or afternoon, east or west.

Ryan walked for a while, then stopped and looked back.

The trees behind him looked exactly like the trees in front of him.

There were no footprints. The moss was too soft. It would sink underfoot, leaving an impression for a mont, then slowly spring back, erasing everything. He crouched and examined the ground carefully. He could barely make out where he had stepped earlier. The moss there was slightly flattened, the color a shade darker.

In another stick of incense’s ti, even that would vanish.

Ryan stared at that faint depression for a long while before lifting his head again and looking around.

Trees.

Nothing but trees.

Silver-gray trunks stood shoulder to shoulder, stretching away in every direction. Each one was the sa thickness, the sa texture, with moss climbing over the sa places.

The sunlight trickled down from above in countless fragnted points, scattering over the moss, over the trunks, over his face, enough to make his eyes ache.

He took a few steps forward, then turned to look back.

The tree he had used as a marker had vanished into the sea of silver-gray trunks.

He could not pick it out anymore.

He walked a few more steps, then looked back again.

Still nothing.

Every tree looked exactly the sa.

It was like walking into a mirrored maze. Every tree was a copy of the last, and every direction led to the sa unchanging scenery.

Ryan stood there, and suddenly felt like laughing.

Before they ca in, he and Rex had agreed on it. Everyone would head north and regroup there.

At the ti, none of them had considered that this damned place offered no way to tell north from south.

There was no visible sun, no shadow, no mountains or rivers to use as landmarks.

There were only trees. Trees. More trees.

He tilted his head back and looked overhead. The layers of branches and leaves sealed the sky completely shut, without even a sliver of cloud visible.

He did not know whether it was day or dusk.

He did not know how long he had been here.

He did not know which way to walk in order to get out.

Ryan lowered his gaze and took a deep breath.

First, he had to get out of this forest.

He needed to find open ground. Find a place where he could see the sky. Find sothing—anything—that could tell him direction.

Until then, it made no difference which way he went.

He picked a direction and continued forward.

He moved slowly. Every step was carefully chosen, his footing tested before he shifted his weight.

His boots sank soundlessly into the moss.

There was nothing.

No Magical Beasts. No living creatures. Not even birdsong.

Only the rustling of wind high in the canopy, far overhead, like the sound of another world.

How long had he been walking?

Ryan had no idea.

Perhaps the ti it took for one stick of incense to burn. Perhaps half an hour.

The sunlight still filtered down from above in scattered golden flecks, unchanged.

The trees around him were still the sa—silver-gray trunks, rough bark, so wrapped in vines, so carpeted in moss.

He began marking the trunks as he went.

Each ti he passed a tree, he carved a horizontal slash into the bark with the tip of his knife.

Then he kept walking and carved another mark.

After perhaps several dozen trees, he looked back.

The nearest tree behind him had a fresh cut in its trunk.

A little farther back, the next one did too.

Farther than that, he could no longer see clearly.

But he could see enough.

So he was not walking in circles.

Ryan kept going.

The moss underfoot grew thicker and thicker, so soft it felt like stepping on cotton, making no sound at all.

The sweet-fishy scent in the air grew stronger. It was still faint, but now it was unmistakable.

He slowed, carefully tracing the direction it was coming from.

Left front.

He moved several dozen paces in that direction, rounded one enormous tree, and saw it.

A corpse.

No—a carcass.

Whatever animal it had once been, it was no longer recognizable.

Only a scatter of white bones remained, strewn across the moss, with shriveled scraps of skin and flesh still clinging to so of them.

Three or four ribs had been snapped apart and lay off to one side.

The skull had rolled several paces away. Deep bite marks marred its surface.

Ryan crouched beside the bones and studied them.

The broken ribs had jagged edges. They had not been cut by blade or sword. They had been bitten through by sothing.

The bite marks were deep. The jaw that had made them must have been imnsely powerful.

The bones were gray with age, no longer fresh. The creature had been dead for several days already.

He rose and scanned the area.

There were signs of struggle everywhere. The moss had been torn up in places, exposing the black soil underneath. A cluster of bushes had been crushed flat, the broken stems still fresh. One tree trunk bore several long gouges running from halfway up its bark all the way down to its base, the deepest of them sinking in as far as two fingers.

Ryan walked over to the tree and touched the claw marks.

The edges were rough.

They had definitely been made by claws.

He compared them with his own hand. His hand barely filled half the width of one mark.

That thing was big.

He stepped back several paces, his gaze sweeping across the surrounding woods.

This area was clearly its hunting ground.

The claw marks were not limited to that one trunk. Several nearby trees bore them, so old, so recent, so shallow, so deep.

They looked like territorial markers.

Or warnings.

Ryan turned and quickened his pace away from the area.

He did not run.

In a place like this, running would carry sound far, and it made it too easy to miss the movent around him.

So he rely walked faster, placing each step carefully, his eyes ceaselessly searching the forest around him.