Chapter 71: Cht 71: Deeper Into Wilderness
By dawn, the forest was awake long before the sun.
Mist clung to the undergrowth in delicate tendrils. Birds cawed overhead in tones too guttural and strange for any normal woods. Here, deep within the Verdant Fang region, the forest was alive in ways most mortals feared to learn. This was not the outer ring they’d grown accustomed to this was the more deeper layer, where power stirred in roots more than Basic Tier. Yet Lucy and Alice, tow non-fighters came so far just to search for one person.
The group moved in tight formation.
Saira walked at the front, her senses tuned to every shift in air pressure and every whisper of moisture. Her robes flowed behind her like a stream, trailing faint glints of water energy. Just behind her floated Xingning, barely touching the forest floor. Her long braid swayed with the winds she summoned around her, a silent buffer that scattered pollen and spores before they reached the group.
Jean was the group’s shield, her massive wooden form trailing vines that brushed against bark and moss as they passed. The Lightning Wolf padded to the left flank normally alert, ears perked and fur sparking faintly. But now and then, it slowed slightly, its head tilting toward distant rustles in the underbrush, or paused to sniff the air a little longer than usual.
Lucy and Alice remained near the rear, following at a cautious but steady pace. They didn’t talk much now. This part of the forest demanded silence. Even Lucy, whose usual default was commentary and planning, kept her mouth shut. Her hands hovered near the emergency whistle she wore around her neck, and Alice had already marked their routes with wooden sigils on nearby trees.
They were no longer playing at hunting. They were here because they had to be.
"Three ahead," Xingning murmured, her voice barely above a breath.
"Four," Saira corrected, eyes narrowing.
Jean paused mid-step, her vines already twitching with tension.
Then they came blurring figures bursting from the canopy, coated in black-blue fur and streaked with jagged patterns that looked like lightning bolts scorched into their hides. Beastmarks. Elite predators.