( mission 1)
Their journey drew closer to the Nethavane Forest. Darkness had begun to set in. Looking down from the valley, the forest loomed below like a monstrous, terrifying entity.
"What on earth is this...?"
Sai said, his voice trembling with shock.
The Sight of Nethavane
As they reached the edge of the valley, the view ahead was enough to freeze their blood. The forest wasn't just dark; it looked alive with decay. A thick, unnatural purple-black mist swirled around the jagged, leafless trees like a suffocating blanket.
Unlike a normal forest where you hear the sounds of crickets or the wind, Nethavane was deadly silent. The trees themselves looked like twisted claws reaching out of the earth to grab the sky.
"The air... it smells like old blood," Jinso muttered, covering his nose.
They could see faint, glowing red orbs deep within the thickets the eyes of the Zeks watching their every move from the shadows. The boundary between the world of the living and the realm of the dead seemed to vanish as they prepared to step into the trees.
"Eh...?"
Jinso looked at him. Until that moment, none of them had paid much close attention to the forest.
"Look... over there!" Sai pointed his finger toward the forest in utter astonishment.
Only then did they truly take notice of the woods.
[The Great NETHAVANE]
The forest didn't just look dark; it looked like a massive, breathing beast. The trees were unnaturally tall, their branches gnarled and twisted like skeletal fingers reaching for the throat of the sky. Instead of a green canopy, the tops of the trees were draped in a thick, charcoal-colored moss that swayed even though there was no wind.
A heavy, suffocating fog the Black Mistclung to the forest floor, glowing with a faint, sickly violet light. It wasn't just a place of trees; it was a fortress of shadows. The very boundary of the forest seemed to vibrate with an eerie energy, as if the woods were a gateway to another world entirely.
"It's not just a forest," Haru whispered, his voice barely audible. "It's a graveyard that hasn't finished burying its dead."
The four of them walked forward together to enter the forest.
They didn't realize they were stepping onto the "Mountain of Death." Even at the boundary of the woods, the air began to change. There was a suffocating weight in the breeze, accompanied by a strange, unsettling stench.
"Ahh..." Haru suddenly stopped halfway, as if something had hit him.
"Haru..." Jinso helped him steady himself.
"I feel... strange. There is something in there, far beyond what we imagined," Haru said, pointing toward the mountain.
"Well, we came here to kill it, didn't we?" Sai said, continuing to walk forward.
They ventured deeper inside. Because the leaves of all the trees were densely packed, the atmosphere was pitch black. Once inside, it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night outside. However, some trees stood without any leaves at all, looking like skeletal remains. Their branches reached toward the sky like terrifying human hands. Amidst all this, a black mist swirled everywhere. It didn't feel like ordinary smoke; it felt alive.
They were exhausted from the long walk. Sai sat down at the base of a tree, while Jinso and Haru sat on the other side. Izuma sat a little further away. As Sai sat there, he felt something dripping onto his shoulder, drop by drop.
"Is it raining here too??" he thought to himself. He wiped the liquid from his shoulder and looked at it. It wasn't water; it was something bright red.
"Blood!!!" Sai shrieked and fell forward in shock.
On the other side, something similar had dripped onto Haru's body as well. He checked it and saw the same red substance.
"Blood!" Haru also moved away, staring at it in horror.
They looked around, and that's when they saw it. From all the trees, a fluid was oozing out and flowing down like sap. This was what had fallen on them.
"This is... this is blood..." Sai panicked.
"Hey, Sai, calm down..." Jinso took some of the liquid and smelled it. It wasn't blood; it was some kind of fluid with a pungent, sharp odor.
"This isn't blood," he told them.
"Then what is it...?" Sai asked back.
"I don't know... but it's not blood. It has a different smell," Jinso said, wiping his hand. Haru looked at it too and realized he was right it wasn't blood.
"Then what is this? It's everywhere here," Sai said, looking around.
Izuma took some of the fluid and smelled it. "This isn't an ordinary forest. This is a land of souls. Everything here is formed by spirits."
Izuma looked at them. "There is much more yet to be seen here." He started walking deeper into the woods again.
Not wanting to stay behind, the others followed him.
{They did not know that Nethavane was not just a forest, but a death trap. They did not realize that what dies there is not life, but something else entirely.}