The gas inside the vehicle was colorless; the ghost beside it could only sense the air currents. A squirrel scurried through the area, not collapsing immediately upon passing through. Tasha almost suspected she was imagining things.
But the watchtower, perpetually scanning the ground, detected the problem.
A scorched yellow slowly crept up the edges of leaves, spreading like dye. Those leaves, once soft and curved, curled up after complete discoloration, becoming twisted and brittle. The pace wasn't fast, yet it was visible to the naked eye—more than double the speed of normal plant withering. The yellowish-brown blight spread from the site where several carts had exploded, rising from low to high, spreading from one leaf to the next.
The withering of weeds on the ground was the most immediate. The once-proud blades of grass and blossoms bowed their heads as the tide of decay swept over them, blending with fallen branches and leaves to form a thick blanket across the earth. The decay of great trees took longer. When they finally died, the leaning trunks began crashing down, their roots no longer able to hold them steady.
It was like watching dominoes fall in slow motion—green tiles flipping to blackish-yellow, slow yet unstoppable. Not a single hand in Tassand could halt the falling dominoes. She directed the goblins to collapse the earth around the ancient oak, then reseal the ceiling. The mighty tree was temporarily sealed within the dungeon, roots still clinging to earth, like a potted plant ready for transport.
Until dawn, the mass withering continued. Vision was extinguished across many regions as the watchtowers, perfectly mimicking trees, succumbed to the same affliction as their imitations. They withered, collapsed, and dissolved into black smoke.
The Amazons who had participated in last night's operation were placed in quarantine by Tarsha. Even those who felt uninjured and saw no need for rest obeyed her orders. The fastest Amazon, who had wrestled the Raven Mask off at close quarters, found herself with a cold that morning. She felt listless, scratching her skin and yawning. She had grown no strange growths and wasn't delirious; she simply felt a bit weary. Another leader might have overlooked this, but the Dungeon Mistress, who knew everything, tensed the moment she noticed.
The isolation wards were segregated even more meticulously, with each person confined to their own room. Food and water were delivered by goblins. Despite these precautions, by evening, every member of the Amazon squad had begun exhibiting cold symptoms, ranging from mild to severe. The first to fall ill didn't sneeze or sniffle; she simply collapsed into bed at eight o'clock that night, unconscious—and she was the night patrol's designated watch.
Tasha sealed all passages to the surface. For at least the next week, she intended to keep everyone inside.
The dungeon could sustain itself, but the problem with the Oak Elder was troublesome. In hibernation, he was simply an oak tree—not medicinal material—and the current herb garden couldn't cultivate him. How long could an oak tree survive without sunlight? Tasha didn't know, nor did she want to find out.
What exactly had the humans used? Some kind of poison gas or virus? But Tasha couldn't fathom how an enemy with such primitive technology—lacking even aircraft—dared wage chemical warfare. A gas easily dispersed by wind was hardly a viable weapon. And if they'd used it at high concentrations, like the current ground operations, weren't they afraid a strong wind blowing in the wrong direction would carry the poison right back to them?
The specters roamed the ground, watching the entire Angars Forest gradually fall. Tasha could only control a limited number of specters simultaneously, and possessing the wolf-headed form already stretched her to the limit with two. Two spirits followed the expanding lines of decay. This unknown phenomenon spread beyond the forest. One spirit traced the advancing withering line outward, discovering distant trenches.
Between Angars Forest and the human settlement lay an endless trench stretching as far as the eye could see. This strip, over two meters wide, was scorched black, seemingly burned. Human garrisons stood opposite the trench, weapons trained toward the forest.
Tasha couldn't immediately grasp the purpose of this structure until the line of decay reached it. The scorched yellow spread across the grass blades, spreading, spreading, until it halted at the edge of the trench.
Is this a quarantine zone? Tasha thought in shock. How could a quarantine zone block the "poison gas"?
"The Withered Covenant!" Victor blurted out. "They're still here?"
"What is that?" Tasha asked.
"A cult born from the Druids—their sworn enemies. Their deeds match their name," Victor replied.
Setting aside the Abyss and the Celestial Realm, the Druids' mortal enemies were not the necromancer faction of the Bone Tower, nor the humans who destroyed trees—it was the Withered Covenant, the scourge born from their own ranks.
Every group harbors diverse factions, and the Druids' doctrine of revering nature was interpreted in many ways. One radical faction believes that all things have birth and death, with life merely a process and death the true fulfillment. Thus, withering is nature's ultimate end. When this world begins to twist and rot, only complete, utter decay can bring it rebirth—and one can easily imagine what the Withered Covenant, interpreting the doctrine this way, would do.
There's no worse enemy than a former ally turned traitor. The former druids of the Withered Covenant embrace decay as their creed. Their spells, derived from druidic traditions yet designed to counter druids, combined with the aid of high-level necromancers, produce curses that become the natural enemies of all nature-based magic, flora, and fauna. During the relative peace between the Celestial Realm and the Abyss, the Withered Covenant actively sought to become the ultimate villains on the mortal plane.
Alas, they declined before achieving their goal.
Though the Withered Covenant targeted druids, their influence extended far beyond them. The good-aligned unicorn clan protected the natural life of their habitats; the neutral wood elves lived in harmony with the forests; even the beastmen, leaning toward evil, despised the Covenant—herbivores fled when their grass vanished, leaving carnivores with nothing to eat. Unicorns were revered by good races, the Wood Elf King was a demigod himself, and the Beast God worshipped by orcs was the least restrained among the celestial pantheon—when displeased, he'd unleash divine retribution without warning. Before Victor lost contact with the surface, the Withered Covenant had been driven into hiding by a multi-pronged assault, nearly vanishing from existence.
"The Withered Covenant's curse spreads through air currents, infecting living beings upon direct contact. It then propagates through infected plants, capable of spreading dozens of kilometers unchecked. Land covered by these plants remains barren for years, incapable of yielding crops." "Well, the watchtower itself wouldn't have been a problem. But you carry a natural aura. A watchtower cloaked in that aura essentially becomes a tree when mimicking woodland camouflage," Victor explained. "I assumed they'd been dealt with long ago. Even if not, humans shouldn't have been traveling alongside such a universally despised, evil group..."
That long trench, combined with the bare, grassless rock face bordering the forest, severed the curse's path to human settlements. For hundreds of kilometers toward the forest lay a desolate wasteland inhabited only by humanity's enemies.
Victor recounted this lengthy history merely to deflect blame, explaining why he'd only now recalled the matter. Yet as Tashar listened, his mind drifted to other questions.
Where were the races that once hunted the Withered Covenant?
The Celestial Realm and the Abyss had severed ties with this land. Without the Beast God, perhaps the beastmen had been defeated in their clashes with humans. Like scattered nomads in history, they might have vanished entirely or been reduced to slaves traded across borders. The Druids, severed from the Heart of Nature and their lineage broken, struggled to survive, hiding in the shadows. But what of the Unicorns, revered for their immense magical power? What of the Elves, whose archery surpassed even the Amazons, blessed with longevity and led by demigods?
Tasha realized her past understanding of Erian might have been significantly flawed.
She had forged a pact with Victor, the former Archfiend said to be thousands of years old, heard the recollections of the centuries-old Oak Elder, and witnessed the signing of the Erian Declaration with her own eyes. The information pieced together from these figures and events painted a picture of a diverse, fantastical world. Combined with the films and television she had seen in the past, Tasha's impression of present-day Erian was this—
The races of the Material Plane united to sever the pathways to the Celestial Spheres and the Abyss. Afterward, the powerful races withdrew into seclusion, leaving behind a fractured alliance of races of comparable strength. These factions pursued their own interests, constantly forming alliances or waging war. Ultimately, humanity emerged victorious, driving out the other races and branding them with shame. This led to the current situation where the human empire reigns supreme, oppressing non-human races within its borders.
But upon closer reflection, this notion seemed a bit too self-evident.
If viewed as the backdrop for some movie, Tasha wouldn't find it odd. When all the screenwriters and directors on Earth were human, what was surprising about humans winning? But this was another world, where humans were neither the most numerous nor the most powerful race.
Tasha had once been one of them, and she'd quite enjoyed being human. The evolutionary history of human civilization was something to be proud of. If she encountered technology more advanced than Earth's in this world, Tasha wouldn't be surprised humans emerged victorious. Yet the common folk here seemed to live in an era before the Industrial Revolution, and the military standards fell far short of World War I—more akin to 16th or 17th century soldiers equipped with a couple of strange, black-tech gadgets.
What had transpired between the alliance of terrestrial races and the rise of the Human Empire as the dominant power? Where had the more powerful races gone? Had they truly gone into seclusion? If so, why? If not, why did they stand idly by, watching everything unfold?
Tasha had once believed that whether it was hunting down the Artisan Dwarves and the Werewolf Maiden, or raiding the Amazons, these were merely localized conflicts driven by self-interest. There was no right or wrong, no extermination—only the pursuit of gain. She imagined this as a fantasy world with superpowers, speculating that the mages and sages Victor spoke of were like the wandering adventurers she'd seen in dreams—regulated by Erian's government, settled near the capital. That's why such remote places remained untouched. Once society stabilized, confining these thrilling yet dangerous individuals seemed entirely plausible.
Ultimately, Tasha remained shackled by the concepts of her past world. This realm simply couldn't be measured by the scientific laws she knew.
Humans would willingly deploy dimension-damaging magic cannons to exterminate the Amazonians. They would use such toxic, mass-destruction weapons to eradicate every trace, even knowing that victory would leave them with nothing but a wasteland. This bears no resemblance to the relatively peaceful, interest-driven relations between modern Earth nations. In present-day Erian, the relationship between humans and the creatures they deem alien species seems doomed to mutual destruction—so toxic that they'd rather harm others than benefit themselves.
The situation is far worse than Tasha imagined.
However, humanity also misjudged the circumstances.
First, they wielded weapons modified by the Covenant of Growth and Decay's magic, yet lacked the immunity to infection granted to its members. Second, Tasha was no druid as they assumed; natural energies were merely tools to her, and she had no qualms exploiting them now.
She possessed none of a druid's pity for the world; her principles lay elsewhere. When it came to the question of whether to harm others for personal gain in war, Tasha's answer mirrored that of most humans.
The goblins swung their claws as the dungeon expanded relentlessly toward the human town, reaching the trenches below. Lookout towers, camouflaged as weeds, silently grew over the trenches. These dungeon constructs, imbued with the essence of nature, were, as Victor had said, similar to ordinary plants.
The withered yellow spread from one end of the trench to the small watchtower, extending to the next before the previous one faded away. Like a bridge collapsing swiftly, these plant watchtowers carried the curse of the Withered Covenant across to the other side of the trench.