They followed the tracks for several hours until it got so dark that it was difficult to continue tracking.
“Let’s set up camp for tonight and continue searching in the morning. I will take the first watch, and then we can switch every 2 hours.” Kain said before assigning watch times to the others.
After they had all set up their individual camping tents and eaten the food they had packed, the others crawled into their tents and left Kain alone.
Kain couldn’t help but reflect on all of the new information since they’d entered the forest. He seriously doubted that the school wasn’t aware about the mass dying of spiritual plants, why hadn’t they solved it yet? Or was the problem even beyond the school’s capabilities?
Since he didn’t have anything else to do for the next two hours, Kain decided to summon the Eve-infected Queen, to see if there was anything that Eve could detect.
Vespirae aren’t nocturnal so Queen and the two guards were obviously unhappy to be summoned at this time. frёeωebɳovel.com
“Just sleep, I don’t need you to do anything.”
Queen doesn’t need to be awake for Eve to still be able to detect her surroundings.
Kain transmitted his thoughts to Eve, and then suddenly, similar to when he had first established a contract with her, Queen’s abdomen began to glow.
However, this time the glow was much more faint, and it instead travelled down Queen’s legs into the ground.
Once the glow met the ground, some of the previously slightly limp looking weeds in the vicinity appeared to be a much more vibrant green.
‘It seems that even without the use of a skill, Eve can just roughly wield her element to a certain extent. However, the effect would probably be much more potent if she had a corresponding skill.’
However, it was possible with a lot of repeated wielding of a certain element, to realize a unique skill from it. Kain put it on the agenda to begin training with Eve alone. He had been mostly focused on training her host Queen, Queen’s guards, and Bea. Eve may have more potential left to be explored.
Looking at the revived plants though, Kain noticed that their improved appearance was temporary. Within minutes they were right back to their old state.
‘I guess the effects of what Eve did aren’t long-lasting’ Kain thought with some disappointment, if they had been, he could have maybe used it to grow some rare spiritual plants that are difficult to grow.
However, Kain suddenly received some new information from Eve that while the effects aren’t permanent the raw administration of life-attribute energy should have had an effect for weeks. In fact, many of the spiritual plants that had grown in the field surrounding their initial nest had benefited from this energy.
The effect was so short now because Eve could sense that something was hungrily devouring the life-attribute energy the second it had entered the ground.
And now that Kain looked at his surroundings, although not as extreme as seen in the spiritual plants, many of the ordinary trees and weeds did look more limp than usual. Obviously whatever had targeted the spiritual plants wasn’t letting the ordinary plants off easy, perhaps just due to their lack of spiritual power they just weren’t as obviously targeted.
‘Can you sense where the energy is going too?’
After feeling a little disappointed, he quickly realized that this information could still be used to figure out a vague direction to travel.
Every so often he can have Eve inject her energy into the ground and see how long it lasts. This would give Kain a rough idea of the area of influence for this energy-draining effect.
Most of the spiritual creatures have probably migrated beyond this sphere of influence.
Grrrr
Suddenly, Kain looked up to see a glowing pair of green eyes in the dark. However, Kain could sense that it was still a red-grade spiritual creature.
Too lazy to get up and kill any random low-level mob that happened across their camp, Kain decided to just release a Bea-infested Mist and have it surround the camp like a shield.
Within moments, Kain has received the information that the intruder was dead.
‘Huh?’
Approximately 5 minutes later, Kain also received the information that along with the death of the creature, Bea’s connection to her split has also been completely cut off.
Out of curiosity, Kain ventured closer to where the corpse would be in the mist, however all that remained was an already decomposed pile of bones.
‘Did this happen to the previous creatures they killed? Or is there something special about this creature or this area?’
None of them had stayed around any of the creatures they killed long enough previously to see if this had happened to them. They were too lazy to extract materials from red-grade creatures and just quickly left the corpses behind.
Additionally, since they had entered, Kain had chosen to kill most of the creatures that attacked him with the spear. Occasionally, the scouting Vespirae wasps also contribute a kill. But this was the first kill done by one of Bea’s splits.
Therefore, they may have missed out on discovering this phenomenon all this time.
Grrrrr
Lucky! It looks like the thing Bea just killed had a friend.
Kain had Bea go through the same process of infecting and killing the targets. However, this time, Kain moved in front of the dying spiritual creature while it was still convulsing on the ground and not fully dead. He wanted to witness what exactly happens the moment it dies for himself.
After the first minute, there were still no noticeable changes in the corpse.
However, by the second minute its fur had lost a lot of its luster and had begun to fall out, falling to the ground in brittle chunks.
By the third minute, the skin revealed beneath the fur had turned a sickly gray and started to sag, splitting open to reveal the underlying muscles.
By the fourth minute, the muscles had melted into a foul, viscous sludge, and the organs burst out spilling their contents onto the ground. Kain had to step back at the sudden assault of the smell of decomposing flesh on his nose.
By the fifth minute, the creature was reduced to a skeletal frame, and the surrounding rotting internal organs had already disappeared into the ground. Thankfully, the smell was also gone now too.
Throughout the duration of his watch, they were attacked several more times by different creatures. However, the decomposition process that Kain witnessed remained roughly the same, with the time until full decomposition fluctuating between 3 and 11 minutes.
Once his shift was up, Kain woke up Finn, who had the next shift, and crawled into his own tent. However, he found it challenging to sleep after that night’s discoveries.