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"Feeling that something was off, we quickly evacuated all the villagers from Kola Village after discovering this."

"These trees kept growing nonstop, and by the next day, they had turned into the forest you see now."

"We considered going in to check it out and started to clear the trees around the forest, but no matter how many we cut down, they would return to their original state by the next day. We tried several times to no avail."

"We didn’t dare to just enter the forest directly, so we could only guard the surroundings, preventing irrelevant people from going in, while waiting for support from the Kingdom."

Child recounted the events of the past few days in detail.

Arsen frowned and asked,

"The reports mentioned the appearance of Undead Creatures; do you know anything about that?"

Child shivered and said nervously,

"The night we moved the villagers out, after everyone had left the forest, we counted heads and found that four people were missing. It was too dark, and we didn’t dare go back to look for them."

"We organized the villagers to rest outside the forest, planning to head to Lord Viscount’s castle the next morning. But in the middle of the night, I heard something stirring in the forest. When I went to look, I saw several skeletons crawling around!"

"One of them even turned its head to look at me!"

"My companions and I got such a fright, we quickly told everyone to rest farther away and dared not get close to the forest anymore."

"But we didn’t see those things leave the forest. In the following days, I checked both during the day and at night, but didn’t spot them again. I also sent the information to the Lord."

"I saw it too. I was on watch with Captain Child that night. Those skeletons obviously were human bones, and there were even wisps of ghostly fire around them!"

Now, a soldier next to Child also responded, confirming it wasn’t just Child’s hallucination.

"Skeletons?"

Arsen looked at Lis, his eyes inquisitive.

Lis understood and nodded, saying,

"If it’s true, then they might be newly transformed skeleton soldiers, posing no real threat."

Skeleton soldiers, entirely made of bones, are the most common and low-level Undead Creatures.

But the appearance of skeleton soldiers also proved that there was indeed something wrong with this forest.

So, no threatening Undead Creatures have been discovered yet?

Arsen pondered to himself, considering from which angle to start investigating this mysterious forest.

Ailina suddenly asked Child,

"You mentioned that you had cleared this area of the forest before. Is there any difference between these trees and those in other places?"

Child was startled, then after a moment of recollection, he said uncertainly,

"We didn’t really pay attention to that at the time, but they should be no different from trees in other areas. We burned the chopped down wood for firewood."

Ailina nodded and then fell silent.

By now, Arsen had also made up his mind. Since they were already here, not exploring the forest would likely result in no valuable intelligence being gathered.

He said to Child,

"We’re going into the forest to see what’s going on. Please take good care of the carriage for us."

"Of course, of course."

Child agreed quickly. He was somewhat reluctant to enter the forest himself, but watching over the carriage on the outside was no problem at all.

Arsen turned around, gathered Lis, Ya’er, and the others to one side, and began to assume the responsibilities of a team nanny:

"We still need to go into the forest and take a look, we should at least make our way to Kola Village and scout the area."

"On this expedition into the forest, Lunbos and I will take turns leading the way, while Ailina is responsible for observing our surroundings; Lis and Ya’er will be in the middle of the team, ready to provide support."

Everyone nodded, Arsen’s arrangements always inspired confidence.

Lis and the others then checked their personal belongings and equipments once more and prepared to enter the eerie forest.

Arsen led the way, this time clad in a suit of gleaming white steel armor, emitting a faint holy light, probably blessed by the Dawn Church.

With a flash of his longsword, the vines entwined between the trees were severed, gradually clearing a path leading deeper into the forest.

Lis and the rest maintained their formation, pushing further into the depths of the dense woods, where the canopy grew so thick that not a single patch of blue sky could be seen overhead.

After advancing for an hour at a steady pace into the depths of the forest, Lis and his teammates had covered less than two kilometers.

Arsen gestured for a temporary halt at their current location, sheathed his longsword, and asked,

"Has anyone noticed anything?"

"It’s too quiet."

Lis said while setting up "Magic Warning" around them.

"Right," Ailina nodded in agreement and added,

"There is no sound of insects or birds chirping at all, I’ve been observing carefully the whole way."

"There’s definitely something wrong."

Arsen nodded in agreement, as he too had noticed this issue.

"Moreover, although the life force in this region is overflowing, but..."

Ailina gently plucked a young sprout from a nearby tree and said,

"There’s a sense of deadness."

The elf, who was always close to nature, said with some uncertainty.

Logically, deadness and life force are two completely unrelated terms, but when used to describe the forest before them, it seemed very appropriate to Lis.

And Lis always felt that something was familiar, but was sure that he had never been here before.

Was this area in the game in his previous life?

That shouldn’t be possible, as a gaming zealot, he couldn’t possibly have forgotten, right?

As Lis racked his brains trying to figure out what he had missed, the others made a new discovery.

This time, it was Ya’er who noticed the problem. Although she tended to be lively, she was very serious when carrying out commissioned tasks, and it was during these times that Lis could see a glimpse of her future potential.

Ya’er used her sword to peel back the undergrowth at her feet, revealing the soil beneath.

Normally, in a forest, due to the continuous canopy of tall trees blocking the sunlight, there would rarely be such dense undergrowth.

However, this place was different, which made Ya’er vaguely sense something was off, so she cleared a space.

Below the lush forest sea, the land should be fertile and moist.

But the soil below Lis and the others was different, dry and barren; what should have been dark brown soil was now turning yellow, losing its vitality.

Ya’er continued to dig down with her sword for a meter and found that the deeper she went, the more barren the soil became.

"It seems that the reason why the life force of this forest is so abundant is that it has extracted all the vitality from this land."

Ailina crouched down, grabbed a handful of the somewhat sandy soil, and said.

Lis also touched the soil and seemed to realize something, furrowing his brows.

Something’s not right!