Rin frowned at the wraiths’ sight, but took out her inscribed notebook and started jotting away.
“How long was I out?” Nord asked, his nose cracked for some strange reason.
Nessa rubbed the back of her neck with a pained expression. “Where are we? What happened?”
Gerald grumbled in pain, muttering quiet curses as he cranked his neck.
Seeing those ghosts outside, their eyes trembled, with Nord cursing loudly.
“W-What is that?” Nessa asked with a narrowed gaze.
“I don’t know. Consider it a new species we’ve just discovered,” Liam mentioned casually, before shifting his gaze to Gerald. “You still have that item, right?”
Gerald nodded once, before taking out what looked like a square box from his ring, covered with inscriptions and runes on each side.
“We’ll look for a suitable place to use it. Having it this close to the border isn’t ideal – since we’ll have to explore further ahead anyways. We’ll rest here for one week and find out more about the surroundings, before setting out.”
With that, the group started to cultivate and bring their bodies to peak condition.
Nessa began to collect samples of the black and red soil, putting them in preserving vials to study and bring back.
Gerald began covering their temporary base with minor enhancing formations.
Formations were much easier to learn compared to inscriptions, but didn’t have the freedom of creating spells and any other magical construct.
One week quickly passed, and the group was to leave and explore the ‘Blood Forest’, as they dubbed it.
“We’ll start heading towards the hillside first. If it’s safe, we’ll find someplace there to camp in.”
With that, they left the cavity.
As they moved forward, Liam made sure to keep a keen eye out for anything that moved within the shadows, relying on his senses for any danger.
For some reason, mental waves couldn’t be spread too far apart. Something would interfere with it and pull it back, but Liam didn’t feel that to be from any living creature.
‘This place is much more complicated than I thought.’
They spent the next hour making their way up the hill, entering the forest and thoroughly examining the bony-white trees with the leaves that dripped with blood.
Cherry-like fruits hung from their branches, which Liam instinctively knew wasn’t safe to eat.
Even the trees themselves had this bloody aura, and ‘veins’ transporting that red liquid were throughout the trunk.
‘The ‘Ora’ around these lands are all stained by blood… why?’ Liam wondered with a pensive frown. ‘These lands are owned by the vampires, I’m sure. It definitely can’t be the same all throughout the continent’
He felt threatened being so near to the trees, but it didn’t attack, even after getting closer to them.
‘Maybe it only attacks if it’s provoked. We best avoid this for now.’
“I’ll grab a pair of these fruits to study and bring back, if that’s alright?” Nessa asked Liam with a respectful tone. “I’m sure this could be a precious material to create countless useful pills and elixirs.”
Liam nodded firmly.
“Just be careful when you’re handling it. There’s a reason this tree has survived this long.”
Nessa responded with a nod, putting on a pair of gloves before carefully extracting the berry from the stem.
Another hour passed.
Nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
Nessa hadn’t stopped writing in her inscribed notebook all throughout the journey, the landscapes, minute details and more.
Other than the sheer amount of trees and berries there, Liam didn’t sense anything unusual, except a river of blood-red water that led upwards and curved around a hill.
“This place is so unsettling… I should have never come!” Gerald cursed under his breath, pulling his black coat over his shoulder.
“Stop crying. You chose to come anyway, so shut your mouth and focus,” Nord harshly reprimanded. It was clear the boy was annoyed by Gerald’s cowardly antics.
“You don’t have to say it so rudely… he’s just a little bit scared. We all are,” Nessa added, patting Gerald on the back and giving him a smile. “Just hang in there, okay?”
“Not him,” Nord scoffed and pointed at Liam, then himself and Rin. “Not me, and not her. I thought only spoiled nobles were pussies, but he is too, apparently.”
Nessa frowned, the iron staff in her hands tightening.
“Shut up, all of you.”
Liam chose that moment to interfere as a low growling grew louder a short distance away.
Abruptly, a pack of blood-frenzied hounds shot through the woods, rushing straight to where Liam stood.
The hounds had dark crimson fur, unkempt and bloody. Four meters in length, their deep barks and howls shook through the air. It came as no surprise that their eyes were blood-red as well.
The most prominent and disturbing feature though, was the fact that each beast had two separate heads.
Liam let out an annoyed grunt. He just couldn’t catch a break.
Nord and Rin followed behind as he shot forth at the closest hound.
It attempted to pounce and devour Liam’s arm and leg simultaneously, but only found a katana and wakizashi piercing its jaws and dark smoke consuming its insides.
Although fierce and vicious looking, the pack of beasts were dealt with relatively easily.
Fire and darkness seemed to be their weakness. Rin had plenty of spells in her arsenal, and Nord helped bolster their effectiveness with his wind. 𝚍ｎ𝚘ｖ𝚕．𝚘𝚛𝚐
After killing the last bloodhound, Liam sliced apart its body and began to thoroughly examine its insides.
‘As I thought, their blood is corrupted,’ Liam assessed, extracting the blood-red core and examining it.
They were magical beasts.
Only, during the fight, the bloodhounds didn’t use their innate abilities. They grew razor-sharp claws made from blood that chipped away part of Liam’s blades as they fought.
However, Liam noticed how it actually damaged their bodies and worsened their conditions.
Liam moved to ask Rin about it, but the deaf girl was as lost as he was.
///
Meanwhile, a red flash of lightning briefly illuminated two silhouettes standing atop the peak of an obsidian mountain, their gazes fixed on five humans treading through the forest.