Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 199: [Extra - ] Ch197. [Dark Forest]

Chapter 199: [Extra Chapter] Ch197. [Dark Forest]

The journey to the [Dark Forest] began at dawn, under a sky tinged with crimson. Cass led the group through the winding backroads of the eastern territories, their caravan flanked by armored transport golems and a half-dozen mounted scouts from Shooting Star.

The terrain grew harsher with every passing mile, gravel turned to jagged stone, dirt to twisted rootwork, and the air thickened with the scent of moss and old decay.

Along the way, they fought off a pack of spectral hounds that stalked them through the lowland fog and narrowly escaped a sinkhole masked by illusion magic that claimed one of their supply carts.

The deeper they pushed, the more the world shifted. Trees grew in impossible spirals, bark weeping a black resin that hissed when touched. At night, whispers echoed from the canopy, voices too quiet to follow, but too close to ignore.

Elise barely slept, Riven stopped smiling, and Cass... She never dropped her guard. By the time the first broken ward stone marked the forest’s edge, their boots were caked in mud, their potions half-gone, and their nerves worn thin.

But they had arrived. Scarred, hungry, and exhausted, but alive.

***

The sky was a pale gold when Cass and her team crested the ridge overlooking the entrance to the [Dark Forest].

It didn’t look like a dungeon.

It looked like the mouth of an ancient god.

Towering trees with bark blackened like scorched obsidian stood in twisted formation, their branches rising like arms, gnarled and pointing to the heavens. Fog drifted low over the roots, and the earth itself seemed darker around the perimeter.

The air hummed faintly with mana, a quiet, coiled pressure that made the skin prickle.

"Well..." Jake said, breaking the silence. "At least we found the front door."

Cass nodded, scanning the ridge and the distant clearing below where the other guild members were already moving.

Victor Hale had beaten them there.

The Shooting Star Guild had carved out a rough semi-circle clearing at the tree line. Tents were going up, enchanters etched glyphs into the dirt, arcanists and scouts arranged traps in wide radiuses.

Everything moved with precision.

Cass felt a chill as she looked past it all into the forest beyond, the memories of her first – and only – raid into the [Dark Forest] still hammering at her memory.

"We need to report to Victor first." She said.

They descended quickly, armor barely rustling. Elise kept her bow loosely in hand, her eyes flicking toward every shadow that shifted.

Victor was standing near the edge of the camp, overseeing a team laying sigil arrays in a rough lattice. His armor gleamed even under the early light, his expression hard but focused.

"You made good time." He said, not looking away from the array. "Cass, Riven, Jake, Alric, Elise."

"Sir." Cass said, offering a nod.

"You’ll set up with the second-strike team." Victor gestured to the southern flank. "We’re holding until the forward scouts return. Expect resistance once the arrays flare, they always bring attention."

"Understood."

The team moved quickly, picking out a patch of high ground under the shade of a massive, dead-barked tree. Within minutes, their tent was raised, their gear unpacked, and their perimeter etched.

Jake tossed a few stones in a ring and struck the tinder for a campfire. The scent of dried meat and spice from ration packs soon filled the air.

They ate in a quiet rhythm, half-listening to the chatter around them. Guildmates running mana calibration tests, setting proximity alarms, murmuring about the nature of the forest.

"I hate how quiet it is." Elise said after a while.

"Forests aren’t supposed to be silent." Alric agreed. "Even dead forests have birds, bugs, anything."

"Nothing here, though." Riven’s hand lingered near his sword. "Just watching trees."

And then they heard it.

A single crack. Not a snap of wood, not a voice.

It sounded like a bone breaking.

Jake was on his feet first, with Cass following a second later. Shapes shifted in the mist, and shadows slithered between the roots.

An alarm glyph flared to life at the edge of the camp, with others answered it. One by one, the traps detonated.

Blue flame, crimson light, screams.

From the dark, they came.

Not beasts, not monsters.

Things.

Twisted shapes of fur and metal, limbs too long, mouths in the wrong places, eyes that blinked sideways. They moved like puppets on invisible strings. Half-animal, half-machine, all nightmare.

"Positions!" Victor’s voice boomed across the field. "Do not let them into the heart of the camp!"

Cass dropped to a knee beside Jake and Elise, her hand flashing over the bow strapped at her back, runes burning faintly blue along its body.

"Time to see what this beauty can do." Jake muttered, placing a hand over the breast of his chainmail while summoning his daggers. They snapped into his grip with a satisfying click, edges pulsing faintly.

Alric and Riven flanked Cass as the creatures surged forward, claws flashing.

The first wave hit the outer lines, but the glyphs held. The traps slowed them, but not for long.

One of the monstrosities leapt high, clearing the defenses. Cass spun and cleaved its side with her glaive, the impact releasing a pulse of heat that threw it sideways, black ichor sizzling as it hit the warded ground.

"Watch left!" Elise shouted, letting two arrows fly in quick succession. Both found targets in a twisted creature’s throat, the shaft whispering past Cass’s ear. "These things were not supposed to be here!"

"This one doesn’t bleed right!" Jake said, ducking beneath a claw. He drove his dagger into the thing’s underbelly, twisted, and it tumbled sideways.

"No, but they die all the same!" Alric grunted, smashing his shield into another.

More of them broke through, though.

They came in pairs now, trios, misshapen packs. Their teeth gnashing, screams rising.

Cass found herself surrounded. She turned low, sweeping her glaive in a tight circle. A burst of wind followed the strike, slicing the legs out from under the nearest creature. Another lunged from the side, and she let it come, stepped in, and twisted its head off with the shaft.

Alric, behind her, spun and unleashed a flare from his sword, driving a cluster of beasts back.

"Status?" Cass barked.

"Holding!" Jake said, panting.

"For now." Riven added. "They’re testing us."

Cass looked up at the trees, the forest pulsed, and deeper within, something howled.

The camp shuddered.