Lith relied too much on their shared feelings and memories to appreciate little things like the sound of Solus's voice, which was getting more human with each passing day from his last breakthrough.
Time flew so fast that when Quylla knocked at his door he almost flinched in surprise.
Once they Warped back to the Rothar caves, Quylla took the lead of the group and shared her knowledge with them. She didn't make them walk, preferring to fly barely above the treeline and landing from time to time to check their surroundings.
"Kiro, a Treantling I know, explained to me that the best place to search for natural treasures is where the green is more luscious. We must look for a spot where the flowers have vibrant colors or where there's a spring."
Her words reminded Lith of mana geysers, but Solus confirmed to him that they had yet to spot a single geyser. It took them a few tries to find the right place.
One could have missed it at a first glance, but Quylla pointed out the presence of a young but majestic tree and many colorful bellflowers growing in its proximity.
'Why didn't we notice it, Solus?' Lith asked.
'There is no mana geyser here, just a fluctuation in the world energy.' She explained. 'Now that we're close enough, I can tell you that there's a small stream of world energy converging on the tree as if it's conjuring it.
'The surrounding plants are simply reaping the side effects of the tree.'
'I'm starting to wonder if natural treasures really are plant folks in the making or just a strategy that they employ to ensure their survival. What if semi-sentient plant folks actually offer natural treasures as a tribute to divert the attention from themselves?' Lith thought.
The tree was beautiful but magically unremarkable, whereas the bellflowers had a faint magical aura.
"This is the right spot but the wrong time." Quylla examined the patches of unnaturally big flowers for a bit before shaking her head. "These plants will evolve into Blood Amethysts, but it might take them months if not years to complete the process."
She pointed at the red streaks inside the bellflowers' petals, which had also partially turned into crystals.
Lith used Invigoration on the tree before leaving, noticing a mass of raw mana hidden inside of it. The tree was too big and the mana too thin to make it remarkable, even to Solus's mana sense.
'I think this is no geyser. The world energy is here because of the tree and not the other way around.' Solus pondered. 'This is like the light pillar that manifests when a magical beast evolves, just slower and smaller.'
After a while, they found a wood anemone as big as Lith's fist and almost as tall as Quylla. According to her, it had no magical value, but the Zephyr Apples growing on the nearby trees were quite a catch.
"It's the first time I actually find something of value." Phloria said while Quylla showed them how to recognize the most valuable fruits from those that actually held little magical properties due to not being exposed long enough to the world energy.
Soon they started quarrelling for the best pieces. Quylla called dibs because she was the one who had found them, Friya because she was the guild master, and Lith claiming to be the poorest among them.
"Isn't this odd?" Phloria wasn't interested in the argument. She trusted her sisters to be fair. "How come in none of the places we visited there was any sign of wildlife?"
Lith was aware of it as well, but he had avoided mentioning it to not ruin the mood and to not get further involved. Whatever was happening, it was none of his business.
Quylla shushed the others and listened. Aside from the rustling of leaves when the wind blew, the forest was silent. Lith confirmed with Life Vision that there was no threat nearby, but the situation was still creepy.
They collected their prize and resumed to move, searching for clues and natural treasures. They didn't spot a single animal during their flight and soon things got worse.
The deeper they went into the forest, the more numerous were the bald spots they found. Each area was small, barely a few meters large. Yet whoever did it had taken care to not touch the trees, so that from above the damage was nigh invisible.
"Fuck me sideways." Lith said when they found a withered area recent enough for him to catch the scent of the culprit. Life Vision revealed to him that the ground was enveloped in a black aura so thick that is was unmistakable.
"This is the work of undead." He said while pointing at a young sapling that somehow had become fossilized. Its bark had become as black as coal after having its life force completely drained.
"Undead in a forest? It's ridiculous!" Friya said. "Magical beasts would kill them and plant folks would be glad to help them."
"Yet we have not found a single one of them." Each word Lith said made the forest look eerier.
None of those present was afraid of a vagrant undead, but to cause that amount of devastation, to drive the wildlife away, it couldn't be the work of a normal undead. Even worse, it could be lots of them.
"We better leave." Phloria said while looking at the sun that was dangerously close to the treeline. Spring had just begun and the days were still short. "They might still be nearby."
"Yeah, I'm starting to think that whoever did this, didn't touch the trees not to remain hidden from onlookers, but from the sunlight." Quylla said.
\u003c"Not so fast, sweetie."\u003e Said a raspy voice in an unknown language. A rotten figure stumbled out of a patch of woods. The creature had glowing red eyes that burned with a hunger that had been denied for too long.
The exit point of a Blink spell appeared in the middle of the group and Ruin cleaved the dimensional door in half along with its caster, leaving both undead as flabbergasted as they were angry.
"We got company!" Lith yelled as he could see several dimensional doors opening, too many for him to cover them by himself. Not with the creature at his feet still undead and the one in front of them rushing in as fast as a bullet.
The group of undead had sniffed them the moment they had found the first bald spot in the forest and had been tracking them ever since. Their shabby appearance wasn't caused by the damage they had sustained while moving during the day so much as from starvation.
On Mogar, undead could feast on any life force, no matter its source. Yet only the life force of a member of the race they were part of when they were still alive could properly feed them.
Every single kind of undead needed a specific source of vitality. Feeding on another prevented them from dying, but it tasted like shit. Also, it would require an enormous amount of 'wrong' food to satiate their hunger.
The little group of undead was composed of humanoids, so the smell of young and fresh bodies represented an allure so great that they were willing to risk the sun turning them into ashes rather than miss a full course meal.
