The densely packed Corrupted Tree Men still trudged slowly through the snow from the forest toward the city. Wherever the pitch-black trees passed, even the snow surface became filthy.
The swarms of insects hanging darkly in the sky, along with all sorts of other strange things, were still blocked outside the Golden Thunder shield. Some light shone from the woods; perhaps the professors of the Three Great Academies were casting spells together to hold something back. Only the cold night wind blowing the snowflakes remained just like every normal night before.
Vanessa looked over with Shade, who had returned to human form beside her. In the woodland outside the city, smoke and dust from underground erupted into the night sky like a tornado. At the center of that "sandstorm tornado," which had nearly dyed half the night sky earth-colored, the ground rose layer by layer, and a fifty-meter-tall hill took shape almost within a breath.
The rising hill was bare, but at its very summit, as the buzzing grew louder and louder, the trunk of a giant tree burst out from underground. Once the hundred-meter-tall trunk stood amid the starry sky and falling snow, its canopy grew at a visible rate. Beneath that canopy, densely packed "corpses" swayed in the wind and snow, forming the strangest sight of the night so far.
Vanessa heard Shade sigh beside her. The little witch looked at him suspiciously.
"What is it?"
"I just feel that the Ancient One is a little too uncreative. We fought the Illusion Dream Tree before, and now there's the Curse-Eroded Great Tree. If nothing unexpected happens, the final battle will probably be against a tree too. This type of enemy shows up far too often."
Vanessa thought Shade was trying to make her laugh and gave a faint