Chapter 1: Outer and Middle Layer
Darkness foreshadows evil creatures wreaking havoc across the land, from saints to leaders, deep within our hearts there is a shadow looming to awaken when the time has come.
The Continent of Aswerth, one of the countless large body of land that composes of the world of ”Mornd”
8000 years ago, this continent ravaged by wars, hundreds of races fight for dominance or just for survival was forced to until few left exhausted as the rest have gotten extinct or into hiding.
Left with devastating after-effects of the race war, the survivors decided to make peace to one another and made a bloodline contract that would bind the agreement for generations to come.
But such broad statement left a lot of loopholes that after a few hundred years, wars and conflict resume to the continent.
The Dark forest.
Home to the most savage and powerful monsters that have ever lived on the continent.
The land Is centered on the continent; it occupied a quarter of the landmass of the whole continent.
For a long time since the first documented history has ever known, no Empire has ever conquered even the edge of the dark forest that’s called the Outer layer.
There are four sectors of Dark Forest’s outer layers, the Northern dessert, Western mountain, Eastern Forrest, and the Southern winter.
Each territory inhibits monsters that were fully adapted and evolve to take advantage of the environment that they’re in for hundreds of thousands of years.
Up to this day, Neighboring kingdoms and empires still salivate the raw resources that the Dark Forest provides that is seemingly limitless due to the high density of mana throughout the territory that accelerate and replenish the resources quicker than they take them.
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Besides the Outer Layer, there’s the Middle Layer which only a group composed of S Rank adventurers or high-level personnel of an Empire would dare to venture to fulfill the high-level quest.
There is no distinguishing when you step to the Middle layer aside from the monster there have fully dark eyes that seemingly observing you with a hint of intelligence.
Once you step foot in the Mid layer part of the Dark Forest, plants, trees, monsters, and animals are so precious that materials like pelt from the black-eyed leopard would cost on average 600gold coins.
Because the high conductivity of mana and the versatile use for a high-level equipment demand is an all-time high.
An average annual income of a five-team composed of AA rank adventurers combine is 2500 gold coins. Just one black-eyed leopard would make the team of five to not work for two to three months or so.
But only if you keep your life intact.
Countless people attempted to enter the Middle-Layer but only chosen few manage to survive, only to become fertilizer to living things within.
Their seemingly quite high immunity to magic and physical damage is quite a challenge even for S rank adventurers. There is also record sighting from the adventurers returned from that place seeing small fist size creatures called Fairy, which is one of the extinct races after the Great Race War due to being hunted for their fairy dust to use for alchemy, one of the main ingredients of revival potion.
In which case it added the allure of going and exploring the Middle-Layer of the Dark Forest.
The Middle layer is hard enough that one of the most powerful adventurers encounters a monster left him grievously wounded.
The central core, the middle of the Dark Forest.
Filled with dark, foggy miasma that covered the Central core that it was deadly to any living creatures, your visibility nearly closed to zero.
Very few tried, but all of them never returned. Not only the miasma killed all living creatures with slow poison, but in economic standpoint, it's not worth the risk as anything the miasma touches would turn black deeming materials became tainted and unworkable, you would be also slowly dying from the miasma poisonous.