Chapter 276: Chapter 260 – A Forest Full of Despair

“The Forest of Despair was so-named by those who had gathered up the courage to explore it. Out of maybe twenty expeditions into the forest, only around half returned, and most of those expeditions lost half their members or more to the beasts that inhabited the forest. From there came the now common moniker used to call the forest, a place that many feared and caused explorers to despair.” - Vandrin Rousseau, Geologist and Cartographer from the Clangeddin Empire, Circa 196 VA.

Western Outskirts of the Forest of Despair

Half a day’s travel from the easternmost village in the Duchy of Jonkver

Kingdom of Posuin, Western Alcidea

2nd Day of the 4th Week of the 1st Month of Year 220 VA.

 

The first thing Aideen noticed as she stepped into the forest proper, well away from any civilized habitation, was the lush flora. Both the trees and the undergrowth was so thick that even on foot, she had some trouble making her way through without carving up a path for herself.

 

Similarly, animals of all sorts, from little rodents that scampered up the trees the moment they noticed her presence, birds that gawked curiously from the branches they were perched on, and insects of various sorts were abound. They flitted here and there in the dense forest and kept an eye on the unknown intruder to their home.

 

In some ways, the place felt almost idyllic, with how natural everything around her was, a pristine land so far untouched by the hands of civilization, not for the lack of trying either. The outskirts of the jungle was pretty peaceful overall, with the largest predators Aideen saw being some hawks and owls, and a wildcat as tall as her waist. None of them dared to approach her and only kept a wary eye as she passed before they went on with their lives.

 

The forest started to show its true nature an hour or so later, as Aideen traipsed deeper into it.

 

She ran across a patch of thick vines which hung loosely from the canopies, and tried to push her way through, only to realize when she was in the middle of the patch that the vines were moving. Not only that, but several of the vines secreted a sticky substance and grabbed at her, as they pulled her upwards into the canopy.

 

There she saw a large, bulbous plant from which the vines originated, as they grew from the lower end of the odd plant. The vines writhed almost like the tentacles of a sea creature as it brought her to the top of the plant, which had an opening, secreted more sticky mucus to bind her into immobility, and tossed her in.

 

Inside the bulbous plant was a pool of acidic liquid - probably what passed as digestive juices for the plant - which began to dissolve Aideen’s skin on contact. She was bound tight by the sticky substance, unable to move her body, so instead she resorted to bringing out a small, fragile glass vial from her storage, which she could do with just her mind, and allowed it to fall down into the acid.

 

Moments later the acid ate through the glass and reacted with the dragonfire brew stored within, and the resultant explosion not only blew the plant into many pieces, but also violently hurled Aideen back down to the forest floor. A good chunk of the sticky substance - along with some of her clothes - were burnt off by the explosion, but the ones that bound her right arm to her torso still remained.

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It took her a good bit of effort - and not a little pain - to finally free herself from the substance, which was so sticky that it tore off the skin on her entire arm before she managed to free herself from it. It was her first introduction to the more dangerous inhabitants of the forest, and soon, she learned that the plant was relatively tame for the forest’s standards.

 

The deeper she went in, the fewer normal animals remained. Most things that survived in the deeper regions of the forests were mostly monsters of some sort, both the flora and fauna, barring the large trees that grew so high they towered into the sky.

 

Not an hour after her encounter with the vine-plant she was assaulted by a large insectoid creature, which looked like an oversized centipede with horns. The creature burrowed from underneath and tore off her right leg before she managed to react, and kept coming afterwards.

 

Its hard shell proved to be no match against her adamant staff, however, as she beat it to death when it kept trying to eat her. The leg it took, she regenerated within moments, though with the creature’s prodigious size it took her quite a bit of effort to kill it.

 

Rather than leave the area as soon as she could, Aideen climbed a tree and hid herself on one of the larger branches as she observed the carcass she just made. Sure enough, before long other inhabitants of the region arrived to feast on the fresh carcass, many of which she had never seen before.

 

A large predator which had long, clawed arms and a wide snout filled with sharp teeth were the first to arrive, as it walked with an odd gait using its arms and stubby legs. It carefully sniffed at the carcass before it tore off a section with its fearsome claws and stuffed it into its too-wide mouth, shell and all.

 

Large birds that reminded Aideen of ravens flocked to the carcass as well, though unlike the ravens she knew, these birds were easily five or more times as large, and had proto-claws at their middle wing joints. The flocks pecked through the hard shell of the dead insectoid and pulled off chunks of its flesh as they feasted.

 

Several other insectoids that looked near identical to the carcass also appeared as their heads burrowed out from the soil. The beasts clearly had no qualms about feasting on its own kind, as they dug into the dead one from below. Many other smaller beasts joined in the feast as well, some of them ending up as food for larger predators at times.

 

It was a feeding frenzy down on the forest floor, one that Aideen watched closely from above.

 

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