Feathers, falling in the air, beautiful, goshawk feathers. The feathers floated in the wind, swaying, and eventually landed on the shoulders of the gray robes. The man slowly stretched out his arm from under his robe, laboriously touching the feather with his fingers, and then made contact with his fingers through the feather, and the goshawk's eyes in the air shone with blue magic.

"Chirp!" the eagle's cry brought energy, shaking another dark shadow in the air to the point of almost falling. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Naren quickly descended and landed on Cheese's shoulder, which already had several scars on its body, and even if it won the fight, it would inevitably fall from the sky and die together. The mage couldn't handle the falcon's injuries now, and his eyes were still fixed on the dark shadow in the air. I saw that the thing struggled a few times, but still flapped its wings and glided again in the air, and without an opponent, it began to fly in a certain direction after a short circle.

"You go back first. Tell them not to come to me. Cheese whispered to Naren on his shoulder, of course he didn't understand the language of the goshawk, but the falcon, who cooperated with the hunter, knew human nature. Naren blinked, flapped his wings and flew up in the gust of wind, never looking back. That's fine, there's no need to put Batu's companion in danger with him. As for the mage himself, the position of the black shadow could still be faintly seen in the air, and he didn't hesitate to follow it. At that moment just now, he had already seen the true face of the black shadow through Naren's eyes.

A black shadow, falling at the end of the horizon, fell on the trees that stood abruptly on the prairie. The tree was not that tall, and its branches were not straight enough and its foliage was not lush enough compared to trees that grew in the cold zone. But in this vast land, it is the tallest tree, even if its branches look like human bodies twisted by excruciating pain. Now a dark shadow fell from the twisted limbs, like a low-hanging leaf, or like a newly-borne fruit, and the tree was full of such leaves and fruits.

The dark shadow that attacked Naren was a bat, a steppe bat. Cheese was sure of his judgment, and just like the ground bear was originally an animal that dug for insects in the ground, the prairie bat, though large, was not ferocious, and its main diet was insects above the grass. It's no surprise that bats use trees as their habitat. The strange thing is that the nocturnal bat will go out alone during the day, and also attack the goshawk, the lord of the sky of the steppe, and the most terrifying thing is that it almost defeats the goshawk. Such an anomaly sounded familiar to him, as if something similar had happened not long ago.

Approaching the tree, Cheese could see more detail around it, and on the thickest and most twisted branches of the tree hung something much larger than a prairie bat, like a cocoon. The only difference is that these cocoons are not made of silk threads made of protein, but of coarse cloth and hemp rope, and they cannot give birth to butterflies or any life at all, because they are only used to hold dead people. The body bag hanging from a tree is a common deterrent in war-torn areas, implicitly, to get out of here.

But it was impossible for Cheese to leave, for he saw something other than the body bag and the swarm of bats, which was sparse and staggered around the tree, like a sapling that had just come out of the ground and could not hold its trunk. The knot is not a sapling, but they do have similarities between them. The knots around the tree didn't look complicated, and they were simple compared to the ones Cheese had ever seen, but the smell of these simple knots was clear.

Cheese looked at the knots, unconsciously recalling the terrible memories of Amaki's war. The evil god itself is tricky enough, and if that evil god is still related to the gray robe, things will go out of control. No, the mere existence of the evil god has already made things out of control, has it? After all, what's the use of worrying about it now?

There is a hole in the root of the tree that leads to the dark underground. These burrows are often used as nests by animals such as wolves or dogs, where the roots keep the soil from collapsing, while the roots of the plants draw water from the soil and keep the cavity dry. Therefore, the tree hole is often used as a residence for some unnatural creatures, and it is said that the elves prefer such tree holes, and they will even use the tree hole as a gate to connect the fairy kingdom with the world. Of course, in fact, most of these children are stuck in the tree hole and cannot get out of the tree to starve to death, and some are killed by the animals that originally lived in the cave.

But Cheese was sure that no child had ever died in this hollow, for even the bravest child would not dare to burrow into such a hollow. As for the mage, he didn't want to bury in the tree either, so he took off the lantern from his waist, lit it, and put it on the grass in front of him. The light in the breath of dawn is mixed with the natural sunlight and becomes a bright light that can be seen even during the day. The bats that had been napping on the branches of the trees were awakened by such a strong light, and they all spread their wings from the branches with strange screams, but none of them dared to pounce on the light source.

In the midst of these strange screams, a hand slowly stretched out from the hollow of the tree and scraped against the soft dirt, the arm was thin and covered with tattoos of unknown significance. The hand that came out of the hole in the tree twisted the dirt in his hand with great effort, grabbed a small pebble from it, and then hit the stone with his backhand at the lantern on the ground!

"Smack!" The brainchild of the Hammer Grand Duke, although it is not a weapon, it is not too hard to give, and a stone is not even qualified to leave a mark on it, so it can only be ruthlessly bounced away. But that was enough, the bright light from the lantern quickly extinguished, and the frightened bats scattered as a noisy black cloud heading to the surrounding habitats.

Cheese bent down to pick up the lantern on the floor and hung it around his waist again. But self-control is always there, and his eyes are on that hand. A lazy voice came from the hollow of the tree, "Why, have you been assigned to such a remote place for your adult mission?" ”

"Come out, we haven't seen you for a long time. The mage's expression was solemn, and his tone was not relaxed.

"I'm not like you, I slept late last night, and I don't want to get up yet, so why don't you come in." "The voice, falling. The dirt-covered arm flew out, and it wasn't even attached to the shoulder! The tattooed hand grabbed him by the neck before Cheese could react, and then, as if pulled back by an invisible chain, he led the mage into the hollow of the tree.