Chapter: 156
At the moment when the Necromancer was getting thoroughly thrashed by Jess and Iris, Noah found herself panting, staring down at her bloodied hands in a pit about 3 meters deep.
“Hack, hack…”
Anxiety, fear, and restlessness filled her throat, making her breath come in ragged gasps. Her entire body felt as cold as if it had been dunked in icy water.
Her once neat hair was a tangled mess, with dry tear stains and dirt smudged on her cheeks. Her lips, bitten repeatedly, were cracked and oozing blood.
“Ugh… huh…”
A sorrowful whimper seeped out from her cracked lips, and Noah hunched forward, her back rounding in despair. The weight of misery and guilt pressed heavily upon her.
Cruel memories that she had long forgotten in her familiar peace began to flood her mind, stirring confusion and torment. The regret that came too late tightened around her throat mercilessly.
“…”
At some point, she stopped clawing at the ground with her broken nails, no longer making sounds of suffering. The silence settled in, and a chilling wind swept through the space.
Thud.
Noah touched the ground, which was mixed with tree roots and stones, with her blood-stained hands.
“Ugh…”
She let out a short groan and staggered to her feet. Her once brilliant green eyes were now murky and dangerously gleaming.
Had it been during her stay in Cardishian, Noah would have wallowed in endless despair, dragging herself down to hell. Perhaps she would have become so anxious that she might have attempted to harm herself.
Noah realized that such actions would only serve to alleviate her guilt. She was no longer the foolish girl flailing about in tears.
Her gaze, which had been fixed on the ground like the blade of an executioner, slowly rose to the air. With that, a terrifying presence began to radiate from her.
Boom—..
The trees outside the pit shook violently as if caught in a storm, while Noah’s unseen magical energy spread throughout the forest. A massive amount of mana began to scan all information in her vicinity and report back to her.
‘…I need to find the cause.’
As her anger intensified and her despair deepened, she needed to keep her wits about her to make rational choices. A principle that had only ever worked properly in front of Lian began to finally take shape today.
Noah quickly started organizing the information in her mind.
Initially, when she had been digging, Noah thought an ‘unknown monster’ had used the plant-type monster ‘Lapl’ as bait, and that the ‘Lapl’ had used ‘something’ resembling a human as bait, too.
Looking at it rationally, it was easy to see how nonsensical that was, but having lost Lian right before her eyes, Noah no longer had a shred of reason left. It took her a long while to catch on.
‘There’s something that dominates the entire forest. It swallowed Lian.’
A cold glint of malice seeped through her expressionless face. Her mechanical gaze rolled down toward the ground. Thanks to pulling her magic to its limit, her heightened senses detected the foreign energy that had consumed the forest.
The mana that spread faster than an arrow captured Naro and Lily moving in a group with several knights, Jess and Iris looking around curiously at Noah’s peculiar mana, and Rangers engaged in battles with monsters.
Noah was filled only with thoughts of saving Lian, disregarding the presence of others as she sent her energy out further into the distance.
Just when she felt like she had almost consumed the entire forest…
Boom!
“…!”
At the edge of the spreading energy, she caught a sticky presence that words couldn’t express. It was a disgusting, gut-wrenching aura, reminiscent of maggots on a rotting corpse.
“…I found you.”
Noah’s eyes glinted with a fierce determination.
Crash!
She leapt out of the pit and charged forward, quickly biting her split lip as she dashed past the trees that flashed by her side.
‘If I had gone all out from the beginning… I could have saved Lian.’
Noah thought she had lost Lian because she hadn’t used her strength in time, but that was incorrect. Right now, the reason she had such immense power at her disposable was because she was half out of control.
Her mind, consumed with a mix of reason and guilt, continually blamed herself as her fury grew. The rampage was escalating quickly.
Thud! Boom!
In her wake, trees toppled and bushes were trampled. As she ran for some time, the mist grew thicker.
The closer she got to where the Forest Guardian resided, the more disorienting the mist became. Noah dispelled the surrounding fog with her magic and continued running, holding her breath.
Crackle… Crash!
The Necromancer’s barrier tried to halt her strides, but it was torn apart like paper in the face of overwhelming force.
As she broke through the mist, an open space lay before her. The first thing she saw was a large lake tinted red and a bizarre entity standing above it.
“Kit… grrr?”
That thing—the Forest Guardian in the shape of a reindeer—had a grotesque appearance. Its massive antlers were riddled with holes, eaten away by bugs, and its head was half rotten, half revealing its skull.
Its back appeared entirely decayed, while its legs were still covered with skin and fur. The hollowed-out head and back overflowed with foul mana.
Even Noah, who regularly encountered such beings in Cardishian, felt nauseating disgust at the quality of its mana.
The corrupted magical energy overflowing from its face and back constantly dripped into the lake. Its bizarre form invoked a primal fear in humans, but there was an even greater terror that lurked.
“Grrr…”
The spirit that had guarded the forest for long had, in its extensive life, exuded an essence of dignity and holiness. That dignity and holiness, however, had transformed into a sense of dread and grotesqueness after its corruption.
The aura emitted by this non-human entity was so overwhelming that even an ordinary person would fall into panic or suffer a heart attack. Even Noah felt cold sweat bead on her forehead.
Instinct and reason screamed together at her. To run away from this wretched, horrific being!
“…Give him back.”
Noah pushed past her instinct and reason as she strode boldly forward.
“Return Lian to me!”
As she charged ahead, a sword had somehow found its way into her hand. Her feet, coated in mana, pushed off the surface of the lake as if it were solid ground. Thanks to the lake being filled with magical energy, she could run on its surface with minimal mana.
The sword, glistening with mana, lunged at the Forest Guardian’s neck. The Guardian slid back, but that alone wouldn’t take it out of the attack’s range.
Crack.
The Forest Guardian’s neck contorted grotesquely as it narrowly dodged the speeding blade.
Shwaah!
Nauseating mana surged up like a huge stone tossed into the lake from its flayed back and head. Noah took a step back, gritting her teeth as she faced the overwhelmingly powerful Forest Guardian.
And thus, the battle began.
*
Meanwhile, Lian was searching for a way out of the underground with the Duke.
“Looks like the only option is to break through the ceiling.”
“…For now, that seems to be the only way.”
The Duke barely managed to reply to Lian’s remark, trying to hide his confusing expression.
“Hmm… It might collapse, so we can’t just go breaking things… Oh, would you like another drink?”
“Y-yes, please.”
Swoosh!
Lian set up a new white tea table from his bag, sitting comfortably on a sturdy wooden chair. The chair must have been quite high-end, as it emitted a nice aroma, adorned with beautiful patterns.
On the table rested an elegant teapot and teacups, filled with a nutty tea he’d never tasted before.
‘…I’ve never had such a flavor before. Plus, it’s quite high-quality. Where on earth did he get this tea?’
Although it was just barley tea summoned using a gag filter by Lian, it was a shocking taste for the Duke, who had never experienced a rich tea before.
‘Why do I keep reaching for it? More importantly… how expensive is that bag for it to hold so many things?’
Expansion bags are fairly common and not cheap, especially if the interior space is large—Lian’s bag seemed to drop an endless array of items with no end in sight.
Before he knew it, the underground space had turned into a decent camping ground.
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