Deep in the forest, the overlapping canopy filtered the light into an eerie dark green.
Leo and Hisoka walked single file, their footsteps making faint rustles on the ground thick with rotting leaves.
The dark red monsters around them kept roughly twenty meters away like silent sheepdogs, neither attacking nor allowing them to stray from their course.
"They seem intelligent~"
Hisoka spoke without looking back as he walked in front, his voice carrying its usual flippancy.
"Someone's probably controlling them from behind the scenes."
Leo answered, his gaze sweeping over the dark red silhouettes flickering among the trees on either side.
"We'll find out soon. Looks like we're almost there."
Brighter light shone ahead.
They walked for another five minutes or so before the dense forest abruptly fell away, opening up before them.
It was a clearing about the size of a soccer field.
The ground was level, as though someone had cleared it. Several enormous gray-white rocks lay scattered in the center, their surfaces covered in dark green moss.
And along the edges of the clearing-
Dark red figures stood packed together.
At least fifty monsters stood motionless as statues, their eyeless faces all "watching" the two men emerge from the forest.
The sickly sweet, bloody stench was nauseatingly strong here, making even the air seem thick and sticky.
Leo and Hisoka stopped.
The monsters behind them stopped advancing and slowly retreated into the forest they had come through, cutting off their escape completely.
The encirclement was complete.
Just as the two were about to strike, the monsters at the far end of the clearing suddenly parted, opening a passage.
A figure slowly emerged from their midst.
It was a teenage boy.
He looked no older than sixteen, much shorter and thinner than a typical member of the Chirajet