Chapter 300: The Curse of the Dead Forest

Iron was making his way through the Main Building's hall toward his office. After the chaos of assigning duties in the village, his thoughts had finally started to settle, but one thing was still eating at him.

Unable to hold back his frustration any longer, he snapped inwardly:

"Lumon... what's with this green eye of mine?"

Lumon answered immediately, its tone cold and detached:

"The change in pigmentation of your right eye is a result of the magical poisoning you suffered and the critical strain placed on your system."

By then, Iron had reached his office. He pushed the doors open, stepped inside, and closed them behind him. The feeling that something foreign was lurking inside his own body wouldn't go away.

As he replayed the past in his mind, he narrowed his eyes slightly and muttered:

"The inner ring of the Citadel..."

Lumon responded with a low hum, signaling its agreement. Iron walked around the massive desk, pulled out his chair with a smooth motion, and sat down, still thinking over Lumon's words.

His gaze grew distant as he continued to ponder the matter, until he finally asked the question that had been bothering him ever since Abel's mirror:

"If that's true... then why wasn't it visible before? Why the hell did it only show up now...? Though... thinking back to those first few days... it was already there..."

Lumon answered at once:

"Confirmed. In the early days, that energy acted as a potent biological and psychological toxin, corrupting your body and mind. It took me nearly a year of continuous effort to neutralize it and prevent a fatal outcome, all while sustaining and protecting your internal organs. As a result of that purification process, the pigmentation temporarily stabilized, and your eye returned to its normal color."

Iron leaned forward slightly over the desk as Lumon continued its analysis:

"At this point, I'm no longer able to suppress the anomaly. Over the past few months, you've barely used the 'Lumon' skill at full power. The system has cooled down and can no longer artificially maintain your eye's original color."

Lumon paused briefly before delivering its final assessment:

"However, I've managed to completely remove the poison from the eyeball itself, making it entirely safe for you. At this point, the eye is 99.9% safe."

Iron furrowed his brows slightly as he processed the information, then asked inwardly:

"Is there any way I can get my normal eye back?"

Lumon's response was firm and unequivocal:

"Restoring your original eye is entirely out of the question. If you attempt to correct this using your technology, you could trigger the development of a tumor that would be extremely difficult to treat. Even if you went through with having the eye removed, the anomaly has already spread throughout your entire body. So even if you had the eye removed and regenerated a new one, it would inevitably turn the same emerald green."

Iron let out a heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair. He sat in silence for a few seconds before slowly closing his left eye to test the vision in his right. Everything was perfectly clear. He then closed his right eye and checked his vision with the left.

"My vision is perfectly fine with both eyes..." he noted to himself, realizing that the mutation hadn't affected his eyesight at all.

Recalling what had happened in the early days, he asked inwardly:

"If I remember correctly... didn't my right eye have some kind of special ability from the very beginning?"

Lumon confirmed without hesitation:

"That's correct. In the early days, your eye did possess the ability to scan and analyze the structure of objects. However, that function is no longer available. If it had remained active all this time, you wouldn't have survived until today due to the immense strain it would have placed on your energy reserves."

A long, heavy silence followed. Iron sat motionless, staring at a spot on the surface of his desk. Finally, he let out a breath and asked one last question:

"Are you absolutely sure... it's safe?"

"Yes," Lumon replied calmly and confidently. "There is no longer any threat to your life."

"Alright... I'll take your word for it," Iron muttered, turning his attention back to the task at hand. He pulled the blueprints and blank sheets of paper closer, ready to focus on establishing a proper currency and financial system for his village.

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Nellis, King Andres sat in his study, illuminated by the dim golden light of tall candles. Sleepless nights had left his face haggard, with dark circles beneath his eyes. A mountain of unsorted official documents lay piled on the desk before him. With sharp, practiced motions, he pulled each document toward him, skimmed its formal wording, signed it with a flourish, set it aside, and reached for the next.

They were garrison reports, financial records of grain purchases, petitions from lords requesting assistance with border roads, and lists of missing scouts.

The king suddenly stopped, holding his quill above the parchment. He let out a long, strained breath.

"And why have I become like this...? Just one lie... and my mind is already clouded..."

Irritably, he tossed the quill aside and leaned back in his chair. A terrible dilemma had been eating away at him, giving him no peace, day or night. On one hand, he desperately wanted to abandon everything and finally put an end to the fruitless search for Iron, admitting that all the time and resources spent on it had gone to waste. On the other hand, he could continue the search. But at this point, that would mean leaving the kingdom's borders exposed, with the capital and key defensive positions left without their loyal knights and reliable protection.

He remained motionless, lost in his grim thoughts, until a deafening crash shattered the silence.

The massive oak doors to his study burst open with such force that it seemed as though they had been struck by a battering ram. A knight from his personal guard appeared in the doorway, gasping for breath and covered in road dust. His armor was dented, and fresh streaks of blood stained his cloak. Without waiting to be announced, he blurted out in a voice trembling with terror:

"Your Majesty!... Our kingdom... we're under attack! A massive horde of monsters has broken through from the eastern road!"

The king's head snapped up, and in an instant, he'd forgotten all about the mountain of paperwork and his own exhaustion.

"What? What?! Monsters?!" Andres blurted out.

The knight was still catching his breath as he hurriedly delivered his report.

"That's right! According to our preliminary estimates, there are already hundreds of them, and their numbers are still growing. The remaining guards are trying to hold the line at the outer walls, but there are too few of them. They won't be able to hold out much longer!"

Without a second thought, the king slammed his fist against the desk and barked out his orders:

"Send every available soldier there immediately! Mobilize the reserve knight units, equip the troops with heavy gear, and send them to the front lines!"

"Understood!" The knight rushed out of the study, hurrying to relay the orders.

The king had barely begun to rise from his desk when a deafening explosion shook the ground outside the palace windows. The thick stone walls trembled, and a moment later, a section of the wall collapsed inward in a cloud of dense dust.

Through the breach, a massive, terrifying silhouette slowly emerged from the haze. Standing over two meters tall, the monster had rough, purplish skin, bloodshot eyes wild with madness, and the tattered remnants of clothes hanging from its body. Its enormous, clawed hands gripped a heavy warhammer with ease, each step leaving deep cracks in the stone beneath its feet.

A whole wave of other monsters poured through the breach behind it. But there was something strange about their behavior, something deeply unsettling. Despite their ferocious appearance and destructive power, the giant with the hammer and the creatures following close behind it looked... absolutely terrified.

Their eyes darted wildly, their movements were erratic, and their growls sounded more like panicked screams.

While the capital of the Kingdom of Nellis was reeling from the sudden invasion...

The Dead Forest had been spreading at a frightening rate over the past few months, growing several times larger than before.

Tall, bare tree trunks stood stripped of their bark. They looked like charred, dried-out husks, their dead fingers reaching toward the gray sky. Their twisted branches were so tightly intertwined that they formed a solid, impenetrable canopy over the narrow paths, resembling the roof of a gigantic crypt.

The dry branches kept twitching ever so slightly, scraping against one another with an unpleasant, brittle sound, even though there wasn't the slightest breeze. The ground beneath them was dry, lifeless, and fragile, crumbling into dust at the slightest touch. A thick gray haze hung in the air, composed of remnants of shattered energy and fragments of consciousness left behind by those who had once died here. The haze seemed to have a life of its own, shifting and swirling in translucent ribbons that resembled ghostly silhouettes.

Just then, a lone mage who had wandered too close to the thicket suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream. He froze in place, clutching his head in terror as his eyes twitched violently in every direction, rapidly filling with black liquid. Thick, black sludge began pouring from his open mouth as well, even as his scream died away into silence. Cursed spirits crawled into his living body, greedily draining every last trace of mana and life force while mercilessly corrupting every cell within him.

Wracked by unbearable agony, the exhausted man collapsed face-first onto the dry ground. Within seconds, he was dead.

Meanwhile, at the very heart of the Dead Forest, countless enormous, withered trees had grown tightly intertwined, forming a single monstrous mass without a single green leaf. Its surface was riddled with a network of small, winding holes.

Peering deep into one of those dark openings, one could make out a small, dark green silhouette nestled inside the hollow. Its limbs were long and dangled downward, and its body seemed to be constantly stretching, as though it were slowly being pulled out of shape.

Distinctive dark, circular lines covered the creature's abdomen, spiraling inward toward its navel before tracing sharply downward. They were considerably darker than the creature's skin.

Dozens of miles away, at the edge of the forest, a little girl stood in a sunlit clearing beside the lush green trees. She stared wide-eyed at the towering monster before her, sobbing uncontrollably, her cries filled with pure terror.

The monster was already raising its massive, clawed hand to deliver the killing blow.

Yan, dressed in a loose dark cloak with red trim around the collar and wide-legged pants, rushed forward. A delicate hairpin holding back his dark hair, streaked with several bright yellow strands, caught the sunlight for a brief moment. His dark yellow eyes narrowed as he fixed his gaze on the target.

His sword flashed in a short, precise arc. The blade sliced clean through the monster's raised arm before it could reach the girl. The severed limb flew off to the side, and without wasting a second, Yan followed up with two more strikes, cutting through the creature's torso and head. Its massive body crashed heavily onto the green grass.

The girl remained huddled on the ground, breathing in ragged gasps, unable to stop the tears streaming down her face.

Yan knew that words would be useless right now. He approached so quietly and smoothly that the frightened child didn't even notice him. Crouching beside her, he gently stroked her hair without a word. He carefully covered her eyes with one hand, turning her face away from the monster's bloodied body, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

At first, the girl only grew more frightened. But the warmth and reassurance radiating from him gradually eased the tension in her body. At last, she buried her face against him and broke down in uncontrollable sobs, crying bitterly into his shoulder. Her small hands clutched his dark cloak, gripping it tightly as she held on to him.

Yan remained still, letting her cry out all her fear. He simply continued to stroke her head, slowly and gently, trying to soothe her.