Chapter 190

190 Darkwood

Illum also considered the possibility of his servants joining forces with Selena and attacking Kastil as a united front, but there was a better chance that the sun would rise in the West than that Selena would accept his aid.

The only saving grace was that Kastil was still in the early stages of growth, so his avatar was unable to move away from his real body and the influence he could exert outside the sea of trees was limited by the host he could possess, so Selena would be safe as long as she didn’t attack him personally.

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In the southeast of the Caprio continent, in the darkwood forests.

“Huff...huff...” Selena was breathing heavily after destroying everything in her reach. She was in her office when she got the call from Illum and went into a rage as soon as the call ended.

Selena was able to stand her ground as she faced Illum, but as she looked into those amber eyes and listened to that voice so much like Kastil’s it reopened wounds in her mind that had barely been closed.

“Feeling better, daughter?” Malena appeared behind her suddenly and started rubbing her back reassuringly. His body looked translucent like a ghost, as if it would disappear at any moment.

She was a phantom, a rare breed of undead without a physical body. Phantoms possessed bodies made of pure energy and were the only species that lacked a mana core, the life force spread throughout the entire body to keep the energy body stable.

“No, I still feel like crap and helpless. No matter what I do, that bastard’s face keeps appearing in front of me. I know Illum isn’t like that man, but I can’t let go of associating the two with each other.” Selena spoke as she struggled to keep her form in check.

.....

“We understand, daughter. You don’t have to justify yourself to us.” Trevor appeared at her side and hugged her to reassure her. Just like Malena, he was a phantom and was linked to Selena.

A banshee’s scream was capable of conjuring the souls of fresh corpses, turning the souls into phantoms. A banshee’s scream would affect all spiteful souls, without consuming a single drop of mana or life force from the banshee itself.

His voice would only shape the energy dispersed throughout the corpse, so there was no cost for the banshee who conjured them.

Trevor and Malena hugged her from both sides and let their daughter cry, just like they did when she was a child. They stayed like that for nearly half an hour before she calmed down enough to regain her composure.

“Sniff...thanks for helping me, I’m already better now. Staying here crying won’t solve anything. While I’m here moaning uselessly, my baby is alone in this desert in danger and needs my help.” Selena wiped her tears and spoke determinedly, but her parents looked at her with pity.

Since becoming a banshee, something had broken in Selena’s mind. Treevor would be a young adult after 100 years, but she still thought of Treevor as a child who needed her protection.

Her mind was fragile and she went into a frenzy whenever Trevor or Malena tried to explain that Treevor was no longer a child or that the chances of him being alive were slim.

Trevor and Malena were realistic and had already accepted their grandson’s death, but continued the search anyway, fearing that Selena would lose her sanity for good if they gave up.

A sudden knock on the office door interrupted them, making the three of them get up and Selena hastily pack her clothes, despite the precarious state of the office.

“Matriarch, I have news – what happened here?” A phantom orc bent to get through the door and was startled by the destruction of the environment.

“It doesn’t matter. But you came at a good time, Gorok. I have a mission for you.” Selena forcefully changed the subject, feeling ashamed of the destruction. She explained the meeting with the illum and the rise of the new undead.

“New undead, huh? I wonder if they’re as strong as you, matriarch.” Gorok asked with an excited smile.

“We won’t know until we meet him in person, but I doubt that. My little girl is the best.” Trevor spoke arrogantly, making Malena roll her eyes.

“Gorok, did you get any news to come here? You don’t often come out of the desert.” Selena asked hopefully for good news. She was always hopeful when someone came to report something and always ended up disappointed in the end, but things were different this time.

“I think we finally found a lead. A search party scouring the far south near the cliffs and beaches found a suspiciously dead forest and decided to investigate, finding a runesmith lab deep underground in the forest.”

“A dead forest in the middle of the desert and a secret laboratory? Someone killed a spirit?” Trevor asked, not too surprised by the news.

The desert was an almost lifeless place and some of the oases that existed were artificially created by spirits. It was rare for spirits to be attacked, as both monsters and demihumans depended on oases for survival, so all living beings in the desert avoided conflict with spirits.

“That’s what the investigation team thought when they decided to investigate the forest, but what they found was different. The laboratory was full of weapons made of magic wood, but some of them were different from the rest.” Gorok spoke and drew a bastard sword from his back.

It felt like a short sword in his hands, but that wasn’t what caught their attention. It was a small green branch resembling a finger on the hilt of the sword that attracted all their attention.

They immediately recognized a branch of yggdrasil, but what silenced the room was the shape of the branch. It was an adult-sized green finger and there was only one being in this world that had a yggdrasil branch in that shape.

The truth was, Treevor had lived on the coast for a while and had set up a workshop underground, just as he had in the forest of Faltra. Treevor had experimented to test whether he could improve the quality of weapons made from magical wood using fragments of his yggdrasil arm, and had failed miserably.

Treevor had no nerve endings in his arm, so other than a brief discomfort from losing a limb, he could rip parts of his arm off without any problems.

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His yggdrasil arm possessed a quality far superior to ordinary magic wood, and instead of increasing the quality of ordinary wood, the quality of the yggdrasil dropped to suit the wood.

He was never able to solve the problem, so he just gave up on the experiment and left the coast a few years later when he got tired of the seascape and looked for another place to live.

“M-my baby...” Selena began to sob as she gripped the sword with trembling hands, her voice cracking as her knees gave out. She touched Yggdrasil’s finger and wept profusely, her mind a chaotic mess between the joy of finally finding a clue about Treevor and the fear that it was all an illusion.

“This weapon design is identical to the one I taught Treevor when he was a kid.” Malena joined in the tears as she noticed the weapon’s simple pattern. She had only taught Treevor simple patterns because of her young age and had never had the opportunity to teach her anything else, so it only took one look to recognize her.

“...” The only one who stayed silent was Trevor, but why was he fighting the emotion. He quickly wiped away a single lone tear and asked after swallowing a lump of saliva, “Do they find anything else?”

The two weeping women lifted their heads in unison at these words and looked at Gorok hopefully, but their words were a cold water bath.

“The forest had been dead for a long time and any traces there were have been erased by time, but there’s no need to panic. There were no signs of a struggle anywhere, the forest died naturally without the presence of a spirit and unable to survive with the lack of nutrients.” Gorok spoke with mixed feelings.

He was relieved that Treevor was alive somewhere, but where was that place that was the problem. The desert was vast and hoping to find him, only to find he died in some random place would be too much for Selena’s failing heart.

She was barely able to keep herself mildly sane in her current state, any more blows would drive her mad.

“If there are no signs of a struggle then my baby must have left of its own accord. My baby is intelligent and must travel like a nomad just like we used to.” Selena dried her tears and started ordering.

“Send all search teams to investigate the cliffs and nearby areas before continuing the search along the mainland coast. We finally found something about my baby and I won’t stop until I find him.”

“And what do we do about Illum’s request? If we divert our teams to shore, we’re unlikely to meet up with them.” Trevor asked, but Selena just huffed in annoyance.

“Illum and this new species can die for what I care. My baby is priority!” She yelled and grabbed a comm item to order all search parties.

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