Tonight was strange. Not even the sounds of insects nor night lives could be heard. It was as though every life had died and only trees remained.

It was 2 nights after Lunus decided to part away from Oscar. At the moment, he was slinging his way through the forest, searching for something.

“I am close to them. I can sense it, this feeling of every life being devoured.”

He whipped his vine over a tree branch as his body flew forward. His shadow moved from tree to tree as if he was soaring through the sky.

He had become more familiar with his new body. Right now, he didn’t have to even catch the tree branches to sling his body since he could just give them a light touch to send his light body forward.

He’d never been able to do something like this back when he was alive since his body would be too slow and heavy. Comparing to that, he felt that he had a better chance against the green warts than when he still had his old body.

“I must hurry. I couldn’t travel in the daytime because I want to avoid being trailed by my lord, but sooner or later he must find me somehow…”

Lunus had learned about Oscar’s ability to talk with plants and animals, so he had traveled only in the nighttime to avoid being detected. And when the sun rose he would hide underground, training his controlling skills over the vines.

*Woosh!*, he gave another light touch to the tree branch as he leaped forward. In front of him was a wide opening where trees were sparse and the ground was solid.

“There it is!”

He dropped his body full of vines down, slapping the ground loudly. He then crept toward what he was searching for during these times.

It was the remnants of a crude fire camp. Some of the green warts were smart enough to know how to set a bonfire and they usually made a camp like this for their meat party the night after their hunt.

“This place reeks of death.”

Lunus approached the remain of the bonfire as his vines crept on the ground. Then he felt a hard object under a branch of his vines. When he looked around, there were several more things like this everywhere, varying in shapes and sizes.

They were all bones. These were the remains of the foods the green warts had in their meat party. Normally wherever there were corpses, scavengers were there, but strangely there was not even one here to get rid of the rotten meat.

The answer was easy. It was because they were also hunted or fled away.

Meats were stapled food to green warts. They hunted everything that moved and lived. It was as though they were born to be greedy and gluttonous by nature. When they felt bored from the taste of meat in their hands, they would seek out for a newer and fresher one. With this, they always left more than half of their hunted preys behind.

However, it wouldn’t be strange if this was only a hunt for feeding their gluttonous bellies. But when Lunus looked further in, he could see several rotten beasts lying around the campfire in gruesome ways.

Next to a big tree, a rotten bull tied there had its flank carved with a knife. Its dark rotten flesh painted its white hide with circles lapped into a shooting mark. On there, the trace of its hide being pierced by knives and arrows was left behind. This poor guy was used as a shooting target, and most probably while alive! There were even trails of its last attempt to live left on the ground.

Hanging down from the tree were the bodies of small animals like rabbits and squirrels. Seeing from the height and the wounds on the corpses, they were used as sandbags until their last agony breath.

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On a big rock, the remains of heads being cracked open and rotten brains were scattered around. And next to them was a wooden club soaked in dark sticky liquid. They must be what was left from the green warts twisted games.

These were barbaric acts!

The green flames in Lunus’ eyes flickered as his vines coiled and twitched in anger. It was acceptable if a predator hunted their preys just for food since it was the way of nature; however, killing and torturing just for fulfilling their twisted desires like this was intolerable!

Don’t they have any respect for lives? Killing to feed their greed like this is an act of evils!, he cursed.

“They must be around here last night. It’s a shame that I can’t save these ones…”

The corpses were all rotten and already gave off stinky smell due to being left outside during the day, but there were still no worms and maggots on the meat even though there was an army of flies around. With this evidence, he could roughly estimate the time when this meat party took place.

Lunus crept toward the body of the bull that was tied and used as a shooting target. He raised and placed his vine on its rotten flesh, sweeping the cluster of flies aside.

“I know that it is a selfish request, but please lend me a hand to protect this forest together and avenge your misjudged death.

Glowing berries grew at the tip of the vine was dropped onto the rotten wound. Lunus poured his mana into them, making them quickly sprouted and grew long. The growing vines stretched around as they sunk into the rotten flesh and crept underneath the tattered hide.

A moment later the bull’s body shook strongly as the flies hiding around its body flew away altogether, creating a buzzing black cloud.

Then the bull moved. It twisted around, pulling the ropes tying its feet and shaking the trees at the rope’s ends.

Fearing that the bull might pull the trees down with its monstrous strength, Lunus decided to cut the rope down to avoid the worst outcome.

Being set free, the bull stomped as it supported its heavy body up. The vines crept underneath its flesh wiggled and bursted out from its worn-out hide. They coiled around the bones and scraped the rotten meat out.

Soon after, its flesh was all scraped out and piled on the ground. The vines coiled and extended along its bones like muscles leaving no white bones to be seen except its skull and the green flames that ignited and flickered in its hollow eyes.

The sturdy transformed bull stood firmly showing off its new body. Then it bent its knees and lowered its head to the ground.

“Greeting, master,” it said through the connection of [Mind link].

Not speaking a single word back, Lunus’ body froze still. The tip of his vines coiled around and the flickering flame in his eyes grew smaller indicating his disappointment.

After calming down, he looked up at the moon hovering over the tree top.

“Oh heaven…, why?,” he mumbled.

The silence approached as he was immersed in the recent event betrayed his expectation.

*Whack!*, his vines strongly slapped the ground as his body leaped high into the dark sky.

The moon was said in an old story to be a holy child of a great god. It always floated high in the sky letting no one touch its majestic figure.

Then there appeared a king of a powerful nation who truly admired the moon’s beauty from his heart. So he sent an invitation message attached on an arrow to the sky hoping that the moon would catch it and come to visit his castle.

But the moon was so prideful of its gorgeous presence that it would never touch the dirty ground no matter who asked it to. As the result, the arrow which couldn’t get even a tiny bit of attention from the moon returned back to the heart of the king as it took his poor life away.

However, the old story would be rewritten tonight as hundreds of small moons had appeared over the dark sky. They glowed in pale yellow as they scattered over an abandoned camp. And like shooting stars, they fell down to the earth only to be received by rotten meat.

A soft green hand broke them from inside as it stretched outward and grew longer every second passed. The hands grew leaves as they turned into vines and sunk into the stinky rotten flesh.

A moment later, a scary scene where every dead body in sight suddenly stood up and twitched as their rotten meat was discarded on the ground took place in front of Lunus’ eyes.

When his vines touched the ground, all of the standing bodies turned their meatless skull to face him and lowered their head on the ground.

“““Greeting, master!,”””

Their sounds sent to him via the connection echoed in his head as his nonexistent heart twitched in depression.

“Where have their memories gone?”