Chapter 31: Deep in the Forest (3)

“If you all stay here long enough, you won’t be able to avoid it either.”

“““…”””

Booker, Jelena, and Felice all stared in shock—even Felice wore a stunned expression.

“No way, you’re kidding, right?”

Jelena clutched her head, slowly backing away, her face full of disbelief.

This was something no girl could possibly accept. Just look at the hideous faces of the rotted ones, their frail and wasted bodies—anyone would instinctively recoil.

“So you kept this from us? You hid something this important!? Are you serious?! Say something, damn it!”

“WTF! I knew something was off! My body’s been hurting and itching like hell! I kept telling myself it was just scrapes or bruises—You motherfucker, are you telling me my body is rotting just like yours!?”

“My skin… will rot? And I’ll look hideous?”

Jelena and Booker burst into furious shouts, while Felice looked utterly crushed. Together they began pressing in on the chieftain, whose face had turned grim. Booker looked like he was about to start throwing punches, until I stepped between them.

“Everyone, calm down—”

“Calm down, my ass! Get out of the way! I’m breaking this old fox’s legs today!”

“He’s not to blame.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re gonna say this is your fault again? Don’t—”

“Yes! It is my fault!”

“You—Haaaaaah!?”

“To be exact, it was a joint decision between me and the chieftain. We chose not to reveal it yet.”

I pushed them away from the chieftain. He was innocent. Even if he had his own hidden motives, sabotaging us would’ve served him no purpose. I licked my chapped lips and spoke quickly.

“At first, I just had a gut feeling. The people with rotting skin, the poison in the water, and in the fog—it didn’t sit right when you put them together. I went to the chieftain and asked. He confirmed it.”

“Wait, what? He just told you? That easily? Why?”

“I hesitated too!” the chieftain interjected. “You were all in low spirits after arriving here. I wasn’t sure if I should drop that kind of bad news on you right away. But Lord Zhou Yuhong asked me directly, and I judged him to be the calmest among you. So I told him.”

“And we agreed,” I continued, “that telling you right away would only cause panic. It wouldn’t help solve anything. It’d just make you reckless and impulsive. This is our starting point; we have to be cautious with every step. If we charge in unprepared out of desperation, we’ll only end up dead.”

“So you decided to keep it quiet and let us prepare slowly, even though the longer we stay here, the worse the poison gets!?” Jelena shouted.

“Pick one: dying in a rush, or your skin rotting off.”

“Ugh…”

“Whatever. I don’t care if you meant well or not! I won’t argue about that anymore! The point is, it’s already come to this, what the hell do we do now!?”

Agitated, Booker tore off his shirt. His upper body showed signs of faint, scattered rot—not yet severe, but visibly beginning to spread. The chieftain had said that while it took years for the body to rot completely into one of the rotted-face people, it only took a month from the initial poisoning for the rot to start spreading, and once it spread, even purging the toxin wouldn’t stop the rot from becoming irreversible.

We all fell silent.

For a long moment, the silence lingered until Felice finally spoke.

“Does this mean the only way is to defeat the Mist King?”

She stared at the rot on her fingertips and murmured.

“Sigh… in theory, yes,” the chieftain said with a weary breath. “The Mist King is the source and core of this generation’s fog zone. If it dies, the domain will dissipate. The poison comes from the other world. Defeating the Mist King would fundamentally purify all of it.”

***

Booker and Jelena, having finally accepted the truth, now sat slumped outside the altar on a stone bench. Their anger and sorrow had faded, leaving only dazed bewilderment.

“So we’re supposed to keep fighting? And now we’re on a time limit to beat the boss? Even though we don’t know what the boss looks like or how dangerous it is?”

“To be honest… fuck, I think I’m traumatized.”

“Seriously, this is bullshit. ‘If you don’t kill the boss quickly, you’ll rot just like us’? That’s cheating.”

“I don’t like it either,” the chieftain said bitterly. “But this was inevitable from the moment you were brought here.”

“Damn it.”

The mood was heavy beyond words.

When we set out that morning, everyone had been full of spirit.

Now, that fighting spirit had been extinguished.

We had seen firsthand the terror of Jack and Aldrich and had to throw everything we had into defeating them. The day’s experience made one thing starkly clear—the gap between elite fog fiends and the common ones was immense.

And if the elites were already that hard to deal with, what about the Mist King?

All we knew about the Mist King was that it released deadly poison. Just that was terrifying enough. If it exuded poison constantly, then just getting close would be impossible, let alone defeating it.

If there was any other clue, it was its “name.”

In the information on the lizardfolk, the poison-spewing lizardmen, the human centipedes, Jack, and Aldrich—one name kept appearing again and again.

“Ian.”

This Ian must be the creator of this generation’s fog fiends. And considering the sign at the Academy’s gate read ‘Royal Alessia Academy of Alchemy,’ it was likely that he was the kind of alchemist you’d read about in fantasy novels. If that’s the case, then him creating poisons and monsters makes sense.

“Hey, old man,” Booker grumbled.

“I’m listening.”

“That ‘rot spreading’ you mentioned, how long do we have?”

“About three days. After that, the ulcers will begin to spread across your whole body.”

“And then what? Just disfigurement?”

“The spreading rot means the toxin has fully infiltrated your system. You’ll begin to lose strength. Your body will grow weaker and weaker just like ours.”

“So in other words our fighting ability will plummet? And at that point, fighting will be impossible?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck…”

In the end, we left the forest depths and returned to our quarters, each of us lost in thought as we drifted into a restless sleep.

Killing two elite monsters back-to-back hadn’t left us with any sense of accomplishment—only the looming shadow of an even greater problem.

Three days.

Within three days, we had to return to the ruined town, infiltrate the Academy’s main building, find the boss Ian and kill him.

We were already at the edge of the cliff.

The poison was advancing far faster than we’d ever expected.

It was do or die.

We’d thought things couldn’t possibly get worse.

But reality, as always, had no bottom.

***

In the heart of the ruined town, inside the Academy’s main building—

The once grand and classical corridors now lay in ruin. The ornate murals on the walls had long since crumbled away. A chandelier on the ceiling creaked as it swayed, and cold, damp wind seeped through shattered windows. There were no stars or moonlight in the fog realm’s night, only a murky gloom.

“Ge-ge-ge-ge-ge…”

A strange sound echoed from the dark end of the corridor. It sounded at first like a deep-throated person laughing weirdly, but in truth, it was the twisted breathing of a creature.

Thud.

Seven limbs—neither quite human nor beast—stomped across rubble-littered ground. The heavy steps echoed down the hallway. The creature’s size was four or five times that of a normal human, and its form was blurred in the foggy gloom. Yet its overwhelming presence screamed its existence with every step.

Ordinarily, it spent most of its day in a corner of a dark laboratory, unmoving, haunted by fragments of its human past.

But now, sensing something, it had emerged, drifting aimlessly through the main building.

“Ge-ge-ge… ge-ge-ge-ge-ge…”

It walked the length of the corridor, stepped through the front gate, and stretched its body in the chill, damp air. Following the stench of rotting blood, it began to move. Gray-black bandages covered its body, marked with glowing runes and reeking of a foul odor. Wisps of purplish-black smoke curled out from between the bandages.

Something stirred in the desolate square.

Somewhere at the edge of the town, something had changed.

The connection with one of its creations had been severed.

An intruder had arrived.

An intruder had arrived.

An intruder had arrived.

A thief. A lowlife. A petty fool coveting his genius. A rat worming through cracks.

Rats had to be purged. Must be purged. His treasures, his life’s work, his creations of wisdom—none of them must fall into the hands of rats.

They must be purged.

“Ge-ge-ge… sssss… Roooaaarrr!”

Its head reared back as it unleashed a thick, phlegm-laden roar. It was a guttural, warped cry that carried far and wide, infused with unnatural frequencies no human throat could ever produce. The entire ruined town heard it.

In that instant, every fog fiend in the town—every one of its creations, whether wandering aimlessly or lying dormant—froze in place and roared back in unison.

The monsters’ howls resonated, echoing endlessly beneath the gray, fog-choked sky.