"… Leeches?"
She said with a pale face.
"Yeah, you know those worm-like insects that suck blood."
"I know what leeches are!! Why? What did I do wrong? Where are the regular carnivorous or poisonous plants? Why it had to be insects?"
She yelled at the verge of tears
"They are trees tho…"
"But leech trees!!"
"Hope… you are getting sidetracked… we have to move, and these trees are dangerous."
"Can we change their name at least? I don't like insects…"
She asked as we started to walk in between the trees. At this point in our travel, there was enough distance between the trees, so there were no significant problems to walk in between them, but I could see that deeper into the forest the number of trees increased to the point that it will be difficult to move in between them as we are doing it now…
"They don't have a name… I just said about the leeches to explain what they do…"
I said continuing the conversation.
"Let's call them Hematrees!"
She is completely ignoring me. I have to give it to her, the name was unexpected. It might not seem like something important because her core hasn't changed, but this kind of details showed me that she was slowly maturing.
"I thought you were going to call them vampire trees… you used to like that stuff …"
"It was a phase, they are way cooler than leeches anyway. Ouch!"
As we were walking, she suddenly screamed and tripped. I moved in time to catch her from the arm and prevent her from falling.
"Be careful."
"It's not that… I stepped on a root."
I looked at her feet and healed it. She lost her sneakers during the cow's attack, so she has been walking barefooted for a while now.
"Why didn't you ask me for shoes?"
"Well you carried me most of the way, and the soil was soft that I didn't have any problem with it. Also, I didn't want you to waste your precious points on it. You already got me a jacket and a blanket."
"What's your shoe size?"
"37." (A/N: US 7)
I looked at the system and got a pair of leather boots that reached a little under her knees. I added a pair of socks with a childish imprint to annoy her, but she actually liked them.
As she put on her new boots that I randomly picked from the system. I had a little idea and got a pair of leather gloves. I waited for a little for Hope to be ready.
"Hey, this feels nice… do you think you can get ones with metal inside to slide on them?"
Hope walked around and jumped a little to try them. She seemed to like them.
"Ok, I want to test something, be ready to help me again if it doesn't work."
She turned serious and nodded as I got near the leaves again this time with the gloves on… in a quick movement I touched a leaf without problems and brought my hand back.
"it worked?
"It seems like it did… I will do it again, but for a little longer, I will whistle while I do it if you think there is something wrong help me."
"Okay."
Any interruption while I whistle will mean that something happened, so it was a good way for her to know if something was wrong. I touched the leaf again, but this time I didn't withdraw my finger.
*Whistle*
The soft whistle was the only sound in the forest and was only interrupted by the occasional thunder from the storm that we could see in the distance.
I thought that it was enough at that the experiment was a success. It was as if my finger was completely isolated from the leaf, but when I was about to withdraw my finger back…
"Ugh!"
Hope who was ready at my side acted fast helped me get my hand back.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, the leather doesn't stop them completely, it only delays the effect."
I said while showing her a darker spot in the fingertip of the gloves.
"Is that blood?"
"Yes, the leaf didn't penetrate the leather, but somehow it can suck the blood after a while."
I healed my finger.
Despite not being perfect the leather worked to a certain level, so I got an extra layer of clothes for both of us to cross this place… the whole set was priced at 50 each, even if it didn't make us immune to them it will still protect us and was better than having nothing on us.
"We have to be on the move the whole time if we stop and touch a root or a leaf for too long the hematrees will start to suck our blood so try to not stay on the same place unless we are sure that there is nothing dangerous there.
"Why don't we try another way? This place is dangerous."
"From what I saw outside this is our best shot. After we cross this forest, we should be in the area that works in a similar way to the fourth stomach and after that is our way out."
"Okay let's go."
Thanks to our new clothes there wasn't another situation like the one that Hope suffered before. From time to time we have to go under low branches or jump roots. What surprised us more was that the soil until now only had the trees. As we get deeper into the forest, some flowers started to appear. They had white petals with thin red stripes and dark red stems.
I couldn't see the end of the forest yet as it became more and leafier. I was worried because of it, but there has to be a path to the fourth stomach somewhere here or after the forest.
As we advanced the forest also changed. The appearance of the flowers was followed by bushes that looked similar to the trees. The trees also started to change, in the beginning, all of them seemed the same, but now I could see different types of trees.
Pines, oaks, firs, and others that I have no idea what are they called, did their best to slow us down with their high density. Some of them had the white flowers between their leaves and others were bleeding as if they were wounded. The dark red of the blood had a high contrast against the white trunks, but the characteristic smell of blood didn't appear as I expected.
The different shades of red and the white contrast gave a horrific yet marvelous sight.
We finally were forced to stop under an Oak. Unlike me, Hope didn't have a high endurance or stamina, so she needed to rest. There was a patch of soil without flowers of branches that we used to stop and rest.
Hope was breathing fast because of the tiredness.
*Growl*
It was a wild beast that appeared… I got water and a couple of protein bars for us to eat in the break. I threw one to hope, and she almost choked as she swallowed it, to which I respond passing her a bottle of water.
"Eat slow, the protein bar is not going anywhere."
She drank the water as I ate my own bar. After a while, I gave her the other half of mine. Because of my ability, I wasn't hungry. I totally forgot that she hasn't eaten anything since we left Green Shelter. We were supposed to eat in the break at the edge of the city, but the cow's army was waiting there, and we were forced to skip lunch, add to that the fact that she has been fighting, and using her powers for a while already. There is no surprise that she was starving.
As we finished our break and after giving Hope another bar she was ready to continue…
"What are we going to do now?"
Hope was worriedly looking to the direction where we were going.
"We will have to continue forward as before… we have no choice…"
I followed her gaze understanding what she meant by that.
It wasn't only the fact that the numbers of trees kept increasing leaving us with fewer places to move.
In front of us, we noticed that to the flora that we had somehow already gotten used to had new additions.
Red branches with white leaves…
The climbing plants that appeared around the trunks of the trees left us with less space to move around as they were hanging down from the branches of the trees.
But the appearance of the climbing plants wasn't as troublesome as the other one.
Starting a couple meters ahead an endless carpet of red grass covered the remaining of the forest.