Chapter 12: The Maddened Forest Wizard

"Severing your connection to the gods?" Wang Yu asked the old priest again, his tone laced with skepticism.

The gravity in the old priest's voice made Wang Yu feel a prickle of unease; it sounded like a serious matter.

Yet, the core problem remained: Wang Yu had no idea what this actually implied.

In his view, gods were simply hyper-powerful supernatural beings, strong enough to distribute their own essence to their followers.

And that was the extent of it. Ivya’s evening tutorials had only lasted a single day, focusing solely on the systematic study of the knight’s path.

The mystery of this fog would likely have to wait until he could question Ivya later.

"Yes, it is truly unbelievable, isn't it? That is precisely why I remain stationed in this small village."

"I stand guard over this land, which is severed from the radiance of the divine," the priest nodded, his face illuminated by the glow of a true believer.

"It is indeed hard to believe," Wang Yu replied, finding nothing else to say but a nod.

"Father, was it only recently that the fog in this forest grew so dense?" Ivya suddenly interjected into their conversation.

"That is correct. About six to eight days ago. Do you remember the woman I was with when we first met?"

"It was her son. Seven days ago, he chose to enter the misty forest at night to hunt, and he never returned."

"That must have been the time when the fog suddenly turned abnormal," the priest confirmed Ivya’s suspicion.

Ivya cast a glance toward Wang Yu, who was initially bewildered, leading to a brief, awkward stare-down.

Five seconds later, Ivya blushed and turned her head away.

Wang Yu finally realized the connection—right, seven days ago, Ivya’s aunt had been inside this very forest.

And seven days ago was roughly when Ivya had been handed over by the Iron Wall Knight, Oca, to the old wizard, Yegor...

"So, this anomaly in the misty forest is actually linked to Ivya? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Wang Yu wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. Does this mean the blame falls on them?

But that wasn't quite fair; they were victims themselves. The true perpetrators, Obi-Wan and Yegor, had already descended into hell.

As for Oca and his master, in Wang Yu’s eyes, they were destined to die regardless.

"Father, tell us about your own experience entering this forest in the past."

Wang Yu maintained a neutral expression, choosing to set aside his musings and inquire about the priest’s unique history.

"Oh, that was a truly memorable experience. The villagers don't care much to hear it, as it is considered somewhat ominous."

"But I suspect you won't mind, and it may prove helpful to you," the priest said, his tone filled with the wistful nostalgia peculiar to the elderly.

The priest began to recount his tale in a calm, fluid cadence...

Forty years ago, as a young missionary and cleric, he had chosen to travel abroad to win more believers for his god.

Full of youthful ambition, he opted for the church's popular practice of solitary proselytizing.

Without a guardian knight, carrying only supplies and a holy scripture, he set out to reach lands not yet touched by the Lord’s radiance, hoping to expand the divine kingdom on earth.

Of course, this method of preaching was gentle; if the residents didn't believe, it didn't matter. As long as they didn't resort to violence, the Church of Light would not strike back.

The young priest set off, brimming with enthusiasm, eventually arriving near this misty forest.

The area was sparsely populated, and this nameless village was the only settlement in the vicinity.

The young priest walked for many days. Though his divine arts kept him from harm, he grew disheartened by the lack of human presence.

However, one day after making camp, a routine Revelation spell lifted his spirits.

A first-tier spell of the Church of Light, usable only once a day, indicated that people lived nearby.

Thrilled, the priest packed his belongings and hurried off, his fatigue forgotten.

But lacking a knight’s constitution and a mount, a cleric’s stamina was ultimately limited.

As the sun dipped toward the horizon, he reached only the edge of the misty forest. The lingering guidance of the spell suggested that across this forest lay the inhabited lands.

Seeing the sun about to vanish, the priest decided to press on through the night.

He cast the second-tier spell, Light of Exhilaration, and under its influence, his exhaustion vanished instantly.

He resolved to finish the journey under the spell’s grace, and so, amidst the twilight, the young priest stepped into the fog.

At first, he felt nothing amiss, but as the sky darkened, the woods grew shadowy and the fog thickened.

Strange whistling sounds began to emerge from the surroundings—sounds like the laughter of children mixed with sobbing, utterly chilling.

The priest did not panic; these were the cries of Forest Witches. They were birds with the hideous faces of women, possessing low-level illusion and curse-based abilities.

They loved to torment their prey, letting them die in a state of panic and fear before devouring their corpses.

Some scholars believed Forest Witches drew power from the fear of their prey, though this remained unproven.

The witches discovered thus far were quite weak; even ordinary people would only suffer hallucinations or poisons that could be purged with timely care.

As long as one didn't panic and had some experience, survival was not an issue.

But this time, it felt different. The priest felt his steps grow heavy, and those strange whistles seemed to draw closer to his ears.

In the shadows of the dense leaves, a woman’s figure seemed to appear—blurred, indistinct, but clearly deformed in shape.

"This isn't right, this isn't right! Why am I tired? The duration of the Light of Exhilaration hasn't ended yet! You damned bird-witches!"

The priesthood did not require one to speak with perfect civility; the priest cursed the wretched creatures, shocked by the hallucinations and his mounting fatigue.

But curses could not stop his exhaustion. Checking himself, he realized the power of his second-tier spell was nearly spent.

Desperate, he chanted a prayer, hoping to cast another spell to bolster his spirit.

He needed to dispel these hellish illusions; the figure of the deformed woman weighed heavily upon him.

Then, a greater horror descended: he found he could not cast his spell. The bond between him and his god had vanished; he could no longer sense his Lord.

The holy, radiant figure he usually felt in the heavens during prayer was gone.

In its place was... a boundless, silent, gray mist.

"God, where are you?" The young priest began to panic, calling out to his Lord, but receiving no response.

The whistling grew denser and closer, and the sense of impending doom intensified.

Terror seized his heart, and he could not help but start to run, an uncontrollable fear spiraling within him.

But running blindly through a dark forest was no wise choice; even a cautious, groping walk was better than a sprint, for hitting a tree would be disastrous.

Fortunately, the panicked priest did not strike a tree.

He stumbled forward, the shadow of fear in his heart catalyzed by the witch-like whistling, growing, swelling, and spreading.

The air seemed squeezed from his lungs. He struggled to breathe, his chest gripped by a sharp pain. Amidst the terror, a grim realization dawned: his stamina had bottomed out.

His strength had been maintained solely by the divine spell; once it faded, his constitution plummeted to that of an ordinary man.

Having sprinted for so long while gasping for air, he had exhausted his reserves. His legs turned leaden, and breathing became a struggle.

Yet, the fear drove him on, panting, frantically draining his body to keep running.

Exhaustion, fear, pain—the sensation was enough to make him explode.

Suddenly, his foot caught on something, and he tumbled to the ground, sliding far, his clothes tearing into ribbons.

His arms were etched with deep lacerations, the searing pain and encroaching weakness causing the priest to fail repeatedly as he tried to scramble to his feet.

Yet, the sudden shock seemed to sharpen his mind; the shrieking in his ears fell silent, and the agony suppressed the neural hallucinations, banishing them for a moment.

With the phantom wails gone, he found a brief clarity and a measure of calm, allowing him to struggle upright.

He exhaled, relieved; despite the pain, the auditory delusions had ceased, and the terror had been dulled by the sheer intensity of his physical suffering.

He lifted his throbbing head, but under the moonlight, the forest remained a dark and gloomy abyss.

However, the woman’s silhouette reappeared before him, and the priest felt a surge of irritation—the hallucinations persisted, a truly wretched torment.

He shook his head violently and struck himself hard, the sharp pain once again quelling the rising tide of phantom screams.

Having banished the vision again, the priest resolved to endure the path ahead in agony, for even pain was far better than the terror wrought by his fractured mind.

He took a step, then froze; the woman’s phantom remained.

"Bang!" The priest punched himself, blood spraying from his nose, his nerves nearly numbed by the pain, his mind agonizingly clear...

"Chatter, chatter, chatter," went his teeth, clattering together—she was still there, that woman was still there...

His entire body began to tremble; the terror, unsuppressed by the pain, flooded his poor soul, his legs turned to jelly, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

A clear mind should not see hallucinations... then that woman, she was no hallucination!

Fear exploded in the priest’s mind, tears began to fall unbidden, and his expression twisted into a mask of uncontrollable agony.

He should not have been so afraid, but something was plucking at the strings of his sanity within the void, leaving his reason teetering on the brink of being consumed by dread.

Seeming to sense his fear, the shriek of the forest witch returned, but this time it was no hallucination—it was the woman herself, the sound erupting from her!

Overlapping wails poured into the ears of the distorted priest; how could there be so many, how could so many forest witches be shrieking in unison?

The priest screamed, unable to comprehend such a nightmare.

Then, he understood why: the woman’s form shattered, her deformed body falling into pieces, yet remaining bound together.

In the dim forest, his eyes, now accustomed to the dark, saw clearly.

It was no woman’s silhouette, but a cluster of bird-bodied, human-faced forest witches stitched together into a "woman."

They shrieked in unison, overlapping, manic.

The twisted monstrosity began to lurch toward the priest in a human gait, the face of the witch forming the "woman’s" visage wearing a look of frenzied glee.

Ordinary forest witches were merely hideous, incapable of expression, bearing only a sinister grin.

But this one laughed—a wild, human-like, horrific cackle—revealing jagged, dense, and sharp teeth; it was a mad forest witch!

The priest’s mind crashed; beyond the terror, he could only call out the name of the Lord, watching helplessly as the monster drew near, emitting its bone-chilling screech.

As it reached him, the final thread in the priest’s mind snapped, and he collapsed into unconsciousness, the freak mere inches away.

In his final second before fading, he saw the mad witch’s face turn expressionless, and a sudden, brilliant light erupting from his holy scripture.

When he awoke, battered and bruised, he had been carried away by villagers from a nameless hamlet to be healed, the scripture nowhere to be found.

"Ahem, the scripture I hold now is one I copied by hand," the priest said with a hint of pride.

Is losing a holy scripture something to be proud of? Besides, this priest had a remarkably resilient life—and heart, too; just look at how terrified Avia was.

Wang Yu glanced at Avia, who had begun to tremble, clutching his sleeve and pressing herself against his back, and patted her shoulder to soothe her.

Wang Yu had to admit, the priest’s tale was indeed frightening; the sense of dread and the expression on the priest’s face as he spoke were enough to make one feel as if they were there.

Though Wang Yu felt no fear, Avia seemed truly shaken to her core.

The priest, however, returned to normal once he finished; it was evident that the scene he witnessed before losing consciousness had only deepened his faith in the Lord of Light.

It seemed a miracle had saved the poor wretch; the Lord of Light was indeed a benevolent guardian.

"Thank you for the story," Wang Yu signaled to the priest, took the jar of holy water in his left hand, and led the still-trembling Avia out the door with his right.

The story proved nothing; as long as they avoided the mist, it shouldn't be a major issue.

"Farewell, may the Lord of Light guide you," the priest waved them off.

"Thank you for the guidance," Wang Yu thought to himself that the Lord of Light was truly generous to guide even a non-believer like him, and turned to offer his thanks.

He waved casually, failing to notice the priest’s body trembling slightly.

The fear buried deep by the shadows of forty years ago had not faded with the passage of time.

The deepening of his faith only made the priest stronger; no one knew how much courage it took for this devout believer to revisit the past...

"Are you alright, Avia?" Wang Yu walked back to the village entrance with her, stooping to pat her shoulder and check on the girl.

Avia shivered twice more, and Wang Yu assumed she had not yet recovered.

Suddenly, the girl reached out and grabbed his shoulders, her trembling eyes meeting his, her voice shaking but unexpectedly firm.

"We cannot wait. Every minute that passes before news of my survival reaches home, my mother is in greater danger. We must enter the Mist Forest, no matter how dangerous it is. Help me, Wang Yu!"

Wang Yu raised an eyebrow; he hadn't expected Avia to be thinking along these lines.

It seemed the girl’s trembling wasn't just fear of the story, but the fear that he might refuse to enter the forest due to the danger.

That would mean the news of her survival wouldn't reach her home, leaving her mother, alone, in even greater peril.

A truly resilient girl, indeed.

Wang Yu smiled and tapped his chest with his fist. "Knight-squire Wang Yu, at your service."

What a joke—would Wang Yu be afraid? He was never afraid, and besides, having promised a year of dedicated service, Wang Yu’s word was always heavy and reliable.

……

The sun climbed toward high noon, its fierce rays brightening even the Mist Forest.

The entire grove shimmered, devoid of the gloom found in the old priest’s tale.

Standing at the church door with a teacup, the priest watched Wang Yu, Toret, and Avia enter the Mist Forest, a smile in his eyes.

If it were that "Blade of the Night," there shouldn't be any issues; he hoped the holy water would help them.

Entering at noon was indeed a good strategy; he wondered what they were going in for—the anomalies had been worsening lately, and he hoped their goal was to resolve them.

Watching the figures of the two people and the horse vanish into the cover of the trees, the priest smiled.

Suddenly, his smile froze.

The bright Mist Forest seemed to be draped in a black veil, beginning to turn dark.

Under the sunlight, it appeared as if it were being shrouded by something invisible.

Shadowy darkness began to emerge, and wisps of gray mist started to churn, appearing brazenly and swaggeringly in the fierce sunlight.

Slowly but unstoppably, it began to wrap and shroud the entire forest...

"Clink, crash"—the sound of the priest’s teacup falling to the ground and shattering into countless pieces; his pupils trembled uncontrollably, his entire body shaking without cease.

The fear that had not faded in forty years resurfaced in his heart. "That monster, that monster..." his Adam's apple bobbed as he whispered in a trembling voice...

The priest had seen it: a grotesque woman’s silhouette, silently following behind Wang Yu’s party into the depths of the invisible mist.

Seeming to sense the old priest’s gaze, the figure paused, revealing a hidden, manic grin within the fog.

The terror of the young priest from forty years ago overlapped with the fear of the man now past his prime; that mad forest witch, how could it...

I am truly grateful for your presence, for your attention is the greatest support I could ever receive.