Free Web NovelThe forest was silent, the cold fir trees standing like pillars.
Even at noon, the sunlight struggled to penetrate the branches and leaves, failing to reach the depths of this lifeless dense forest.
The knights who entered this place felt as if they had stepped into a sleeping ancient tomb.
They had been searching this forest area for nearly half a month.
Yet, they found nothing.
But no one complained because of this, nor did anyone question their leader; they trusted him one hundred percent.
Because walking at the very front of them was “Northern Territory Quick Blade” Vik Grantham.
His deep silver armor gleamed with a cold light, and twenty Northern Territory Elite Knights silently followed behind him, traversing the desolate forest.
This small team was personally selected, trained, and led by Vik.
They never relied on their eyes to find enemies, but rather on Vik’s perception ability to navigate the battlefield, and they had already achieved several great merits.
But only Vik himself knew that the string in his heart, taut for so long, had already begun to tremble subtly.
The clues had been cleaned too thoroughly—unnaturally clean.
The woodland was as if it had been “washed” by something, all perceptible anomalies erased, leaving only emptiness.
Even he, without expending his fighting spirit, could only rely on slight clues, following the faintest scents and traces to scout ahead.
He was not without anxiety.
Because the longer it took, the harder it would be to find.
Vik knew this, but he could only suppress the unease in his heart and continue forward, continuing to gamble on the correctness of that vague intuition.
However, today was finally different.
He found a small piece of dark brown residue in a crack in a tree trunk.
Vik raised his fingertip, gently touching the sticky trace, then sniffed it before his nose, his expression suddenly changing.
“Stay close to me, don’t fall behind.”
“Yes, Sir.” A young knight responded, his voice steady but unable to hide his tension.
Vik lowered his gaze, his right hand’s knuckles lightly tapping the armor at his neck.
“Activate.”
A faint silver-blue fighting spirit flowed along his meridians, and faint, crack-like fiery red patterns subtly emerged beneath his skin.
The world in his eyes suddenly changed; colors faded, replaced by an intertwining of gray, white, and shadows.
The fluctuations in the air, the residual heat traces on the ground, and the traces of magic power reflux were precisely captured by him.
He scanned the forest, stepping by step into that silent place that ordinary people called “completely traceless.”
“There were Worm-Eaten Households here,” he said in a low voice, without extra embellishment.
The ground above seemed perfectly intact, but in reality, its temperature structure was distorted.
Faint and regular corrosive aftershocks spread, as if countless figures had passed through, but had forcefully buried all traces.
“It was deliberately cleaned up.” Vik crouched down, pressing his palm against the damp soil beneath the withered leaves.
A young knight who had recently joined couldn’t help but speak: “But Captain, we can’t see any traceable clues at all.”
“It’s normal for you not to see them.” Vik slowly stood up, his gaze fixed straight ahead, “They have learned to conceal themselves.
Not just corrosion, but controlling the spread of corrosive traces.”
He turned to look northwest-north.
In the gray-white world, that extremely faint heat source fluctuation was like dying embers, blown by the wind, about to dissipate but not quite.
“That way.” He said, then started walking, and the silver-armored knights behind him followed silently, without hesitation.
No one questioned him.
They followed Vik, walking into the traceless land, walking towards the unknown depths of the dense forest.
Night had fallen deep, and the mist in the depths of the dense forest seemed to be stirred by some invisible force, churning ceaselessly.
The silver-armored knights moved quietly, their boots treading silently on fallen leaves and humus, like shadows passing through the forest.
Vik suddenly stopped, raising his hand to signal everyone to halt immediately.
The air changed.
A sticky and pungent stench of corpses assaulted their nostrils, unlike ordinary decay; it was a putrid odor blackened by time.
It was mixed with the rust of dried blood, the bitter fishy of ruptured organs, and a cold, viscous liquid that did not belong to the living.
It was like a cold finger inserted into the nasal cavity, slowly stirring one’s nerves, making one want to vomit, yet unable to escape. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Not only Vik felt it, everyone smelled this stench.
“The smell is getting stronger,” a knight whispered, his voice tinged with tension.
Following this, the team covertly drew closer, holding their breath as they advanced, following the increasingly strong stench of corpses.
They bypassed a section of overhanging rock and a collapsed giant tree, arriving at a narrow opening at the bottom of the valley.
The sight before them made several experienced veteran knights instinctively grip their weapons.
It was a—nest.
Or rather, a temple of evil gods from the depths of a nightmare.
This gigantic nest was like a living beehive, with resin structures crisscrossing, nesting countless passages and cavities, like the dwelling of some unspeakable Insect King.
It was as if it were an unhatched Queen’s egg cocoon, yet it also possessed the characteristics of a uterus nurturing myriad corpse hordes.
It was grayish-white, its surface moist and soft, like skin stripped of all blood, continuously writhing in the cold wind, rhythmically expanding and collapsing.
A moist mucus constantly seeped from its surface, filling the slowly wriggling tubular holes, as if more Worm-Eaten Households were being conceived within it.
The entire structure was composed of an unknown resin, its translucent, unhardened texture seemingly slowly breathing.
They were corpse-Worm-Eaten Households.
Those human bodies that should have rested in peace were now forcibly “reset.”
Stripped of will, erased of individuality, only a shell manipulated by psionic energy remained.
And hundreds upon thousands of finished products slowly crawled on the surface of the nest, their movements coordinated to an eerie degree, possessing neither vitality nor stiffness, more like a group of ritual laborers, instilled with commands, performing some ancient, mysterious sacrificial process.
Corpse-Insect Tides—human, beast, and even the remains of knights in broken armor.
They were carried in batches, quietly queuing, and finally thrown into a gaping “fissure” at the bottom of the resin structure.
And directly above this nest, a huge fleshy sac hung suspended—that was the Broodmother.
The fleshy sac and the nest body were connected by multiple wriggling fleshy “fibers,” slowly transporting the “sacrifices” thrown into the opening upwards.
With each wriggle, the entire nest emitted a low sound like a heartbeat.
The air seemed to tremble with it, like a breathing bellows of hell, exhaling death and birth.
But the most terrifying thing was the human faces appearing beneath its surface.
It was not an illusion.
Face after face, like lingering souls pressed beneath the translucent resin, slowly emerging, struggling, sliding.
Some were full of pain, their eye sockets bursting; some had hollow expressions, their lips moving slightly, as if whispering;
And one of them, strikingly, revealed a bizarre smile.
The corners of its mouth turned up, its eyeballs slowly opening, directly facing Vik’s direction.
In that instant, Vik’s entire body’s blood seemed to freeze, his throat dry, almost unable to utter a sound: “That is—”
He recognized that face.
Baron Halder Blox.
A Northern Territory noble he had met several times at Frost Halberd City banquets, always smiling when he spoke, and refined in his demeanor.
But he had mysteriously disappeared after last year’s war, officially reported as “killed in action, body unrecovered.”
Now, that familiar face was embedded on the Broodmother’s surface like a bas-relief, with a stiff smile and slightly tearful eyes, as if pleading in a dream... or mocking him.
“This thing...” Vik’s voice seemed to seep from deep within his throat.
The twenty Elite Knights behind him were also completely silenced at this moment.
They were the strongest warriors in the Northern Territory, each having experienced various bloody battles; swords and flames were already etched into their bones.
But «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» at this moment, they were silent, some taking half a step back, some with constricted pupils, some with knuckles gripping their long spears turning white from excessive force.
“Impossible—this—” a young knight murmured, as if trying to plug the crack of fear with reason, “This is too disgusting—” The adjutant’s forehead also broke out in cold sweat, seemingly just seeing the Broodmother caused his mind to be polluted.
Vik forcibly suppressed the urge to vomit rising to his throat, his shoulders tensed, and a few fiery red fighting spirit patterns had already appeared on the skin beneath his eye sockets.
That was a stress response from excessively suppressing his perception.
But Vik remained calm.
He gave a short, low command: “Mark the coordinates, everyone retreat. We can’t handle it; we must request support.”
The adjutant merely nodded when he heard Vik’s order, and began to organize the evacuation.
Vik scanned the team, confirmed that everyone had begun to retreat, and prepared to withdraw himself.
However, the next moment, a sudden change occurred.
The Worm-Eaten Household suddenly paused collectively, as if an invisible thread had been instantly pulled taut.
Those corpse-Worm-Eaten Households, previously busy with transport, all looked up in unison.
Their movements were so synchronized it was hair-raising, without the slightest delay, like a puppet army controlled by a single will.
Then they simultaneously twisted their heads, emitting rattling bone-joint friction sounds, and slowly looked towards Vik’s direction!
In an instant, the air seemed to freeze.
It wasn’t killing intent.
It was a gaze, a gaze transcending life, as if the entire nest had “identified” him as a target.
The knights of the Elite team were all battle-hardened fighting spirit knights.
But just as that gaze, as synchronized as a pendulum, fell upon them, everyone’s heart pounded, and cold sweat streamed down their backs.
The next instant.
The corpse-Worm-Eaten Households all let out a strange clicking sound, like bones dislocating, or a snapping sound of a cervical spine coming undone.
Then they lunged forward.
Without warning, without preparation.
Those corpse-Worm-Eaten Households clinging to the surface of the nest detached like a tide, like a collapsing wall of corpses, plummeting en masse under the guidance of gravity and will!
Then they skillfully rolled and leaped in mid-air, lunging towards the team with movements utterly inconsistent with the structure of a corpse.
The knights had fallen into the hunting domain of the Worm-Eaten Household!!
“Full retreat!! Get the message out!” Vik roared, his voice like thunder, scattering the lifeless air in the forest.
The next moment, his fighting spirit erupted!
Silver-gray flames swept around like a storm, the air currents surging, kicking up fallen leaves everywhere, forcing the approaching corpse-Worm-Eaten Households to halt for a moment.
The adjutant’s eye twitched, as if he understood something, but in the end, he said nothing.
The team members gritted their teeth, turned, and retreated quickly, none hesitating.
The silver light behind them, however, did not follow, only a faint sound of wind, like tearing cloth, could be heard.
