Carefully stepping forward, a group of bow-wielding hunters tread around the boundary of blackened ground and transformed plant life, the boundary of the transformation an almost unnervingly clear separation. There was about two strides of distance where the black ground slowly lightened toward the normal earthen hues beyond the changed zone and the grass was merely grey and stiff rather than blackened and sword-like. Roughly a dozen figures comprised the group, mostly humans, but there were a trio of shorter, bearded figures of dwarves clustered furthest from the phenomenon. All had an arrow nocked and hands ready to draw, eyes flickering rapidly between examining the ground of the boundary, and the twisted treetops that lay within. Within a stones throw, the unnatural stillness of those blight-birds calmly stared at the group, heads rotating on a swivel to follow the motion of the group. They didn't make any threatening gestures, or even caw with annoyance as they were observed.

Every able-bodied man was being sent out to try and gather food to deal with the desperate lack of it following the chaos of the burning that had happened just a few days ago, with strict orders from the lord of the town to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. If this didn't count, who knows what would? "We should go. We should go right now. We found something, we can go back and report it, get the reward rations. I don't know what the rest of you intend to do, but I'm taking my family and going to a big city to hunker down. I'll never venture into the wilds again, Sevarth take me if I lie." A particularly pale-looking man rubbed at his face, trying to keep the cold sweat from his eyes. "We're all going to die if those things act up." His bow aimed slightly higher, directing his remark toward the Picantch that stared back at him, impassively.

"Easy, easy. That's why we need to stay calm. No screaming. No running. And for the sake of your soul don't fire an arrow unless they attack first." Another man tried to bring the panicked mood back down, speaking in an even, calm tone. There was a round of vehement nodding at that, everyone having been firmly told about how the Crowcaller had started the tragedy of Kremston. It was pounded into their skulls again and again: if you want to see another day, do not provoke the flocks of the blight-birds. If they attacked you, pray to your preferred God and try to take some with you, but never, never fire the first shot. "We're gone as soon as I finish marking this on the map. We might get more credit if we stuck around and followed the edge to see how far it goes, but I doubt anyone wants to take the risk."

A gruff snort rose from one of the dwarves, thumb caressing along the bladed edge of a small hatchet, eyes locked firmly on the ground beyond the barrier. "Burn my beard, anyone who takes a single step on that tainted land willingly is a madman. I've nae felt earth and stone so... wrong. The ground's twisted. I cannae feel a bit of the call of the earth in it. That's bad land, and I ain't talkin' about farming. Nothin' about that's natural. It's like someone took all the natural out of it, on purpose, and filled it in with sommat else." He spat to the side in disgust, taking another step back from the boundary. "That land's a sin, I cannae think of another word for it." The other dwarves made murmuring noises of agreement, and several of the human men nodded along besides.

Every man stiffened in terror as a deafening cacophony of cawing sounded out, a flight of three birds sweeping from a nearby tree to descend with rabid violence on a rabbit that had crossed the boundary of the blackened lands, then twisted in a panic and tried to dart back. It didn't make it more than a bounce as the birds seemed to take almost malicious pleasure in tearing the poor creature into parts and ravaging the remains with their razor-toothed beaks. Once the rabbit resembled minced meat and shredded fur, the bloodied birds returned to their perch with an almost casual slowness to their flight, settling back into their perch, and directing their attention back to the group of men. They almost seemed to be daring the men to cross that boundary, as obviously it wasn't a lack of willingness to fight that seemed to be keeping them from assaulting the men. "Somethin' be holdin' them back." A dwarf muttered darkly, slowly backing away and keeping his gaze firmly on the flock. "An' that's all I need to know to leave, right now. That map's gonna be good enough as it is. Maybe we'll get more credit for saying they don't want to leave that damned dark-land, but we go. Now."

The group seemed to agree, and began their retreat backward, keeping their attention on the threat as they backed away. Seeing their intent to leave, a sound that haunted the dreams of those present echoed. A reverberating cawing, the laughter-like calling of the birds. Every man knew that sound in their bones, despite having heard it but once before: right before the flock had attacked the town. "RUN!" one of the men screamed, losing all composure. He dropped all pretense of calmness and began to sprint away, shoving several of his fellows out of the way in the process. The terror spread through most of the group, as all the human men broke away in their mad scramble. The dwarves were the only ones to remain steady, seeing the birds hadn't taken to wing. They almost seemed to be... mocking the hunters, chasing them away in as cruel a fashion as they could without actually attacking. "We aren't going back to Kremston it seems, brothers. Can't trust the humans to keep this one in hand. They might deal with the monsters, eventually, but it's going to take dwarves to deal with the earth. Even if we just need to wall it up to be sure it doesn't spread." Knowing that the town was keeping a strict leash on those who tried to leave, they started to back away and vie further southward than the humans had ran. The Stonecrowned Circle, the ruling council of dwarves, needed this report more than anything else. It was a long trek back across the human lands to get back to their home in the mountains, but it'd take more than a long walk to keep a dwarf down.

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Malcom fumed to himself, trying not to let his anger overwhelm his rational mind. Whoever, or whatever, had been toying him was doing so with a purpose. His actions had clearly been influenced up until this point, but he wasn't sure that this wasn't still happening, even right now. Why, after the deception of pretending to be an argumentative tone in the back of his mind, had things come to such a direct conflict? Was it trying to make him lash out without thinking? He very nearly had, the moment after the vision vanished from his mind. Looking out over a massive number of troops he had felt a strange compulsion to make, his knee-jerk response had almost been to send them all out in a rage to track down any information related to the contents of his... hallucination?

Instead, he decided to give an order to his summons to defend the dungeon's territory and not a step further. If anything came to him, he didn't want to be bothered giving orders, but he didn't want them causing any more problems with their interpretations of his orders, either. Anything that came in? Deal with it so it didn't bother him. What Malcom felt he needed most was time to think, uninterrupted and ideally uninfluenced by any outside sources. 'What do I know for sure? Well, the system and the voice seem to be completely separate influences on me, but that could simply be another way to influence me. Still, the system has been pressuring me to defend my core and build defenses around myself, both of which make sense. It's the other influence that bothers me, as it seems to pressure me any time I stop moving forward or reaching outward for goals. It seems to be driving me more through my aspect of hate, amplifying my negative emotions at times that drive me to purpose. I need to find a balance between making sure I'm not being manipulated, and holding myself back too much and putting myself in a dangerous situation.'

The shadowy influence seemed to want him to press outward, to expand and grow aggressively... but why? What did it gain from pushing him to do so? Certainly, there had been benefits to the dungeon as a result of his blind expansionist urges, and an absurd head-start of experience that skyrocketed him ahead in the levelling process. It gave Malcom more options, but he secretly worried that he was going too fast, not having time to adjust to the increased power. Like a novice driver being told to race a supercar, he was bound to make mistakes... and he just hoped that none of them led to a serious wreck. The lapse in judgement that led to the emergency mana dump into the environment came to mind as the largest potential problem. Malcom may have been able to be relatively unnoticed as a hole in the side of a number of low, rolling hills in a nondescript grassland... but now that the changes that had been wrought on the surroundings were taken into account, anyone who wanted to find him was going to be able to do so, and quickly.

The claimed area was just too small, a circle of a few miles of radius, compared to the vast wilderness that he might have been lost in before. Was he finally going to have his first visitors to his dungeon? After all this time, no one had so much as stuck their head in the door, and there was a certain amount of stress that he wasn't able to tweak his traps and preparations. Sure, he could come up with new ideas, new theories, but without seeing delvers actually trying to make their way through his dungeon, it was all guesswork. He had an impression of being strong, from the ease at which his Picantch had caused a massacre, but was that a false sense of strength? He had summoned thousands upon thousands of troops, built up a labyrinthine tangle of tunnels to try and slow intruders, but would all of it work? He was only level 4, but was that impressive? The amount of experience it required was a lot, sure, but he had no point of reference! Malcom's mood continued to spiral downward as he continued to doubt himself, nervousness gnawing at his mind. An awful, lingering sense of foreboding hovered over him ever since the first surge of experience from the massacre, and it had only grown much worse after the tremendous surge of mana attributed to hatred coursing through his core.

Too much, too fast, with too little information. All he could do was mentally go over any holes in his plans, assess his traps for flaws, arrange his summons in the appropriate spaces through the tunnels. The form of the first mage he had started days ago was finally solidifying, a clear human-sized lump of silvered mana steadily gaining more and more definition. Likely a few more hours, and he would be able to see just how good his Mechanical Casters lived up to their name. It would be some time before the rest of the mage armada finished forming, since he only started them after the mana surge, but give it another few days and he felt like things would be much more secure around the dungeon. Hopefully nothing serious would go wrong before then.