“Oh… Welcome to Wolfome! You don’t seem to be the usual kind of visitors…”

  “I greatly doubt you get the usual kind of visitor here anymore, Old Man… We caught wind of unusual activities in Louwoods for the past months, and by digging, we found that nearly all villages bordering the forest have posted several quests concerning evil spirits”

  “Well, yes, there is indeed a slight problem here… But to be frank, no one could do anything, so we pretty much stopped posting quests and just… Learned to live with it. The spirits aren’t aggressive or anything, they are just a bit scary and mischievous”

  “Is that so? Then why does that forest reek of death?”

  “Does it? As far as I know, only one adventurer perished, and three others went missing… I don’t think that’s a high number, is it?”

  “Four is indeed not enough, but clearly, many more people have died in here. And not in a peaceful manner, might I add. Do you truly have no idea what is going on, Old Man?”

  The group of unusual visitors was made up of several armoured figures. Having seen many adventurers throughout the years, the elder was well aware that these were not the armours of mere adventurers. These had been smithed at a high price. They were gear belonging to genuine knights.

  And the one speaking was dressed in clerical robes, having quite the solemn presence, somehow appearing like the most stalwart of the group despite lacking any armour or weapon.

  “I…”

  The cleric glanced down.

  “What happened to your arm?”

  He asked, intensely eyeing the elder’s right arm, which was currently resting in a sling and wrapped in bandages. The robed man, judging by the lack of finger motion, guessed that the injury was somewhat recent or had been brutal enough to require a very long resting period.

  “Oh…! This? Ah… Just an unfortunate accident, at my age, there are things I shouldn’t be doing… And this reminded me of that”

  “Is that so?”

  The man slightly bent forward, getting nearly eye-to-eye with the elder.

  “Old Man, you are a surprisingly good liar”

  “Huh? Why- Why would I lie?”

  “That’s what you are going to be telling me, let me see your arm. There is something that can not deceive, but the bandages are in the way”

  The elder felt a bead of sweat travel from the top of his forehead all the way down to his chin, but even if he would rather not, he relented.

  Somehow, the inaction of the knights made him more unnerved than if they had taken action. It made him wonder just who he was talking to. The young man, whom he presumed to be a cleric, didn’t look too important, and the elder couldn’t think of anyone well-known that had his looks…

  Removing the sling, he held up his broken arm, and before he could even blink, the bandages simply fell off as though slashed by a blade, revealing his bruised arm. There was no need to be a medical expert to know that this wasn’t the result of a mere fall or typical countryside accident.

  “When did you get injured? Do not lie, I will know”

  “This… It was six months ago…”

  “Six months?”

  One of the knights muttered under his breath. The injury looked as recent as it could get, so it was only natural to be surprised.

  But the robed man’s lack of reaction showed that it was indeed the truth.

  He leaned closer to the arm, seeing the clear extent of the damage. In truth, the bone itself had been broken rather cleanly, but the flesh had apparently been strongly held to the point of taking on a purplish shade, and deeper within lay the truth as to why this injury looked so fresh.

  “A curse. Primitive, unrefined… Nonetheless effective, its sole point seems to be to slow down the healing, and it is quite successful…”

  He muttered to himself before straightening his back and raising one hand, fingers curled up except for his index and middle fingers.

  “Huh?”

  The broken arm healed up at a visible rate, only requiring a dozen seconds before being back to what it should be.

  “I dispelled the curse and healed your arm. As you can see, I am not weak like the average adventurer. So tell me, what did this to you, and what caused Louwoods to become saturated with negative energy and an omen of death?”

  The elder looked around with a worried expression.

  “Come in, her daughters might notice us here…”

  The old man brought the robed man and his knightly entourage into his humble abode, closing the curtains at the cost of barely being able to see a thing.

  “Good Sir, if you are here, then you must have heard about the newborn legend of the woods, right?”

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  “The Mother Beast, is it? I figured that it was an inaccurate manner to represent the events taking place here, but judging by your comment just now, is it actually to be trusted?”

  “Yes… She… The Creature has the surrounding villages trapped. At first, it was but mere threats, but these were already vivid, our villages all rely only on Louwoods to function, if we move, we will be destitutes and lose everything… She knows this and used it against us”

  “She forced us to lead travellers and wanderers into the forest. I don’t truly know what happened to them, but it seems obvious that they were killed… The first adventurer to die was actually slain by a Behemoth Bear. He and his group stumbled upon it with its cub, so you can imagine that things instantly took a turn for the worse”

  “The other three, however…”

  The elder covered his mouth.

  “I lied to them, and they never came back. They had seemed experienced, so there is no doubt in my mind that she got to them”

  “But about a month after this happened, things got even worse”

  He looked around as though worried that someone might be listening in on him.

  “The Creature, she visited us, and inflicted this injury upon me, as a threat, I assume… She wanted us to allow our children and teenagers to go into the forest. But she didn’t harm them, not physically, at least. She scared them so that they would spread word of her existence, and from there, the legend grew”

  “People from outside came by, only a handful disappeared, the wanderers that no one would know were gone were still her main prey… The visitors served the same purpose as the youths of the villages. Spread word of her existence. That’s how she became known as ‘The Mother Beast’, people assumed that the spectres under her control were her daughters, and they began imagining a story to it all”

  The robed man nodded.

  “Several groups came to slay the creature, right? I talked to them, but struggled to get anything coherent. Wonderful people were left utterly terrified by this monster. From what I gathered, it is powerful… But thanks to you, I learned that it also dabbled in the art of curses, you have my thanks”

  He stood up, preparing to leave, but the elder continued speaking.

  “Are you going to challenge her? You definitely shouldn’t! She’s a monster, she knows the woods!”

  “Do not fret, Old Man. I am Maarkus. I work as a cleric, exorcist, and healer in Tolten. You may not know me, but you know the one who sent me, as everyone does… I am not your benefactor today. Your benefactor is Mister Nebulo”

  With these words, the cleric and knights made their exit, leaving the stunned elder behind.

  “Nebulo? Why would such a man be interested in such a matter?”

  Outside, the group, made up of Maarkus and ten senior guards of Mister Nebulo’s personal army, approached the forest with unwavering steps.

  “Let us proceed carefully, it would seem that the enemy possesses capabilities to curse. I didn’t go into details, but the primitive manner in which the old man was cursed shows that it isn’t a traditional curse slinger… Be on your guard, every strike might result in a curse”

  At first, nothing happened. The eleven men proceeded without encountering any obstacles. All that was off was the dreadful silence of the woods, but it was to be expected from a place so oversaturated with negative energy.

  Frankly, Maarkus was surprised that the local flora and fauna had not begun showing signs of transformation due to the high amounts of it. Such a sharp increase should lead to a steady replacement of the quantity of inner energies.

  The plants would absorb it first, then the herbivores, and then the carnivores… But everything seemed just fine.

  It might be a different story deeper in the forest. The concentration seemed to become greater over there.

  “We haven’t spotted a single one of those so-called ‘daughters’, according to our intel, they should have already begun showing themselves”

  One of the knights spoke, due to their similar stature and helm, actually telling the difference between them was arduous.

  “Can you sense anything, Markuus?”

  “These daughters must carry great amounts of negative energy within them. I am afraid that I won’t be able to sense them unless they let me”

  The group continued forward, soon reaching a small clearing featuring a rather cosy-looking cabin, though that impression was sullied by the rotting crow carcass nailed to the front door. The significance of that could vary, but considering that they were dealing with something that was seemingly familiar with curses, it certainly meant that the cabin was cursed, or in the process of being cursed.

  “No worries, I sense nothing wrong with it”

  The cleric motioned toward the door with his head, and one of the knights kicked it open, revealing a weirdly mundane interior. Everything was clean and tidy, but without doubt, Maarkus could tell that people had died and been butchered here.

  “There is a hatch here”

  An armoured man lifted a carpet with his foot, revealing a rather large trapdoor that was heavily and tightly locked.

  Upon forcing it open, a hole that seemed to go deep into the earth was revealed.

  The exorcist manifested a sphere of brilliant energy and sent it down into the depths.

  “This is at least several dozen meters deep…”

  “It doesn’t matter, we aren’t putting even a single toe into a tunnel that thing dug. Things don’t seem to go too well when someone does that. If it won’t come to us, we’ll have to find it ourselves. Let’s find a good spot to set up camp”

  They shut and locked the hatch before leaving, even placing the carpet back in its original position. It was surely meaningless, though. The Mother Beast certainly already knew of their intrusion.

  The trek through the woods continued until the sun began to show signs of setting. It would certainly be much safer to go back and rest at a village rather than directly within the forest, but this was the point: To invite the danger to them.

  And indeed, once dark came to replace light, the woods grew more ominous.

  The sound of something darting and running around appeared, choked cries rang out in the distance alongside faint giggles, but suffocated words and knocking also accompanied it all.

  Five distinct sounds, each carrying a hint of its own personality.

  Maarkus narrowed his gaze, infusing energy in his eyes in an attempt to see better without alerting the presences. Unfortunately, he could not match the wonders of dark vision and could only accomplish a sort of night vision, allowing him to better see using the faint traces of moonlight that were able to peer through the canopy of large trees.

  Apparently, he wasn’t as slick as he would have liked. In the distance, he nearly instantly made direct eye contact with a ghastly figure.

  Dressed like a proper young lady from a well-off household, with refined blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes.

  Although her disposition was corpse-like, the only real sign of damage she bore was a single mark right on the front of her throat, which looked like a stab inflicted with a knife.

  Just below, her dress was tainted with blackened blood.

  “Just as I thought… It is her”

  The spectre walked behind a tree and disappeared.

  “She is never gone…”