Chapter 25: The Shocked Human Traitors

Chapter 25: The Shocked Human Traitors On the other side, the human traitor camp that Carlos had spotted nearly 2 months ago had doubled in size. It was packed to the brim—easily several hundred of them. At the center of the camp, a sickly green bonfire burned unusually bright. The three captains of the human traitor camp sat around the fire. Dead silence—no one spoke, only the crackling sounds of the fire burning bones. Suddenly, the most jacked of the three captains—a middle-aged man—spoke up. "Damn, I’m not getting anywhere on my end. Stuart, Chapman, how are things going for you? Have you found any Dark Mist nodes?" The lean man, Stuart, shook his head. "Zilch on my end." The middle-aged man, Wolf, turned his gaze to the last person—Chapman. This was a man completely wrapped in black robes, skinny as a rail, with exposed fingers that were dried to the bone—like skin stretched over a skeleton. "Found one." His voice was extremely hoarse and slow, like an old man on his deathbed speaking. "Where?" Wolf and Stuart spoke almost at the same time, their voices excited but tinged with greed, emotions running high. Chapman glanced at them, throwing cold water on his two buddies. "You’re celebrating way too early. That Dark Mist node has already been cleared by humans." "What! Cleared by humans!" Stuart cried out in shock, while Wolf’s expression went dark as a storm cloud. "No freaking way! That’s a Dark Mist node! Under the iron law that prevents Psionics of Spirituality 10 and above from entering the Withered Lands, who could possibly clear so many monsters with such crazy stats!" Stuart looked completely skeptical—he suspected Chapman wanted to hog all the credit for opening the Dark Mist node. "Stuart’s right. Even Spirituality 9 Psionics would need at least a thousand people to have a snowball’s chance in hell at clearing a Dark Mist node! And we all know the situation in Ember City. There’s no way they could round up that many Spirituality 9 Psionics!" Wolf also chimed in, eyeing Chapman with suspicion. Chapman hung his head in thought for a moment, then said hoarsely: "Not sure. That Dark Mist node was in an ancient castle, with monster corpses scattered all over the place. Following the dark mist’s trail, I found the monster carrying the Dark Mist node’s power in the deepest part..." Chapman paused here. Wolf and Stuart got antsy. "Keep talking!" "Then what?" "But that monster was stone cold dead, only half its corpse left. The remains had tons of sword wounds—clearly killed by greatswords! Besides human Psionics, what other force would pull something like this?" After Chapman finished spilling everything in one breath, the scene went quiet again. Wolf and Stuart’s eyes went wide with disbelief: "Impossible! A monster carrying a Dark Mist node’s power must have at least one attribute at 20 points. How could it get taken down by Non-tier Psionics with less than 10 Spirituality?" "Chapman, are you sure that was the monster carrying the Dark Mist node?" The two couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Because in other Dark Mist regions, traitors had already stumbled across Dark Mist nodes. According to the word on the street, those places were absolutely beyond what current human Psionics could handle. Every Dark Mist region had Spirituality restrictions, And the monsters carrying Dark Mist nodes definitely had maxed-out attributes at least one tier higher than the human Psionics in that region. Plus the massive spawned elite monster groups—absolutely not something current human Psionics in each region could clear. "If you don’t believe me, you can go check it out yourselves. I’ll take you there." Chapman gave up arguing and stood up. Wolf and Stuart stuck close behind—they had to see it with their own eyes to believe it. ... The Castle of Agony that Carlos had cleared over ten days ago welcomed three dark figures—the camp’s temporary captains. "It really is a monster that carried a Dark Mist node’s power!" Wolf and Stuart each used arcane methods to confirm the identity of the half insect corpse in the room, their faces grim. "Could it really have been human Psionics?" Wolf’s thoughts started to waver—he suspected this was some terrifying human force that had been laying low. Stuart looked down at the leftover battle traces in the castle, from the main hall to the secondary hall and back here. The more he looked, the more something felt off. Suddenly, a light bulb went off: "Have you noticed there’s no blood from any other creatures here?" Wolf and Chapman got drawn in by Stuart’s words, checking out the bloodstains around them. Besides insect blood, there really wasn’t any other weird blood. "There are two possibilities. The human team that cleared this Dark Mist node was extremely powerful and pulled off the clearing with almost zero casualties." As soon as he finished talking, all of them shook their heads. If it was humans organizing a massive force and paying through the nose to clear a Dark Mist node, they could barely buy it. But almost no one getting hurt? That was pure fantasy. With that kind of scary power, their big, obvious camp would have been wiped off the map ages ago. "Of course, that’s pretty much impossible." "The other possibility is that what cleared this node wasn’t humans at all, but Dark Mist monsters." "Dark Mist monsters using greatswords?" Wolf and Chapman looked at each other. In all their years, they’d never actually seen Dark Mist monsters wielding greatswords. "That’s not out of the question. Under the massive power of the Dark Mist, what couldn’t happen?" "Could be some new type of monster it cooked up that did this." Wolf’s tone carried a hint of relief—as long as it wasn’t human Psionics, that was good news. He was really sweating that some human force capable of clearing Dark Mist nodes had suddenly shown up in the Withered Lands. A force that could clear Dark Mist nodes could naturally steamroll their camp too. "I’ll send people to scout this area. If it really is Dark Mist monsters, then there’s nothing to sweat about. And the urgent thing is tracking down the remaining Dark Mist nodes." Chapman felt Stuart’s reasoning was full of holes, But right now the three just needed a halfway decent excuse to keep everyone calm, so he didn’t push back. ... While the traitors were looking seriously spooked due to the destruction of the Agony Beetle node, Carlos and his Purple Thornblade Skeleton Guards arrived at the last node in the Withered Lands: the Four-Section Beetle node! "Has this Dark Mist node already been woken up?" Carlos stood on a boulder, his gaze carrying some caution. In front of them was a triangular giant insect nest. Three levels total, each level over 30 feet high, radiating a withered, creepy vibe. Looking into the distance, he could see Monsters constantly going in and out of the nest, working to build this massive structure. "Who pulled this off?" Carlos wondered—besides himself, were there others hunting for Dark Mist nodes too? Was it some "lucky bastard" who stumbled in by accident, or did those human traitors do this on purpose? Thinking of that human traitor camp, Carlos figured nine times out of ten it was the human traitors’ doing.