Isla seemed to have made up her mind, "If you need help with your task, Sila and I are willing to join".
Harold had faintly expected that the two would agree, but he hasn't even said anything about the rewards yet, and they had already asked to join. His gaze flickered over Sila, who sat behind Isla from start to finish. Seeing her eyes showing interest when the rest of the group had started speaking about their experience during the trip, he understood. 'It seems the older one is willing to follow the whims of the younger' he thought.
"Well since you've been so kind as to offer, we would happily accept some extra help" Harold replied kindly.
With the solemn conversation out of the way, the group decided to set off for the suspicious area.
During the trip there the group dealt with many short eyed silver ranked beasts. The stronger ones seemed to know that a dangerous group was journeying through the area, so they had hidden themselves early on, so as not to cause an unwanted catastrophe.
When the group finally reached the outskirts of the suspicious area, the golden unit gasped. What was originally an area too normal to be normal, just a matter of days before they left, has taken on a much gloomier appearance.
According to Rale, the woods were originally too dense to allow sunlight in, so he used his agility to maneuver up the trees to try and see if he could see anything from a higher point, and during that time the woods were no different from the surrounding area. If he had to say anything, perhaps it was a little darker.
But now the group looked in front of the and saw only a creepy darkness. Not entirely black, just enough to notice the twisted and jagged branches hanging from the rotted trunks.
A smell of decay reached their noses, causing Harold who was in front to frown deeply.
"How did it manage to become like this? " he said in a whisper, not as if he was asking the others, more just wondering to himself.
Isla and Sila had always had a keen sense of danger, but the strange thing was they felt no sense of dread from this obviously unnatural environment. They finally understood what Harold meant when he described it as too normal. Even in this situation, they felt nothing, which was the most dangerous thing. The two were clueless as tk the reason, but a chill crept up their spines when they realised.
Casting a glance at each other, whether they wanted to continue to participate or not. Isla showed a little worry, while Sila tried to gesture that it was alright.
"Andir, try to light the area up" Harold spoke.
Seeing that the task was still going forward, everyone watched intently as Andir raised his staff. A ball of light was conjured from the top of the staff, and flew slowly into the darkened area.
The group followed the ball of light with their eyes, trying to use the radius of brightness it emitted to find anything that could explain the unusual circumstances.
Isla and Sila watched the ball, but they saw nothing. They were a little disappointed, until they heard a faint rustling sound from the direction where the ball of light was.
Staring around the light, they still couldn't see anything, but as the ball progressed in further, they could still hear the rustling sound.
They looked around, but the group only stared at the light ball, not showing any interest to the rustling coming from around it.
The two looked at each other with some confusion, before Isla tentatively asked "Did you hear that noise?"
Everyone was busy focusing on the ball of light when they heard Isla's question. They all looked at each other and Edrii asked "What noise?"
"There's a rustling coming from around the ball of light. It's very faint, but it's coming from all around it" Isla said with certainty.
The group was shocked, seeing that Sila was nodding to agree, Harold asked Andir to fire off another ball, but when the twins heard the rustling again, expand the ball as much as he could.
Andir conjured another ball of light and everyone watched it with bated breath. They tried listening to hear anything, but once again they couldn't hear anything.
Isla and Sila began to hear the rustling coming from right in front of the ball of light, just out of the range of light, but they waited until they could hear it coming from all directions.
"Now" they whispered.
Andir expanded the light radiating from the ball as much as he could, which directly exposed countless vines twisting together like snakes.
The light seemed to have surprised them, for a moment they paused, before exploding towards the ball of light, trying to extinguish it.
The coiling vines terrified the group. If they had walked in to the woods with the light to guide them, then they would definitely be overpowered by those vines.
"I'm certain that when we were here last, there were no vines around us" Rale spoke.
The others agreed, but looking at the thickness of the vines, they were definitely not young.
The vines that were trashing violently at the light seemed to understand that their actions were pointless, and began to retreat further into the depths of the dark forest.
The group stood in place looking at the area where the vines had retracted. The darkness perfectly hiding what they knew was there waiting for them to enter.
"Those vines don't seem to be controlled by anything. More like a defence against whatever enters the territory" Harold guessed.
Everyone agreed. But they knew the vines still had some ability. They knew to keep silent when approaching, as if they were stalking. It wasn't until they were exposed that they reacted so violently.
However with only that primitive hunting ability, the vines didn't seem to be much trouble.
Andir knew that he was the best choice for dealing with such a large area of vines, so he said, "Leave this to me".