Chapter 1231 - The Tide of Fear (1/2)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“There is something in the dream. It came out of our hearts…”

Morian scratched his jaw as he repeated those words in confusion. He had never heard anything like that before. The old knight turned his head and looked at Veronica. “Your Royal Highness, this seems a bit like sorcery.”

“Do you mean an illusion spell?” Veronica frowned. “These soldiers seem to have suffered tremendous fear before they die, and the commander has signs of madness. It looks like an illusion spell, but I haven’t heard any of that has such a strong and the wide area of effect. Those stationed here are veterans who have received at least one year of willpower training, they have strong resistance to the illusion.”

Hao Ren listened but did not say anything. Concerning the mind illusion, he knew much more than Veronica and Morian did, and he had seen the most influential soul power in the universe and personally stood inside the psychic storm that could throw a whole city into madness. Many powerful and extraordinary minds in the world could pull these things off in, such as the whisper of the First Borns and the nightmare of the guardian giants. But he found it difficult to explain to the people here.

Moreover, he could not determine what the soldiers in the outpost were encountering because he did not see any signs of activity of the First Born’s tentacles, nor did he sense the breath of the guardian giant. A psychic storm might have happened here, but the culprit did not show itself.

After thinking for a while, Hao Ren asked, “Have you ever seen the psychic attacks of a monster of Chaos?”

“The existence of the Servants of Chaos itself could interfere with the human minds already,” Veronica said as she shook her head. “They don’t have to master the skills of psychic attacks. Oh, wait! Can it be said that the Chaos has bred new variant of monsters?”

The old knight was nervous hearing the princess’ speculation. Hao Ren’s simple question had ignited their imaginations. Morian immediately got to his feet. “We must return to the civilized world and alert them before it is too late.”

Veronica nodded. “We should use the Chastetree Road. There are still several outposts along that route. Maybe we can find something.”

Chastetree Road was a boulevard before the Shadowy Forest festered completely, initially a path that the elves in the forest use to communicate with humans, but as the forest was chaoticized, the Chaos swallowed this avenue. Poisonous plants and activated shrubs grew on the side of the road, and the softened and deformed soil made the road rough and difficult to travel on. For ordinary travelers, there had been no road in the forest.

But to the knights of the kingdom, Chastetree Road was still a passageway. The festered power had blocked it, but the crystal dust the elven kingdom embedded in the stone slabs of the road was still magically active. Chastetree Road was still a little safer than the forest in the surroundings where carnivorous bushes were everywhere.

The group quickly found a second outpost located deep in the forest.

They had expected the worst after what happened to the first outpost, but when they saw corpses strewn inside the second outpost, their hearts inevitably sank. The soldiers here had all died the same way, experiencing something horrifying before they died, their faces twisted, and their bodies mutilated and started to decompose. Other than that, there were no signs of a struggle.

The enemy did not attack them physically but mentally. The evidence was obvious.

The same had happened to the third outpost. But this time, Morian found a wizard near the small furnace in the center of the station.

The wizard had also killed himself in a frenzy, but before he died, he had set up a large number of defensive runes around him, and his magic book fragments were found scattered on the ground around the furnace. Sacrificing their magic guidebooks was the last card wizards played when their lives were threatened. The wizard here, just like the commander in the first outpost, had fought to the death with the illusion.

But the mysterious magic had failed to save the wizard. He sat in the middle of his defensive circle and ended his life himself. There was a burned hole in the chest near his heart, which was the result of him detonating the magic power in his body.

Judging from the death of the commander in the first station and the wizard in the third, Hao Ren had come up with a theory: though the two had had frenzy, there was an indication that they had experienced great horror like the other soldiers. It might be the effect of the furnace, which kept them to hang on longer than the other soldiers though it was not able to shield them from the mind attack completely.

And if the furnace could affect the invisible enemy, then the Chaos was naturally the culprit.