I. Deeper into the Green
The forest of Balamony had layers. The outskirts were sun-dappled and full of game trails. Where Foran and Rento now walked was something else entirely. This was the Deep Verdancy, where the canopy wove itself into a permanent twilight, and the air grew thick with the scent of wet earth, blooming fungus, and ancient magic. They had secured the unconscious trio—Mizty, Lard, and Ram—in a warded hunter's blind Foran knew of, leaving them with a note that was equal parts explanation and mocking farewell.
Rento, his staff now glowing with a soft, guiding light, navigated the roots and hanging vines with a scholar's curiosity. "If I may ask… is there something very specific you need down here? This doesn't seem like a place for casual foraging."
Foran, moving with the quiet confidence of someone following an internal map, glanced back. "Well, two things. First, something that will help me finish a… personal project I've been working on. A component that's hard to come by in civilized markets." A rare, genuine grin touched his lips. "Second, and more immediately, something to make me some money. Guild pay is a joke, and my equipment fund is looking tragic."
"A mercenary and a scholar," Rento mused, a smile playing on his own lips. "A practical combination."
Then, Foran stopped. Not for an obstacle, but as if a thought had physically halted him. Rento nearly walked into his back.
"Hey, Rento," Foran said, his voice unusually contemplative. "Do you know why Casting is considered a dangerous, almost forbidden way to use magic? Beyond the textbook answers."
Rento blinked, thrown by the sudden academic turn in the eerie woods. "Hmm. Well, the standard texts say it directly channels raw magic through the caster's own soul as a conduit, using their life force as the fuel and the catalyst. It's wildly inefficient and corrosive. That's why we use Spells—pre-packaged, refined magical formulae. They're like… cooked meals. Casting is trying to eat the raw ingredients and your own stomach acid." He paused, his curiosity piqued. "That reminds me, how are you able to use it without, you know, dissolving?"
Foran shrugged. "Because I'm resistant."
Rento stared, waiting for more. "…Huh. That's it?"
"Well," Foran amended, looking at his gloved hand as if it held the answer. "I'd say it's because my body is… empty. In a very literal sense. Spells need a vessel—a magical core—to inhabit and activate. I don't have one. Casting doesn't need a vessel; it creates a temporary one from the caster's own essence. For me, that 'essence' isn't magical life force. It's just… will. Intent. The emptiness isn't a barrier; it's a hollow mold the raw magic temporarily fills without touching anything vital. There's nothing for it to corrode."
Rento's eyes widened, the scholar in him connecting dots with visible excitement. "I see! So the danger isn't the raw magic itself, but the collision! A person's innate magic and the raw external magic, forced together in an uncontrolled conduit—they clash, erode each other, and the caster's life force gets caught in the crossfire as the only common medium! Is that right?"
"Precisely," Foran nodded, impressed. "You catch on quick. Well, I wanted to use Spells, but I couldn't. So I had to find another way. I stumbled upon Casting theory in a… let's say, disreputable archive. Took a lot of trial and error." He didn't elaborate on what that error cost.
His demeanor shifted then, the teacher vanishing, replaced by the hunter. His gaze swept the surrounding gloom. "Anyway, lesson over. It seems like one of them is here. Get ready."
"One of wha—?"
The ground in front of them heaved. Not an explosion, but a violent upward surge, as if a buried river had broken through. Dirt, roots, and decaying leaves erupted outward. What emerged was not a river, but a horror.
It was an Arthropod Merinoid, a creature usually found deep in mineral caves. It resembled a nightmarish centipede crossed with a salivary teeth, ten feet long, its segmented body plated in iridescent black chitin. Its countless legs ended in razor-sharp points. But what was wrong was the aura. A pulsating, sickly violet energy, identical to the threads that had controlled Rento, crackled around it, seeping from its joints and its gnashing, mandibled maw. It didn't screech or roar. It let out a low, hydraulic hiss and lunged without hesitation.
Foran shoved Rento to the side as the creature's front end slammed down where they'd been standing, piercing the soft earth.
"What's a Merinoid doing out in the open?!" Rento yelped, scrambling to his feet, staff held defensively. "And that energy…!"
"Rento, calm down!! Anyway Cover me!" Foran barked, already in motion. He didn't draw his sword. His hands moved, and two cards materialized: one a dull gray (Stone Bind), the other a vibrant yellow (Flash Cast).
II. Corrupted Crystal Commerce
The fight was brutal and efficient. Foran was the distraction, a flickering, frustrating target. He used Flash Cast to teleport short distances in bursts of light, appearing behind the creature, slapping a Stone Bind card on its carapace that caused local rock to surge up and clamp around a few segments. The Merinoid thrashed, its violet energy flaring to break the stone.
This was Rento's opening. "Aqua Lance: Piercing Torrent!" He didn't gesture broadly; he aimed like a sniper. A spiraling jet of high-pressure water, condensed to a point no wider than a needle, shot from his staff tip. It punched through the chitin at a joint where the violet energy was thinnest, drilling deep into the creature's innards.
The Merinoid convulsed. Foran appeared above it in another flash, a new card—Force Hammer—already activating in his fist. He drove it down onto the creature's head with a crunch that echoed through the trees. The violet energy flickered, died, and the monstrous arthropod went limp.
Foran landed, breathing heavily. He immediately drew his short sword and, with practiced efficiency, flipped the massive creature onto its back. He located a softer plate on its underside and carved it open. From within the ichor-filled cavity, he pried out a central crystal node—usually a clear, geodesic focus for the creature's earth magic. This one was clouded, with a vicious violet scar running through its heart.
He held it up, a greedy, childlike grin spreading across his face. "Hehehe… some easy money must not go to waste." He peered at the crystal. "I wonder how much a 'Corrupted Deep-Crystal' goes for… Probably a lot, given the risks of harvesting it."
Rento approached, wiping his brow, but his expression was troubled. He poked the dead Merinoid with his staff. "Hey, Foran… about this monster. It sort of feels like… it wasn't in control. The energy it's giving off now that it's dead is just… residue. It feels imposed. Artificial."
Foran pocketed the crystal, his grin fading into seriousness. "So my suspicions were right. I've known about these corrupted emergences for a few weeks. Been tracking them. But I've been cautious about getting too close to the source." He looked pointedly at Rento. "Maybe that's why you were being controlled. To get infected by this curse, you usually have to go into a specific place—a dungeon, a ruin—where the source is concentrated. The fact that it's out here, in a monster…....I have another theory."
He met Rento's gaze.
"Someone is trying to spread this corruption. Manually. Using monsters as carriers."
Rento's face paled. "Really?! That's… that's catastrophic! We need to report this to the Guild immediately! To the Capital Guard!"
"That," Foran said, his voice low and firm, "is exactly what we shouldn't do. Why? Three reasons. One: it'll cause a panic. Two: it'll send a bunch of well-meaning, underprepared adventurers to their deaths or worse, infection. And three…" He leaned closer. "…it will make the person in question change tactics, go deeper into hiding, or accelerate their plans. That would be far more troublesome. We'd lose the trail."
Rento swallowed, understanding the cold logic. "I see… So we're on our own? What should we do now?"
Foran pulled a folded, slightly stained piece of parchment from his inner robe. He unfolded it, revealing a detailed, hand-drawn map of the deeper forest and a messy scrawl of notes. "This," he said, "is a sort of… personal quest. And my official guild quest, conveniently. I accepted it from a rather paranoid herbalist who pays in pure gold. All we have to do is get samples of the corrupted flora and fauna from the suspected source zone." He tapped a marked location on the map—a sinkhole denoted by a skull. "And I want to take something else with me from that place. Something the quest-giver doesn't know about."
III. The Sunken Cathedral
The "dungeon" wasn't a castle or a cave. It was a Sunken Cathedral, a vast, half-buried ruin of an ancient civilization that had worshipped the three moons. Only the very tops of its moss-covered, elegant spires breached the forest floor, like the fingers of a drowning giant. The entrance was a crumbling archway leading down into darkness.
"Stay close," Foran murmured. As they crossed the threshold, he held up a card—Phane Membrane. It glowed with a soft, mother-of-pearl sheen before dissolving. A barely-visible, static-charged bubble of energy encapsulated them both. "This should disrupt any passive corruption fields. It won't stop a direct assault like you experienced, but it'll keep the ambient 'mind fog' out. Don't leave this bubble."
The interior was a haunting mix of natural decay and preserved grandeur. Bioluminescent fungi provided an eerie blue-green light, illuminating walls carved with intricate lunar cycles. Strange, corrupted plants with violet veins pulsed in the shadows. They encountered more corrupted beasts—a pack of crystalline foxes, a giant moss-sloth—each fight a tense ballet of Foran's disruptive card-casting and Rento's precise hydro-piercing magic. They took samples as per the quest: a leaf, a shard of crystal, a vial of tainted moss-sloth saliva.
During a rest in a relatively clear chamber, seated on fallen pillars within the safety of the Phane Membrane, Rento finally asked, "So this 'something else' you want… what is it?"
Foran was silent for a long moment, chewing on a piece of jerky. "A key," he said finally. "Or a piece of one. This place… it's connected to the problem. Not just the corruption, but to why I am the way I am. I've been piecing it together."
Before Rento could ask more, it happened.
The air pressure changed. It wasn't a sound, but a sudden, profound silence, as if all ambient noise had been sucked away. Then, a pressure like a deep ocean current pressed in on them from all sides, heavy and intent. The Phane Membrane flickered, strained, and with a sound like breaking glass, collapsed.
"Foran, what's—?!" Rento began.
The world warped. The fungal-lit ruins, the stone, the very air seemed to stretch, smear, and then re-knit itself.
It was over in an instant.
They were no longer in the Sunken Cathedral.
They stood in a vast, pure white room. It was featureless, boundless, and utterly silent. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor—just an endless white plane in all directions. The transition was so absolute it left their senses reeling.
"Foran, are you okay?!" Rento spun, his staff held tight, his voice echoing oddly in the void.
Foran was already on his feet, his face a mask of grim recognition. "Well, I'm fine. But not for long if we mess this up."
"What do you mean…?" Rento's question died in his throat.
A figure appeared in the white distance. It didn't walk into view; it simply was there, as if it had always been part of the canvas.
It was a humanoid doll, about seven feet tall. Its body was made of a pale, ceramic-like material, cracked and broken in countless places, held together by strands of glowing, silver light that pulsed like veins. One of its arms ended in a jagged stump. Its face was a smooth, featureless oval save for two deep, empty eye sockets. From its chest, a complex, crystalline core was exposed, rotating slowly, humming with an ancient, terrifying power. It took a step forward. The motion was wrong—not stiff, but fluid in a way that suggested broken bones moving independently. It was profoundly, utterly creepy.
It stopped and turned its blank face toward them. A sensation of being microscopically examined washed over them.
Rento's grip on his staff turned his knuckles white. "Foran… what is that?"
Foran's voice was a low whisper, devoid of its usual dry humor. "If I have to guess… that's a Lunar Broken Doll. A guardian automaton from the civilization that built the cathedral. Ancient. Powerful." He slowly drew a card—a deep blue one he hadn't used before. "And the one I'm after… it probably brought us here. This white room… it's sort of like a pocket dimension. Be careful. Don't make any sudden moves."
The Doll took another step, its cracked feet making no sound on the non-existent floor. Its head tilted to a ninety-degree angle.
Foran's mind raced, a cold sweat tracing his spine." Well, this is unexpected. I was after a fragment of a control seal, not a fully active, sentient guardian. An Ancient. One wrong interpretation of our intent, one mis-cast spell, and we are not just dead—we're erased from this pocket space. What to do…? "A nervous, entirely inappropriate grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. The absurdity of it all was almost hilarious.
The Lunar Broken Doll raised its one intact hand. The silver light in its cracks flared brightly. The white room seemed to hold its breath.
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