[Your horde is under attack.]
[2x Grade-3 Dread Stalkers were slain.]
[3x Grade-3 Ravagers were slain.]
"All of them at once?" Blaze mumbled. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel_fіre.net
"My lord, is something the matter?" Marrow asked.
Blaze shook his head and waved her off. They were focused on constructing the bone turrets, and he didn’t want them to stop that.
As for the grade-3s’ deaths, he knew it couldn’t be humans.
He had created those zombies to counter humans, with instructions given to retreat as soon as they identified the enemy.
That way, Blaze could have used the spire to scan their memories and see the enemy himself.
If the threat were human, the stalkers could have outrun them with ease. The fact that they couldn’t escape meant that whatever was killing the zombies wasn’t human.
Should I send Raven or Fester to look?
Blaze rejected that thought as soon as it appeared.
If the creature could kill multiple grade-3s at once, then sending grade-4 zombies wasn’t a wise move. It would have been different if Chimera had been there, as he had exceptional agility, but since he wasn’t, Blaze decided to go and check things out in person.
"Marrow, take care of things here," Blaze said, wearing his suit. "I’ll be right back."
Before she could say anything, Blaze zoomed past her at full speed.
Five minutes later...
Blaze stood before the marshlands, his hands bloodied.
On his way over, he spotted some mutated dogs. They stood there as if guarding the swamps beyond. Next to them were a few piles of bones, with a bit of flesh on them. Rotten flesh, to be precise.
There’s no denying. These are the bones I used to make grade-3s.
Blaze thought, lifting a bone to examine.
Then he turned to the dog corpses. While they were strong, they weren’t strong enough to take down grade-3s. The pack was too small to kill everyone at once.
Not to mention, they couldn’t possibly eat all that flesh in less than five minutes. It was more likely someone had dumped those bones for the dogs.
"Did humans tame these wild creatures again?"
It wasn’t a far-fetched thought. He had been wondering why no humans had tried domesticating these creatures yet, as it would have helped them a lot. Then again, these beasts were too domineering to surrender.
Blaze’s gaze shifted to the swampy forest. He took a quick look around, but other than the forest, there was nothing for the dogs to guard.
Whatever had killed the zombies resided inside the swamps.
"If that’s the case, inside the forest I go," Blaze said, wiping the blood off his hands on the dog’s fur.
However, instead of walking, he used his tendrils to swing on the branches of the few trees that were there. Since it was a swamp, the place could be filled with mutated reptiles and whatnot.
Besides, he didn’t want to get his new suit dirty. Although he knew it was only a matter of time before it did.
A few minutes passed, and he had yet to find any settlement or any animal that could have killed the zombies.
"It’s awfully quiet here," he mumbled, hanging by a tree branch. "Perhaps they are underground? No, the ants would have found them already if that were the case."
Fester and the ants had kept on with their intel collection duties since there wasn’t much to do. If any underground creatures lived so close to the lair, they would’ve already found them.
"It’s something on the ground, but I can’t see or sense it. Interesting—"
Blaze hadn’t even finished the sentence when he felt something rustle towards him. He kicked off the branch, swinging to another tree, and only saw a glimmer of green.
The creature struck again, but this time, Blaze swung his claws at it. The thing was slashed in half, yet it didn’t die. A part of it fell to the ground, while the rest scurried away.
"What was that? A snake?"
He kept staring in the direction the thing had slithered away. He picked up the severed part with his tendril, and what he saw confused him even more.
"This looks like a vine, not a snake."
He looked around and noticed that none of the trees in his immediate vicinity had such vines. Whatever the vine was, it came from deeper swamps.
However, instead of blindly chasing the ghost of a vine, Blaze waited. Soon enough, more vines crept toward him. As they shot towards him, he slashed all of them but one.
He let it wrap around Necrophage and pull him to the destination. Perhaps it was a dangerous move, but it was the quickest way to get to the source of all the trouble.
The vine dragged him into a clearing, where a lone tree stood tall.
"A bald cypress. It isn’t something I was expecting to see here."
The tree stood nearly 120 feet tall and seven feet wide at the base, covered in dense grayish-green vines. Its trunk was covered in moss and fungi, while its fluffy roots kept it locked in place in the soft, swampy soil.
Other than getting larger than normal, like the other plants, there was nothing extraordinary about the tree.
That was until Blaze saw what was dangling from its vines. Shriveled up corpses of zombies, beasts, and humans alike hung there like showpieces. None of them had a single bone in them.
"So that’s where those bones came from," Blaze mumbled, remembering the bones he saw earlier.
It would seem the cypress had established some sort of symbiotic relationship with the dogs.
Since the tree couldn’t move, the dogs lured victims into the forest, and in return got bones and some flesh. Perhaps they also acted as an alarm to alert the tree, or to protect it.
The dogs got an easy meal, and the tree got necessary nutrients. A win-win situation for all the involved parties, other than the victims, of course.
As Blaze got closer, even more vines shot towards him. However, these were different. They split open in the middle like mouths to reveal the jagged teeth.
"I’m not your food," Blaze said before slashing all the vines and landing in front of the tree.
"Every...thing...food."