Free Web NovelA group of people were making their way through the Dark Snow Forest.
The leaves were withered and yellow, the ground was muddy, and a nauseating stench of decay permeated the air.
The knights leading the group remained silent, focusing only on guiding the way, while most of the mages behind them wore silver masks, with only their leader donning a mask adorned with purple-gold trim.
“Excuse me—how much further?” one of the female mages asked softly, her brow furrowed.
“Almost there,” the leading knight replied without turning his head. “Half an hour more and we’ll reach the outpost; you’ll see it clearly from the hillside. At our current speed, we should arrive at the ruins this afternoon.”
The mages nodded and continued forward.
Further back in the group, a young mage was lowering his voice, leaning close to a companion to complain: “Didn’t that Calvin say he had already ‘dealt with’ the Mother Nest?
If it’s already dealt with, why are we still investigating? This is completely unnecessary. I was planning to go back and seclude myself to study the Fiery Abyss Array.”
His companion immediately looked ahead nervously and whispered, “Keep your voice down—don’t let the Archmage hear you.”
“Hmph, so what if she does?” The young mage pouted.
He knew, of course, that he dared to speak so flippantly because their leader was Archmage Flora, a renowned kind old lady who was gentle and tolerant and never lost her temper.
Dillin, the youngest high-ranking member of the Magician Forest, was also accompanying them.
Younger individuals were naturally more prone to looking down on younger prominent figures.
If it had been one of those stern Archmages—the cold-faced, silent ones who would instantly freeze people on the spot—he would have shut his mouth long ago.
Just as he was thinking, the leading knight spoke again: “We’re here. Just ahead, past this forest belt, and you’ll see it.
There are already knights stationed here permanently.”
Everyone quickened their pace.
As they emerged from the dense forest and ascended to the top of the slope, the sight before them made everyone hold their breath.
“Ugh...—”
The young mage who had just been complaining suddenly clapped a hand over his mouth, turned his head, and began to retch violently.
He had thought he was accustomed to the rotting corpses in magic laboratories and the remnants of sacrificial altars, but he had never witnessed a sight like this.
The air was thick with the foul stench of burnt flesh mixed with viscous fluids, and an older mage couldn't help but murmur, “—Is this truly real?”
The entire Magician Forest contingent fell silent.
The Mother Nest no longer existed.
What was once a writhing, festering body, like a giant nightmare-hive, was now nothing but a vast expanse of shattered, charred fragments, piled up in the valley bottom like collapsed rocks.
Its pale, resinous shell had long since splintered into countless pieces, embedding themselves in the rock walls and the ground.
Through the cracks, faint remnants of human faces, frozen by the flames, were vaguely visible—some contorted in malice, others screaming—solidified like waxen statues.
The tentacles that had once rampaged across the battlefield like giant pythons were now shriveled into carbonized, brittle branches, piled haphazardly together. The corrosive fluid that had seeped from their breaks had long since solidified, yet it gleamed with an eerie metallic luster.
Further out were countless silk worms and worm corpses.
The ground was littered with dismembered limbs and torn skeletons, many of which still wore damaged knight armor, making identification difficult.
The self-destructing sacs inside every worm corpse had burst, releasing corrosive acid that had scorched the ground into dense, honeycomb-like pits, filled with thick, greenish-black liquid that emitted a pungent, fishy odor.
Now, the entire valley bottom was like a black hill composed of charcoal, flesh, and nightmares.
It was both grotesque and possessed an indescribable sense of solemnity, like an ancient and mysterious altar, silently narrating the terror this land had once endured.
Several fully armored knights were clearing the “remains.”
They wore heavy black protective armor, and the sound of their heavy breathing could be heard from beneath their visors.
Some carried oil cans, continuously incinerating the worm corpses that had not yet fully carbonized.
Others held long-handled scythes, carefully severing residual parasitic neural tissue.
Knights on the outer perimeter held torches high, driving away wild beasts and carrion birds attempting to approach.
This was to prevent these remains from being accidentally touched, taken, or consumed.
Although Flora believed she had prepared herself mentally, her chest still tightened slightly when she personally witnessed the “Hill of Death.”
She took a deep breath, tapping her staff twice with her fingertips, drawing her attention back.
Even the most obtuse mage, upon seeing these “ruins,” no longer doubted the young lord’s words.
This catastrophe had truly existed.
And he had indeed ended it.
“Everyone,” her voice was calm yet undeniable, “go down and touch the Mother Nest’s remains and these worm corpses with your magic. I want you to personally sense their magical characteristics.”
The moment her words fell, several young mages exchanged glances, revealing clear expressions of resistance.
“Archmage, is this really necessary?” one of them attempted to protest tactfully.
Flora merely cast him a glance, without a single word, but the silent authority contained within that gaze caused all complaints to cease abruptly.
The mages ultimately complied with the order.
They walked hesitantly towards the Worm-Eaten Household and the charred remains, releasing faint sensing spells from their fingertips.
The instant of contact.
The first mage’s pupils constricted sharply, his body trembling as if pierced by an electric current.
He gasped, nearly falling to the ground, and quickly severed his magical connection, his chest heaving violently.
“Magical corrosion—it pierced my barrier like a spike, there are whispers, there’s noise—it’s speaking—!”
Another squatted, clutching his head, his face ashen, muttering, “It’s not just ordinary residual magic—it’s like some kind of will, a non-human, primal malice, peering into me, trying to devour me—”
Still others forcibly cut off their spell, their eyes wide with terror, their throats tight. They seemed not to have recovered from that momentary “mental touch.”
Sweat ran down his face, and his fingers trembled uncontrollably.
Their reactions were almost identical: pupils constricting violently, muscles trembling, surface magic erupting like a hedgehog’s quills.
They tried to defend themselves repeatedly.
But no matter what, the distorted and chaotic magic they felt had deeply etched itself into their nerves.
Flora merely watched it all calmly.
“Remember,” she spoke slowly, “remember this feeling.”
“From now on, you are to use sensing spells to search this valley for echoes and traces of similar magic, no matter where they are hidden, no matter if they are still alive, or if only traces remain.”
So the mages successively attempted conventional spells such as “Elemental Residue Tracing,” “Spiritual Resonance,” and “Fragment Reflection,” but almost all yielded nothing.
Either the residual magic was too chaotic to discern a direction.
Or the sensing spell, once it touched the malicious residue, would immediately be interfered with and backfired, sometimes even causing distorted echoes or forced interruptions of mental fluctuations.
A mage, his forehead slick with cold sweat, stopped his spell: “It’s like trying to grasp a shadow in water, not a single trace can be caught.”
Flora remained silent, observing everything, until she slowly turned her head to look at the young man behind her who had not yet acted.
“Dillin,” she called softly.
The young Archmage, beneath his purple-gold mask, nodded slightly and finally stepped forward.
He brought no assistant, nor did he prepare any complex magic circles; he simply took out a silver magic crystal and gently clasped it in his palm.
“Sensing spells are ineffective against this kind of chaotic field using conventional methods,” he said, his tone calm. “So I must first perform a ‘reversal’ to reconstruct the final magical fluctuations of this area.”
He closed his eyes, his silver hair trembling slightly, and the surrounding air seemed to suddenly still.
Accompanied by a low and clear incantation, a silver magic crystal slowly floated from his palm. Complex light patterns flashed across the crystal’s surface, spreading like ripples, then projecting a blurry and distorted three-dimensional illusion.
This was the magical residue he had “compiled” with his mental power, and he began to trace it backward. frёewebηovel.cѳm
What first appeared were the chaotic remnants of the aftermath—countless fragmented magical information, strewn across the field like broken bones, dispersing like sand.
He continued to delve deeper, penetrating this outer shell of magical collapse.
The next moment, the # Nоvеlight # entire illusion suddenly trembled violently.
“...Found it,” he murmured.
In the image, the previously silent valley suddenly erupted—that was the instant the Magic Bomb detonated.
A massive shockwave exploded in the Mother Nest’s core, and terrifying magic shattered the core in less than a second,
Unleashing a destructive vortex like a landslide and a tsunami.
Heatwaves, fragments, and magical currents spread layer by layer within the illusion, as if the end of the world had arrived.
Going further back.
He frowned tightly, his consciousness suddenly delving into the deepest layers of the remnants, finally reaching the moments before destruction, and the scene stabilized.
The Mother Nest’s magic pulsed slowly and regularly, like the breathing of some giant living organism.
Between the mountainous piles of flesh walls and skeletons, countless hair-thin nerve lines quietly spread.
They passed through the Worm-Eaten Household’s spines, drilled into their bodies, and gently connected with their magic cores, precisely controlling the mental rhythm of each insect like puppeteer strings.
These fine lines were not physical, but rather a resonance conduction structure at the mental level—the Mother Nest acted as a “frequency source,” causing all the insects to move in the same rhythm, like a silent symphony.
“This is it,” Dillin murmured.
But just as he caught a glimpse of the resonance core, his face suddenly turned pale.
The illusion abruptly shattered, the magic crystal fell rapidly to the ground, and he swayed, clutching his forehead, his lips slightly pale.
“Cough—cough.”
A mage quickly stepped forward: “Archmage Dillin?”
“I’m fine,” he waved his hand, catching his breath a few times. “The reversal took too long—my mind is a bit overloaded.”
He opened his eyes, a slight dizziness still in them, but his voice remained steady: “I’ve roughly pinpointed the Mother Nest’s mental control frequency band.
It indeed remotely controlled the worm corpses through frequency synchronization. And some of these fluctuations still remain outside the scorched earth.”
Flora looked at him, a hint of solemnity in her eyes: “Can you continue?”
“Of course,” Dillin looked up, a wry smile on his face. “I can still manage, but I’ll have to change my approach.”
Then, Dillin gently waved his right hand, reactivating a second spell.
Several hair-thin strands of light extended from his fingertips, slowly drifting towards the Mother Nest’s remains and the surrounding worm corpses.
His gaze was focused as he controlled the light strands to “scan” these charred, fractured magic cores one by one, as if searching for some pattern.
Before long, the light strands began to tremble slightly and gradually converged, as if responding to a familiar rhythm.
“—There are indeed signs,” Dillin opened his eyes, his tone calm. “These worms were all briefly synchronized with the Mother Nest’s frequency, as if they were uniformly controlled.”
He stood up and continued, “I can save this ‘frequency’ and then use it to compare with nearby magical fluctuations to see if any areas show similar reactions. This could mean there are other nests, or residual control signals.”
He spoke slowly, each sentence carrying caution and fatigue.
“However—” he paused, frowning, “—that’s as far as I can go.”
Flora watched him, her voice low: “Is there any immediate usable clue?”
“—No,” Dillin answered candidly. “The Mother Nest was blasted too thoroughly; its magic is shattered like powder,
and utterly chaotic. I can only record this frequency first, and then slowly test it in the vicinity, hoping to stumble upon something by luck.”
Flora closed her eyes and sighed softly.
“Then that’s all we can do.”
Dillin was currently the most skilled individual in “sensing spells” within the entire Magician Forest; even if she were to try herself,
she couldn’t do more.
And to go a step further, that was no longer something a “genius mage” could solve.
That was the domain of the Supreme Mage.
Dillin suddenly spoke again, his voice low and unusually firm: “But I can confirm—this was not a naturally formed nest, nor was it an accidental mutation.”
He slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over the charred, twisted remains of the Mother Nest and the surrounding scorched and twisted worm corpses, a cold light appearing in his eyes.
“The entire structure, whether it’s the frequency construct of mental synchronization or that precise self-destruct mechanism, is too orderly, too intentional.”
He paused, his tone growing heavier: “It’s like a meticulously planned experiment.”
A silence fell over the area, and several young mages instinctively tensed their bodies, revealing expressions of lingering surprise and uncertainty.
Dillin did not stop: “And most crucially, the magic system they used is completely different from any faction passed down through generations in our ‘Magician Forest.’
Whether it’s the energy channeling method, the spell structure logic, or the magic wave feedback mechanism, it’s like a system from another world.”
“It might be some kind of—magical branch we have never encountered before.”
His tone was not loud, but it clearly conveyed a chilling unease.
As his words fell, the air seemed to solidify for a moment. Flora’s already troubled expression deepened, her lips pressed tightly, her brows furrowed into an unyielding knot.
She stood silently for a few seconds, then spoke, her voice carrying an undeniable cold firmness: “You all rest for a while, and adjust your state. Then prepare to depart.”
She scanned the area, “Using Dillin’s established frequency model as the core, gradually expand your search in the surrounding mountains and wilderness.
Do not miss even the slightest resonance, residue, or interference.”
