But…

  “We still have to go in.”

  Pandora finally made up her mind. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was exceptionally firm. “The secret is inside. We can’t stop here.”

  Since that was the case, Aurora no longer held back.

  She took a deep breath and said, “My Lady, after that experience, I became especially afraid of creatures like snakes and insects, so… I’ve also accumuted some experience in dealing with them.”

  She pointed to a vine pnt with grayish-white bark at the edge of the woods:

  “There’s a tree in this forest called the ‘Gray-Skinned Snake-Vine Tree.’ If you cut its bark, the sap that flows out can be collected and lit. It will give off a very thick, pungent white smoke.”

  “This white smoke has a strong repelling effect on snakes and insects. We… we might be able to use this method to create a safe space for ourselves.”

  She added, “If it doesn’t work, we can retreat immediately and think of another pn. It won’t be too te.”

  “Good idea.”

  Pandora agreed on the spot, her eyes showing her approval.

  This was undoubtedly the safest and most effective method avaible.

  She looked at Aurora. “Then you lead the way.”

  “Yes, My Lady!”

  With the pn set, they didn’t hesitate.

  Relying on the near-instinctual intuition inherited from her hunter father, Aurora quickly found several Gray-Skinned Snake-Vine Trees nearby.

  The sap from these trees was thick and pungent. Pandora just took one whiff and felt a burning sensation in her nasal passages.

  Under Aurora’s direction, they soaked some dry moss and tree bark fibers in the sap, then tightly wrapped them around the tips of several long, dry branches, creating six simple yet effective “smoke torches.”

  Each of the three took one, and the remaining three were wrapped in cloth and slung across their backs.

  Pandora took a flint from her pouch, struck a spark, and lit the torches in their hands.

  Hsss—

  The fmes licked the moss, which had been soaked in the special sap. Instead of bursting into a roaring fme, it spewed out a dense, pungent white smoke.

  The smoke quickly rose and dispersed. The unsettling rustling of insects in the grass and undergrowth, which had been constant, vanished almost instantly as the white smoke spread.

  The effect was remarkable.

  Pandora nodded, her st trace of hesitation gone.

  She gnced at Elsa, who was already looking at her, a question in her eyes.

  Pandora gave a slight nod.

  “Let’s go.”

  She took a deep breath and took the first step, following the heavy tracks belonging to the zombies, stepping into the shadow-shrouded Forbidden Forest.

  The moment they entered the forest, the surrounding air seemed to instantly grow thick.

  The light dimmed abruptly. The tall, twisted canopy was like a giant net, blocking out the sky. Only mottled, gloomy specks of light struggled through the gaps in the leaves, falling upon the thick yer of fallen leaves that had accumuted for who knows how many years.

  The soft earth underfoot was silent to the step.

  The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and decay, as if everything here was slowly rotting.

  Hsss…

  Before Pandora had gone far, she caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. A bck shadow shot out from under a nearby tree root like lightning!

  It was a jet-bck, triangur-headed viper. It had been about to unch a surprise attack, but the moment it drew close, the pungent white smoke washed over it.

  The viper’s movements clearly faltered. It seemed to detest the smoke to the extreme, immediately abandoning its attack, twisting its body, and fleeing quickly into the deeper shadows.

  This was just the beginning.

  As they ventured deeper, the forest revealed its ferocious side. The variety and number of snakes and insects here were beyond imagination.

  Pandora herself saw at least three types of highly venomous snakes, ones she had seen in her father’s bestiary, capable of killing a person in minutes.

  They coiled on tree trunks, hid under fallen leaves, or hung from the branches overhead, like countless watching eyes.

  But thankfully, the smoke torches worked exceptionally well. As long as the smoke neared them, the vast majority of snakes and insects would flee, unable to bear it.

  Occasionally, there were a few that were fearless or had a strong resistance to the smoke, but their numbers were still within the range that Pandora and Elsa could handle.

  Aurora’s knight’s sword and Elsa’s blood-red greatsword became two lethal streaks of cold light. As the sword light fshed, snake heads flew, and the bodies of venomous insects were severed in two.

  Some of the smaller, pouncing insects were a bit more troublesome, but they quickly found a way to deal with them—directly searing them with the burning torches.

  The moment those insects touched the fmes, which carried the special sap, they would let out a sizzling sound, instantly turning to charcoal and releasing an even worse stench.

  The three of them formed a moving, smoke-emuting safe zone—one with a torch in the lead, two guarding the fnks—following the trail, which was almost completely covered by leaves, step by step, deeper into the forest.

  They walked for who knows how long—perhaps half an hour, perhaps an hour.

  When Pandora used the tip of her sword to push aside a giant fern that was blocking their path, she suddenly sensed something was wrong.

  The surroundings… were too quiet.

  The scalp-tingling rustling sound, made by the countless snakes and insects, had disappeared. In its pce was a deathly, heart-pounding silence.

  “Stop.”

  Pandora said in a low voice.

  All three stopped.

  Aurora’s face, at some point, had turned deathly pale. She gripped the hilt of her sword, her palm slick with cold sweat.

  “My Lady…” her voice held a tremor she couldn’t suppress. “I… I feel uneasy.”

  She tried to recall, to dig up the memories of that childhood experience, memories that had been sealed away by fear but now became crystal clear.

  “I… I think I’ve been to a pce like this before.”

  Aurora murmured, her eyes filled with fear. “That time… the snakes and insects suddenly all disappeared. I thought… I thought I was finally safe.”

  Her voice grew lower, as if she were back in that helpless, dying afternoon.

  “But then… then I accidentally saw… a… a terrifying bck bear.”

  As Aurora described it, her voice grew strained with fear.

  “That bear… it was over two meters tall, much rger than a normal bck bear, its whole body covered in thick, jet-bck fur, like a living patch of midnight. It… it reeked. A foul, heavy stench that carried on the wind, so strong it made your heart pound and your legs go weak…”

  Pandora listened quietly; she could feel that Aurora’s fear was genuine, stemming from the deepest trauma of her childhood.

  She was just about to say a few words of comfort,

  when a flicker of something caught the corner of her eye.

  Pure, unadulterated…

  scarlet.

  A color that didn't belong in this gloomy forest.

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