Because of a mysterious force, the Jade Forest stays evergreen year-round, though each season still has its subtle differences.
With spring giving way to summer, the land wore both spring's green and early summer's heat. After days of frequent rain, sunlight, moisture, and the forest's vital mana braided together, driving a surge of growth in trees, underbrush, and ferns.
Even though a route to the Black Forest had been cut by hand, wild branches and grasses kept crowding back in, flaunting the forest's raw, feral nature.
The moment they left Outpost 11 and stepped beneath the trees, the clamor fell away. Everything went still.
"Easy."
Gauss kept his voice low as he warned his companions.
The closer they drew to the Black Forest, the denser the "voices" he could sense became.
Most were noise he should have filtered out—the constant chatter of bugs. Afraid of missing anything important, he'd loosened that filter as soon as they entered the woods, and a flood of useless signals came with it.
"Reproduce!"
"Love!"
"Crave offspring!"
"Hot!!"
"Hungry!"
"Danger! Hide!"
All of it mindless, instinctive muttering.
They eased their pace. Four clay spiders shadowed him, darting at any fat insect or small animal they passed and finishing it fast.
Cruel, maybe, but in a forest this vast it was a raindrop in the sea—lost in the endless cycle in an instant.
The clay spiders kept sending back emotions—"delight," "tasty," "relaxed," "getting stronger."
Even the most ordinary beetles, rhinoceros beetles, and stinkbugs were tougher here than the ones near towns. Gauss guessed the richer ambient mana seeped into their bodies over time, nurturing their essence—and turning them into juicier feed for the clay spiders.
Looked like this would be a good place to come back to for topping up the constructs.
Each bug gave only a trace of spirit, but there were so many that for clay spiders it was perfect.
A lot of the "panic" he heard came from the "tragedies" his four spiders were causing.
He was mulling that over when a voice suddenly came through—unusually clear.
"Humans have come in!"
"!!!"
Because he'd been keeping his focus tight, Gauss was sure he hadn't misheard this time. The voice carried a humanlike mix of unease and rejection—like a child watching a bad man break into the house, peeking through the closet door, whispering to another in a panic.
"Hold." Gauss lifted a hand.
Alia and Serandur glanced over and dipped their chins. They'd talked this through beforehand: show themselves first to draw out whatever was hiding, then use Gauss's Proto–Hive Mind to gather intel.
Gauss followed the sound. It led him to an ancient tree.
This one was massive, casting a broad, heavy shadow. Dark green bark was slick with moss and dusted with tiny, faintly glowing fungal spores. It looked different from the other trees—so this was why they called it the Black Forest?
They were still on the way, not yet inside the zone marked as the Black Forest. This was the first "black tree" they'd seen.
As Gauss stepped close, the voices cut off.
"You heard it again?" Alia leaned in.
"Mm." He nodded. "It came from right here. Said we'd arrived."
He pointed at the tree.
"The tree is talking?" Alia asked.
"Not necessarily." He shook his head. "Could be the little things on it—or something even smaller we can't see."
He leaned toward bugs living on the tree rather than the tree itself.
"Hey, little guys—come on out and talk. You there?" Alia circled the trunk and tried to commune. No luck—her Speak with Animals only worked on bigger, normal beasts. Most insects were out of its reach.
"Anything?" she asked.
"No." Gauss rubbed the glowing spores between his fingers. He'd wondered if the sound had come from them, but no matter how he prodded them, nothing happened. Maybe it was up in the canopy? He looked up at the dense crown and let the thought go.
"Let's keep moving."
They mounted and rode toward the Black Forest. The deeper they went, the blacker the bark. The crowns thickened until the sky was a memory; even at midday it was dim and shadowed. If not for light-shedding mosses, fungi, and plants, it would be no different from night.
Crack.
A chocobo hoof snapped a fallen branch.
"No wonder they call it the Black Forest—this is really dark…" Alia muttered. "And too quiet."
There was almost no animal calling—hardly a bird's chirp. The forest felt wrapped in something strange and heavy.
To Gauss's "hearing," though, it wasn't quiet at all. It was loud.
Inside the Black Forest, the bug whispers got much clearer. "Eat," for example, became "Eat that leaf!" or "Eat that bug!"—longer, more specific pulses. The insects seemed… smarter here?
Alongside the chaff, Gauss began picking up the other voices again:
"Humans really came in!"
"…What do we do…"
"Drive them off!"
"Drive them out!!"
The sound bounced through the dark enough that he couldn't fix a source. The whole forest felt like it was rejecting them.
"Kweh—kweh!!"
The chocobos must have felt it too—their steps went heavy; they tossed their heads and cried in unease. Animals, with fewer thoughts to muddy their senses, often trust their instincts better than people. Alia stroked her bird, fed it a carrot, and calmed it down.
"Gauss, careful. Something's in there. The birds are spooked."
He was about to answer when a rustle drifted from the shadowed brush ahead. Anywhere else it might have been nothing—just a beast passing by. In this wrong sort of silence, it was eerie.
Gauss snapped his head around. He caught a tall, thin figure flicker away at the edge of sight. By the time he focused, it was gone.
He ordered the clay spiders—soaking in their "all-you-can-eat buffet"—to chase.
They dropped their delicacies and scuttled fast, their eight legs skimming over moss and humus without a sound.
Gauss sank his mind into the link through Proto–Hive Mind and shared their senses. A spider's compound eyes didn't see like a human's, but it was enough: twisted black trunks, root mats exposed, dim freckles of bioluminescent fungus… and, on the ground, several fresh scrape marks that nature didn't make—along with a few snapped black thorns.
"It's those things."
He matched the signs to the reports from the tavern and to President Ritchie's "bramble wildmen."
Shhhk-shhk-shhk—
A razorish friction rose. Several black vines lying flat suddenly snapped up like coiled snakes and whipped at the spiders—fast and precise.
Gauss was linked to a Decoy Spider when the view went black. It didn't react in time; a thorn punched clean through it. Decoys were the weakest in a fight—but best at drawing hate. It had done its job.
The other spiders lunged, limbs flashing to parry and cut. Tough vines sheared; dark green, caustic-smelling sap sprayed the air. Gauss felt a brief ripple in the clay spiders' essence, then—under his control—it settled. They weren't flesh; the beguiling taint barely touched them.
When the vines were cleared, the grove stilled. Under mana the skewered Decoy spider re-formed.
"Something's using the plants to hit my spiders," Gauss said quickly to Alia and Serandur.
Almost on cue, that long, thin shape flickered again—this time close enough, in the glow of moss, for all three to see.
Humanoid, very tall and gaunt, moving with quick, uncanny shifts and using the terrain like second nature—melded into the forest's shadows, the black trees hiding it well. In a blink it looked built from dead sticks, skin bark-brown like the trees, its upper body furred with moss and lichen. Most striking of all, black briars coiled over its limbs and torso—not dry and rigid, but writhing like living things. Fanatic green light burned in its eyes.
"Kill them all! Protect our Master!"
Gauss heard it perfectly. Yet it didn't rush them; it slipped into a massive black tree and vanished.
The forest's "malice" thickened.
"Watch it!"
Even without understanding the words, Gauss wouldn't have lowered his guard. Vines, roots, and branches around them began to writhe, groping for the chocobos' legs.
"Guess we're moving after all." Gauss tightened his grip on the white staff.
Serandur conjured his magic weapon; Alia raised her oaken rod.
Bristling shapes slid out of nearby trunks. Several elite monsters—at once.
The clay spiders were quicker. They pounced the instant the enemy appeared. Each was roughly a Level 1 elite in its own right; in terms of burst damage, the Blast-Burn variant hit even harder—at the cost of emptying its mana.
Thump!!
One bramble creature didn't know what it was dealing with. It mistook a rushing Blast-Burn Spider for another tangler like the Decoy and didn't dodge—just thrust out a spread of thorns to skewer it.
The spider tapped a mandible against the oncoming thorn, used it as a springboard, and leapt harder—latching to the creature's trunk.
Vmmm—
Its abdomen burned red, flaring to a painful peak—and boom.
Fire and a shockwave blew out from the center.
WHAM—
Red swallowed the target. In a blink of heat and pressure, the bramble creature blew apart—leaving a silent whisper hanging in the air.
Images flickered before Gauss's eyes—black vines, treants, a strange cave… The death-whisper carried a heavy, beguiling will—but it crashed hard against Gauss's INT 13, a wall that held it out. Alia and Serandur staggered, then cleared their heads. The whisper faded.
[Convert Slain ×1]
Only when the air went quiet did the panel pop. Ninth elite entry unlocked—plus 10 Elite Points. His total jumped to 40; just 10 more to evolve the white-tier talent [Reptilian Strain]—but Gauss noted something else: the bramble creature only truly died when that whisper ended.
The prompt's timing had meaning. If they hadn't resisted the charm, what then? He had a guess—but no time to test it. Even with the spiders tying them up, three more Converts raced in—flicker, vanish, flicker.
Thud—the Magic Missile caught only a trunk and blew out splinters; the Convert had already melted into the wood. Still, the probing was enough. Offense wasn't strong—around Level 1—but the weirdness mattered. They blended into the environment and seemed able to "infect" and convert targets. If you failed the last whisper, you'd lose yourself and join their side.
Vmmm—
A surge of magic tickled his senses from the canopy.
BOOM—
Branches thrashed. Magic forced new growth—limbs split, lengthened, hardened—into a rain of spear-sharp wooden javelins that fell like a storm.
They could cast? Gauss arched a brow. Most monsters didn't. Even elite 1–2s mostly relied on body or inborn tricks. This was different. Smarter, then. Magic and mana aren't "human-only"; plenty of higher minds wield them.
There was nowhere to dodge. Gauss didn't bother. Since hitting 3, his core [Omni-Armor] had advanced—a Level 2 feel to it now.
Thunk-thunk-thunk!
The spears hit the air before them and locked there against an invisible force. The field felt thick—no longer a thin second skin, but a heavy, unseen armor. Punching through it was several times harder. [Spell Proficiency] + [Magic Resistance] + Level 2 foundation made most Level-1/2 monster attacks look shabby.
"Blessing!"
White light washed over him; he felt lighter. "It's on the crown!" Alia called. Her nature sense had spread across the area; she pinned the spot that had just fired the spell. Vines surged up under her Entangle—thicker and stronger under the Powderwing's dust. Nature wasn't only theirs to use.
The bind held. Gauss's Magic Missiles ripped through the creature. "Eeeeee!!" The mind-fogging death-wail returned; they'd plugged their ears in advance. Charm-proof or not, why suffer?
Thud. The riddled Convert fell from the crown—but didn't die. The living briars wrapping it began to slacken, trying to seep into the ground. Blessing had him in top form; he felt something slipping inside the thing—power moving. He snapped the staff up and cracked it like a bullet through a wriggling lump.
[Convert Slain ×1]
A limp, dying moan dwindled away. Being a repeat species, the entry only gave 1 point—total 41. The charm must be limited; this death carried less mind-pollution. Likely it had spent its "blue bar" on the earlier whisper.
For a team this far above a normal Level 3 party, the Converts weren't hard to kill—but one got away. There wasn't much he could do. Weak attacks, home-field stealth—if it wanted to flee, he couldn't stop it. He couldn't exactly punch the ground apart while it flowed through roots.
Five Converts, four down. Elite Points: 43. Seven to go.
He didn't mind. There seemed to be plenty of them here; even without new species, seven more would do it. New entries would be better, sure.
With the place quiet again, they swept the area and picked up dead briars as material and proof—along with four little clumps of bluish slime, the Convert's true body, some kind of soft-bodied insect.
Beyond points and loot, Gauss had one more gain: two clots of elite-grade spirit—from the blast kill and the venom + steel combo.
He fetched the corpses back out. Under [Shaping Magic: Clay], he kneaded the bluish slime into earth and reshaped it. Two fat, squirmy grubs formed—like oversized azure beetle larvae.
"Mm-mm!"
The newborn "Convert babies" pulsed simple, fawning thoughts. They didn't have the original's intact wit—but through Proto–Hive Mind he could still "talk" to these clay lives.
"Can you take the shape we just fought?"
He sent the thought. They couldn't answer in words, but they did in kind: mana bled out from them, and the bramble branches he'd collected snapped toward them as if tugged.
Crack-crack-crack.
Green-glowing thorns slotted together, climbing higher and enclosing the grub until a nearly three-meter, gaunt silhouette stood there—only a pair of green eye-glints showing.
"Perfect." From the outside there was no telling them apart. He had the feeling he could even use them to blend in. Unlike his other clay creatures, the Convert itself hid inside brambles by magic—the body was hard to find.
He liked the plan.
After a short rest, the two clay Converts took point. The trio held back at a distance and followed deeper in. Gauss, in the chocobo saddle, split his attention and shared one construct's senses.
A moment later, a faint chemical pulse touched him.
"Kin?"
He looked—at some point, a stranger stood beside the clay Convert. It didn't seem to notice the fakes.
Gauss wasn't sure how to answer. Proto–Hive Mind could likely mimic a reply, but he didn't want to give himself away, so he held off. Like a wolf strolling up to greet two huskies, the newcomer broke the awkward beat first and moved ahead.
"Chief calls… follow."
It left a trail of signaling hormones and drifted into a trunk, flowing away along the roots—without a glance back. Gauss wasn't about to waste the lead. He told the clay Converts to stick tight. Under the Powderwing's veil, the three of them shadowed from far behind—sparrows stalking the mantis.
He had a feeling they were close to the source. Without Clay Shaping's disguise, tracking a species this hidden back to its nest would be all but impossible.
~~~
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