Novel Full Chapter 1783: The Whispering Tree [Part 1]
Chapter 1783: The Whispering Tree [Part 1]
Villain Ch 1783. The Whispering Tree [Part 1]
The wind here wasn’t biting like the glitched-out snowfields. It was alive—warm where it needed to be, cool when it touched skin too long in the sun. The scent was earthen, wild, full of decaying pine, cracked soil, and something older. Almost like charred parchment or burnt offerings.
Blackpike Fields opened before them like a war-torn canvas—rolling hills of shadow-grass, skeletal trees reaching to the blood-orange sky, and ruins twisted into long-forgotten altars.
Allen didn’t say it aloud. But this? This was already better.
Maybe it was the open field—the freedom to move, to see the horizon, to breathe.
Maybe it was the fact that the monsters here felt real.
Not code-glitched neon monsters.
Not weird AI clones or bugged event mobs. Just high-level beasts with armor, patterns, and satisfying death animations.
Or maybe… maybe it was because here, in this secluded, side-quest locked region…
They could just be players again.
Or villains.
Themselves.
The difference was subtle, but Allen could feel it like a shift in the air pressure.
He swung his blade once—clean and precise—and severed the plated neck of a prowling “Warden Hound,” a beast that looked like a skeletal wolf wrapped in rusted barding and fire-veined sinew. It let out a warped snarl before its body crumbled to scorched bone and scattered embers.
[You gained EXP]
[You received Black-Iron Houndplate 1 ea and 200 coins]
He didn’t grin.
But his stance relaxed. His breath steadied.
There was a calm in his shoulders again.
And that said more than any smirk could.
“Damn,” Jane muttered from nearby, carving through a cluster of twin-bladed wraiths. “Why is this place so good?”
Shea kicked the last of her targets off a crumbling ledge. “Feels like someone actually designed this part of the game with care.”
“Because it’s locked behind a side quest. One scroll per team,” Allen said, flicking blood off his weapon. “No PvP traffic. No war guilds. No players.”
Vivian rolled her eyes. “So basically, we’ve been suffering because the main maps are a crowded mall and this is the VIP lounge.”
Zoe nodded. “Even the loot’s better. And the monsters aren’t… I don’t know—half-rendered messes with broken aggro.”
Alice added, “Also, nobody here screams and backflips into lava. So that’s a bonus after what we had with the hackers.”
Allen exhaled through his nose.
He didn’t want to admit it, but…
Yeah. He was enjoying this.
There wasn’t the usual tension clamped behind his jaw. No rising heat from stress, no low buzz of rage ticking in his nerves like a timer waiting to go off.
And it was visible, apparently.
“You good, Allen?” Shea called from a rock outcrop, squinting at him. “You’ve been quiet. Not brooding. Just… quiet.”
He blinked. “Hm? Yeah. I’m always good.” It was kinda a lie and he knew that, but he didn’t want the girls to worry about him.
Vivian scoffed, flipping her hair with a toss of her hand. “No you don’t. You looked like you were going to have an emotional aneurysm in the snowfields.”
Allen didn’t respond immediately.
Because yeah… she wasn’t wrong.
He’d been sulking. Hard.
In a duck costume.
Which was real. And humiliating since it wasn’t typical of him, but he still did. And the worst part?
He hadn’t even hated it because of the look.
It was the chaos. The noise. The sense that he had no control, that the rules didn’t matter anymore, that he was being yanked into other people’s madness.
Overstimulated. Overexposed.
He didn’t like being a punchline.
Especially not when he felt like burning.
Allen looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers once, then let the tip of the blade rest against the soil.
“You’re right,” he said finally.
His voice was lower now. More grounded.
Shea blinked. She hadn’t expected him to admit it.
Neither did the others.
“I felt… overstimulated. Not in the fun way,” he muttered, voice dry. “It was like the game forgot what it was supposed to be. Everything felt… stupid. Disconnected. Like I couldn’t land my feet anywhere.”
Vivian nodded slowly. “You looked like you were going to snap. And not in the sexy way.”
Zoe added, “You were twitching like a cornered cat, Emperor.”
“And the duck suit really didn’t help,” Jane said solemnly. “Feathers do things to a man’s soul. I mean I enjoyed it though. I thought… you also like it.”
Allen gave a tired huff of amusement. “That wasn’t chaos I could enjoy. It was just noise.”
Now though?
This map?
This side quest?
This storyline?
It didn’t feel like punishment.
Despite the rewards was a bit… weird.
He could understand that Relic-tier drop.
But that ’Companion Affection Increase’? Totally didn’t make any sense.
Still… He needed something real.
Not real-world real. Not grief and madness and vengence and jealousy drama.
But game real.
Lore. Tension. Meaning. Progression.
He needed something he could fight and win without it turning into a glitchy joke or a cursed soap opera.
And his girls—his team—weren’t teasing him.
They just got it.
They were all breathing easier here.
It made Allen feel like himself again.
And then—
“You just wore a different mask.”
A voice. Whispered. Barely above the wind, but distinct. Weathered. Worn down, not by age—but by remorse.
The tone was too old. Too tired.
Allen exhaled slowly. “Not really,” he answered aloud, unsure why his voice was already heavy. “Maybe this is my bad side. The one I can’t handle when everything’s out of control.”
The others turned toward him, alert.
“I just don’t know how to contain it,” Allen continued, his voice quieter now. “When the chaos starts to suffocate… when nothing makes sense… I lock it up. I bury it until I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
It wasn’t a speech. It wasn’t even an explanation.
It was a confession.
And it came from his heart before he could stop it.
Bella tilted her head from the side, looking at him with wide curious eyes. “Allen… who are you talking to?”
Allen looked around, blinking like someone coming out of a trance. “To—”
He stopped.
Because the voice didn’t belong to any of them.