Ian hadn’t been in the swamp for long before he felt sothing was wrong.
He looked down. The ground beneath his feet had beco soft, making a SQUELCHING sound with every step.
Through the grayish-white mist, he could faintly make out many crooked, withered trees standing in murky puddles of water.
Dark-red vines hung from their trunks like strands of clotted blood.
Ian was about to go around them. Suddenly.
"Rustle... rustle..."
A faint scraping sound ca from the swamp to his left.
He stopped at once, suppressed his presence, and silently scanned the area.
The mist swirled slowly, and a "plant" about the height of two n "stood up" from the swamp.
It had a humanoid silhouette. Its main trunk resembled a twisted torso, with branches like arms. Instead of leaves, its top was a mass of dozens of slender, dark-red tentacles that writhed ceaselessly.
The tentacles’ surfaces were covered in suckers. In the center of each sucker was a sesa-seed-sized, deathly-pale eyeball that darted about erratically.
The most grotesque part was its roots. They weren’t buried in the mud. Instead, they were ford from countless, pale human hand bones spliced together, moving slowly through the swamp like feet.
’A companion servant of the Soul-Devouring Tree Demon... the "Blood-crying Vine Puppet."’
Information from Mira flashed through Ian’s mind.
This monster had no intelligence. It attacked by sensing the Spiritual Fluctuations of living creatures. Its tentacles could release a weak spiritual interference and drain the Life Force of its prey.
’I can’t let it raise the alarm...’
Ian’s mind raced as he stealthily raised his right index finger.
An icy blue light condensed and compressed at his fingertip, but he didn’t fire it imdiately.
He was waiting.
The vine puppet slowly turned. Dozens of its deathly-pale eyeballs simultaneously "stared" in Ian’s direction, and its tentacles began to writhe faster.
’Now!’
He instantly cast [Secondary Frost Freeze Beam]!
A razor-thin, icy blue ray shot through the mist, striking the center of the vine puppet’s trunk with perfect accuracy.
There was no sound.
A terrifying, intense cold erupted in an instant!
The vine puppet’s movents froze solid. A thick layer of frost visibly spread across its dark-red tentacles, creeping from base to tip.
The deathly-pale eyeballs were frozen mid-rotation, making them look even more grotesque.
In less than a second, the entire vine puppet had beco an ice sculpture.
Ian walked up to it and gave it a gentle push.
CRACK... SHATTER...
The ice sculpture shattered, turning into a pile of icy fragnts along with the vine puppet inside. The pale hand bones, made brittle by the extre cold, also disintegrated.
’The freezing effect is surprisingly effective against this type of plant monster.’
Ian nodded to himself. Without lingering, he quickly skirted around this part of the swamp.
As he went deeper, the sinister chill in the mist intensified, and he began to hear faint, intermittent whispers.
At first, they were just fragnted, unintelligible murmurs, like the sound of wind whistling through a crevice.
But as he pressed on, the whispers grew clearer, as if countless people were muttering right next to his ears.
They spoke in a language Ian had never heard, its syllables twisted and its rhythm maddening.
’The Whispering Forest... It certainly lives up to its na.’
Ian activated his ditation thod. The Will Rune Array glowed faintly, filtering and dispelling the external noise that was trying to invade his Sea of Spirit.
But the whispers didn’t vanish. Instead, they grew more intense, surging in from all directions like a tide.
To make matters worse, illusions began to appear in the mist.
He’d glimpse a figure flash behind a tree in his peripheral vision, but when he turned to look, there was nothing there.
A corpse would suddenly appear hanging upside down on the path ahead, only to dissolve back into mist as he approached.
He heard familiar voices calling his na—it sounded like Talia or Hawke—but they ca from completely the wrong direction...
’The spiritual interference is getting stronger.’
Ian maintained a steady pace, silently reciting the principles of the [Bloodline Purification Technique] in his mind.
The dark-red "Spirit Devourer" Rune flashed with a bloody light. It spun slowly in his Sea of Spirit, emitting an invisible suction.
The psychic static trying to invade his consciousness crashed against it as if hitting an invisible filter.
The "Spirit Devourer" Rune silently devoured and broke it all down, converting it into faint wisps of cool Energy that, in turn, slightly nourished his Spiritual Power.
’It really works.’
Ian’s spirits lifted. He now had a more direct understanding of the "Spirit Devourer" effect’s combat applications.
After walking for another couple of miles, the terrain began to slope upward, and the trees grew taller and denser.
The trees here were no longer twisted and grotesque. Instead, they exuded an ancient, solemn air.
Their trunks were straight and thick, with deep, grayish-brown bark marked by natural spiral patterns.
Their canopies were lush, their leaves a deep, inky green that seed to glimr faintly in the gray mist.
’A subspecies of the Ancient Tree of Life... This must be the place.’
Ian stopped and hid behind a giant tree, using his spiritual link to perceive the area carefully through the eye high in the sky.
The Magic Concentration in the air had reached a peak. Its nature had also beco gentle and full of life, a stark contrast to the deathly, cold stillness of the surrounding area.
But mixed in with this vitality was an unsettling Spiritual Force Field.
It was cold and viscous, blanketing the entire area like an invisible spiderweb.
By now, the eye in the sky was suffering from severe interference, making his own direct observation more reliable.
He strained his eyes and, through a thinner patch of mist, could see a small, relatively open clearing in the forest about a hundred ters ahead.
In the center of the clearing stood three exceptionally tall, ancient trees.
They were nearly ten tis thicker than the surrounding trees and stood over a hundred ters tall. The spiral patterns on their trunks shimred with a faint golden light. Their canopies were like great parasols, and their hanging aerial roots ford a curtain.
The trunks’ surfaces were pocked with holes, where amber-colored, translucent, resin-like crystals had ford, emitting a dense aura of Life Energy.
These wounds were the "masterpiece" of the five Soul-Devouring Tree Demons. They had been parasites on these three Ancient Trees of Life for a long ti, siphoning their Tree Sap.
’The bark Extract is taken from those crystallized sections of bark...’
Ian’s gaze swept to the edge of the clearing, and his pupils suddenly contracted.
There, five even more bizarre "saplings" stood silently.
They stood about six ters tall. Their main trunks were like twisted, gray stone pillars, their surfaces riddled with honeycomb-like holes.
They had no branches or leaves. Atop each was a constantly writhing, dark-red fleshy tumor that pulsed as it expanded and contracted. Several slits, like unopened eyes, were split across the tumors’ surfaces.
The roots of these "trees" were buried deep in the soil, but their tendrils bulged from the ground like blood vessels, spreading in every direction.
The end of each tendril was coiled around one or more skeletons—so human, so beast. Dried, dark-red stains still clung to the bones.
’Soul-Devouring Tree Demons... and there’s more than one.’
Ian held his breath and quietly recalled his [Eye of Vigilance].
These Soul-Devouring Tree Demons were also highly sensitive to Energy Perception. He wasn’t sure if his eye, even in a state of "Concealnt," could avoid their notice.
Peeking carefully from behind the tree, he observed the air around the Tree Demons, which was thick with a viscous, gel-like Spiritual Force Field, invisible to the naked eye.
Any living thing that stepped inside it would be instantly detected and hit with a powerful Spiritual Shock.
To make things even more difficult, the five Tree Demons’ positions seed random, but they actually ford a loose encirclent, guarding the three Ancient Trees of Life at the center.
’First, I’ll see if I can sneak in and find a way to lure them away. If that’s impossible...’
Ian’s mind raced, his eyes scanning the surroundings for any terrain or opportunity he could exploit.
The whispers echoed in his ears as the mist swirled slowly around him.
「At the mountain entrance.」
A team of three High Level Apprentices silently guarded the path, their forms concealed.
They were dressed identically and moved with practiced coordination, seeming extrely familiar with the area.
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