The Sacrificial Ritual

"Strange. Why haven't we seen a single Demonic Beast along the way?" Ulshi said, his expression cold.

The others had noticed it too. Although the route they had chosen had relatively few Demonic Beasts, it still should not have been so empty that they saw none at all.

"And didn't Tana say their squad came to hunt Goblins?" Elaine muttered.

Goblins were a typical pack-dwelling Demonic Beast, noisy and active, yet they had not found a single one nearby.

This was highly abnormal. Out of caution, they had already used the Moonshadow Necklace in advance to conceal themselves. By rights, no matter how alert those low-level Demonic Beasts were, they should not have been able to discover them.

The only explanation was that the Demonic Beasts in this area had, for some reason, all vanished...

Night was nearly over, yet the forest had sunk into a deathly silence. Only the sound of their party's footsteps remained.

Until the evening wind carried over a fresh scent.

"Blood..."

Celine, whose sense of smell was comparable to a wild beast's, was the first to sense something wrong. She tightened both hands around her spear and warned her teammates.

Elaine also clutched her staff nervously and instinctively edged closer to Lynn.

...Lynn was somewhat speechless. Young lady, doing that only makes the enemy's target even clearer. Two fragile mages huddling together will only be more dangerous!

As they drew closer, the thick, suffocating stench of blood rushed into their faces.

Celine the Leopard-kin was choked until her head spun, and the wildness inside her body was also stirred up by the smell of blood. In order to suppress the impulse, she clenched her teeth with all her might, making "clack, clack, clack" sounds in her mouth.

The group soon groped their way to the source of the bloody smell.

At a glance, Elaine was so frightened that she hurriedly covered her mouth, barely stopping herself from crying out in alarm.

In the forest clearing, the ground was littered with the corpses of Demonic Beasts.

Green-skinned demi-human Demonic Beasts, and huge Gray-furred Canines.

"Goblins and Magic Wolves, more than thirty combined... This situation is very strange. Although they occupy the same position in the food chain, it shouldn't have led to a conflict on such a large scale."

Ulshi the ranger surveyed the battlefield's wreckage and analyzed it calmly.

Lynn slowly swept his gaze over several corpses. It was his first time seeing such a brutal sight, and his stomach inevitably churned.

The green-skinned demi-humans' corpses had been torn to pieces by wild beasts, while the Magic Wolves had been disemboweled by the Goblins' Bone Blades, or had their skulls smashed by Stone Hammers.

Amid the green trees and weeds, blood, red flesh, red-and-white entrails, and white bones intertwined into a hellish painting.

Seeing that the two young people both looked terrible, Liam quickly rummaged a small bottle out of his pack. "Try this."

He opened the bottle and passed it in front of Lynn. The refreshing scent of Peppermint Oil instantly made him feel clear-headed and invigorated.

After Elaine smelled it, she also recovered a little.

Lynn took the chance to pick up a long branch and used it to turn over the corpse of the sturdy Goblin nearby.

Sure enough, there was something strange.

He whispered to Liam for a moment. The Halfling nodded, drew a dagger from his waist, crouched in front of the Goblin corpse from just now, skillfully spun the dagger twice, then found the right spot and gouged it into the back of its neck.

After a few cuts and scrapes, he actually dug out a pitch-black worm. The fleshy surface was still giving off an eerie green glow.

"It really is a Soul-Eating Worm. This is the Corruption Cult's handiwork. They rely on this to control intelligent creatures."

After that, the group spread out to inspect the Goblin corpses in the area, but they did not discover any new Soul-Eating Worms.

It seemed Soul-Eating Worms were not that cheap either. After all, they were creatures that needed magic to be summoned...

Ulshi summarized, "Looks like that Goblin was their leader. That isn't surprising. The class awareness within Goblin tribes is very strong. Controlling the leader is equivalent to controlling an entire group of Goblins."

The situation seemed a little clearer now. The people from the Corruption Cult had used the Soul-Eating Worm to control the Goblins, but why they had made them fight the Magic Wolves until both sides suffered losses was still unknown.

"Could it be to deliberately create death? I—I can feel it. The aura here is awful..." Elaine said softly.

As a mage who wielded Life Magic, she was naturally extremely sensitive to mysterious things like death and the undead.

"I've heard that some Dark Magic rituals require a large number of souls..."

That does fit the behavioral logic of an evil cult pretty well... Lynn thought silently.

"In other words, deep in the Whispering Forest, an evil magic ritual is quietly being carried out?"

As soon as he said this, his teammates' expressions turned extremely ugly.

A magic ritual that consumed so many lives to function—its intended effect was hard to imagine.

But no matter what, it would pose an enormous threat to the Whispering Forest, and even to Colin Town!

"It's already too late to return to town and seek reinforcements. I think we should rely on Invisible Shadow to sneak over there. Even if that guy is powerful, he's still just a spellcaster with a fragile body."

As a mage, Lynn knew better than anyone how weak his own body was. Based on Tana's earlier information, he judged that the person who had attacked them and taken her teammates away was at most a powerful Initiate Level.

Otherwise, with the strength of a Veteran Professional, it would have been impossible to let a mere Apprentice Level rogue escape so easily.

Their current team had five people, a full three of whom were Initiate Level. As a healing mage, Elaine's role lay in support rather than combat.

As for him, in terms of combat, he should probably count as a quasi-Initiate Level as well.

In fact, when it came to sustained combat, he was not the slightest bit inferior even compared to more powerful spellcasters.

Honestly, Lynn did not have any especially deep feelings for Colin Town, but it was also impossible for him to watch a disaster happen before his eyes and simply ignore it.

First, they would scout out the situation. If things really went bad, they would run without hesitation...

With that thought, he looked at his teammates and saw that their expressions were calm and resolute. They did not seem opposed to the suggestion he had just made.

By now, the sky had gone completely dark. The group left the Demonic Beast battlefield and found a safe, clean place to rest and make some simple adjustments.

Then, under cover of night, they continued on their way.

The spellcaster who had abducted Tana's teammate might have had some skill in magic, but his counter-surveillance ability when it came to hiding his trail was extremely poor.

With Ulshi and the other two there, that guy's route had nowhere to hide.

Following the intermittent marks on the ground where a heavy object had been dragged, after a little over two hours, they finally drew close to the target's hiding place.

It was a low stretch of mountain terrain, and the lay of the land was extremely complicated.

Because almost no one had ever set foot here, weeds that swallowed their ankles were everywhere, and there was no road to be found at all.

"The traces have disappeared..." Ulshi searched the surroundings with his eyes, but found nothing. "There should be a hidden passage here, or even a magical barrier."

Just as Lynn was about to use "Mana Wave" to investigate the surroundings, Elaine raised her hand.

"The mana stored in the Moonshadow Necklace is about to run out. I need to use my own mana to restart it, and that will make 'Invisible Shadow' temporarily fail."

Was it like having to turn off a phone before changing the battery? Lynn was amused by his own inexplicable thought.

Seeing that everyone agreed, Elaine first took a bottle of Mana Potion from her staff, just in case.

Then the invisible field of mana that had sheltered them all this way quietly withdrew.

Lynn abruptly regained that feeling of being in the jungle, of being spied on, watched.

The insects in the grass, the birds among the branches and leaves, those appraising gazes from the forest's native inhabitants.

And...

Suddenly, his spirituality exploded violently!

At the same time, Lynn jerked his head up toward the sky. The pure white full moon hung high above, but where it overlapped with the moonlight, there was faintly a spot of shadow.

He focused his mind, and at last he saw the shadow clearly.

It was an entirely black eye, quietly watching them from above.