Nightmare Forest (1)

Trees and thickets plastered with purple leaves welcomed Kang-hoo’s party.

In fact, there was no separate name here called Nightmare Forest. People only called it Area 7.

But perhaps because the Chinese hunters who had visited here experienced too much hardship, they gave it a nickname.

That name was Nightmare Forest, and afterward, among East Asians, the nickname Nightmare Forest was used more often than the official name Area 7.

At least near the base camp, which was flatland without thickets and trees, the view was open and the sky could be seen clearly.

But from the moment they entered Nightmare Forest, something like wavering demonic energy wrapped around the surroundings.

Even the sky seen when looking up inside Nightmare Forest was not a clear sky, but a purplish sky.

Their vision had already been engulfed by Nightmare Forest’s unique yogi.

It wasn’t that their eyesight had a problem; it was the property of the air that made up the inside.

Once the full-scale entry began, it would be difficult to chat leisurely like now.

So Kang-hoo finally pointed out the essentials to Ayane and Park Dong-jae. It was a proposition they must never forget.

“Ayane. No matter what, only keep your eyes above the mid-trunk level of the trees. And together with Dong-jae, prioritize targeting the acetic-acid bats.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Got it, hyung. You’re saying that’s priority number one, even before refreshing your buffs?”

“Yeah. Even if my buffs drop, it won’t be a problem, but if the acetic-acid bats get close, everyone could get hurt.”

“Confirmed.”

“Keep it in mind. Even if it looks like I’m about to die, the thing you must pay attention to first is the acetic-acid bats.”

Kang-hoo emphasized it repeatedly.

Acetic-acid bats.

This bastard had its own sharp claws, but that was not what made it threatening.

Even so, what Kang-hoo was wary of was the “after-effect” it poured out when it died.

At the moment it died, all bodily fluids throughout its body turned into acetic acid, and it melted and died in that state.

When that happened, naturally, the acetic-acid bodily fluid that had melted its body would have no choice but to splatter in all directions.

If exposed to acetic acid that melted everything it touched, no matter how much of a hunter you were, there was no way to endure it.

Unless you wrapped your whole body in something like Shell of Blackwood, melting to death was guaranteed.

For that reason, many hunters had been sacrificed in Nightmare Forest so far, but they couldn’t properly find the bodies.

For a hunter who died to that thing, it was hard to recover even a small bone fragment—no traces remained.

Even picking up some fragments would be fortunate.

Once it touched the body even once, the body melted as if triggering a chain reaction, so there was no answer.

Unless you predicted the path in advance and amputated the body before it melted more areas, it was difficult.

‘Acetic-acid bats are perfectly Ayane’s domain. Since I’ve entrusted it, I should switch off worrying about it now.’

Kang-hoo lowered his gaze slightly.

If Ayane just caught the acetic-acid bats well, she was definitely paying her share for coming here.

In fact, it was work that couldn’t be done without Ayane. If she hadn’t been here, Kang-hoo also wouldn’t have dared to come to Nightmare Forest.

Bang!

Ayane’s muzzle spewed fire at once. As soon as an acetic-acid bat was found, she pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Pop!

Before it even noticed Ayane, the acetic-acid bat that was first exposed to the snipe burst and died on the spot.

At that moment.

Kkii-eeek! Eukkii-eeek!

The acetic-acid bats that were together beside it were exposed to the acetic acid in a chain and quickly melted to death with screams.

The speed was so fast it was like watching soft-serve ice cream left under the blazing sun in midsummer.

That speed was no exception even when it was a human body; once exposed, it took at most a dozen or so seconds for the whole body to melt.

“I can’t pass up the experience!”

BANG!

Ayane also carefully fired a mana-shot at another bat that was dying from acetic-acid exposure.

You gained more experience if you killed it by direct hit than if you killed the monster through indirect exposure.

Hybrids were beings outside dungeons, but in broad classification, they were monsters.

So, like dungeon monsters, they granted experience and dropped items and magic stones.

From Ayane’s perspective, the desire to raise her contribution was not a choice but a necessity. It was only natural.

Kang-hoo first opened the engagement by sending a clone ahead as reconnaissance.

It was a crude form, but inside Nightmare Forest there were quite a few traps made by hybrids.

So they needed a means of luring that would directly trigger traps to provoke a reaction, and a clone was perfect for that.

Sasaseot! Saseot!

The clone advanced forward while moving in a dizzying zigzag.

There didn’t seem to be any traps revealed by Kang-hoo’s mana tracking ability, but it wouldn’t hurt to cross-verify.

Then.

“Hm.”

Kang-hoo discovered an insect crawling up along a tree trunk visible nearby, and—

He used the Abduction skill for the first time in a while.

The insect was pulled in immediately without any resistance. It was a white worm about the size of a human forearm, with deep wrinkles.

Its official name was Coward Bug.

To explain it simply by appearance, you could say it was a giant white caterpillar.

The kind of appearance that, if some survival expert saw it, they would go, It’s a festival! and call it a good protein source.

Kkishing. Kkising.

The Coward Bug trembled left and right as it made a fear-filled sound.

Unlike its heavy appearance, it had no attack or defense ability at all.

This one was also called a mutant-type hybrid, but it was the only one here with no threat.

Thwok!

Kang-hoo drove his dagger into the upper part of the Coward Bug’s head and tore it open straight to both sides.

Then thick ichor flowed out. Kang-hoo took out a small cup he had stored in subspace and collected it.

The first to drink was himself.

The taste was more sour than makgeolli, and the texture had a wriggling thickness that made it slightly hard to swallow.

To compare it to experience, it felt like drinking lemon juice and snot together. It was bizarre, but exactly that.

Soon, Kang-hoo handed the ichor he extracted further to Park Dong-jae and Ayane as well.

Ayane, who received it first, downed a cup in one go and—

“Mmm, it’s tasty?”

—said, then nonchalantly passed it to Park Dong-jae.

Had he been tempted by that?

Thinking that it would be a tasty liquid unlike its appearance, Park Dong-jae gulped the contents down at once, and then…….

“Kkeugagagak!”

He couldn’t come to his senses for quite a while, rolling his eyes back as he caused a self-electrocution on the spot.

He had been fooled by Ayane’s masterful acting.

Only after seeing Park Dong-jae’s impressively solid reaction did Ayane also twist her whole body as she expressed the aftershock.

Even if you conceded a hundred times, the taste was not something you could eat at all, but for the three of them it was a must-have liquid.

The reason was the effects that would be caused by “Sorrow Tree,” the gatekeeper guarding Nightmare Forest.

Soon.

A wind called Sorrow Wind would blow from deep within Nightmare Forest.

This thing’s characteristic was that it was a debuff skill in the form of wind.

It steadily shaved down toughness and magic resistance evenly, and each time it did, one debuff stack accumulated.

A stack was a game-style expression meaning that a used skill or some effect overlapped.

Since it was a widely used expression even in the original work, it was a familiar expression in this world now that it had become reality.

Anyway, when the Sorrow Wind stack, the debuff stack, reached 10 afterward, the “Sorrow” debuff effect that fixed stats would activate.

Toughness and magic resistance stats would be fixed at 50. It ignored everything, even if you had any buffs or items on.

At 50, it was a stat you could consider as essentially having no resistance ability, so it was the same as being bare-skinned.

Sorrow Wind wasn’t blowing yet, but the murky air caused by Sorrow Tree was encroaching on their bronchi.

This wasn’t a debuff yet, but if exposed continuously it could swell the airway and cause breathing difficulty.

So it was very important to eat the ichor extracted from the Coward Bug’s head. It was a natural protective agent.

But this fact had not been made public to hunters at all yet.

So hunters who came to Nightmare Forest would always, as time passed,

complain of breathing difficulty caused by airway constriction, suffering without knowing why, and then leave the site.

“It feels like my airway is getting coated.”

“It really feels like the scratchy feeling is gone, huh?”

Ayane and Park Dong-jae, who were sensitive to changes, reacted immediately. It was also what Kang-hoo wanted.

If they ingested the ichor periodically like this, they wouldn’t have to suffer from sudden breathing difficulty.

After that.

They kept advancing.

At first, Ayane was busy.

Acetic-acid bats popped out in surprise attacks every so often when you forgot about them, so there was no time to lower her guard.

Kang-hoo ensured the route’s safety while moving by using clones to remove traps found from time to time.

And from a certain point, he also began responding to the Sorrow Wind that started blowing from the front.

Just as he already knew.

The moment they were hit by the wind, their stats were shaved down.

It was a fatal stat loss for a buffer like Park Dong-jae, who had low stats related to magic resistance and toughness.

In fact, if they had set up a protective barrier in front from the start, they could have avoided exposure to the single stream of Sorrow Wind blowing in.

But there was a reason they didn’t do that.

Keugeugeu…… Keugeugeu…….

It was because of the tree hybrids that were ready to target outsiders from all directions at any time.

They recognized a target in the Sorrow Wind debuff state not as an enemy, but as one of their own.

But if there was no debuff, after a certain amount of time passed, they regarded it as an enemy and began attacking.

Just as Kang-hoo used the Apostle of Silence skill when dealing with undead-type monsters so they would recognize him as one of their own.

Now too, he was deliberately exposing himself to Sorrow Wind to disguise himself as if he were a member of Nightmare Forest.

And when the Sorrow Wind stack reached 9, only then was it planned that they would not be exposed to Sorrow Wind for 70 seconds.

Then the debuff reset and climbed again from stack 1.

The reason they deliberately stacked Sorrow Wind up to 9 was because only then did the hybrids recognize them more as allies.

The lower the Sorrow Wind stack, the higher the probability of giving off a “smell of an outsider,” so strategically raising the debuff was also important.

There was only one thing here!

As long as they prevented it from becoming 10 stacks, the “Sorrow” effect that fixed toughness and magic resistance to 50 would never be completed.

“The trees are definitely quiet.”

“Yeah. Even in the pre-briefing, they said the problem here was the trees that go f*cking berserk the moment they see hunters.”

Within the repertoire Kang-hoo had laid out, Park Dong-jae and Ayane marveled at the flow in which safety was perfectly guaranteed.

A tactic of not unconditionally rejecting debuffs, but using them as clever camouflage.

It was a strategy that was hard to come up with unless you were Kang-hoo. It meant he knew Nightmare Forest that well.

But what was puzzling was—

Kang-hoo’s head had so much prior knowledge about a place he had never once been to that it seemed excessive.

No matter how much they watched and thought, they couldn’t figure that out. Did he have prophetic dreams that told the future or something?

Advance.

And advance again.

While Ayane steadily suppressed the acetic-acid bats that appeared from time to time.

Before they knew it, Kang-hoo’s party could arrive at a point with about half the remaining distance to the final point they had targeted in Nightmare Forest.

Up until now, Kang-hoo had been opening the path and searching, focusing on a support role of exploiting Sorrow Wind in reverse.

But from here, it was the moment Kang-hoo’s importance grew again. No—without Kang-hoo, it wouldn’t work.

At the same time, it was also the point when a large number of mutant hybrids that most hunters wouldn’t even dare to face appeared.

The greatest obstacle inside Nightmare Forest, also called “Scorching Hell.”

Fwoosh! Fwoosh!

A hell of fire was right in front of them.