Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 2952: Chapter 2953: The Eerie Forest

Angel originally thought of choosing a random direction to walk, to see if he could find a way out of the forest.

Or rather, in this sunless forest, see if he could find a guide to leave the anomaly.

However, after taking just a few steps, Angel frowned. Although he couldn’t perceive the Mind Space or mobilize energy, his Spiritual Sense as a wizard hadn’t disappeared.

He vaguely felt something was amiss around him, but couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. The sense of pressure on his brow kept reminding him that this forest wasn’t as simple as it appeared, it harbored an indescribable danger.

"Where would the danger come from?" Angel rubbed his throbbing brow with his fingers, trying to enhance his Spiritual Sense. But it was to no avail; instead, the surging sense gradually dissipated.

Everything returned to silence, as if the danger was just an illusion.

Angel knew very well that the pressure he felt earlier wasn’t an illusion, there was definitely something wrong here. Since his Spiritual Sense had quieted, he could only try to observe the surroundings with his eyes to analyze the source of the danger.

Was there a monster lurking in the forest shadows? Or was it a trap set by hunters within the forest?

Or perhaps... the forest itself was dangerous? Like, maybe the trees around him possessed a hidden intelligence, capable of transforming into evil treants?

As Angel’s thoughts began to run wild, several harsh, screeching caws suddenly reached his ears.

Are there crows in the forest?

Angel looked up, spotting a few dark silhouettes flying through the pitch-black forest, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

The size of the shadows was similar to crows, and when they flew past, a fluttering sound could be heard, with a high probability that they were indeed crows.

These presumed crows, although they disappeared in an instant, their screeching didn’t stop, as if they were constantly hovering around Angel.

Could the danger come from the crows?

In the Wizards’ Realm, crows are often used as eyes. Moreover, crows are known for holding grudges, and some wizards keep them as pets, using their vengeful nature as a warning to approaching individuals.

Angel wasn’t sure if these crows were kept as pets or if they were the eyes of some Transcendent, but since this was within the "anomaly," it shouldn’t be some cryptic metaphor, right?

Perhaps these crows weren’t the source of danger, but rather were amplifying the atmosphere?

After all, even Angel, now listening to the caws that seemed like the cries of the undead and looking at the dark forest ahead, felt an inexplicable uneasiness in his heart.

The eerie atmosphere here had clearly been amplified by these crows hiding in the shadows.

Suppressing the turbulent thoughts in his heart, Angel refocused on the present.

Staying in one place wasn’t an option. Angel thought for a moment and decided to try walking in a different direction.

Perhaps the earlier sense of danger was because he was walking in the wrong direction? As long as he found the right direction, could he shed the feeling of impending danger?

Changing direction, Angel took a few more steps.

The Spiritual Sense didn’t reawaken, which perhaps meant changing direction indeed helped evade the danger? But Angel didn’t think it was that simple; the lack of a prompt from his Spiritual Sense might just be because it had already given its warning earlier.

Undaunted, Angel continued walking a few more steps.

When the total number of steps reached thirty, Angel stopped. Because he finally discovered what was off!

The trees around him seemed to have become thicker and taller!

Could there really be something wrong with the trees? To prove his discovery wasn’t mistaken, he decided to continue moving forward. But this time, he used a different reference point.

Several seconds later, Angel stopped again.

At this moment, his expression was no longer as calm as before because he had uncovered... the truth.

—The trees hadn’t changed, it was he who had changed. His body had shrunk.

This forest was like a Gulliver’s tunnel; every step forward made his body shrink a bit.

This shrinking didn’t cause Angel’s body to feel unusual, it seemed to shrink naturally. For this reason, Angel didn’t notice at first, and if it weren’t for the reminder from his Spiritual Sense, he might not have realized his abnormality until the surrounding trees all turned into towering giants.

However, the shrinking had a pattern: it only occurred while walking, stopping halted the process.

Does this mean stopping is the "solution"?

Absolutely not.

Angel tried stopping to analyze the situation around, but the more he stopped, the more he didn’t want to move, didn’t dare to move. As if, upon discovering the shrinking pattern, "staying still" became his inner island of safety, making him increasingly reluctant to take another step.

And this was definitely not a good thing. Unless he wanted to be trapped forever in this bizarre anomaly, he had to move and find the solution to the anomaly.

"Every step causes shrinking, is this the prompt for this anomaly?"

While pondering inwardly, Angel proactively took action, starting to conduct more tests related to the shrinking pattern around him.

Angel might have appeared to be wandering, but in truth, he was testing different directions, walking styles, and various factors influencing the shrinking. He even climbed a tree and ran with all his might down a stretch of path.

Eventually, he arrived at a not-so-great conclusion:

The shrinking wasn’t affected by any other factors; as long as you kept moving, no matter the posture, even crawling forward, you’d definitely shrink. And running accelerated the shrinking.

This meant, if he wanted to find the solution to the anomaly, he inevitably had to shrink, and this shrinking would continue indefinitely. Eventually, he might become smaller than dust.

No, he might not even have the chance to become as small as dust before falling prey to other dangers lurking in the forest, like the crows.

Ever since the first crow’s call rang in Angel’s ears, this group of crows hidden in the shadows hadn’t left, occasionally cawing to assert their presence.

Without a doubt, these crows were secretly watching him from the dark.

By now, after a series of tests, although Angel’s body had shrunk considerably, his height had decreased by half a head, at least maintaining an adult figure. Against the crows hiding in the forest’s shadows, he still had a certain advantage. Comparatively speaking, he was barely the Hunter in this scenario.

But as he continued shrinking and his body reduced to a size comparable to the Kulakuka people, Hunter and prey would change places.

He would become the prey, and the crows the hunters.

Angel believed that when that time came, the crows would certainly fly out from the shadows and launch an attack on him.

"A forest that shrinks people, and crows watching intently from the sidelines." Angel murmured softly: Could this be the test of this anomaly?

Angel knew it was hard to guess the true test of the anomaly, but the current biggest predicament was indeed resolving his shrinking problem, as well as dealing with the crows in the shadows.

How to resolve the predicament? Should he stop and try to kill the crows?

No, the fact that the crows weren’t attacking meant they knew about the forest’s shrinking pattern too, so they would wait until the tables turned to attack.

Stopping wouldn’t prompt an attack by the crows, but would instead induce a subconscious psychological suggestion, making him more afraid to move the longer he stayed still.

But what if he doesn’t stop, then what? Deal with the crows? Or is it that the crows and shrinking are just forms of psychological pressure, causing him to panic and overlook clues hidden in the shadows?

Angel began to force himself not to think about the crow and the shrinking of his body, ignoring these external factors, and seriously searching for clues hidden in the forest.

...

Angel didn’t pay attention to the changes in his body and started to wander in the forest. He initially planned to look for "traces of people", thinking that if there were traces, he might find a way out.

But after searching for a while, he didn’t find any traces of people but did discover some animal footprints.

These footprints were found beneath a patch of rotting broadleaf trees, very small, about the size of a baby’s fist, yet they sunk deep into the ground.

Angel couldn’t identify the shape of the footprints, because water had filled them, turning the once clear prints into muddy smears.

Could these footprints be a clue? Angel was unsure, but he decided to search around the vicinity of the footprints.

Since there was one footprint, there had to be a second footprint.

As he searched, Angel shrank by another three centimeters. However, he eventually found the second footprint.

It’s worth noting that the second footprint seemed to be left by the same kind of animal as the first, yet they were quite far apart, over four meters, suggesting that this animal took large steps? 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Additionally, there was no change in the size of the footprints, which meant there was a second type of creature in the forest that did not shrink with movement.

The first was the crow, and the second was the owner of these footprints.

If the crow was a hidden enemy, could the owner of these footprints be the one to unravel this anomaly?

Angel pondered for a moment and decided to follow the direction of the footprints to find their owner.

In this search, he lost another five centimeters.

However, this time Angel found around ten footprints, confirming that the owner of these footprints indeed did not shrink.

Although the owner of the footprints left one on the left and one on the right, the general direction was certain.

"Could this direction be the way out?" Angel didn’t know, but he was willing to try again.

Continuing to follow the footprints, this time Angel shrank another two centimeters before stopping.

It wasn’t that he found the owner of the footprints, nor was he planning to give up, but rather his previously dormant spiritual sense suddenly awoke in an instant.

This time, the awakened spiritual sense did not give Angel warnings of danger as before but provided a vague guidance: it seemed his spiritual sense was echoing with some part of the forest.

At the same time, the spiritual sense pointed Angel in a general direction—due north.

However, the direction of the footprints was northwest from his current position, considering it as the origin point.

Although not a complete divergence, it was still at a significant angle.

Moreover, Angel could roughly estimate that the location pointed by the spiritual sense was at least a kilometer away from his current position.

Not to mention the possibility of detours on the way, even if he went in a straight line, according to the rules of shrinking and the reduction in stride as he shrank, by the time he reached the target location, he estimated his body size would shrink to half of what it was now, resembling that of a dwarf or a halfling.

Though not yet immediately vulnerable, the crow would already have the qualification to launch an attack on him.

His opportunities were becoming limited, and the biggest dilemma before Angel was choosing between the footprints or trusting his spiritual sense.

Angel paused, lost in thought.

About half a minute later, Angel stepped forward again, this time deciding not to follow the footprints and instead trust his spiritual sense, heading due north!

He made this choice because of his trust in "absolute self."

Spiritual sense is quite mysterious, it can be called inspiration, or spirituality. It originates from oneself, is the guidance of deep thinking, is the summation of the sea of etheric energy, and is the outlet of hive consciousness.

It is also a form of intuition from the inside out.

To put it more bluntly, it’s a kind of absolute self.

Surface self can still be deceived. But the probability of deceiving the deeper absolute self is very small.

At least, in the Southern Domain Wizard World, Angel had never seen the ability to deceive the absolute self.

Therefore, he chose to trust his spiritual sense.

However, there was something strange about this sudden spiritual sense. For instance, the spiritual sense can predict danger and provide decisions during hesitation, but directly using the spiritual sense to guide the way, even with the endpoint coordinates appearing.

That was very strange.

It’s not that spiritual sense couldn’t achieve this, but generally, only one kind of situation could accomplish this: it meant there was something deeply related to Angel at the guided place, or even that there was an item belonging to Angel at the coordinate point, leading to this "strong association" of spiritual sense.

But Angel could be sure that he hadn’t lost any items.

If he had to say something, it might only be the Mind Space.

Except the Mind Space was the least likely to be lost. Although Angel couldn’t sense it now, he was sure that the Mind Space followed him through higher dimensions all along. Otherwise, the spiritual sense wouldn’t appear.

Since it wasn’t the Mind Space and Angel hadn’t lost any other items, why did such a "strong association" of spiritual sense appear?

Angel didn’t know, but he decided to see for himself.

...

After walking for about ten more minutes, Angel had shrunk by about thirty centimeters.

However, the distance to the target point was getting closer and closer.

The cawing of the crow hadn’t disappeared, continuing to sound incessantly by his ear. But apart from the secretly spying crow, Angel hadn’t found any other dangers in the forest... nor any other animals.

This seemed to suggest that the previous animal’s footprints might be the only other animal in the forest?

If so, could his choice have been wrong? Should he have trusted the footprints instead of his spiritual sense?

A trace of confusion arose in Angel’s heart.

Should he retreat? If he retreated now, there might still be time?

It was as if a voice in Angel’s heart kept tempting him to retreat, to try looking for the footprints, but after deep contemplation, Angel still didn’t stop.

If he retreated now, he might quickly find the footprints, but where would the end of the footprints be? Could his body size support him to reach the end of the footprints? That was hard to say.

However, if he chose to continue forward, at least Angel had a set goal.

Compared to aimlessly searching for footprints, advancing with a goal could at least give him an... outcome.