Ascension of the Sylvan Cosmos.

Chapter 288. Big Surprise Outside of the Forest!

The army felt tense as they advanced. When the World Tree attacked, it would come from right below their feet, and that notion made every step feel as if they were walking on thin ice.

Moreover, Wisdom had softened the ground, so walking was a terrible experience. The mud splashed by others stained their uniforms up to the thighs, while the stomped muddy terrain became beyond slippery. Each time someone lost their footing, the sound of their armor clanking together as they flailed their arms to regain balance echoed around.

Then, unlike Liu Shu, Wisdom began using <Mind Echo> not to speak human voices but to attack their brains with sounds of a frequency that could barely be heard. These sounds were creepy voices, like the low growl of a terrifying beast, a creature slithering nearby, the sound of a clash of weapons occurring to the side, and many more.

Each time one of these sounded, the soldiers and others would look over, startled. Yet, once they looked, nobody was reacting to the sounds they were hearing. Doubt and tension increased in them, and like a boiling pot, their feelings needed a small catalyst to blow up. 

Liu Shu’s mental attacks, while powerful, were easy to tell that they came from her once discovered. Wisdom’s, however…

“H-Hey, did you hear that?”

The person who was being asked the question frowned and looked sideways to the person asking. “Hear what?”

The soldier frowned. ‘They didn’t hear it…?’ He was about to shake his head and ignore what happened when suddenly, the crawling sound of a creature came from above him. He quickly looked up and said, convinced. “That sound! Something is crawling above us.”

The other soldiers around looked up, but no one saw anything. Not only were the leaves and branches untouched, there wasn’t even a hint of movement. One of them spoke, his tone carrying a hint of pity. “Hold onto your sanity, soldier. I know it’s hard, but we can’t have people hearing things that aren’t there at this time.”

So, between grievances and frustration, they were dismissed. No one felt that it was odd; after all, their current situation was very stressful. Hearing things out of anxiety was not unusual. 

At first, it was just a few people all across the army, so no one really bothered. The numbers increased, though, and after ten minutes, the number of people speaking about it increased several-fold. Even Baron Lorbase heard about it, some soldiers nearby speaking about it with hushed tones. 

Baron Lorbase was someone who had been to war several times before. While he hadn’t heard of anything similar happening at the scale of which it was currently happening, in his mind, he concluded it was because of a group psychological problem. “This is a case of severe group psychosis. Send a few high-level people to reassure the soldiers! We need to pacify the unrest and give them hope.”

Many people moved together with Lorbase’s orders. Meanwhile, Evangeline looked around, curious, but she didn’t feel the thinly stretched-out Aether Mana and Anima Energy that Wisdom was utilizing. After all, they were currently walking above Liu Shu’s roots, so what Evangeline tried to do was like trying to distinguish two types of water contained in the same vase.

When the leaders spread out to reassure the soldiers, their words started to work, and Wisdom showed up again. Her timing was impeccable, and the slightly reassured people could not rest their minds for a second before chaos ensued once more. 

Splash! Splash! 

The floor parted in several places simultaneously, swallowing around one hundred and fifty people at once in strategic locations. Everyone in the army caught their plight, which pushed many group leaders to shout. “Dig them out!”

Lorbase didn’t stop them. But as if the creature attacking them was reading each of their actions as if they were an open book, a situation that forced Lorbase to make a choice happened. When their attention focused on the center, roots at the extremes lashed against the weakest people, breaking their legs with a single swift strike.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Ahh!”

“M-My leg!”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Help!”

Baron Lorbase’s face dropped when several hundred screams of pain and help reached him. ‘Tsk, I either stay here saving those swallowed and lose people to that, or I continue forward and lose those buried…’ Lorbase was not someone who hesitated, though. When the dilemma appeared, he made a decision in a split second. “Leave them behind! Accelerate and get out of the forest!”

With his words, the entire army rushed forward while several attacks targeted Liu Shu’s roots when they surfaced to attack. And then, behind their entire army, Eila’s group moved like shadows.

Wisdom never targeted anyone over Level 25 except when the Earth Aether users had stepped forward. The reasoning was simple; they were far enough that she didn’t have any kind of hurry to eliminate or decisively cripple their forces. As said before, her objective was not to scare them away. She wanted to annihilate them. 

To do that, Wisdom balanced damage and how much of Liu Shu’s strength she could command. In this case, her tricks were somewhat convoluted, making Lorbase think that while strong, Liu Shu was not strong enough to face them in a head-on match.

The journey across the forest was frantic. Many people pushed themselves beyond their limits to run forward while simultaneously trying to keep the army formation from falling apart. Still, the muddy terrain was complicated to traverse, and many ended up falling down. 

Those who fell were left behind by the rest, and by the time they would stand up, it would be when the army had already overcome them. The rush was such that some were even stomped down by others! To add to their despair, once they stood up, ready to follow the army and gather outside the forest, a shadow made out of one hundred people would appear, picking them apart individually. 

Their tired minds and battered bodies from being stomped could barely resist the powerful group gathered by Eila. They were like an efficient predator, slicing each fallen prey down with surgical precision and unstoppable momentum. 

Meanwhile, unaware that the back of their army was being slaughtered, the rest of the soldiers felt as if their hearts were about to explode. The whirlwind of emotions encompassing rush, fear, discipline, the raw instinct to survive, and many others made everyone feel as if their minds were about to snap—Wisdom’s use of <Mind Echo> only made things worse.

Even then, the army was large and had several very powerful people to block most of the attacks coming their way from Wisdom. So, pushing forward, the entire army left the forest and saw the sky again. 

Many celebrated.

“Ah… Free at at last!”

“We’ve finally left that hellhole!”

“I really don’t want to step foot in a forest again for a decade!”

The sight of the sun beyond the large canopies that hid out its warmth was like a rush of happiness and relief. Everyone took a deep breath, but some Sylvans with strong affinities to life and medical backgrounds felt their expressions change as they did so. ‘This smell…’ One of them shouted. “There is some kind of poisonous gas in the air! Don’t breathe and continue forward!”

Lorbase looked back when he heard that. Looking around for confirmation, he saw a few nods from trusted people, so he shouted. “Forwa-”

Before he finished that word, though, everything around him blew up.

BOOOM!

A few moments before, a man with narrow eyes and a cunning face was looking at the army. He was using a tool that helped him look into the distance, far beyond his sight. The man, Taro, muttered when he saw a few people freaking out after taking a death breath. “They detected it so quickly… Well, sadly for them, it’s already too late.” 

“Lord Taro! Five seconds until the energy is channeled.”

Taro counted down softly. “Four… Three… Two… One…” He smiled and closed his eyes. “Boom.”

Then, a white flash engulfed everything with such a glare that observers had to close their eyes briefly, being blinded by it.

What followed was a deafening shockwave.

BOOM!

Taro’s long black hair moved back, his posture straight. Opening his eyes, he could see the disaster he created. Blinking a few times, he pondered. “That was stronger than anticipated… I wonder if I’ve hurt Liu Shu too much.”

The trap he had set up with one day to prepare was a literal hole dug out and filled with inflammable gas. The gas was pressured into the hole below the place, and when the army appeared there, they just had to light up the match. Then… Well, boom.

Of course, some might think that he wouldn’t have been able to do this without anticipating that they would take the forest route. Taro spoke. “Recycle the materials we used for the other two traps we set around the forest. The gas and material should be able to be salvaged.”

His assistant asked, her heart bleeding slightly. “My Lord… That was really costly. Is it really worth it?”

Taro laughed faintly. “Costly…” He looked toward the Golden Sap City and shook his head. “If we could really defend Liu Shu with just this one trap, it would be so cheap that I would think I am being robbed for it in another way.”

The assistant girl looked at her notes and couldn’t really deny it. The Golden Sap Tree has given them a few fruits with crazy effects they never thought were even possible in a fruit. These fruits were extremely valuable, and Liu Shu was the tree where these fruits had been grown.

Taro already valued Liu Shu due to the extra security net that it gave his city. After learning about the inherent value of the fruits Liu Shu grew as if they were ordinary apples, he almost lost a few years of life out of surprise.

“Lord Taro, we have sight of the enemy army!”

Taro raised the tool to his eyes, looking at the blackened people, and he asked. “So… How many did we kill? A quarter? Perhaps a third? That thing had an incredibly strong force.”

The man who reported shook his head, explaining with a serious face. “Lord, there was a massive protective spell that appeared out of nowhere on the other side. We don’t know the origin, but this has minimized the number of deaths from our trap. There are, according to our observers, around 67,000 thousand remaining out of the 71,000 that managed to cross the border.

Taro lowered the device and looked sideways, his usually narrow eyes slightly widening. “67,000 remaining? That many? How is this possible…?”

The man sighed. “It seems that there is a mighty Earth-Attributed Sylvan on their side. She is the one who prevented the grand part of the soil from blowing up by using an incredibly clever spell.”

Taro asked, curious. “How did she do it?”

The man spoke, his tone clearly having a touch of respect. “Instead of creating a powerful shield that blocked the entire ground, she enhanced the most part, leaving a softened section at the side. The pressure blew up from there, and while there were still many deaths in that section, she basically protected 90% of the army with a single move.”

Taro’s face gained a touch of seriousness. “Do we have a name?”

“Yes, Lord Taro…” He looked at the report and commented. “Elenara. That’s her name.”

Taro spoke aloud. “You heard, Liu Shu? Elenara needs to die; she is too good.”

Wisdom heard Taro and began pondering.