Ging stepped up beside Moses. His expression was the same as Moses's, slightly solemn.
"Doesn't look like fire… and it's not withering either..."
Resting a finger on his chin, Ging's eyes showed a thoughtful look.
Moses tilted his head to look at Jin and nodded, "Yeah. To me, it feels more like… the life was sucked out of everything here."
"Sucked out?"
Ging was slightly startled, then shook his head and said, "If we go by your description, then judging by the traces at the scene, it seems more like the life was violently ripped away."
"…"
Moses fell silent after hearing this.
'No withered leaves, no charred remains… nothing.'
'What exactly had happened here?
Without more information, none of them could even begin to guess.
The only thing they could do was proceed with even greater caution.
"I propose we avoid this path."
Karura, the Beast Hunter in the team, raised his right hand. (T/N: The RAW is written Tommen, but Tommen is in medical unit, so I believed the Author is talking about the Beast Hunter, Karura.)
This Beast Hunter has a spiky haircut, red serpent-like markings on his face, and a lean, muscular build. He is also dressed in dark green military-style clothing.
Everyone glanced at Karura, and of course, no one had any objection.
Though they didn't know what had caused this gray-white clearing or what kind of phenomenon had created it-
But what is certain is that anything related to this path was extremely dangerous.
In a situation like this, of course, they had to stay as far away as possible.
Human courage and the curiosity to explore the unknown did not apply here.
"Let's take a detour."
Moses made the decision immediately.
The overwhelming deathly scent lingering over the gray-white clearing made him uneasy.
It was also this scent that made him abandon any thought of getting closer to investigate.
In a place like the Dark Continent, if you encountered something incomprehensible and eerie, the only sensible move was to retreat as far as possible.
Unless you could clearly see the 'true form' of whatever caused it.
The team quickly adjusted their formation and stayed away from the gray-white clearing that stretched deep into the forest.
While they needed to find a highly valuable Hope before Beyond's team, they couldn't afford to take unnecessary risks just for the sake of time.
The team moved forward again, and soon, the gray-white clearing disappeared from sight.
But before everyone could relax for too long, a gray-white clearing appeared again ahead of them.
And it's not just one, but five…
These five gray paths were like chaotic brushstrokes, slashing haphazardly through the forest in crisscrossing lines.
Wherever the 'strokes' passed, all plant and animal life had been reduced to shrunken, gray-white remnants… though some faint traces of their original forms remained.
In addition, a lifeless atmosphere permeated the crisscrossing gray-white paths.
"This…?!"
Most of the team stared in stunned silence at the five intersecting gray-white paths.
This situation no longer requires discussion-
They had to detour again.
"Move."
Moyou had no intention of staying and waved his hand to let everyone adjust their formation immediately.
But just as they adjusted their position, a land creature about the size of a millstone appeared from another direction.
It was a tortoise.
It is about the same size as a three-wheeled cart, and its entire body was emerald green. Under the sunlight, its shell and even its limbs glowed faintly with a verdant luster.
But this tortoise was carrying a gray-white stone tablet that looked like a tombstone on its back.
The surface of the stone tablet was pockmarked, entwined with pulsing green vines that throbbed rhythmically like veins.
This unknown tortoise moved slowly from about sixty or seventy meters away. Its speed was not very fast, about the speed of a three or four-year-old child walking.
The reason why Moses and the others were able to immediately discover the existence of this tortoise was that wherever the tortoise went, everything within a twenty-meter radius of the tortoise turned gray-white and lifeless.
Even the towering trees, which are nearly 200 meters tall, have shrunk at a speed visible to the naked eye, barely retaining their original shapes. The same went for the grass, shrubs, and other vegetation on the ground.
As the tortoise crawled forward, a gray-white path about twenty meters wide formed behind it.
Seeing this scene, everyone's expressions tightened.
It turned out that the eerie and lifeless gray-white path was created by the tombstone-carrying tortoise.
"Death Aura?" (T/N: The Aura here is different from Nen's Aura. It's more like Halo in the game.)
Moses instantly thought of a very common debuff from games, and couldn't help but exclaim to himself in surprise.
Beside him, Ging and Pyon, who are also experienced gamers, understood it instantly.
From what they were seeing, it did resemble a Death Aura.
And if such a game-like ability existed in reality, it would undoubtedly be one of the most terrifying things imaginable.
No one would gamble on the possibility of whether Nen could resist this Death Aura.
This means that they couldn't fight it, but they could run from it.
With just a gesture from Moses, the entire team retreated in an orderly manner, putting distance between themselves and the leisurely crawling tortoise.
This was the first truly bizarre threat they'd encountered since landing on the Dark Continent.
Fortunately, this tortoise was moving quite slowly, otherwise, the consequences would've been unthinkable.
"Judging by the paths we've seen, there's probably more than one of these things in the forest."
Cheadle frowned as she stared at the slowly crawling tombstone-carrying tortoise, then reminded everyone.
Botobai followed suit and suggested, "We could try attacking it. As long as we use the surrounding greenery as reference points, we might be able to avoid whatever ability turns everything into that decayed gray state."
"Then let's give it a try."
Moses nodded, then looked at Morel in the team.
Noticing Moses's gaze, Morel immediately understood. He raised the big pipe he carried with him, lit it as quickly as possible, and then took a deep drag, "Haaah…"
Morel then opened his mouth and spit out a puff of white smoke, which, under the influence of his Nen Ability, morphed into a squad of smoke soldiers.
[Deep Purple Smoke Troops]
Without any hesitation, Morel issued the attack command.
In an instant-
The newly formed smoke soldiers lunged at the crawling tortoise like a pack of wolves.
But just when the smoke soldiers stepped within one meter in front of the tortoise, they turned into green smoke and dissolved without a trace, just like snow in spring.
"Huh!?"
Morel's heart skipped a beat.
Just now, he could feel that he had instantly lost contact with the Manifested Aura he used for creating the smoke soldiers.
"The range is about one meter ahead of it, but we can't rule out the possibility of it expanding."
While the smoke soldiers that instantly dissolved did not cause any harm to the tortoise, they allowed everyone to obtain useful information.
Nen couldn't block the Death Aura's effect!