After only traveling for twenty minutes, Fisher had led his team of five to the first point of their mission.
As they slowly paved their way through the dense thicket of the jungle, a pylon that looked like a high-voltage tower standing about five meters tall immediately came into view.
“We’re here!”
Fisher gasped heavily and made a signal to the group behind him before approaching the bottom of the tower right away.
Looking up from the bottom of the signal tower, it was immediately apparent that the steel tower was a bit taller than the surrounding trees. There was a white spotlight on the top of the tower that appeared like a round pearl among the ancient jungle.
Surely enough, the signal tower would be visible from the top of the mountain once lit up.
“This is the first target of our expedition.”
Fisher spread out the map made from torn pieces of clothes and nodded when he looked at it. “We need to light up three signal towers. This is the tower closest to us.”
With that, he turned to the blonde-haired lady who had been silent all this time.
“I’ll do it!”
Jennifer nodded as she took a deep breath and approached the bottom section of the signal tower. Fisher quickly waved and motioned for the others to get back.
Jennifer was going to light up the signal tower.
“The black sphere Gantz mentioned that a curse will be placed upon lighting the signal tower. What does this curse refer to? Virus, toxic fumes? Or is it something else…”
Fisher muttered to himself. His expression became extremely dark as he did so. He was prepared to immediately evacuate to the safe zone at the drop of a hat if he noticed something odd.
Below the tower, Jennifer raised the communication device in her hands and pressed into the button to light up the signal tower!
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
After several seconds had passed, Jennifer remained still like a statue in place, still maintaining her motion of pressing the button.
“Jennifer?”
Fisher could not stop himself from calling out to her. It was only then when Jennifer slowly came back to her senses. She blankly shifted her attention away from the display on the communication device and turned to Fisher. “Did something happen just now?”
“No, nothing happened at all.”
Fisher looked at the top of the signal tower and noticed that the spotlight was turned on silently. However, there did not seem to be any visible change in the signal tower or Jennifer herself.
Jennifer also looked up and said as she approached Fisher, “I didn’t feel any curse or anything else either…”
Before she could finish, she suddenly stumbled.
When she approached her group, everyone including Fisher instinctively took a step back.
“Jennifer… Are, are you feeling alright?”
Fisher quickly reacted and mustered out a smile. “It’s great to see that you’re fine. I thought that the curse would be some sort of biological weapon like rabies!”
“It’s not. I didn’t feel anything at all.”
Jennifer’s expression turned darker as she shook her head and said with a bitter smile, “I only saw a strange image appearing on the communication device. When I clicked the confirmation button, the image disappeared.”
“What kind of image?” Fisher immediately asked.
Jennifer seemed to have returned to her usual self as she expressed curiously, “It’s hard to describe. That picture gave off a gross impression, it’s like… It’s like a pile of dead bodies or a bunch of foul-smelling, dirty garbage piling together into a pattern. It gives off a filthy impression.”
“Is that so?”
Fisher frowned. “This is the curse that black sphere Gantz mentioned? That can’t be it…”
“This isn’t the time to discuss these things. Let’s go ahead and light up the second signal tower.”
Jennifer shook her head. She saw her group keeping a noticeable distance from her and decided to just go ahead by herself.
“Be careful of those monsters wandering around here, let’s catch up to her!”
Even Fisher felt like he had a hard time keeping it together. He quickly motioned for the people behind him and quickly caught up to Jennifer.
Apart from the five humongous Tyrants, there seemed to be minimal threat in this ancient jungle that had not had anyone set foot on it for countless years. They did not even run into any venomous snakes or vicious creatures. Within three hours, they had lit up the remaining two signal towers.
After that, they only had to bring Jennifer back to the safe zone to declare this a successful mission.
After completing this signal tower mission, they would only have to light up another one hundred towers closest to the safe zone. This was also a way for them to experiment with how they could circumvent the rules. If it proved to be successful, the remaining hundred towers should be achievable as well.
There were good reasons they did not choose to light up all the signal towers in one go. First of all, because there were Tyrants in the jungle waiting for them and the risk increased exponentially the further they went into the jungle. Secondly, they could at least minimize the risk if the people in charge would not allow them to play around with the rules like this.
On the way back, nothing abnormal seemed to have occurred to Jennifer who had lit up the signal towers.
“What are the odds that the so-called curse doesn’t even exist in the first place? What if they are just bluffing us?”
That’s what I’ve been saying. How do you expect something like dark witchcraft to be a thing? Turn someone into ashes in a day? That’s impossible!”
There was the occasional small talk among the group, expressing their relief at how things had turned out.
Fisher also started to settle down slowly. He smiled at Jennifer. “Thank you, Jennifer, you’re a hero.”
“I sure hope so.”
Jennifer only squeezed a forced smile, not appearing to be in good spirits.
Just as Fisher was trying to come out with something to say to redeem his image, his pupils suddenly shrunk.
He suddenly noticed that there was a cloud of black substance permeating through Jennifer’s stained back.
The substance crawled out from Jennifer’s back and had spread to the back of her neck. Also, the substance did not appear to be something that was produced from the forest, but something that had grown directly from her skin…
What appeared to be ashes were clinging onto the back of Jennifer’s neck. When her shirt brushed against it, pieces of black ashes dropped onto the ground.
After the pieces broke off, what appeared was not the texture of Jennifer’s skin, but a large sunken sore…
The sore was horribly pale, mixed with the stark pink of flesh under it. It seemed to be steadily spreading out, invoking a great sense of terror when one looked upon it.
However, despite having such a large sore forming on her, Jennifer seemed to have hardly noticed it at all.
“Is this the curse the black sphere spoke of?”
Fisher’s eyes fluttered. His previous sense of relief had all but dissipated into thin air. It was true, the curse was real and was happening to Jennifer already…
While a terrible shiver climbed through every part of Fisher’s skin, Jennifer seemed to have sensed his eyes on her and turned to him curiously. “What are you looking at?”
“No, nothing!”
Fisher quickly brushed her off and quickly hastened his footsteps as he took the lead in front. “We better quickly return to the safe zone, be careful not to make any loud noises, the monsters could be stalking nearby at any given time!”
With that, the crew moved along without so much as a whisper.
They continued their journey like this for another two hours. Just as they were starting to feel exhausted, they re-entered the safety ring of the safe zone. One after another, they allowed themselves to collapse onto the safe ground and laughed and celebrated.
It was then when Jennifer suddenly unleashed a sharp, nightmarish shriek. When everyone turned to look at the commotion, they saw that Jennifer was tearing away at her long strands of hair with her face expressing horror.
With a relentless tear, a huge chunk of hair on the back of her head was torn right off along with a black chunk of rotten flesh clinging onto them…
