Is This Still a Swamp?

"Boss Arno, are you really not coming back with us?"

At the entrance to Swamp Forest, a four-man adventuring party stood beside their carriage, watching the figure heading deeper into the swamp.

Without looking back, Arno waved a hand and delivered what he considered a very cool line.

"Kids, head back. The swamp is nothing to me."

His figure gradually vanished beneath the shade of the trees, leaving the adventurers standing there in admiration.

"As expected of 'Miracle' Arno—a man worthy of being my boss."

"I heard Boss Arno attended Knight training before. Those training grounds were either deep in the mountains and forests or dangerous mana-filled environments. A mere swamp must be as easy for him as going home."

"This is the composure of a seasoned adventurer."

Arno, making his way deeper into the swamp, had no idea the adventurers were showering him with rainbow-fart praise. All he felt was the stone patches on his fingers itching terribly, and he wanted to return to Oak Territory as soon as possible to find the boss for treatment.

To be honest, after every needle ritual, his back would burn with pain, but his body felt lighter each time.

It was as though dozens of pounds of stones had been lifted from his body. The feeling was so addictive that he could not stop.

Arno had to admit that he seemed to have become addicted to getting pricked.

As he trekked along the Forest Path, his gaze swept over the surrounding swamp. One ruin after another had abruptly risen from the ground, their massive black silhouettes lying silently in the dim swamp, as though waiting for adventurers to uncover the treasures hidden within.

"There really are ruins."

Arno could not help lingering over those pitch-black wreckages for a few extra glances.

When the boss had first asked him to return to Iron Boot Town and spread information about the swamp ruins, he had been deeply puzzled.

He had passed through this swamp several times, after all. There were settlements left behind by the Lizardfolk, but he had truly never seen any swamp ruins.

In the past, the outskirts of this swamp had been so barren that adventurers could not even be bothered to spare it a glance.

How had it undergone such earth-shattering changes after only a few days?

Was this the power of demons?

To think they could influence reality and project the ruins of hell into the real world.

Terrifying indeed.

Arno shook his head, trying to fling away those stray thoughts.

So what?

Thanks to the boss's gifts, he had already earned enough to leave Laura and the children an inheritance.

Even if the boss wanted him to offer up his life now, he would do so willingly.

He had been fated to be a stone. Without the boss, he would have long since collapsed in this filthy, rotting swamp, sinking like a boulder into the bottomless black sludge.

Without the family's main pillar and the inheritance they could squander, it was hard to imagine how much hardship Laura would have endured raising Emily and Little Arno alone, how many cold looks and how much bullying she would have suffered.

Nothing could have been worse than that.

Now, every day was better than the last.

He was already content.

Of course, compared to the harmless-looking Slime demon, he hated the petrification curse inside his body even more. He did not want to spend even a second with it.

With that thought, his pace quickened involuntarily.

But before long, he encountered a Slime leisurely making its way along the Forest Path.

At first, he did not dare to be certain.

Then the Slime turned around and glanced at him, before tree roots lifted its round body and set it in his arms.

"Perfect timing. Take me back to the castle."

Chen Yu lazily bubbled. The Forest Path was so long that walking it had nearly put him to sleep.

The swamp territory was still too vast. Perhaps he should consider cultivating the Gate Escape Art, or catch a swamp puppy to use as a mount.

That could wait until later.

Arno had happened to return, and with a humanoid mount, Chen Yu could gather the Castle Guard and investigate the situation in Death Swamp before the day was over.

"Yes, Boss."

Arno did not dare delay. Without realizing it, he quickened his pace again.

If the adventurers who had just left could see "Miracle" Arno treating a Slime with such respect, their jaws would probably hit the ground.

"By the way, Boss, where is the castle you mentioned?"

"Haven't you been there before? It's at the end of the Forest Path."

"The end of the Forest Path?"

Arno hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping himself. There was indeed a demon territory at the end of the Forest Path, but could that primitive land of oak trees really be called a castle...?

Never mind.

Whatever the boss said, went.

He gradually broke into a run and reached the end of the Forest Path in no time, only slightly out of breath.

"Looks... looks like the physique I built through knight training hasn't deserted me yet..."

Of course, if that curse-like petrification had not faded so much, let alone running freely, he would have struggled even to move like a normal person.

"Come in."

Chen Yu jumped from Yano's arms and hopped into the mist.

Yano followed behind, unable to stop himself from reaching forward to feel his way ahead. The dense fog seemed alive, surging and rolling with his movements.

Every attempt to venture deeper gave him the suffocating sensation of being swallowed alive by some invisible colossal beast, falling into its icy stomach sac. It sent chills down his spine.

In the past, he would probably have lost his way here, going around in circles without ever managing to enter.

But this time, with the territory owner's permission, his arm slipped into the fog without the slightest obstruction.

Yano stepped into Oak Territory.

A mass of darkness suddenly swelled larger and larger in his vision. When the mist receded like an ebbing tide, a towering, jet-black city wall appeared before him.

Looking up, even the tall oak tree so familiar in his memories had changed. Dark vines and wooden stairways coiled tightly around it, transforming it into a lofty swamp watchtower.

"Ah?!"

There really was a castle!

At that moment, Yano felt like some unsophisticated country bumpkin who had never seen the world, his eyes flying wide open.

Anyone unaware of the facts might have thought he had been away from the Swamp for ages, but he had only left for three days.

In just three short days, they had somehow even built a castle.

Was this the might of a demon?

He could not understand it, but he was deeply shaken.

"Rumble..."

As Chen Yu approached, thick oak gates were pulled down by vines.

Yano followed behind in a daze, and his view abruptly opened up.

The crude stone camp from before... was gone.

In its place stood a camp formed by several tents arranged around a fire pit.

These tents were not made of canvas or leather, but woven from thick vines, cleverly braided around sturdy tree trunks.

They were scattered in an orderly fashion around the camp. If no one said this was demon territory, it would look like a campsite left behind by some adventurer party.

Farther away, rows upon rows of Digger Beetles, their shells resembling rough stone, stood in exceptionally neat formation, forming a sizable square array.

The "instructors" standing atop a protruding tree root before them were, astonishingly, several Stinger Bees, their wings vibrating at high frequency with a low buzzing sound.

Their slender stingers glinted in the light as they trained the beetle formation with an unquestionable air of authority.

Even if these Demonic Beasts were replaced by humans and this place taken for a fortress where a knight squad was stationed, nothing about it would feel out of place.

If he had seen this scene in the past, Yano would only have thought he had gone mad. As for now...

All he could say was: get used to it.