My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 63

Chapter : 125

The Guild Hall was its usual cacophony. The stares were still there, the whispers still followed him – "The drab duckling again?" "Heard he actually did bring back some cursed wool… lucky fool." – but Lloyd ignored them, his focus on the sprawling noticeboard.

He scanned past the high-risk monster hunts ("Gryphon menacing the mountain passes – Reward: Duke’s ransom and a very large feather!"), the tedious escort duties ("Protect Mildred’s prize-winning pig to the county fair – Reward: Questionable sausages and eternal gratitude!"), and the truly desperate pleas ("Lost: One slightly singed familiar, answers to 'Sparky'. Sentimental value only.").

His eyes caught on a newer parchment, pinned slightly off-center, written in neat, scholarly script.

[Urgent Request: Ecological Survey – Galla Forest Periphery]

[Region: Sunken Fen Mire (Approx. 3 hours west, bordering Galla Forest)]

[Objective: Investigate reports of unusual flora/fauna behavior and localized disappearances of small game. Collect samples if prudent. Document anomalies. Do NOT enter Galla Forest proper.]

[Reward: 50 Silver Coins upon detailed report submission.]

[Hazard Level: Moderate (Difficult Terrain, Potential Wildlife Encounters, Proximity to Galla Forest – Extreme Caution Advised Regarding Border Zone)]

Lloyd reread it. Sunken Fen Mire. Bordering Galla. Fifty Silver. Half a Gold Coin. Enough for five SC, half his daily conversion needs. The task itself sounded… vague. Ecological survey? Disappearances of small game? "Moderate Risk" seemed plausible for a swampy area near a notoriously cursed forest. The explicit warning about Galla itself was standard Guild boilerplate.

It's not exactly 'slay the dragon and rescue the princess', but fifty silver is fifty silver, Lloyd thought with a mental shrug. And 'investigating unusual flora' sounds considerably less life-threatening than wrestling cursed sheep. Besides, the Galla Forest itself, while terrifying, held a certain grim fascination. He'd heard Faria Kruts speak of seeking the Midnight Serenity flower within its depths. Perhaps this survey on its outskirts might offer some… tangential insights.

He detached the parchment. The same perpetually harassed clerk at the counter barely blinked this time when Lloyd presented it. "Ecological Survey, Sunken Fen Mire, Lord Ferrum? Acknowledged." The clerk stamped the form, his expression suggesting he’d seen stranger requests. "Standard one-week completion. May your observations be… fruitful."

"They usually are," Lloyd replied cryptically, tucking the contract away.

The journey to the Sunken Fen Mire was uneventful, a three-hour trek through increasingly damp, overgrown woodlands. The air grew heavy, humid, thick with the scent of decaying vegetation and the drone of unseen insects. Fang, his lightning aura carefully suppressed, padded silently beside him, a dark grey shadow against the mossy undergrowth.

The Mire itself was a treacherous expanse of stagnant black water, tangled roots forming precarious islands, ancient trees draped in thick moss. The silence here was deeper, broken only by the croak of a bullfrog or the splash of something unseen slipping into the murky depths. The "unusual flora" was immediately apparent – patches of fungi that pulsed with a faint, sickly green light, vines that seemed to writhe with unnatural life, flowers that bloomed in disturbingly vivid, almost violent colors.

Lloyd moved cautiously, collecting samples, making notes, Fang sniffing the air warily. The reports of missing small game seemed accurate; the usual scurry of swamp rats or marsh birds was conspicuously absent. The place felt… wrong. An oppressive stillness lay over it, heavier than just the humid air.

He was examining a particularly large, bioluminescent mushroom cluster, its sickly green glow casting eerie shadows on the gnarled roots surrounding it, when Fang suddenly stiffened. A low, guttural growl rumbled in the wolf’s chest, a sound Lloyd hadn't heard since the encounter with the Ridge Runners. The fur along Fang's spine bristled. His normally suppressed lightning aura flickered to life, faint blue sparks dancing around his paws. His golden eyes, sharp and focused, stared intently into a dense thicket of blackthorn and tangled creepers a short distance away.

"What is it, Fang?" Lloyd whispered, his own senses instantly on high alert, hand drifting towards the hilt of his hunting knife. He extended his Void sense, probing the thicket.

He felt… nothing. No distinct life signature. No obvious threat. Just the usual damp earth, decaying wood, the subtle thrum of the Mire’s strange vegetation.

Yet Fang remained tensed, a coiled spring of elemental fury, his gaze unwavering. The growl intensified, deeper now, laced with a primal warning.

Then, the thicket moved.

Not a rustle of leaves in the wind. The entire mass of tangled branches and thorns seemed to heave, to ripple, as if something immense were stirring within, or perhaps, was the thicket itself. The sickly green glow from the nearby fungi intensified, casting the scene in an even more unsettling light.

Chapter : 126

The air grew colder, the oppressive stillness becoming a suffocating pressure. The drone of insects ceased abruptly. A smell hit Lloyd then, overwhelming the scent of decay – a charnel house stench, the smell of old blood, rot, and something else… something ancient and utterly alien.

With a sound like giant bones grinding together, like stone scraping stone, two huge, multi-jointed limbs, thicker than tree trunks, covered in what looked like blackened, chitinous plates interspersed with writhing patches of the Mire’s unnatural vegetation, punched out from the thicket. They weren't attacking, not yet, but anchoring themselves, digging deep into the soft earth with hooked, obsidian-black talons the size of scythes.

Then, the rest of it began to emerge.

Lloyd stared, a knot of ice forming in his stomach, his carefully cultivated composure shattering. This wasn't "potential wildlife." This wasn't "moderate risk." This was a nightmare given form.

It was huge, easily fifteen feet tall even in its hunched posture, a grotesque fusion of insectoid horror and corrupted forest. Its body was a segmented carapace of the same blackened chitin, festooned with weeping sores from which grew clumps of the Mire’s pulsating fungi and thorny vines. More limbs, thinner but equally sharp, sprouted from its torso, ending in grasping claws or dripping mandibles. Its head was a nightmare of multifaceted eyes that glowed with an internal, malevolent red light, and a gaping maw filled with rows of needle-sharp teeth that clicked and gnashed. A low, guttural chittering, like a million oversized cockroaches, emanated from it, a sound that scraped along Lloyd’s nerves.

This… this creature had no business being here. This wasn't some oversized swamp beast. This felt ancient, powerful, utterly alien to the known ecology of the region’s outskirts. This belonged deep within the cursed heart of Galla Forest itself, or perhaps, in the darkest depths of some forgotten abyss. The Guild hadn't just misjudged the risk; they’d sent him into the hunting ground of a Lovecraftian horror armed with a sample bag and a fifty-silver contract.

Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me, Lloyd’s internal monologue screamed, raw panic momentarily overriding the eighty-year-old pragmatist. Ecological survey?! I think I just found the apex predator that ATE the ecology!

The monster – for there was no other word for it – finished extricating itself from the thicket, its multifaceted red eyes fixing directly on Lloyd and Fang. It raised one of its massive forelimbs, the scythe-like talon glinting in the eerie green light, and let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but a high-pitched, mind-scraping shriek that vibrated the very air, promising pain and dissolution.

"Fang! C**DORI!" Lloyd roared, raw survival instinct kicking in, his voice cracking with adrenaline.

With an answering shriek of his own, the sound of a thousand birds tearing through the swamp, Fang exploded forward. Azure lightning erupted around his foreleg, a brilliant flash of controlled fury against the grotesque darkness of the monster. He launched himself at one of the creature's anchored forelimbs, aiming for a joint in the chitinous armor.

CRACK-HISS!

The Thousand Chirp Strike connected. Sparks flew. The acrid smell of ozone and something else – something like burning, corrupted insect shell – filled the air. Fang was thrown back by the impact, landing hard but rolling to his feet, the lightning around his leg sputtering. A shallow, smoking gouge appeared on the monster’s limb, but the blackened chitin barely seemed damaged. The creature didn't even flinch, its multifaceted eyes still fixed on Lloyd with predatory focus.

It was like throwing a firecracker at a fortress wall.

Not even a scratch?! Lloyd’s mind reeled. Fang’s strike, which had left smoking furrows on Redborn, had barely dented this thing. The power disparity was terrifyingly, hopelessly vast.

He didn't hesitate. He drew on his Void power, the familiar thrum of Steel and Fire answering his desperate call. Not fine wires this time. He needed something substantial. A thick, gleaming cable of superheated steel, almost as thick as his arm, erupted from his outstretched hand, lashing towards the monster’s head like a molten whip.

The creature reacted with horrifying speed. One of its thinner, grasping claws shot out, intercepting the steel cable mid-air. The impact was immense. The superheated steel sizzled against the blackened chitin, but instead of slicing through, it bent, deflected, the monster’s claw gripping it with impossible strength, the red glow from its eyes intensifying. With a contemptuous flick, it snapped the thick steel cable as if it were brittle twine.

Lloyd felt the backlash, a jarring shock through his Void connection. His primary offensive ability, the core of his Ferrum power, rendered useless, broken with casual ease.

The monster shrieked again, that mind-flaying sound, and lunged.