Chapter 254 – Darkness (V)

Chapter 254

Darkness (V)

“AWWUAAAATTT!!”

Strange ‘howls’ (groans? growls? a mix of those, probably) echoed throughout the forest at fairly predictable intervals. Sometimes they were deep and sonorous, sometimes they were high-pitched, sometimes they were long, and sometimes they were short. There was no true pattern to them, but after about a day of listening to them, we kind of got used to it all and weren’t startled every time.

In the meantime, we faced two more beasts–one stood upright, though less so like a person and more like… I don’t know, a werewolf might? Its legs were angled awkwardly, though its torso and arms were eerily person-like. All the same, it was consumed by strange growths, too, as was the other one, who was much closer in appearance to the first one we’ve seen.

The two were dispatched by the kids within one strike, too, as they weren’t particularly strong.

While all that was happening, I was mostly distracted by the hint that wasn’t so much a hint as it was a vague statement. Follow a voice? What voice? Were there people in this place? Not as far as I could tell, anyway.

The only voice-like sounds, even, were those howls, and even if we wanted to, we couldn’t really follow them, per se, as they seem to originate from different parts of the forest.

I feel a bit cheated, to be honest, as I’d expected something a bit more concrete.

Nonetheless, it did confirm at least one thing: the garden, or at least its ersatz, was real and was somewhere in this place. Where?

Yeah.

That was the big question.

We did start sort of relaxing after the first few encounters and even dared to go a bit deeper from the edge, which was also when I started noticing a few… differences. Nothing major, or even particularly ‘worrying’ in any way, but different enough for me to pick up on them.

The first one was that the ‘rotation’ of Qi, as it were, was a bit slower.

The second one was less magical, as it was just that the humidity in the air was actually present. On the outskirts, the air was practically bone-dry. Reminded me of the very first cheap AC Yas and I got for the apartment and how it dried the living shit out of the place until we started leaving glasses of water everywhere.

While still dry, it was a bit odd that it was ‘wetter’ here.

Thirdly, and kind of in conjunction with the humidity, the air was getting… warmer. I mean, it might be my brain that’s on backwards, but shouldn’t it be the other way around? Hotter near the edges and then cooler as we inch deeper in?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The last one, and perhaps the most ‘worrying’ one, was that it was… too perfect. The trees weren’t identical, no, but they were perfectly spaced out. No, seriously, if I had a measuring tape with me and started doing some measuring, I’d probably find out that they are perfectly spaced, with an inch or two of rounding error.

All the other inconsistencies I could just handwave away with some notorious world magic that I was yet to grasp, but the last one was freaking me out a bit. I won’t say (yet) that the forest’s designed, but if there was some ADHD-addled kid who wanted to design a forest, it might just turn out to look something like this.

However, as nobody pointed it out… I kept my mouth shut. I don’t want to make a fool of myself by saying it out loud only to learn that this type of tree just naturally grows in a perfectly spaced-out pattern or something.

“There are three now,” Wan Lan warned as we all came to a halt and they executed their practiced ritual of surrounding me in a circle. I’d complain if I knew it’d do me any good.

Just like before, the three were quickly killed as they were still weak, and just like before, we walked up for a closer inspection. All three were mostly reminiscent of the first beast we’ve met, with the difference that they had slightly shifting hues of their fur. Or, well, what little they had left of their fur, the spaced bits that weren’t consumed by growths.