Wh... wh... th... this is!
Slowly turning his head, Spectacles Man's companion stood frozen in place, his face filled with shock, disbelief, and a trace of fear. His pupils gradually contracted, and when his gaze finally settled on the center of the forest clearing, the eyes that had held only a little fear suddenly widened.
Terror instantly consumed his entire vision!
Clang!
At that moment, the rolling sound of metal striking uneven, hard ground rang out with a series of clinks and clangs.
The kunai in Spectacles Man's companion's hand fell in response, rolling across the ground at the center of the clearing before coming to a stop.
He was so terrified that he could no longer even hold onto his kunai.
What reflected in his eyes was an enormous cone-shaped pit, sloping downward and surrounded by four massive trees whose roots were riddled with pits and pressed beneath huge boulders. Within the pit, earth and stone jutted upward in blocks from the center outward. Now that the dust had settled and the soil had hardened, it looked, in the dim surroundings, like the very source of terror itself, radiating an indescribably horrifying aura that left them speechless with fear.
But that was not the most terrifying part.
Nor was it what had reduced them to such a state.
What truly left them horrified and wordless was the expressionless girl standing at the source of it all in the center of the pit.
Drip!
Just then, a drop of blood fell from the expressionless girl's tightly clenched fist, soaking into the soil, already red and black, and blending into the vast patch of scarlet-black earth at the center.
Drip!
Then came another sound of liquid dripping.
This time, it was a stream of thick, ghastly pale fluid sliding down the