Shadow Forest (2)
Haley’s heart was pounding. Whenever something sparked her curiosity—something she desperately wanted to know—it always made her heart race like this. It had been the same the first time she spotted Kael on Bingryong Mountain, and again when she entered the academy and recognized him.
What kind of magic was that? I’m dying to know. It’s driving me crazy.
At first, it had been purely his magic that fascinated her. She’d followed him in secret from a distance, but her curiosity had grown unbearable, eventually leading her all the way here. And now…
Her heart was beating even harder. She was just as curious about his next move as she was about his mysterious magic.
He came toward me step by step like that. Pinned me against this tree. Why? What’s he going to do next? What’s his plan?
When he planted his hand on the tree beside her head, effectively trapping her, she thought her heart might actually burst out of her chest. Anticipation swelled inside her, wondering what would happen next. Her heart was racing so fast her shoulders trembled and her breathing grew ragged. The suspense was so intense that tears welled up in her eyes.
She took a deep breath and finally managed to open her mouth.
“That was… insanely cool……”
Instead of answering his question, her true feelings had slipped out unconsciously.
The completely unexpected answer made every ounce of strength drain from my body. I nearly lost my grip on the tree with my left hand and face-planted straight into the bark. Thank god I didn’t. If I had, I would’ve merged with both the tree and Haley in one glorious disaster.
Still dazed, I studied Haley’s expression again. The moist eyes I’d assumed were filled with fear were actually sparkling with excitement, and her flushed cheeks seemed to stem from an entirely different reason. If I only looked at her face, she resembled a starstruck middle-school girl who had just met her beloved celebrity crush.
Wait, why? There’s no reason for her to look like that…
I quickly pulled my hand away from the tree and took a step back from her.
“I haven’t told anyone,” Haley said, finally answering the question I’d asked earlier. As she spoke, her eyes darted shyly, and I couldn’t begin to guess what was going through her head.
“From now on…”
“I won’t tell anyone from now on either.”
I had been about to warn her not to spread rumors about me, but Haley quickly cut in and finished the sentence for me. From the look of it, she wasn’t lying. Not about keeping quiet until now, and not about staying silent in the future.
In the original story, once Haley grew curious about something, she would dig until she uncovered the truth, then hoard it as her own personal secret. It meant her lips weren’t exactly loose. It was still suspicious, but pressing her further probably wouldn’t yield anything useful. For now, I had no choice but to trust her.
“Stop following me for no reason and go back.”
“Okay, got it.”
Her obedient answer came without the slightest hesitation, which somehow made me trust her even less. Especially when her eyes were sparkling like a kid who had just discovered a tub of premium ice cream in the freezer.
Anyway, I had things to do. I turned my back on her and continued down the path.
Crunch. Crunch.
I hadn’t taken more than a few steps before I heard the sound of damp underbrush being stepped on behind me. When I looked back, sure enough, Haley was trailing after me. Earlier she had at least pretended to hide so I wouldn’t notice, but now she was following me completely out in the open.
“I told you not to follow me.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Then what are you doing instead of going back?”
“I have somewhere I need to stop by.”
“Where are you going?”
“Wherever my feet take me?”
She sounded like a wandering poet. I was speechless.
“This place is dangerous. Monsters appear here.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be careful.”
She answered with a bright, beaming smile, refusing to lose a single verbal exchange. With a resigned sigh, I started walking forward again.
I had warned her that it was dangerous, but that was only half true. While monsters did appear, they weren’t particularly threatening. Since she was an upper class mage, there was virtually no chance she would find herself in real danger because of the creatures here.
More accurately, this place wasn’t so much dangerous as it was terrifying to anyone who didn’t know it well. The fear it inspired was the same kind you got from horror movies.
The deeper you went, the darker and more eerie it became. I figured she would eventually get scared and turn back on her own. So I kept moving forward, whether she followed or not.
As we advanced, the trees grew denser and the ground underfoot became increasingly damp. Even though it hadn’t rained, the air felt heavy with moisture, like a forest on a rainy day. It wouldn’t be strange for monsters to start appearing any moment now.
The monsters that mainly appeared here were slime-type creatures and giant spiders. If I followed the path where the spiders appeared, I would eventually reach a zone covered in thick fog.
Right on cue, a monster appeared ahead. It wasn’t a spider, but a blue slime. That meant we still had a long way to go.
Anyway, I raised my staff and began drawing up mana to deal with the slime—when suddenly, a sharp shard of ice shot past me from the side.
Thud!
The slime that took the direct hit lost its shape and melted away like ice cream left in the sun.
I didn’t even need to wonder who had done it. When I turned around, Haley was smiling at me with an expression that practically screamed, Did I do good?
“You don’t have to thank me,” she said.
Her face might as well have had “Praise me!” written across it in bold letters, yet she still said that. So I didn’t thank her and simply continued forward.
Looked like I had gained an unwanted tagalong.
The Shadow Forest was as shadowy as its name suggested. When a slime appeared, I slightly changed direction and kept moving. When a spider showed up, I continued straight ahead. After repeating this pattern, we had somehow ventured quite deep into the forest.
The surroundings were now so dark that we wouldn’t have been able to proceed without a portable magic lantern. The ground had turned into a complete muddy swamp. Spiders the size of small dogs kept appearing, and a faint mist had begun to drift through the air.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the gloomy atmosphere, but we were definitely heading in the right direction toward our destination.
“It’s scary……”
I felt a hand grab the hem of my coat from behind. The owner of that hand was, of course, Haley, who had followed me all this way. I had told her several times already to turn back around here, but she had simply brushed it off with that bright smile of hers and stubbornly kept following.
Now that she was actually scared, she stuck right behind me, clutching my clothes tightly.
“That’s why I told you to go back earlier.”
“But now it’s too scary to go back alone. What if I get lost in the dark?”
She had a point. At this stage, it was pointless to argue. I couldn’t just abandon her alone in this darkness, so I had no choice but to keep her with me. We only had the one magic lantern I was currently holding anyway.
Still, since she was an upper class mage, she had been helpful in dealing with the spiders. Thanks to her, I was able to conserve my mana. Not that I needed much mana to take down the boss here anyway.
“Hold on tight. And don’t run away in fear.”
Since it had come to this, it was better to stay close to Haley. Having her disappear alone into the darkness would only create more work—I’d have to go find her and drag her back out.
“Why? Why hold on tight? Why would I run?”
One comment from me triggered a rapid-fire barrage of questions. She sounded exactly like a three-year-old who had just learned how to talk. I couldn’t be bothered to answer.
I simply looked forward and kept walking. The mist was slowly beginning to envelop us, so I stayed on high alert.
Horror movies aren’t scary once you know what’s coming. Since I already know what’s going to pop out, I’m not scared at all.
I repeated that to myself as I pressed onward.
Swish.
Suddenly, a pitch-black human silhouette appeared beyond the bushes directly ahead.
“Kyaa!”
Haley screamed and yanked hard on my clothes. Thanks to that…
Splat.
The two of us tumbled together in perfect harmony, landing butt-first in the mud. To think I’d be pulled over by a tiny girl like her—I really needed to start exercising.
“W-what was that just now?”
Haley was still sitting on the ground, trembling violently. The thing that had appeared beyond the bushes was a boy with an eerie, ghostly appearance. It was completely monochrome, like something straight out of a black-and-white horror film. And it had looked exactly like me.
Even I, who had known something like that would appear, was startled. So it was no wonder Haley, who knew nothing, was terrified. Still, she had remembered my words and hadn’t run off on her own.
“It’s gone. It was just an illusion,” I said, standing up and brushing the mud off my backside. Honestly, I wasn’t completely unfazed either, but since she was already shaking so much, I couldn’t let it show.
“It looked just like you……”
Haley was still sitting there, shuddering as she recalled the illusion from moments ago.
“That’s why it was an illusion. There can’t possibly be a monster that looks like me.”
Dense fog and shadow illusions. That was the boss’s only pattern here. The main body itself was pathetically weak. It created black illusions modeled after anyone who entered the foggy area, using them to scare people away from approaching its true form.
Later on, once the related quest appeared, those illusions would even launch magical attacks. But at this point in time, they were nothing more than harmless phantoms.
If you didn’t get scared and kept heading toward where the illusions appeared more frequently, you could locate the main body. Since the real body was nothing but a simple rock, all you really needed was courage rather than any special abilities.
“There—there it is again…!”
Haley pointed with a trembling finger. Another shadowy figure stood in that direction. This time, it was the silhouette of a sturdy adult male.
What the…?
There should only be me and Haley here right now. That meant a third party—someone other than us—had entered this foggy zone.