Sokram decided to test something and left all the Purple Honeyed Berries he had bought there.

Their scent, a rich, sweet perfume of overripe and rotting fruits, filled the cold air.

Then, in a flash of dark lightning, he went back to where the girls were carrying Amira in his arms.

Even before they could ask him about what they had just seen, he spoke, “I’ll explain what happened once we get home. For now, focus on the hunt.”

“Can you at least tell us why she attacked you?” Lucy’s gaze fixed on Amira, wary and uncertain.

“She didn’t; that flash of light wasn’t an attack, but we can’t talk about it here.”

That was the only explanation Sokram offered before taking Amira back to her tent.

Once the rest of the team saw her passed out, Sokram had to invent an excuse about her failing to cast a spell she wanted to show off and passing out.

Soon after, they went to sleep while Sokram continued to observe the hares.

He saw that whenever they appeared, they would be chasing away some other beast out of the woods.

He saw them again: five horned hares, moving with a surprising, synchronized grace.

They weren't just chasing; they were herding, driving a snarling Dire Wolf away from the edge of the woods.

The wolf snarled furiously, while the hares chased in dreadful silence.

But, after driving the wolf away, once they passed by the Purple Honeyed Berries, they completely ignored the small mountain of fruit.

A behavior that should be impossible for such an unintelligent beast. ‘So, it’s as I thought, hm? They are too organized. They completely ignored the bait. There has to be a highly intelligent symbiotic creature behind that behavior, but what I’m not sure of is how many of the villagers are infected.’

After satisfying his suspicions, he went to his tent.

Instead of sleeping, he began crafting runestones.

This time, he focused on elevating them to the level of Crimson Runestones, two levels above the usual azure ones.

Even if they were much stronger, he could only hope they would last long enough for him and his team to escape.

Sokram made four types of runestones.

Twenty were for a defensive barrier for him, his teammates, and their mounts.

Fifty were for the prison barrier type, and the last two he would use now.

As soon as he activated them, Sokram vanished.

An image simulating his presence formed an illusion of him meditating, so anyone with sensory range sharp enough to reach his tent would think he was still there.

While invisible, he entered the tents of his teammates, leaving a crimson runestone and a note that read: “When the morning comes, act as normal as possible, not to attract unwanted attention. Prepare to leave as soon as I give you the signal. And don’t forget to activate this runestone.”

The good thing was that, although oblivious, some of his teammates were still awake.

Once they saw a note popping out of nowhere with Sokram’s handwriting and a Crimson Runestone, they knew it was a red alert, and they were in extreme danger.

After leaving the notes, he knew his teammates would inform the newcomers, Kina and Amira.

The first thing he did after that was to set a defensive barrier around their camp, but this barrier was set to remain invisible until someone tried to invade the perimeter.

He crept through the deserted streets, the only sound the soft padding of his own feet on the packed snow.

He reached the Chief's Long House.

The air inside was thick and stale, a suffocating silence pressing down on him.

The Chief, his family, and the servants stood motionless, their bodies rigid, their eyes vacant and unblinking, like puppets without a puppeteer. It wasn't just stillness; it was an unnatural, terrifying void where life should have been.

Sokram's movements were silent, a whisper of shadow in the Chief's long house.

He knelt as he delicately pried up a loose tile with a quiet scrape.

He slid the runestone into the dark space beneath.

He hoped no one could detect the subtle mana ripples the runestone emitted.

The floorboard settled back into place with a barely perceptible click, and he was gone.

He didn’t dare to get too close to anyone, fearing that whatever type of parasite was in their brains could sense the runestone's energy and become agitated.

Luckily, it didn’t happen.

Leaving the long house, Sokram went around the village, investigating, house by house, and they were all the same.

Children, adults, and even the animals; the only ones acting alive were those close to his camp, yet the guards never changed shift as if they were tireless.

After confirming there was no one to save, Sokram slipped out of the village and started hiding runestones around it close to the walls, while also engraving runic marks on the walls.

He knew that once he activated this runic formation, whatever was hiding in the woods would come after him to free them.

Sokram knew many symbiotic creatures like that, and all of them had the same characteristics.

They were very good at hiding themselves.

The worms that formed inside the hosts' brains were part of the same organism.

And in the best-case scenarios, once the main body was destroyed, the other hosts would also die, so this village was already doomed.

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The reason for this formation was so that no one else would make the same mistake of entering this place until the City Lord or the Commander of the Extermination Hall sent a high-level squad to deal with this.

He moved stealthily back to his camp, the familiar shapes of the tents a welcome sight in the gloom.

But as he got closer, a dreadful chill crawled over his skin.

A circle of guards, motionless like stone, stood in a silent, watchful ring around the camp, their dead eyes fixed on his tent.

Strangely enough, none of the guards dared to enter the barrier’s perimeter.

This confirmed to Sokram that he was right to hide the runestones.

Whatever that thing was, it was highly sensitive to mana fluctuations.

Instead of confronting the guards, Sokram went to check on their mounts that were near the camp.

He hadn’t allowed anyone to feed them, despite the guards’ insistence. Thankfully, tamed beasts were completely obedient to their owners and wouldn’t eat anything if they weren’t allowed to.

Still, Sokram checked one by one, also adding Crimson Runestones to each mount after confirming that none of them were infected.

He stealthily returned to his tent.

He deactivated the stealth runestone and activated a defensive one, and left the tent, catching the guards by surprise.

Once the guards surrounding his camp saw him coming out of his tent, they tried to disperse.

Sokram caught a glimpse of it.

A single, unified ripple of alarm.

A synchronized twitch of their lips, and a flicker in their eyes, as if a single consciousness had momentarily seized control of them all.

“Is there a problem, captain?” Sokram smiled at the captain of the guards, making sure things would stay friendly while he and his team were inside the village.

“Oh, haha, we… just wanted to check if you… were sleeping well, haha.” The captain stuttered, grasping for words, and flashed that same unnerving, overly friendly smile.

It was clear that the parasite in his brain could even learn from the host’s memories.

Speech, mannerisms, and expressions, to a level that could fool other humanoids.

Still, it couldn’t fool Sokram Dragon Sight.

Sokram was amazed by the level of intelligence of the symbiotic being, but terrified at the same time.

“I see, thank you,” Sokram smiled back.

If he showed fear, the monster controlling them might react, “We are having quite a nice sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be ready to enter the woods and kill all those hares for you, haha.”

“Nice, we’ll be counting on you then.” The captain nodded enthusiastically, but also failed to hide the fact that whatever that creature was, it truly wanted Sokram and his team to enter the woods.

The captain went back to the top of the wall, and Sokram went back to his tent to wait, on high alert until morning.

Morning came, and he could sense his teammates one by one activating the defensive Crimson Runestones, even Amira, who seemed to have just woken up.

Sokram left his tent first and began preparing soup for breakfast.

Minutes later, his teammates left their tents.

Their acting skills were terrible, as they tried to act normally while eating breakfast.

But Sokram believed it would be enough, mainly because of Amira, who became loud as she complained about her headache.

“Ugh, what happened last night?” Amira groaned loudly.

“The spell you tried to show me backfired, and you passed out,” Sokram answered while handing her some pills.

“I see, sorry…” Amira pouted exaggeratedly while their teammates tried to play along, having no clue about the danger they were in, only knowing they should act like nothing was happening.

Sokram sat beside Savannah, handed her a runic key, and whispered to her with an Isolated Sound Transmission spell, “When I tell you to activate it, just do it; you won’t need to sustain that one. Just don’t hold back, and activate it no matter what. I’ll explain it later.”

Savannah nodded, trying to mask her worries, while Lucy and Amber observed, trying to understand why Sokram was so jumpy.

After breakfast, Sokram led the team to pick their mounts, and as they were leaving the village, the captain asked them, “Do you need mounts to reach the woods?”

“No, captain. I saw some strange movement last night, and I want to check it before entering the woods. But don’t worry, I’m sure it was nothing, I just like to be overly cautious.”

Sokram explained before adding, “The sooner we check it, the sooner we enter the woods; besides, the mounts will help us in the woods too, those hares can be too fast sometimes.”

“Ah, haha, I see, that’s good, the more of you the better it will be, those mounts look strong too, haha.” The captain held that creepy smile as he waved at her while they passed through the gates.

When Sokram and his team left the village, Sokram, in a loud, uncharacteristic way, shouted angrily at his team, “Come on, you bunch of lazy bums! We don’t have all day, let’s go check the north side and then come back here to get those hares!”

His team understood the message, and they quickly started heading north after letting out a sharp, “Yes, captain!”

Sokram extended his senses toward the woods, trying to sense any threats as he and his team rode away, but sensed nothing.

Still, he was feeling quite uneasy, as if his guts were screaming at him to run.

“Guys, run! Now! Don’t look back, I’m right behind you!” Sokram ordered, but this time he didn’t stay behind to play the hero; seeing that he was behind them, his team didn’t hesitate either.

Just as they were a couple of hundred meters away, Sokram gave the signal to Savannah to activate the runic key.

As soon as she did it, an insurmountable amount of mana started rushing toward the Chief’s Longhouse, mana enough to kill an Exalted-level being.

“Sokram, what have you done?” Savannah looked speechless.

“Don’t stop! Don’t look back! Just run, dammit!” Sokram's guts continued to scream at him to run.

When the crimson barrier activated, a blinding column of light tore into the sky, and a deafening shriek sounded from the woods.

At the same time, coming from the village behind the barrier, voices shredded the air: children’s wails, women’s cries, and men’s guttural pleas. All perfectly synchronized, their mouths moving like marionettes on strings.

“Dammit, the people of the village!” Kan hesitated, looking back.

“There are no people there anymore! They are just empty husks, puppets to that thing in the woods. But as long as their bodies are alive, whatever that thing is, it won’t leave the woods. Keep running if you don’t want to end up like them. We’re not in the clear yet.”

Sokram urged them; his tone, heart rate, and smell of fear left no room for doubt; he was scared shitless.

It was the first time they saw Sokram like that, so they didn’t doubt him, but still, they were full of questions.

Lara turned to speak, but froze, shocked by the sight.

Sokram, seeing her reaction, shouted once again, “I told you not to look back! Ride! faster!”

Sokram knew Periklis could run much faster, and he even felt tempted, but couldn’t leave them behind.

Suddenly, he felt mana, dense and sharp, coming in their direction, but before he could even react...

“Booom!”

An explosion, right over them, but thanks to the Crimson Runestone, they and their mounts were safe.

Sokram noticed that they could only handle one more attack like that; they had already crossed five hundred meters, and the woods were staying behind.

Only then did Sokram take the risk of looking back.

What he saw left him perplexed.

The extermination team that went missing was just a few meters away from them, all of them from the Reformed level, but the captain was a Flawless Existence.

They all emitted the same killing intent as if they were the same being in different bodies.

But after reaching a certain distance away from the woods, they simply stopped chasing, just like the hares had the previous night.

But more than that, what perplexed him the most was what he saw among the trees.

The trees trembled.

Between them, a white mass thicker than an adult basilisk uncoiled, its body glistening with mucus.

The snow beneath it blackened where it passed.

Even with the dense, snowy pine trees, it was easy to distinguish the white giant, slug-like snake rushing back into the woods with the extermination team following.

And it wasn’t just him looking back.

Amira’s voice resounded even more panicked than Sokram’s heartbeat, “That is a Kasulla! That is a calamity-level threat. How did something like that appear here?”

“Fuck!” Sokram shouted in relief, “We just escaped certain death! Fuck!”

“We must rush back to the city and inform the City Lord immediately!” Amira, still panicking, almost screamed as she urged the wolf she was riding to run faster.

“Don’t worry, that thing will go nowhere without the husks carrying its worms, and they will not escape that barrier I set. It’s a self-sustainable type of spell; it can last for a month.”

“That was big brother Kutro.” Kan's voice sounded desperate, looking ghastly, still not believing how close to dying they all were, “I need to tell Alpha Kanami, he is Koma’s second son.”

The wolf-kin he was speaking about was the Flawless-level captain of the extermination team.

The rest of the girls, too, were too shocked to speak.

Lucy, Kiana, and Kina were shivering and failing to contain their tears. Amber was holding back tears, but she was struggling with her anxiety-filled thoughts.

Lara and Nora kept looking down, trembling slightly.

And Savannah, beyond scared, kept sneaking glances at Sokram, not knowing what to say.

They rode tirelessly back to the city, reaching it by sunset.

They didn’t leave their mounts at the stables and rushed, riding toward the City Lord’s Palace, completely ignoring the speed limit.