As we move deeper and deeper into the forest, the space becomes more and more sparse, and the subconscious sense of security is gradually compressed. Although no one said it explicitly, it was clear that many people were beginning to miss the lush wooded area that once stumbled their footsteps.

Hu Cong, who walked on the periphery of the group, frequently looked around, casting an inexplicable gaze behind the craggy trunks without a foil, as if something would emerge from the light and mist of the forest that had lost its green curtains.

They engage in some boring chit-chat, and share all kinds of gossip, but the monotonous life in the castle does not have much land for rumors to grow, and this little remaining talk is quickly digested by rumination, and only meaningless crumbs from the same food and training can be picked out to support tasteless communication.

The rambling conversations had lost their meaning, just to keep the sound in their ears and to keep the team from falling into empty silence.

The forest hides another side of it, leaving it to the visitor to realize in silence that it lacks anything to make a sound other than itself. The background sound of the insects playing in the nocturnal ensemble is completely gone, and even a birdsong is hard to hear.

It's tantamount to drinking in the noisy atmosphere of a banquet when you suddenly find that the sound of your glass clashing with the table is the last sound in the whole hall, and you instinctively feel that in the empty silence around you, everything is like stagnation, and some sudden change will be noticed.

The sense of prying eyes grew stronger with each passing moment of the march through the lifeless forest, and some people began to complain that the sparse vegetation made the ranks too visible, and quickly reacted to the unclear shadows of the trees in the distance, seeing them as something else the moment they skimmed their gaze.

At first, this impulse could be restrained, but it was only interrupted by a pause and organized speech by one of the servants, but after a day it developed into a whispered exclamation that rang out from time to time, shaking its head at the gaze and denial somewhere in the forest for a while.

As it turned out, it was just a minor visual error. a half-decayed tree trunk deformed by its own weight, with a xyloma that looks like a skull from a distance; or a more slender shrub, the details of which are diffracted to the lake.

People with a keen emotional intuition can sense most people's tense nerves, slowly and continuously increase their weight under the constant cues of the environment, and only get better rest when they are in deep sleep.

But after more than two days of traveling here, even the double weight of exhaustion and strong armor can't make you fall asleep quickly. They need to talk constantly and comfort the spirits through a deliberately created atmosphere of human activity.

The mood of the crowd spreads like mycelium under the bark of a tree, covered by things like knightly honor, training results, personal faces, etc., and it is not turned to the surface, and the ranks remain in order.

More than ever, they wanted to see an animal other than themselves, even if a heretic attacked them.

This wish was fulfilled on the morning of the third day, or half of it.

The fairly good view allowed them to find a path that did not look like a beast's path, and the bare earth surface that stepped on appeared in the forest like inevitable baldness. Judging by Martin's experience of hunting, this is closer to the traces formed by the regular stepping of humans.

The mood of the team was so high that it even let out a suppressed cheer, which was immediately suppressed by Barrow less harshly. They no longer care about hiding their whereabouts, they just want to find the infidel lair as soon as possible and put an end to this dumb mystery that has been too long.

Eliminating the need for distractions and speeding up the queue has been greatly improved. Along the trail, they soon came across the first special thing they found here.

In the dark green, a sharp-eyed husk saw from a distance the heterochromatic object leaning against the root of a stout tree in front of him. Suspiciously dazzled again, he resisted the urge to speak directly, and when he got closer, he found that it was a lush mass of fungus.

This was the first time that such a thing had been seen in the woods, and all kinds of mushroom umbrellas bloomed on a small trellis, some of which were delicate in shape and had the drapes of the lace skirts of the ladies.

He half-knelt beside him, wanting to touch the dreamy masterpiece.

"I advise you to stay away from that thing."

A cold and hard voice was inserted from behind him, stopping the hand stretched out to the fungus umbrella "flower stand", and the urge to hunt Xinxi was extinguished.

The owner of the voice grabbed him by the shoulders and tore him away, forcing the gaze that was glued to the various fungus solitudes to look at it from a few steps away, and the outline of the "flower stand" that was not seen at first glance became familiar with the change of vision.

It is indeed in a "leaning" position, half resting on the ground and the other half against the trunk of the tree, the cage-like top fused with the bark under the connection of a wide basal stipe, and the mouth open to support the hemispherical soft canopy.

Mouth? 】

The thought made him shudder like an ice cube sliding into his back collar and revisiting the gorgeous fungus trellis, a terrible conjecture that quickly turned into reality and culminated when the thing was pried off the trunk.

It bonded to the trunk of the tree very strongly, and Kraft took some effort to cut off some of the lignified joints, and with the use of a lever, he used a thick-backed mountain opener to pry up the part that was about the head, and it felt like tearing off a sticky tape and pulling out a dense mesh of filaments.

Before being completely separated, the brittle structure crumbles first, and the half of the cage-like outline splits into several pieces, and rolls to the ground along with the fungus clump growing on it, exposing the yellow inner surface, and the bony sinuses of the nose can be vaguely distinguished, filled with flocculent silk balls.

"Looks like we're in the right place."

The back of the knife struck the rest of the silhouette, and the thing that made up the frame collapsed, turning into a mixture of broken bones and mushrooms, still with a rich, vivid color rarely seen in this era.

The brighter it was, the more creepy it was to those who witnessed it, as if the thing peeking at them in the forest had revealed a corner that they could not find the right words to describe it. As a result, conversation in the team was extinguished for a few seconds when they saw it, and their minds struggled to comprehend and accept the existence of such a thing.

"Be on the lookout." Martin took a deep look at the thing and calmed his breath, "Take off those full armor sets on horseback, it looks like we're almost there." ”

The servants tried not to look at it, and a group of men helped the knight quickly put on the armor.

If it weren't for the scare, the process would have been incredibly smooth. They managed to reach the area around the infidel stronghold, without the slightest hindrance, not a single outpost, not a single arrow in the dark.

Not to mention Martin, even Kraft didn't feel like it was going well. It was most likely that they had been reacting passively and not having the opportunity to use their full body armor, but at this time, they were able to march towards their destination in a good time.

After passing a few more "trellises", at the end of the trail, a creap of artificially carved out of the trail appeared in front of them, centred around the buildings with a view of the spire, and with a patchwork of huts on the periphery, which you can see anywhere in the Westminster region.

Except it shouldn't be here.