HPV 31

“Good grief, is someone doomed to disappear every single day now?”

It had barely been a day since they set out to find the bride who vanished on her wedding night.

Now, the boy raised by elves, half out of his mind, had grabbed Riarun and run off—but he was so fast that even their traces had vanished.

“Penzey, what do we do? Should we follow them into the forest too?”

Paronai placed a hand on Penzey’s shoulder. Though he usually teased Penzey like a peer, at times like this, he relied on him—after all, Penzey was nine years older.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Oh, about what magic to use to rescue them?”

“No… if Yuri says to abandon Riarun, which beauty’s side should I take…”

He wasn’t a particularly reliable companion.

Turning away from Penzey, Paronai looked toward the other elder in the group—their spiritual anchor, the priest clad in white.

While Penzey leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head, pretending to be nonchalant, Paronai had gone deathly pale. Yurichen, meanwhile, was somewhere between the two—his right hand, which had shot forward moments ago, was now neatly folded behind his left hand as if nothing had happened.

“Penzey is especially vulnerable to the forest’s influence. After all, he serves the spirits of the woods. He won’t be able to find his way out on his own.”

In short, even if Riarun succeeded in persuading Bzhan, the chances of finding his own way back were slim. He would need help.

“We can only hope that Bzhan holds on to him tightly. I know where Bzhan is.”

Yurichen activated the sacred tool that restrained Bzhan.

The artifact, formed from divine power, resonated with the High Priest’s strength, causing strange ripples to spread out in all directions.

“They’re not just standing still, right? They’re moving, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they’re moving.”

Since Bzhan’s position was shifting, they would have to chase after him. Considering Bzhan could use elven footwork perfectly, they would need to sprint at full speed just to have a chance of catching up.

But if they recklessly seized Bzhan’s consciousness to immobilize him, they risked disturbing the forest’s secrets.

Even though the forest looked peaceful, there wasn’t even the occasional birdsong—under the trees, it was likely not mushrooms but piles of travelers’ bones growing instead.

“It’s a forest hostile to humans.”

The giant man, silent until now, finally spoke.

It was rare for him to do so, and immediately all eyes turned toward him.

“That’s why only I can enter.”

Since he had never before volunteered to take action, it took a moment to gauge his seriousness.

Yurichen withdrew his hand from the sacred tool to question him.

“Even if you can move safely in there, how will you find them?”

“By scent.”

The man’s eyes, fixed on the forest, looked like blood-red stones.

The scent he claimed to remember belonged to just one person.

Penzey’s lips twitched, clearly wanting to make some kind of joke.

Yurichen caught it and, with the sheer force of his presence, conveyed ‘shut your mouth’.

“One hour. If you haven’t returned by then, I will do whatever it takes—whether it’s chopping down every tree or burning it with divine power—to bring you back.”

Banwes, watched by the warrior, the mage, and the priest, strode into the cursed forest.

Thick branches blocked his path, making it immediately obvious that no human traveled here.

When he reached out to brush them aside, the delicate leaves crumbled easily at his touch—fresh, tender wild plants.

The lack of dense, thorny underbrush meant that monsters were rare here, and if any lived, they were likely tiny creatures, hiding silently like squirrels.

It was a forest to his liking.

In a place like this, he wouldn’t have to live so desperately anymore.

He wouldn’t have to growl like a beast just to drive other monsters away.

He could even sleep deeply for hours.

But in the end, just like that lofty priest from earlier, the humans would surely come and drive him out—setting fire to the forest if necessary, just as they had done to the Byahil Forest.

Drawing on the blood he inherited from his monster father, Banwes concentrated all his senses into his nose.

Taking a deep breath, he caught a faint lingering trace of a familiar scent.

How far had the little human wandered in such a short time?

But for Banwes, tracking him was laughably easy.

And now, having spotted the slender figure crouched beneath a large tree, all he had to do was approach with a mocking smile.

Riarun’s scent grew stronger.

Banwes, maintaining a steady, unhurried pace, reached out and grabbed the familiar nape of the boy’s neck—just as he had done so many times before.

“Hey.”

Golden hair scattered into the air.

Liaron, caught by the scruff, slowly turned to look back.

Kihehehehehe!

A chilling shriek echoed through the area.

Where Riarun’s face should have been, there was the grotesquely rotted visage of a monster. In the next instant, the golden hair fell away like trash.

Banwes, feeling as if his heart had frozen solid, realized—

It was a fake.

Only then did he lift his head… and he saw it.

He couldn’t recognize a single part of the path he had taken.

All around him, it was as if the forest itself was cackling in mockery.

In the end, half their group had vanished.

Paronai, Yurichen, and Penzey had no choice but to wait quietly.

Yurichen was holding both Bzhan’s sacred artifact and Banwes’, splitting his consciousness to monitor both at once.

“Are they getting closer?”

Paronai, growing anxious, asked.

“No… They’re getting farther apart.”

It was a horrifying answer.

That left only two possibilities: Bzhan had abandoned Riarun midway, and Banwes was headed toward Riarun—or Banwes himself was lost and wandering.

“If we leave them like this, they’ll only get farther apart. Let’s go in too. You can track their positions, right?”

“Yes. But the promised hour hasn’t passed yet.”

At that moment, Penzey, who had been fiddling with a few sticks and glass spheres pulled from the bag at his waist, straightened up.

“You know what? The coordinates where we’re standing… they’re a little strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re already inside the forest.”

A strange tension gripped their bodies.

A heavy silence fell.

Yurichen was the first to grasp the situation.

“…I see. The locals wouldn’t even go near the border, remember? Even this boundary was inaccurate. The forest’s curse has spread farther than we thought.”

If they were already within the forest’s domain, then moving forward was the best choice.

Penzey gave a slight shrug as if to say so, and started striding ahead.

“Don’t go ahead alone!”

Yurichen shouted, and Paronai hurriedly grabbed the mage’s arm.

But the moment he did, the sensation of something collapsing in his arms told him—Penzey’s figure dissolved into a wisp of smoke.

“What the—! Penzey was an illusion too!”

Now Paronai was truly terrified.

There was only one companion left.

He clung tightly to Yurichen like a lifeline.

“You’re real, right?”

Spouting a half-crazed question, he fumbled at Yurichen’s face and neck.

He felt warm, living heat.

Even though the high priest’s face behind the veil seemed as cold as ever, Paronai couldn’t let go, driven by the fear of being left alone.

Yurichen ripped the veil off with a sharp motion.

Silver hair, known for earning him the title of the “Silver Priest,” cascaded down like a waterfall.

As Paronai stared, wide-eyed, the divine golden eyes—eyes said to be bestowed by the gods themselves—blazed like twin suns.

A thunderous roar burst forth.

“How dare mere forest delusions try to deceive a messenger of the gods!!”

It was as if the earth, the wind, and the sky all screamed in agony.

Paronai, seized by awe that was close to terror, watched the moment when everything in the forest bent and submitted to the High Priest’s will.

The illusions, from dozens to thousands to hundreds of thousands, shattered and were swept away like a downpour of light.

With a single shout, the forest’s curse was broken.

“No way… I’ve never seen anything like this before!”

Paronai, overwhelmed with excitement, shook Yurichen violently.

The High Priest, holding his forehead, swayed more easily than usual.

“I don’t use it often. The aftereffects are severe.”

Suppressing the headache that surged over him, Yurichen reactivated both sacred tools.

“We’ll have to find Bzhan and Riarun ourselves. And retrieve Banwes along the way.”

“Please, let’s do that. Banwes was so confident he wouldn’t get bewitched—and now we have to rescue him!”

Paronai grumbled for a moment, then suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“If the forest managed to deceive Banwes… does that mean it considered him human?”

Yurichen said nothing, focusing only on the task ahead.

“Bzhan has stopped moving. It’s best to find him first. If I concentrate on the sacred artifacts, I won’t be able to watch our surroundings. If I misstep, please support me.”

“Got it. Leave it to me.”