Chapter 333: The Forest’s Challenge

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

“Only fifty Justice Points? Sigh, what a pity.”

Because a certain mercenary group had volunteered their assistance, I ended up earning only 50 Justice Points in this “finding a spy” incident since I had provided the fingerprints.

And it wasn’t only that. Those two “culprits” were adamant that they were guilty. They profusely confessed; Fain insisted that he had been allured by the prospect of having his gambling debts paid off, while Dean claimed that he had been mysteriously enslaved by a lich. Their repeated confessions made it so that no evidence needed to be brought out against them—they had claimed all responsibility.

I had not hesitated to use a forbidden spell to retrieve their memories. Granted, this forbidden spell had the side effect of wiping their brains blank for a few weeks, but even after using it I obtained nothing useful. That weak Bronze-ranked undead mage named Dean had indeed been under the control of an undead magic forbidden spell. He had indeed become enslaved by some existence, although there was no confirmation that it was a lich who had cast the spell.

And no matter what he said, the fingerprints also proved that Dean was the one who had written that letter. Still, I felt something off with the situation. The low-ranked Dean was unable to explain how he had obtained this high-level information. His only excuse was that he had heard it from the rumors.

“Rumors? Indeed, there are so many rumors out there. There’s even a rumor that the God of Nature is about to personally descend—do you believe that as well?”

But now, there were no more clues to go on. After all, no serious consequences had come about of this information leak as I had intercepted the letter. In the end, I could only punish these two by removing their statuses as Contract Heroes. The rest I could do was be even more vigilant than before.

I was still feeling quite suspicious about all of this. Sometimes, the memories extracted from the living might not even be real. This was all the more so because my opponents were the undead, who possessed undead magic spells that had the ability to modify a living person’s memories and knowledge.

“Increase our threat level in the campgrounds. Have magical plants spy on all essential locations, and also place surveillance on the following individuals…”

And so, even if I didn’t say anything about it on the surface, I secretly made many preparations and was highly on guard.

Two days wasn’t a particularly long or short period of time. But on the battlefield, where every second was precious, it was very valuable.

Maybe the spies really were those two low-ranked brats? Or maybe the true culprit temporarily stopped their activities in order to avoid suspicion? During the next two days, there were no signs of information being leaked to the undead. Nor did anyone else seem to attempt to deliver letters to the undead… I had now converted every single undead in this entire nearby area into my subordinate. Unless the spy had some even more secure method, I would definitely intercept any and all messages. But if the spy had a more secure method in the first place, they wouldn’t have had to rely on sending a letter the first time.

The fact that no Undead Lord seemed to send a massive army over was a tentative testament to the fact that the undead hadn’t noticed anything amiss in the past two days. This was doubtlessly good news for us.

Around midnight, at the end of the second day, a magical spell array flashed brilliantly in the night sky. This was an emergency summoning message for all the adventurers to gather. By this point, there was no more meaning in hiding our intentions. Since we would be eventually discovered anyways, it was far more meaningful to gather all our combat strength and face the upcoming battle head-on.

But when the adventurers, who had been out hunting all this time, returned to the campground, they felt that they had gotten lost and had taken a wrong turn somewhere. What greeted their eyes was a campground utterly unlike before.

In fairy tales, spirits were capable of constructing a small house within a single night, while in this world, it was the elves who had the ability to utilize the forest to erect a solid defense. But the wood spirits far outclassed the elves in this area. With Amelia’s power presiding over them, they were able to rewrite the rules of reality—as long as they were within Amelia’s domain, of course.

The old tree in the center of the campground had shed its disguise. Its withered tree bark had been discarded to the winds, replaced by a gigantic root that reached out from the ground.

This ugly and colossal root was an extension of the largest and strongest tree in the entire Forest of Dreams, and it had secretly spread underneath the entire campground. Now, countless specks of green light emerged from this expansive foundation, becoming more spirited than ever as they fed the plants here with plentiful nourishment.

In the past two days, the wood spirits had crafted small wooden shovels from the root and used them to dig a hole—the hole had a radius of ten meters and a depth of one meter. They then buried two stones in this hole, an essential step in their ritual to worship the earth.

What followed was the wood spirits planting the seeds from the Forest of Dreams in this area, before praying for ten seconds, sincerely thanking their Mother for her gifts. Rainwater stored in various containers was poured on the seeds, a way of thanking the blessings of nature and paying respect to its authority. And that was the conclusion of their ritual. The abundant nourishment of nature turned these tiny seeds into giant treants and dangerous magical plants in just three minutes.

“You make it all seem so complicated. Weren’t you just digging a hole, planting some seeds, and watering the seeds? …Why is it three minutes? I just recalled instant ramen. Are these supposed to be instant seeds?”

Samantha pretended not to hear my comments, but a mysterious red blush appeared on her cheeks. Rosa, however, was more than happy to tell me.

“Yes, you’re right. Actually, we don’t even need a ritual—all we need to do is plant the seeds and water them. Mother herself hates complicated rituals and she’ll never be stingy with us. However, Sister Samantha said that that was no good because it would cause others to look down on us, so she wanted to make a more complex ritual that appeared meaningful.”

Alright then, I supposed that making it harder on themselves was how many new religions would get started. In the end, they would add more and more formal procedures to attempt at seeming proper, making even their own believers annoyed in the end.

“Little Samantha, as time goes on, this ritual will change in ways you can’t imagine as it passes through the generations. In the end, even you won’t recognize it, and if you attempt to remove part of the ritual to simplify it, your believers won’t have it. It may even cause a religious war. You’re just causing trouble for yourself… digging a pitfall for yourself to jump into!”

Samantha nodded with a pained expression. She’d already noticed the problems as well. The issue was that she had already publicized the steps of this ritual, and changing it now wouldn’t be that easy.

Cough, I should stop talking about the future, where even Amelia was frustrated by her own religion’s ceremonies. At any rate, the newly-born campground was currently undergoing a complete evolution.

The power of the Forest of Dreams was significantly reduced after being transmitted over such a long distance through a single tree’s roots. Approximately only ten or twenty percent of its power managed to make it here. Still, the Forest of Dreams had almost limitless power to begin with, and it wouldn’t make the Forest of Dreams lose anything, so we could definitely afford it. The riskiest part was actually that the underground root might have been decimated by the power, but that part had already passed us by. The root was now thick and powerful enough that even destroying it would be difficult.

That’s why, with the assistance of the endless power of nature, all sorts of war trees and magical plants grew at a furious pace. That originally makeshift wooden fence expanded more than ten times in size into a solid castle wall that was several tens of meters tall. New roots spread out from the original root and were absorbing nutrition from the earth. Compared to a solid castle wall, a wall like this, one which would be capable of repairing itself, would probably cause a person to despair even more.

The towering war trees might be grandiose and imposing, but their eyes were blank. Their overly short growth period and lack of sufficient care from Amelia caused them to be born prematurely with shorter lifespans. Yet, in exchange for intelligence and potential, these trees were born at the peak of their combat strength and retained their combat instincts. Under the command of the wood spirits, the war trees would be fearless and unyielding.

If those war trees were said to be the best guards, then the magical plants were all intricately designed war machines. Enormous peashooters—approximately three or four meters tall—were positioned on the walls at regular intervals. Their mouths alone were half a meter in radius, and if you stepped near one you would be able to perceive the faint sounds of prayer…

“Praise the Holy Light!” “The radiance of the Holy Light shall cleanse all evil!””In the name of the Holy Light, virtuous fire shall extinguish all evil!”

Yep, these Holy Light peashooters were all praying to the Holy Light. Their roots and ammunition were already filled with the Holy Light. My experiments had long since proved that even demons were capable of using the power of Holy Light, so plants could obviously use Holy Light as well. The only side effect was that any Holy Knight or Holy Light priests who witness this worldview-toppling sight would probably go into shock.

It was a great pity that nobody was arguing about religion any longer, likely due to that Northlands incident with the Holy Church. Otherwise, I could have tried using these research results of mine to slap the Holy Church in the face a couple more times. It might even be possible to cause more to lose faith in the Holy Light and harm the Holy Church’s reputation even further.

The Holy Light peashooters were only one out of many members in the seemingly endless magical plant army. In fact, this was a fourth-generation peashooter that had long since evolved, with abilities such as “Holy Light storage” and “Overload.” All of the magical plants had already evolved by significant amounts as we had prepared many nice “surprises” for the undead.

With the preparations now complete, Samantha, who was in the core section of the main tree root, lightly caressed a seed from the Forest of Dreams and muttered the final words.

“Awaken, my younger sister.”

That’s right—younger sister. As we were preparing over the past two days, Jill, also known as Humility of the Three Virtues, had fused herself with that seed. Upon awakening the seed would merge with Jill’s entire consciousness, causing a new forest to be born here, sprouting into life and transforming into a ubiquitous hive mind.

When Jill’s clean and pretty wood spirit face opened its eyes, the faint green divine light within them illuminated this entire area.

Everything around us began to change. Roots spread and rapidly transformed into skyscraping trees. The green divine light shone on, however, presenting a mysterious sense of nourishment and intimacy to all plant life here.

Now that the air was filled with this faint green light, the power of nature helped the planted seeds to sprout. The natural laws of the world were rewritten, and a new section of the Forest of Dreams began to grow.

Jill had already possessed the ability to transform herself into a garden. Now, she became the overall commander of this new forest, the master of this land.

“All adventurers and Contract Heroes, our goal is to expand the Forest of Dreams’ territory. Soon, the undead will be coming to stop us. As long as we defend this place for a sufficient amount of time to let the newly-born Forest of Dreams mature, we shall win this battle. Everyone who participates will receive bountiful rewards as well as the friendship of us wood spirits.”

It was finally time to inform everyone of our true goal. The Undead Lords’ armies would undoubtedly arrive—it was too late for anyone who wanted out. Although this was rather shameless as we technically dug a pit for the adventurers to fall in, it was indeed the best method to gather every drop of their power and make the best use of it all.

“Every adventurer will receive a hundred bonus Justice Points per high-level undead slain. Also, all adventurers will receive a one-time opportunity to completely heal a serious injury, including missing limbs. And obtaining our friendship means you can receive a chance at exchanging for an item that can’t be obtained by normal means.”

Since adventurers fought for themselves, we decided to lure them in with concrete benefits.

Meanwhile, this divine light, which had pierced the clouds and was giving birth to Amelia’s dimension here, was not only visible to the undead in Asolivis—it was likely that even the Cloud Tower from across the sea could see it with the naked eye.

WIthin the walls of Asolivis, City Lord Davey had been engaged in conversation with his two venerated guests when he suddenly stood up. The brilliance of the green divine light in the sky seemed to overtake the stars. And, at the same time, the angry roars of several Undead Emperors resounded in his ears.

“Davey! If you allow this green thing to grow to maturity, you shall regret it for eternity!” “Your soul shall be shattered!” “I will make you howl in pain until the end of the world…!”

The Undead Emperors weren’t exactly the kind and patient type. Enraged, they responded by immediately ordering the person in charge to deal with this issue at all costs. Failure would result in a fate worse than death.

The two venerated guests beside him had expressions of astonishment, too—a rare sight.

“The will of nature? Could it be a new God of Nature?”

“No, it’s at a level higher than a God of Nature—a threat almost on the level of the Creator. This makes me recall that crazy woman and her older sister… this is a threat, a great threat to all us titan giants! We must absolutely eliminate this threat at the earliest.” [1] 1

The Undead Emperors were looking down upon the wood spirit species; after all, there were too many coincidental factors involved in their creation. It was likely that even their creator, Amelia, was no match for an Undead Emperor in normal circumstances.

This arrogance was part of their very foundation, similar to how longstanding nobility would look down upon a fortunate merchant who struck it rich and purchased a noble title. Undying existences like them had gotten used to witnessing everything around them fade and die. The wood spirits weren’t even a threat in their eyes. The only true threats to them were the dragons and the mages—only other undying existences were viewed their equals.

In their minds, the wood spirits weren’t a big deal as they were stuck in the Forest of Dreams. Even if they were undefeatable in the Forest of Dreams, the forest itself was immovable. They believed that when they descended at their full strengths, this so-called undefeatability would become nothing more than a joke. They were hence taking it easy on the wood spirits and were willing to compromise.

In the Undead Emperors’ overall strategy, the most important objective right now was to conquer the Bardi Empire. If they could break the seal on the titan giants, they would gain a new and powerful ally—good news to them.

As for the area around the former Port Victoria that the wood spirits possessed? Why not just give it to the wood spirits? Even if adventurers arrived through this location to attack the undead… just let them attack!

It wasn’t worth spending so many troops and resources on eliminating such a tiny force. Even if some country’s army came through the Forest of Dreams, the moment they exited the forest they would have to deal with an Undead Calamity filled with astronomical numbers of undead. It wasn’t like the forest was capable of moving to the undead’s most critically important areas. There would be plenty of time to strategize against assaults.

That’s right—the undead’s entire strategy had been based on a most basic, common-sense notion: that the forest wouldn’t move.

Yet now the Forest of Dreams was moving!

Perhaps its new section wasn’t very large, but as long as seeds could be planted and the section could grow, the undead would naturally lose territory. If significant threats appeared at both their eastern and western fronts, it would mean that they were flanked on two sides: a taboo known to every strategist to be avoided at all costs.

“This cannot be allowed! Eliminate those puny ants and damned weeds!”

The entire Tark Republic took action. Innumerable high-level undead began organizing and summoning their armies. A massive battle to determine the owners of this territory was nigh.

I had been waiting quite long for this moment.

“Frostmourne—I mean Ice Calamity is hungry! It desires, it hungers for more souls than ever!” [2] 2

I raised the pitch-black, magical ice crystal sword in my hands as a vast army of undead rallied behind me. The real army of the undead would never expect to meet their own kind on the battlefield, beings that similarly desired to harvest their souls.

“I’m not hungry! I drank two bottles of milk this morning— meow .” The silly cat was still pretending to be a ditz…

“…You really enjoy going against me that much, don’t you? Why can’t you just let me have fun acting pretentiously!”

Notes:

[1] TL/N: “That crazy woman and her older sister.” Hmmm…..

[2] ED/N: Hearthstone reference… kidding, kidding, it’s a WoW reference.

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