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Volume 2 Chapter 4 Part 14

Over the years, the Vampire King may have fused himself with this forest, since that would explain why he had such a degree of control over it. Therefore, they all came to a conclusion that each unit had to call out to each other and proceed with caution, and Theo led the way into the forest.

It was then that the tragedy began.

One party was swallowed up by a sudden growth out of the fog.

Another company got stuck in the swamp and was unable to move. In addition to that, they were also assaulted by the leeches that lived inside of the swamp. On top of all that, some of the teams of soldiers were suddenly attacked by a swarm of vampire bats.

It was as if the whole forest wanted to spill the blood of the invaders.

Theo’s party was also attacked by trees in the forest after they marched through it for a while. A number of eyes suddenly open on the trunks of the trees as they stretched their branches and roots, skewering whoever was unfortunate enough to be standing too close to them and trying to use their vines to entangle those who stood further away. The lumps on their trunks also swelled and burst violently, spewing a thick, black liquid in front of them. The soldiers that got splashed by the liquid had their shin melt and their flesh rapidly rot, which was then devoured without a trace by the swarms of the black flies that seemed to have been waiting for just the right moment to swarm the unsuspecting victims.

As the number of victims mounted, the remaining soldiers have been thrown into a panic and tried to run away.

「Calm down! 」

Theo shouted the order out, but the soldiers did not calm down at all. Even though they were accustumed to the forest warfare since that is what the guerilla tactics employed by Artuk require them to be proficient at, their morale was at an all-time low right now, since they all grew up while hearing stories about the terrors that were lurking behind the borders of The Forest of Eternal Darkness since their childhoods. Using the power of the 「Patriot」banner would certainly help in improving the hopelessness of the situation, but unfortunately the Crest that Theo currently possessed was simply too weak to manifest it.

「Hahaha! You can’t even gather your army in a time of crisis! 」

Prince Milza of Dartania laughed at Theo through his nose. He does not seem to have any intention of taking the initiative in fighting, and he just casually brushes away the branches and roots that aimed at him with his sword.

(If you do not want to help, then why did you come here in the first place?)

Glancing at him, Siluca sighed. This made her feel like he was here just so that he could watch the spectacle before him unfold, but if it really was like that, then she did not want to be held accountable if something happened to him at any given point. In summary, this prince could not be even more troublesome to them than he already was.

「Kyaaa!!! NO!!!!! 」

At that moment, Siluca heard Priscilla scream.

When she turned around, she saw that a branch has wrapped itself around her leg, hanging her upside down. She frantically held down the hem of her dress, trying not to expose her innocent undergarments to everyone else around.

「You know, in this particular case, you should just show it instead of worrying about it! 」

Aishela reluctantly jumped and used her naginata to cut off the branch that was entwined around Priscilla’s leg. Priscilla started falling towards the ground head first, but Irvin moved in quickly to catch her before it was too late.

「Oh, t-thank you very much. 」

「I am glad to see that you are unharmed. 」

Irvin answered gracefully and gently lowered Priscilla to the ground, and then he proceeded to move as fast as lightning, smashing the opened eyed in the trees one by one with his daggers.

And she moves like lightning, smashing her open eyes in her trees one by one with a dagger.

「Converge! Salamander from the Ether World! 」

Siluca swung her magic wand quickly and summoned a spirit of fire out of thin air. Since she already quelled the rampage of a Salamander once before, she could immediately summon a proper image of it in her head so the summoning happened without any issues whatsoever.

「Wildfire! 」

And she did not hesitate for a second in giving it orders to attack.

The spirit of flame, which resembled a lizard, curled its body, and then turned into sparks and scattered. Then, the trees that were bathed in the sparks twisted their trunks, branches and roots as if they have just been subjected to extreme pain.

「Let us hurry up and go ahead! 」

Siluca said to Theo.

「Don’t be unreasonable. What will you do if the entire forest catches fire? 」

Theo replied.

「If it ever comes to that, then I will simply summon rain to quell it. 」

Siluca answered calmly. Right now, what she wanted to do more than anything else was to break through the forest without wasting any more time than it was actually necessary.

「Aishela! Can you jump above the fog? We need to be make sure that we are heading for the castle! 」

「I can certainly try! 」

Aishela said haughtily and then she jumped upwards with all her might. She came back down after a while, but only to shake her head in frustration.

「It was impossible. 」

Aishela hanged her head down in disappointment.

「So the Vampire King can maintain this thick fog and prevent those inside from escaping it? 」

Siluca frowned when she heard Aishela’s report.

「But if that is the case, then even if this forest has a naturally high concentration of Chaos, it is going to be impossible for me to break through the fog, no matter how much magic I accumulate and how powerful of a spell I might try to cast. However, we cannot just sit still and do nothing.」

Siluca thought so, and just as she was voicing that thought… suddenly, a number of bluish-white balls of light fell from the sky.

「Will-o’-the-wisps? 」

Siluca was greatly surprised. Will-o’-the-wisps are the type of naturally ocurrying Chaos Disaster, but of the variety that does little to no harm by themselves. Due to the nature of the kind of place that was The Forest of Eternal Darkness, it would not be all that strange for them to reside here, but this time their appearance was probably not a coincidence at all.

As Siluca was thinking about what their appearance in this particular moment meant, the Will-o’-the-wisps calmly swayed in the air as they slowly made their way deeper into the forest.

「Lady Zelma? 」

For someone like Zelma, the elder of the village where witches lived in Artuk, manipulating Will-o’-the-wisps would probably be as easy as snapping her fingers, but on the flipside, the very same thing could be said about that Black Witch, so now it was a question of what were these Will-o’-the-wisps trying to do: get them lost in the fog even more than they already were, or trying to get them out of it?

Siluca was contemplating the two possibilities before her for a while, and then she made her judgement.

「We are chasing after these Will-o’-the-wisps! 」

Siluca raised her voice and then she called out to the soldiers from all the nearby units to make sure that they are are going to pass this information to every other unit of the army. Guided by the Will-o’-the-wisps, Artuk’s army marched forward, until they have advanced enough that they have reached the Vampire King’s castle.

「Why did things end up like this?! 」

Yana muttered to herself sullenly as she looked out over the fog-shrouded forest from the watchtower of Dimitri’s castle.

Because the Vampire King declared that he would fight against Artuk in order to perpetuate the Age of Twilight and bring more Chaos to the world, Yana got caught up in his mess, whether she liked it or not. It would have been an entirely different story if they had the awakened Demon Lord fighting on their side, but much to Yana’s displeasure and disbelief, Demon Lord Adele ended up going back to sleep behind her Dimensional Barrier due to reasons that clearly made no sense.

Pandora is a secret society that was aiming to change the world through conspiracies plotted from behind the scenes, which means that revealing any information about themselves was the last thing that it would have wanted to do, but since Yana caused 「The Tragedy of the Grand Cathedral」, then it was inevitable that Pandora’s name would come to light sooner or later as the search for a culprit responsible for it began.