Chapter 75: The Dead Forest

The journey to find this dead tree was relatively peaceful. Sorry, peaceful was the wrong word. What I meant was that the journey was lifeless.

For an entire three hours, I never encountered a single life form. Not even a bug or an animal. It was quiet, so much so that the rustling sound of leaves being stepped on under my feet was loud enough to startle me.

I'm not scared, O-Okay!... I just had to momentarily shift into my rabbit form to utilize the enhanced hearing and ensure everything was safe.

Ahem...anyway, after thirty more minutes of walking, I began to understand the reason for the lack of life in this part of the forest. The trees and vegetation were vastly different from the other areas.

I wasn't sure what this dead tree looked like, but I had a hunch that the thing was causing this state. Everything around me was dying or already dead.

The green grass had turned black, the trees had lost their leaves, and the ground was covered in dead branches. The only thing that looked alive were the mushrooms growing from the rotten trees.

'Fuck! This place gives me the creeps,' I muttered, shivering a little, looking around the area for anything of value. There was nothing, not a single animal or a monster, even the air was stale.

"Now, how the hell am I supposed to find a dead tree in an already-dead forest?" I exclaimed, kicking a small rock in frustration. "It's like searching for a needle in a haystack."

"Sigh...at least I know the dead tree is big," taking a deep breath, wondering if this clue was enough for me to find it.

"Oh well...there's nothing I can do about it," I sighed, shrugging my shoulders and continuing my search.

I walked and walked for more than two hours, but there was nothing.

"This is getting boring," I complained, stretching my back and arms while thinking of giving up and going home. "With Hikari's egg, I can finish my quest and unlock my class."

I was tired, hungry, and sleepy. My feet were hurting, and the only thing I wanted to do right now was to take a nap...and a good fuck...maybe a big orgy.

Yep...that would be great.

"But first," I said, searching for a sturdy tree that could support my weight. I found one, a towering giant with thick, leafless branches.

'This should do,' I thought, climbing the tree and settling myself on a big branch that was sturdy enough to support me.

"Let's scan the place one more time," Slowly shifting to my wolf form, my sharp eyes scanned the forest in a matter of seconds.

"Hmm? What's this?" I hummed, spotting movement in the distance. Focusing my gaze, I could clearly see a pack of spider rats dragging the corpses of their own kind using their webs, leading them somewhere.

'Hey, aren't those the ones I killed?' I wondered inwardly, recognizing two corpses, they were the ones that I sliced in half using that massive blood scythe.

'Why are they retrieving the corpses?' I wondered again, watching them for a few seconds before deciding to follow them.

There were eight spider rats dragging four corpses. From what I remember, I slayed ten spider rats, and with the one inside my inventory. The remaining five must have been taken by the owner of the large paw prints.

The spider rats were heading north, which I presumed was the direction of the dead tree. However, after a few minutes of tailing them, they suddenly stopped and began sniffing the air.

'Oh, shit! I'm too close!' I cursed, quickly turning off my wolf form and hiding behind a tree. 'Can they smell me?'

I held my breath, making sure not to make a sound that would attract their attention. Fortunately, they didn't detect me.

'That was close,' I exhaled, opening the map and marking them, this way I could always know their location no matter how far away they were. As for the smell...well.

"UGH!... I can't believe I have to do this," I grumbled, taking the remains of the spider rat from my inventory and coating my skin with it.

'How disgusting,' I thought, trying not to gag at the stench of blood and rotten flesh. 'Think of happy thoughts, Morgana...Happy thoughts.'

With the unpleasant odor masking my scent, I resumed tracking the spider rats, maintaining a safe distance this time.

It took us another hour to arrive at our destination. And let me tell you something, if I had to describe what I was seeing right now, it was something straight out of a horror movie.

"This is...fuck!" I cursed, staring at the sight of a huge dead tree that covered almost half of the forest.

The tree was massive, with rotten, sprawling branches that resembled a twisted, tangled web. The ground was covered in spider webs, and the place was filled with giant spider rats.

"Why do I feel that this will be a long day?" I muttered, looking at the spider rats, they were all over the place not to mention the countless cocoons hanging from the branches.

'This place gives me the creeps,' I thought, observing the eight spider rats that I had been trailing, dropping the four corpses near the base of the tree.

"What are they doing?" I questioned, watching them retreating from the base and just standing there waiting.

The answer to my question came in the form of a huge shadow. A huge figure came out from under the dead tree—A white spider rat with blue spots.

'Holy shit!' I exclaimed inwardly, staring at the monstrous creature.

The white spider rat was the size three times the normal ones, fat and more ugly with eight spiked legs. This white spider rat approached the four corpses and began devouring them with no mercy.

'Eating your own kind... How disgusting,' I thought, watching it feast.

After the white spider rat finished its meal, it stood there motionless for a few minutes, then out of nowhere, it let out a deafening screech that was loud enough to echo around the forest and probably far beyond it.

'Fuck!' I clamped both of my hands over my ears to block out the noise.

Rumble! Rumble!

"!!!" Suddenly, the ground rumbled, and the sounds of cracking bones could be heard. Looking at the direction of the sound, I saw hundreds of spider rats rushing towards the dead tree from all sides, heading towards the base of the tree.

'What's happening?' I wondered, watching the horde gather before the tree.

Then the white spider rat let out another screech, pointing in a direction to which the other spider rats instantly rushed.

'This might be my chance to sneak inside,' I thought, observing the creatures disappearing to the south, even the white one followed them from behind.

Cautiously, I approached the tree, keeping a low profile and ensuring I didn't attract any attention. I needed to be careful, as there might still be some guards left behind.

'Good, I'm in,' I thought, successfully entering the tree's base without issue. However, I found a complex network of tunnels leading deeper underground.

'Damn it! It will take a lot of time to explore the place,' I groaned, looking around the place. The tunnel was dark and it kept going down deeper under the ground. The air was stuffy and smelled like rotten flesh.

'Fuck this is so gross,' I complained, walking through the tunnel with one hand on the wall, keeping me from falling.

I kept walking, not sure how long, but I finally arrived at a place that looked like an underground cave. The place was huge, and the ceiling was covered in web.

"What the hell?" I cursed, seeing that the whole cave was covered in a spider web that had hundreds of cocoons hanging from it.

"..."

However, I wasn't shocked by that. What really shocked me was something entirely different.

"Well?....this is..." I was speechless, staring with wide eyes at a colossal black and purple spider impaled to the cave wall with a thick tree root.

The spider was four times the size of the white spider rat, it had eight spiked legs and two huge mandibles that were sharp enough to slice anything in half. Its body was big, fat, and hairless.

'What the fuck is this?' I thought, looking at its dead corpse.

The size of the spider could easily surpass fifty feet (15m)—if it was complete. The lower half of the spider—four legs and the abdomen—was lying on the ground with its guts spilled out. While the upper half was impaled to the wall by a thick tree root that grew out of the ceiling. There were also massive claw marks all over the cave wall.

"Hmm?" When I got near the spider, I noticed something strange. Normal rats were feasting on the spider's guts. Among them, I spotted two rats with spider legs.

"Ah...I see," at that moment I realized why the system identifies the spider rats as 'Mutant rats' instead of the way I call them or any other name. "They've mutated by consuming the flesh of this giant black spider."

Suddenly, two system notifications materialized before my eyes, two I had never seen before. One was red, and the other was gold.

[Warning: An Extinction-level event has appeared]

"!!!" I was stunned by the ominous words in the red notification, but before I could react, the gold notification overlapped it.

[Hello, Morgana. It's me, Lilith.]

Hello everyone! How are you all doing?

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