Midnight Terror

The underground camp was spacious. After it had all been cleared out, torches had been set up everywhere, bathing it in bright light. A bonfire had also been built in the center, with the smoke able to drift out through the heights above. Not bad.

Zhang Yang first arranged the night watch rotations, then confirmed that there were enough torches and firewood. Only then did he let the soldiers eat dinner.

After they had eaten their fill, he had Spearman Captain Wu Yuan and the other eleven elite soldiers rest near him.

It was not that he was cowardly and afraid of death. Fine, he was not only young, but indeed afraid of dying. He feared that something might happen during the night. If it did, he could activate Level 2 Protection at once. Ordinary soldiers could die if they had to, but the elite soldiers absolutely could not.

Zhang Yang was utterly exhausted by then, so after making all the arrangements, he quickly fell asleep. Thanks to his B-Strength soul, he did not even have nightmares. He slept like a log.

No one knew how much time had passed.

"Aaaah!"

A shrill scream suddenly rang out, jolting Zhang Yang awake. He reacted quickly, activating Level 2 Protection immediately before looking to see what had happened.

The bonfire was still burning in the underground space, and so were the torches. The soldiers were all accounted for—except there was now one more dead man. An ordinary soldier who had just been killed. His eyes were wide with terror, a tree root having pierced through his heart from behind.

Yet aside from that, there was no other movement.

"Did anyone see anything?"

Swallowing hard, Zhang Yang asked nervously. He had arranged five night-watch groups, with five men in each. That was already quite a lot, and under the firelight, it should have been enough to see the entire cavern clearly.

"N-No, I don't know, Village Chief. Zhao Shitou had just gone to relieve himself. When he turned around, that thing stabbed him to death." A night-watch soldier answered with a pale face.

But there was nothing behind the dead soldier.

"That was a tree root? Send a few men over to take a look."

Zhang Yang's heart pounded like a drum as scenes from every ghost movie he had ever watched flashed uncontrollably through his mind. Damn it, I haven't even learned a ghost-catching skill yet.

Several soldiers gathered their courage and walked over. There seemed to be nothing there, aside from the tree root that had just grown out of the soil.

One soldier raised his blade, intending to chop the root apart. But at that very instant, there came a crash as dirt flew everywhere. Another tree root suddenly burst out and pierced straight through the soldier's neck!

Blood gurgled upward. He was clearly done for.

That horrifying scene unfolded right before everyone's eyes. It was terrifying beyond belief. It had happened so suddenly that Zhang Yang, whose mind was full of ghost-movie scenes, nearly screamed in fright.

It was only when Spearman Captain Wu Yuan shouted for everyone to retreat that the soldiers snapped out of it and fell back. Then came crash, crash, crash—from the east, south, west, and north, tree roots bored through soil and stone, forcibly drilling their way in.

And those roots seemed to have come alive. They thrashed and grew wildly, like countless tentacled monsters.

"Damn it, damn your grandmother's legs! Fight! Fight! Chop them to death!"

Zhang Yang roared in fury, nearly hysterical. What kind of nonsense was this?

Why had the Spider Tribe been able to live and settle here without a damn thing happening, yet trouble had broken out after he had lived here for one day? No, not even a whole day—only half a day!

Just because this was a Fantasy Setting world, it could be this willful, this cruelly unfair? What happened to the rules? Had a dog eaten them?!

The battle entered a fever pitch from the very start. The soldiers were incredibly brave, but those evil, living root monsters were even more vicious. Their angles were tricky too—drill, drill, drill!

Left with no choice, Zhang Yang sent in the elite soldiers. Only then did they temporarily restrain the root monsters. Yes, only temporarily. Even when the roots were chopped apart, they still grew back at astonishing speed. That was pure bullying. In the end, Zhang Yang himself grabbed a blade and rushed forward to hack at them madly.

Soldiers were soon wounded and killed. Fighting as they retreated, they were forced to gather together, while also guarding against roots bursting out from overhead. Who knew why those things had such terrifying vitality?

More and more roots flooded into the underground space, steadily claiming ground inch by inch. The torches were crushed out, the bonfire was trampled flat, and in the pitch-black darkness, only the dying screams of soldiers remained.

Inside Zhang Yang's Level 2 Protection barrier, thirty-eight grown men including himself were crammed together so tightly they were nearly flattened into paper. They could not win this fight, especially in this absolute darkness.

Fortunately, although the roots were crafty, they could not break through Level 2 Protection. They roamed outside, growing without stop. When Zhang Yang used his lighter to look around, he saw countless gnarled roots forming an airtight cage, completely imprisoning all thirty-eight of them.

There was no way out. The roots were still growing, still squeezing into every crack and gap. They were trying to compress and cut off all the air. When that happened, there would be no need to break through the Level One Protection barrier. Without oxygen alone, all thirty-eight of them would be dead as doornails.

"I've really seen a ghost. What the hell is going on? Why was nothing wrong when those spiders lived here?"

Zhang Yang was practically despairing. No—he could still maintain the most basic calm. He knew this could not have happened without a reason. There had to be a reason.

Those two Spider Lords must have had some way to drive off or restrain these Root Monsters, but after they had moved in, they had destroyed that method.

"Wait, could it be because of the spiders' venom?"

When that thought streaked through Zhang Yang's mind like a meteor, he immediately understood.

That was right. The reason the Spider Lords had been able to settle here safely must have been their venom.

Zhang Yang recalled the first time he had seen the spider nest. Within several hundred meters around that deep pit, everything had been covered in black material like asphalt. The interior of the nest had also been covered with the same black substance, smeared into every corner.

Within a radius of three hundred meters, no trees could survive at all. Even beyond three hundred meters, many trees were twisted and snarled in grotesque shapes, corroded by venom. At the same time, that had been the most important defensive line the Spider Tribe used to resist these Root Monsters.

But after Zhang Yang had taken over this place, he had ordered the soldiers to clear away large amounts of that black, asphalt-like substance and thoroughly clean the underground space.

That had invisibly destroyed the defensive line.

So only a few hours later, when he had finished hunting outside and led the soldiers back, he had seen those trees that had suddenly become full of life. At that time, they had already begun their attack.

This war might have looked like it had come out of nowhere, but it had not been sudden at all.

Zhang Yang was deeply annoyed. He had not thought of it until now, and so many soldiers had died because of it. What were they supposed to do now? Smear that demonized spider venom onto their blades and spears?

Impossible.

Within an area of only twenty square meters, thirty-eight of them were packed together like sardines. There was no room to apply venom at all. If someone accidentally got poisoned, the losses would outweigh the gains even more.

"Make room. Let me through."

As he thought rapidly, Zhang Yang came up with a simple solution. He would not smear it on anything. He would throw all the venom out at once. With the Level 2 Protection barrier there, the venom could not hurt them, but it should be able to frighten off these damned Root Monsters.

Squeezing to the edge of the Level 2 Protection barrier, Zhang Yang adjusted his posture as best he could. Then he took out all fifty remaining units of Demonized Venom from the Village Building Order's storage space. There was quite a lot of it, soft and squishy, as though it were contained in a venom sac—a huge balloon. He did not dare delay and threw it out directly.

The next second, Zhang Yang and the others heard a deep, strange sound, followed by a rumbling tremor. The earth itself shook—or rather, an earthquake had begun. Countless clods of earth and stones came crashing down, burying them alive underground.

As for that deep, strange sound, it continued without stopping. It sounded pained and furious, but that did not help at all.

Only after several whole minutes did the outside finally fall silent. The owner of that sound seemed to have died, yet the Village Building Order had not captured anything, nor had it given any kill notification.

But Zhang Yang could not wait any longer. If they did not get out soon, they would suffocate to death.

"Dig our way out! Dig a passage!"

Everyone worked together, digging upward like madmen. More than ten minutes later, they clawed their way out of the ground like miserable marmots—then they all froze.