Blood Lake Sacrifice

After listening, Dago fell into thought. He too felt there was something wrong with those lunatics from the Duskblood Council.

He gulped down the hot milk and left the Wizard Hall.

He decided to use the daylight to investigate the forest outside town and find out what the Duskblood Council was doing.

He chose an unoccupied spot in town and spread out his spiritual force field.

The cold wind flowed along the contours of his body like water, lifting every inch of fabric upward.

Hovering fifteen or sixteen meters above the ground, he could clearly see how the town's houses formed a grid beneath him, dividing it into districts.

Dago spread his arms slightly and felt the shifting currents of air, as if he had become a free bird.

For the first time, he realized how inhuman he had become—the feeling of looking down upon everything from the sky...

He flew along a route he had once known well, the route he had taken when selling venison hunted in the forest in town.

He passed over the charred ruins in the north of town and the pitted fields on its outskirts.

At last, he reached the forest he knew best, its tangled trees forming a net beneath the lead-gray sky, always shrouded in a thin mist.

Silence was the forest's main melody, a vacuum-like stillness of death.

There was also a faint scent of blood in the air, along with the stench of decay.

The entire forest seemed like a terrifying monster that devoured all things, waiting for its prey.

Dago steadied himself and flew straight toward the forest.

He arrived at his first stop: the former Forest Patrol Treehouse Outpost.

It had somehow become a temporary den for the Black-Robed Wizards, dozens of densely packed treehouses hanging from bare