They continued deep into the forest without stopping, the two young priests struggling to keep pace with their relentless advance.
Whisper of Gale.
"How much further, Captain?" Zen asked, his voice carried clearly by the spell, not strained but focused.
"Here." G6 halted her horse with a suddenness that forced the others to pull up sharply behind her.
She turned in her saddle, looking past her team at the two young priests lagging several yards back. "Hey, you two. Don't be a nuisance," she stated, her tone flat and uncompromising.
They nodded hurriedly, their faces pale with a mixture of exertion and fear.
"What was Archbishop Xyril thinking?" the young priest, Felon, whispered to Kalia, his eyes wide as he took in the cloaked, formidable trio before them. "Look at them. They seem more like mercenaries than adventurers."
"Shh. It's just the cloaks," Kalia murmured back, though her own gaze was uncertain.
"This is as far as we go on horseback," G6 announced, swinging down from Kira's back.
Without a word of question, Edmund and Zen also dismounted, leading their horses to a sturdy tree to be tethered.
The two young priests clumsily followed suit.
"One of you stays with them on the ground," G6 said, the order making both Edmund and Zen immediately grasp the tactical reality: their charges were now a liability for any kind of swift, stealthy reconnaissance.
"I am not really… sociable," Zen murmured, attempting to push the obligation toward Edmund.
Edmund sighed. "I need to be at the Captain's side."
"I'm not waiting for you to decide," G6 cut in. Then, without a sound, she took two quick steps toward the nearest massive oak, planted a foot on its bark as if it were solid ground, and launched herself upward in a fluid, powerful arc. She caught a thick branch over ten feet up, swinging her body onto it with impossible grace.
Priestess Kalia and Priest Felon stared, their jaws slack with awe.
G6 looked down at her two men below, her figure a silhouette against the dappled forest light. "One of you follow me after you sort that out."
With that, she turned and became a phantom of motion. She leaped from her branch to the next tree over, landing in a silent crouch before propelling herself forward again, a streak of shadow and cloth weaving through the high canopy with the speed and silence of a predator. It was less like running and more like controlled, horizontal flight from tree to tree.
"Edmund," Zen said, a faint, irrepressible smirk touching his lips. "This one's on you." Before Edmund could form a rebuttal, Zen mimicked the G6's launch. He sprang onto the same trunk, pushed off, and vanished into the green labyrinth above, leaving only a trembling leaf in his wake.
Edmund was left standing with the two stunned priests, the sounds of swift, retreating movement already fading into the distance. He massaged the bridge of his nose, then turned to face his wide-eyed charges.
"Right," he said, his tone shifting to one of practical command. "We'll follow their path from the ground. And for your safety, do not stray more than three paces from my side."
"Y-yes, sir," Felon stammered.
Edmund began to walk, his senses extended, with the two priests following close behind like anxious ducklings, their eyes darting fearfully at every shadow.
Echo Trace.
"I am going out," Daunt announced, his form materializing from the tattoo into solidity beside G6 in the canopy.
"Help me scout ahead, Daunt," G6 ordered.
"On it." The Fenrir vanished into the labyrinth of branches with predatory silence.
"Captain, why aren't you using your Reaper's Ascent spell for speed?" Zen asked, keeping pace behind her with fluid jumps.
"I am using it. Just… subtly." Her movements were indeed preternaturally light, each leap covering more distance than physics should allow, her landings making no sound.
As they pushed deeper, the forest grew eerier. Where dappled sunlight had filtered through before, the canopy now knit into a nearly solid roof, plunging the world below into a cold, green-tinged twilight.
G6 remained vigilant, her eyes scanning the dimness ahead. Until her foot, mid-leap, snagged on something utterly invisible stretched between two branches.
"FUCK!"
It was the only word she had time for before she was yanked off-course, tumbling forward into empty air.
"CAPTAIN!" Zen's shout ripped through the silence.
Wind Cushion.
A vortex of air swirled into existence below her, forming a coiled, spring-like platform. It caught her with a soft whump, leaving her suspended a few feet above the forest floor, sprawled awkwardly in mid-air. She glared up through the branches at Zen, whose face was a mask of stark worry.
"I'm fine," she gritted out, pushing herself upright in the cushion of wind before leaping down to land properly on her feet.
She immediately scanned the area. The ground here was not earth and leaves. It was a bog of glistening, green, muculent liquid, pooling in depressions and coating the roots of the trees.
Daunt landed beside her in a silent crouch, his muzzle wrinkling in distaste. "Looks like we've officially entered their territory."
"Captain…" Zen said, dropping down beside her, his own boots carefully avoiding the largest patches of the viscous sludge. His eyes were no longer worried, but sharp and cold, scanning the oppressive gloom around them.
"Let's move forward, but let's leave traces for Eddie to follow," G6 said. She ducked and snapped off a sturdy, dead branch from a nearby tree.
She carefully used the end of the branch to scoop up a small amount of the green, muculent sludge. "Hmm. This melts skin, right?"
"Indeed," Daunt confirmed, his ears twitching as he scanned the oppressive silence. "I detect no movement."
"Me neither. For twenty meters in all directions, I've been using Echo Trace. There's nothing," G6 reported, her voice low.
"Captain," Zen called. He was already using the tip of his sword to carve a deep mark into the clearer forest floor beside the mucus pool.
'0'
"'O'?" G6 asked, glancing over.
"'Zero'," he clarified, finishing the clean, angular character.
"Whatever. Make it big enough for that old man to see." G6 tossed the mucus-smeared branch aside, her attention never fully leaving the creeping spread of the toxic substance around their boots.
Zen deepened the carving, making the symbol large and unmistakable.
With the marker left behind, they pressed on. The further they went, the more the forest transformed. The normal sounds of life—the chirp of insects, the rustle of small animals—were utterly absent, replaced by a heavy, waiting silence. The green mucus appeared more frequently, in larger pools, and they began to pass trees whose bark was sloughing away, dissolved by the venomous residue. The air grew thick with a faint, acidic tang that burned the back of the throat.
They moved with heightened caution now, no longer leaping through the canopy but advancing on the ground, their senses strained against the unnatural quiet. Every shadow seemed to hold a sinister, patient shape. The hunt had entered its most dangerous phase: they were in the heart of the nest, and the spiders were not gone. They were simply waiting.
They moved with extreme care, navigating a gauntlet of nearly invisible silk strands strung between trees and across the path like tripwires.
Then, a skittering movement in the deepest shadow of a gnarled root.
G6's hands flashed to her sides. From her dimensional vault, her twin swords materialized into her grip. As if on an instinctual command, the familiar crimson aura—like solidified blood—began to seep from her palms, coiling around the blades in a silent, deadly sheen.
"Ready," she breathed, the word barely a whisper.
Beside her, Daunt's low growl vibrated through the still air, a promise of violence. Zen's sword was already drawn, its steel now shimmering with a controlled, pale blue aura of concentrated mana.
This is going to be a grind, G6 thought, a cold calculus running behind her eyes. Normally, her power felt limitless, an ocean fed by the world's own natural mana. Here, in this dead zone, that connection was severed. She was running on reserves now—the finite pool within her and Daunt. Every expenditure mattered. The subtle use of Reaper's Ascent earlier, the sustained Echo Trace, the mana coating her blades—it was all a careful drain on a closed system. She couldn't afford waste. She couldn't afford spectacle.
Only brutal, perfect efficiency.
From the gloom ahead, multiple sets of glittering, faceted eyes ignited with a malevolent green glow.
A sound of skittering clicks crescendoed into a screeching harmony, surging closer from the darkness.
"LEAP UP!" G6 yelled, kicking off the ground as a burst of crimson energy—Reaper's Ascent—propelled her vertically into the air.
"STONE SHELF!" Zen barked. The earth at his feet didn't erupt upwards—it liquefied for an instant before surging upward in a smooth, controlled plate of solid granite, lifting him just as the acidic rain sizzled into the ground below.
Below, the shelf dissolved under the corrosive deluge, but Zen was already moving.
Daunt launched himself skyward with primal power.
Just in time. The ground where they had stood erupted, not with creatures, but with a torrent of corrosive green venom, spat from the shadows in a sickening rain.
"FUCK! SNEAKY BITCHES!" G6 cursed, landing in a graceful, weightless crouch on a thick branch, her cloak billowing around her.
Perception Skill.
G6's eyes, sharp behind her lenses, scanned the writhing gloom. Her breath hitched. "ZERO. CODE RED."
"ZERO. CODE RED."
The phrase sent a jolt through Zen. His mind flashed to the Greenhill forest, to her cold instruction: Code Red: If we, or you, are in a disadvantageous situation.
"Are we to retreat, Captain?" Zen called, already knowing the answer.
"Like hell we have that luxury," she shot back, her voice a blade of ice. "We're finishing this. Daunt, listen: find a cave-looking dungeon. You'll recognize it immediately if it's man-made."
"How?" Daunt growled from a neighboring branch.
"You just will. Go."
"Don't die." With a powerful bound, the Fenrir became a streak of silver and shadow, vanishing deeper into the dead zone.
G6 remained, a sentinel in black. Her stylish, wide-brimmed hat remained perfectly angled, casting her face in elegant shadow. Her cloak flowed around her like liquid night as she turned her head, assessing the green-eyed swarm below.
A cold, predatory stillness settled over her. The frantic skittering, the pulsing venom sacs—it all faded into background noise. Her mind was a tactical overlay.
"Five at two feet tall. Six at four feet… and three at seven feet tall," she catalogued aloud, her voice devoid of all emotion. A statement of fact. An inventory of things to be dismantled.
Pure mana-form attacks. This is going to be a pain, literally, Zen thought, steeling himself.
"Yeah. Right," G6 said, as if she'd heard him. Her voice was all business now. "You take the 21 o'clock cluster. I've got 15 o'clock."
"But the 21 o'clock has the two-foot small ones. You're giving me the handicap."
"Never underestimate your enemy until it's over, Zero." A faint, dangerous smile touched her lips beneath the shade of her hat. "Now… let's clean up this batch."
The dance began. But this was no ballet. This was deconstruction.
G6 didn't drop; she stepped off the branch into open air. For a heartbeat, she hung there, defying gravity with contemptuous ease. Then, as the largest seven-footer reared to spit, she fell.
She fell wrong. Not a drop, but a controlled, accelerating vector. A whisper of wind wrapped around her—Gust Step refined into a deadly tool. She became a black dart, her twin swords—now gleaming with a deep, crimson mana that smoked in the dead air—crossed before her like the tips of a descending spear.
The spider fired. A torrent of acid roared up to meet her.
She didn't dodge.
She kicked off the air itself. A micro-burst of Reaper's Ascent altered her trajectory in a sharp, impossible forty-degree angle. The venom passed through the space her heart had occupied a millisecond before. The movement wasn't a flail; it was a calculated ricochet, using the enemy's attack as a slingshot anchor.
She landed not with a thud, but with the silent, absorbed impact of a cat, immediately flowing into a low sprint. Her cloak snapped behind her like a war banner. A four-footer lunged from a mucus-covered root, fangs glistening. She didn't break stride. Her left sword lashed out in a short, vicious backhand arc. No flourish. The crimson-coated edge met the extended foreleg with a sound like shattering ceramic. The limb severed, dissolving into black ash before it hit the ground. Her momentum carried her past the shrieking creature. Her right sword, held low, punched backwards in a seamless, blind thrust. The point, concentrated with annihilating mana, pierced the spider's abdomen with a wet pop. It crumpled.
She was already on the next one. A two-footer tried to web her feet. She didn't jump. She spun, a whirlwind of black cloth and rose-gold hair, her leading foot hooking under the strand of silk. With a sharp yank born of impossible core strength, she unbalanced the creature, pulling it onto the point of her waiting sword. She didn't watch it die. She used the body as a springboard, vaulting over a spray of venom to land on the carapace of a seven-footer. It bucked, trying to dislodge her.
Meanwhile, Zen was a symphony of earth and precise motion. He didn't run on the treacherous, mucus-slick ground; he terraformed it. With each step, a small pillar of compacted soil erupted to meet his boot, giving him perfect purchase. When a spider spat, he didn't just dodge—he raised an earthen wall from the forest floor with a sharp gesture. The venom hit the barrier with a hiss, dissolving a chunk of it, but Zen was already pivoting behind the cover, his sword-arm cocked.
His blade, sheathed in the pale blue-white aura of raw, concentrated mana, wasn't for slashing. It was a precision tool. He thrust, not at the armored carapace, but at the joints, the eye clusters—the structural weaknesses. Each strike was a surgical application of force, the mana bypassing the creature's magical resistance to shatter the brittle chitin beneath. He was a blur of controlled, economical violence, using his affinity not for spectacle, but for perfect, lethal positioning—creating his own battlefield in the heart of the enemy's domain.
Back to G6, she planted her feet, a study in perfect balance. As it tried to scrape her off against a tree, she pushed off its head, using another micro-burst of her wind affinity to launch herself into a horizontal flip. As she spun overhead, both swords extended, trailing lines of sizzling red energy that carved deep, intersecting trenches across the beast's back. She landed behind it as it screamed, its structural integrity failing.
It was brutal, beautiful, and utterly efficient. No wasted motion. No squandered energy. Every movement served multiple purposes: evasion, positioning, killing. She used the environment, the enemies' own attacks, and their bodies against them. She wasn't fighting spiders. She was dismantling a faulty system, her swords the tools, her mind the flawless blueprint.
The dead zone wasn't a hindrance; it was the sterile laboratory where her lethality could be expressed in its purest, most economical form. And in the heart of that silent, sucking void, the Reaper worked.
「EDMUND'S TEAM」
They had been on foot for over half an hour without pause, moving at a pace just short of a jog.
"S-sir Edmund…" Felon called, his breath coming in ragged pants. Beside him, Kalia was equally flushed, struggling to keep up.
"What is it?" Edmund asked, not slowing his stride.
"C-can we rest for a moment?" Felon pleaded.
"Did you not hear our Captain?" Edmund's voice was clipped. "She was clear: do not be a nuisance."
"I-I'm sorry… but they've been gone for so long…" Felon unslung his canteen with trembling hands, taking a desperate gulp.
"So am I. If you hadn't tagged along," Edmund snapped, the rare edge in his tone making both priests flinch.
Kalia and Felon exchanged a glance filled with guilt and mounting fear, but they swallowed their protests and pushed on, their legs burning.
Soon, the forest began to change. The air grew colder, quieter. Then they saw it—the first glistening patch of green mucus on a tree root.
Edmund halted, holding up a clenched fist. The priests stumbled to a stop behind him, their eyes widening.
"W-what is that?" Kalia whispered, pointing at the viscous sludge.
"Venom. Do not touch it. It will not burn; it will liquefy your skin," Edmund stated, his eyes scanning the increasingly eerie surroundings. The normal forest floor was giving way to more and more of the toxic substance.
Felon's foot slipped on a mossy stone, and he windmilled his arms, nearly falling backwards into a large pool of the green mucus. Edmund's hand shot out, grabbing the back of the young priest's robe and yanking him upright with terrifying strength.
"I said, do not touch it," Edmund repeated, his voice low and deadly serious. Felon nodded, white-faced.
It was Kalia who spotted it next. "Look! On the ground!"
Carved deeply into a clear patch of earth was a large, angular symbol: 0.
"'Zero'," Edmund murmured, a flicker of relief passing through his eyes. "We're on their trail. And we are already deep inside the territory."
He looked from the marker into the oppressive gloom ahead. The canopy was a solid roof here, plunging the path into near-darkness. "We go further. Stay close. And be silent."
"F-further?" Felon squeaked, his courage fraying. "It's so dark…"
Almost unconsciously, gripped by fear and a need to see, Felon muttered a prayer. A soft, warm, yellow light—like the gentle glow of a firefly—began to emanate from the holy pendant at his chest, pushing back the shadows in a small, five-foot radius.
"Extinguish that light. NOW." Edmund's command was a hissed whisper, but it was too late.
The gentle glow fell upon the shimmering strands of webs overhead, reflecting in eight hundred tiny, clustered points of green light.
Skitter-skitter-click.
The sound came from all around them, from the shadows just beyond the reach of the cursed light.
"Oh, merciful gods," Kalia breathed, her hand flying to her mouth.
From the weeping trees and behind thick roots, six shapes detached themselves from the gloom. They were the smallest of the brood—each two feet tall, with leg spans that made them seem larger. Their multiple eyes fixated on the three intruders, and their abdomens lifted, tips pulsing with a familiar, deadly green.
"Get behind me!" Edmund barked, his dagger already in one hand. With the other, he made a sharp, pulling motion in the air.
He immediately drew his sword, and as his mana surged, a shimmering, pale blue aura coated the blade from hilt to tip. There was no time for finesse, no room for the butler's poise.
"Your light just rang the dinner bell, boy," Edmund said, his voice cold as iron. "Now, you will learn why you should always listen."
The first venomous spittle shot through the air. Edmund didn't dodge. He stepped into its path, his body a controlled blur as he shoved Kalia aside with his shoulder. The venom sizzled past his cloak, missing by an inch. His other hand snapped up, a small, elegant crossbow now held steady.
Thwip.
The bolt, its tip faintly glowing with the barest hint of raw mana he'd channeled into it, streaked across the short distance and took the lead spider directly in its largest central eye. It shrieked—a high-pitched, horrifying sound—and stumbled back, its legs curling inward.
"Stay close to that tree. Do not move," Edmund ordered the priests, his gaze never leaving the remaining five now fanning out, their skittering forming a sinister, clicking half-circle. He adjusted his grip on his mana-coated sword. The lesson in the dead zone was about to be delivered, and it would be merciless.
–To Be Continued…–