In Afternoon Town, Derrick rolled forward to dodge the monster's attack, while his hurricane axe, held in his right hand, chopped fiercely into the lower leg of a giant covered in short black fur.
Boom!
A silver-white lightning bolt struck from thin air, causing the monster to tremble and stiffen in place.
Derrick calmly stood up. He did not continue to hack with the hurricane axe, but instead spread his arms as if embracing the sun.
A clear, brilliant, and pure holy light descended, enveloping the monster in front of him.
In the light filled with the aura of the divine sun, the monster covered in short black fur screamed and fell, its body emitting a puff of black mist that instantly melted into the light and vanished into nothingness.
On the other side, Chief Colin of City of Silver, holding a silver-white straight sword in each hand, repelled several monsters that approached him.
He suddenly retreated a distance, bowed his back slightly, and plunged the straight swords in his hands into the already decaying gray stone ground.
Pieces of dawn-like light fragments burst forth from the blades of the two straight swords; they were dense and countless, forming a shimmering and violent sharp hurricane that swept out in all directions.
The bright dawn light quickly enveloped everything around, cutting, dissolving, and grinding away all the monsters covered in short black fur.
The bright dawn light lasted for about half a minute, until Colin stood up from the ground, and the surrounding dawn gradually dissipated, with no monster remaining in sight.
After a period of combat, the people of City of Silver had discovered that the monsters here feared strong light.
Although the Dawn Paladin's dawn light was not as divine and bright as the Light Supplicant's, the dawn used by Colin, who was already a Monster Hunter, was no less effective than the holy light summoned by Derrick, and it could cover a larger area.
As the last monster was dealt with, Afternoon Town suddenly fell silent, with only deep darkness covering everything.
Chief Colin of City of Silver looked around and said in a deep voice, "Let's rest, then return to City of Silver."
The exploration of Afternoon Town had constantly encountered unexpected events.
Although the exploration team had no casualties, they all suffered some injuries, and the sudden appearance of Mr. Tower from the outside world, as well as Amon, made him reconsider the exploration plan for the Giant Kings Court.
In City of Silver, clumps of black hair-like plants grew in patches within the cracks of City of Silver's tall city walls, fluttering like strands of hair in the wailing wind.
Leyton stayed at a distance and took a long look towards City of Silver, observing the top of the city wall where a lantern was placed every so often, and the hidden residents patrolling with animal skin lanterns.
After a brief observation, his figure became transparent again, transforming into shimmering starlight dots that surged and moved away with the direction of the wind.
Leyton sometimes walked, sometimes transformed into surging starlight, and soon traveled a great distance towards the south of City of Silver.
He wore a black classical robe with a hood, adorned with many strange symbolic patterns and magical symbols, like scattered stars encircling a cold, indifferent eye.
In his left hand, he held a transparent crystal ball emitting a faint starlight, presenting the image of a mysterious wizard from legends, wandering the wilderness.
On a dry riverbed, specks of starlight began to converge from within, reforming Leyton's figure.
He thoughtfully looked at the riverbed beneath his feet; it wasn't particularly dry, but there was no water either, and the moisture was evenly distributed, not like it had slowly dried up, but more like the river had suddenly disappeared?
Had it entered an incomplete concealed state, only returning to reality at completely random or fixed times?
As he stood still, his eyes flickered, becoming extremely deep, then clearing again after a moment.
"There's a lingering aura of the Evernight Goddess around here; it seems the river water was indeed concealed."
"However, it seems there are still people living here, or rather, there once were."
Through some scenes glimpsed from the River of Fate, Leyton saw some past events here, including monsters and humans, who showed more or less signs of abnormality, cautiously collecting river water by the river with dim lanterns.
Although the exact time could not be determined, the scenes in those images should have happened a long time ago, and the survivors in this area did not continue to struggle in the darkness.
Muttering to himself, Leyton followed his intuition and walked into the deep darkness on the right side of the riverbed.
Using the lightning bolts that occasionally struck from the sky, he saw a dark, dry, and eerie forest less than a hundred meters from the riverbed.
There were no leaves, and both the trunks and branches were extremely distorted, with holes of various sizes on the trunks, like distorted, screaming faces.
Every tree exuded an aura of decay, coldness, and death, yet also gave a strange, living sensation.
Leyton's eyes flowed with deep blue, outlining one complex symbol after another.
The next moment, a giant, illusory eye appeared above the forest, its gaze as cold as substance, sweeping over every corner of the forest.
Leyton stood still, carefully analyzing the various details of the entire forest that appeared in his mind.
It possessed both living and undead characteristics, an incompletely transformed death creature? Can plants also be transformed into undead? Logically speaking, this place lacks light and stable water sources, making it completely unsuitable for plant growth, unless it has mutated into a monster?
Were they once monsters animated by the power of the earth domain, later infected by the lingering power of the former Death, turning into undead, but due to their inherent uniqueness, this change was incomplete?
After pondering for a while, Leyton made the transparent, illusory giant eye above the forest disappear, then gazed deeply at the forest ahead, intending to use prophecy to determine if there was danger ahead.
A moment later, he withdrew his gaze, intending to bypass this strange forest directly.
These strange trees themselves do not have the ability to harm me, but they, along with the accumulated death, earth, and even divine power from the night domain, form a delicate balance. Once this balance is disturbed, I may not be able to escape the influence of the residual divine power here.
As Leyton prepared to cross the forest from the air, a silver-white lightning bolt struck nearby, illuminating the surroundings brightly.
Using the brief blinding light brought by the lightning, he noticed an inverted tree buried in the ground at the edge of the forest, and a strip of cloth, similar in color to the tree trunk, seemed to be hanging from the distorted tree.
Because it was very close to the tree trunk and almost the same color, if the lightning bolt hadn't struck at just the right spot, he wouldn't have noticed this subtle anomaly.
"Traces left by humans; did the people who once gathered in this area find a way to coexist with this eerie forest?"
Muttering to himself, Leyton quickened his steps towards the edge of the forest, and his left hand holding the crystal ball slightly distorted his wrist.
The starlight within the crystal ball flickered, and an invisible gravitational disturbance directly pulled the inverted tree out of the ground.
Looking at the strange tree that was now fully exposed, Leyton frowned slightly.
Perhaps because most of it was buried underground and couldn't grow freely, this tree grew very restrained and very strange:
The trunk part was bent, and near the top, a thick branch grew out from each side, with a strange curve, like two separate, struggling arms.
Looking from a little further away, it looked like a person bending their back, struggling in pain.
Leyton reached out and grabbed the dark-colored cloth strip wrapped around the tree trunk, which also had faint tree bark patterns, and pulled it twice with force.
It felt very rough, like coarse sackcloth made of plant fibers.
It had grown into the tree trunk, and Leyton pulled it several times with force, but couldn't tear it off.
Maintaining his posture, Leyton slightly lowered his head, his eyes flickering and becoming extremely deep, like the sea before a storm, clearly losing focus, his eyes a vast blank.
His mind was slightly dazed for a moment, and soon images appeared in his mind:
In the darkness, a figure holding an animal skin lantern ran quickly, panting heavily as it ran.
Due to the perspective, Leyton could not see the appearance of this figure, only feel the fear and despair that filled its chest, and the distorted, strange trees around it that kept receding.
The surrounding trees receded very quickly, and Leyton used this to estimate the speed of the perspective's owner, finding that it was even faster than a pack of wolves running at full speed in the wilderness.
A Sequence 7 or Sequence 6 Beyonder, and one who had significant physical enhancement. As thoughts floated, Leyton felt the suffocating despair grow even more intense, and the image in his mind flickered:
The trees constantly receding seemed to be changing; they seemed to have come alive, twisting, swaying, and making whimpering sounds.
The image in his mind quickly flickered again, turning completely black, as if the constantly running person had dropped his animal skin lantern, leaving only increasingly heavy panting and an even deeper despair that seemed to crush a person.
Only when a silver-white lightning bolt streaked across the sky could the surrounding environment be barely seen with the lightning's light.
The silver-white light, cut into countless tiny fragments by the cover of the branches, resembled the eyes of monsters hidden deep in the darkness, appearing extremely oppressive.
The running person seemed very familiar with the path here, and even without a lantern, with the help of the lightning that occasionally illuminated the surroundings, he could easily distinguish his position and direction.
As the image flickered, the figure rushed out of the oppressive, distorted, and eerie forest, and the sound of gurgling water echoed around.
At that most relaxed and joyful moment, the image floating in Leyton's mind suddenly ended.
An unspeakable feeling floated in his heart, and he subconsciously murmured, "...Suffering has no end, and the sun will never rise again."