Chapter 62

What remained in the place where the ‘Swamp Predator’ had erupted was a nauseating stench, a brief silence, and a tense atmosphere between the two shadowed groups. They had fought back to back to save each other’s lives moments ago, but a sharp wariness toward one another still lingered in their eyes.

“Let’s go. Deeper.”

At Hector’s words, Cypher nodded without a word. Instead of tending to his men’s bodies, he tore small sigils from their belts and tucked them into his cloak. The Ghosts were denied graves or even names. Their existence would remain only in the memory of the Shadow Minister.

The allied expedition began to move again. The first battle had exacted a costly toll, but it also taught them a valuable lesson. To survive this hellish swamp, they would have to use each other and, at times, rely on one another.

The swamp bared its teeth more openly the deeper they went. The mud rose past their ankles to their thighs, and the fog thickened until it was hard to see an arm’s length ahead. Worst of all was a strange sound that began to haunt them from somewhere.

“…sob… sob…”

At first they thought it was the wind. But the sound grew clearer and clearer. It sounded like a woman’s sob, like a lost child’s cry. The sound seemed to echo across the foggy swamp with no discernible origin.

“Damn, what is that sound?”

A member of Shadow Blade muttered nervously. His face had gone pale and drawn.

“Focus! It’s an auditory hallucination!”

Hector shouted sharply, but cold sweat beaded on his forehead as well. That sound was no mere hallucination. It burrowed into the soul itself, dredging up the deepest hidden grief and longing, like a demon’s lullaby.

“…Mother…?”

One of Valerian’s youngest Ghosts, dazed, muttered and began to walk into the mist.

“Snap out of it, you idiot!”

Cypher lashed out with dark energy like a whip, wrapping the youth’s ankle and yanking him back. The young man rolled on the ground, and only then seemed to come to his senses, panting in terror.

“Everyone, cast mental defense Magic! The moment you succumb to that sound, we’ll become food for this swamp!”

At Cypher’s command, the Ghosts channeled dark energy in unison, forming protective barriers around their minds. Hector ordered his men to activate the Magic amulets Rian had issued for mental stabilization.

They followed the weeping sound, almost hypnotized. How long they walked, none could say. At last they arrived at the heart of the swamp—a colossal tree rising like an island in the middle of a vast lake.

It was the so-called ‘Weeping Tree.’

The tree was unimaginably massive. The ancient trunk, seemingly hundreds or thousands of years old, had gone ashen and lifeless, its branches twisted grotesquely toward the sky. And from every branch hung dozens of corpses like ripe fruit. Men, women, children, even the bodies of monstrous creatures. Their faces were frozen as if in a final, agonized scream.

The sobbing came from the mouths of those very corpses. The tree fed on the souls of the dead, using their final screams as bait to lure new victims, a giant angler.

“Oh, my god…”

No matter how battle-hardened they were, they were speechless at the blasphemous sight before them.

“That tree… is the center of this swamp.”

Cypher whispered with a mix of horror and exhilaration.

“That tree must be the ultimate defensive mechanism the Dragon’s Heart created to protect itself. We must get past that tree if we want the treasure.”

Hector didn’t even bother to correct his rambling. Something else caught his eye. In the massive trunk, at the roots, there was an artificial cave entrance. Around that entrance, black spores swelled up like living organisms.

That place was the farm, the very heart, of the Ashen Worm cult.

They were about to step toward the tree. The eyes of the corpses hanging on the tree snapped open at once. Hollow pupils glowed red as they fixed upon the party.

“Kraaaargh!”

The screams that burst forth from dozens of mouths at once struck them like a powerful psychic assault unlike anything before. At the same time, the corpses began snapping their own necks, turning into rotten chunks of flesh and falling into the lake below.

Splash! Splash!

The surface of the black lake bubbled, and the corpses began to rise again from within. Their bodies were mired in swamp mud, and crude weapons woven from bone and branches were clutched in their hands.

“Prepare yourselves.”

Hector drew his sword.

“It’s time for the second act of hell to begin.”

The army of the dead advanced toward the living, singing a chilling lullaby.