The sky lowered by several hundred feet, making the crimson forest appear dungeon-like. The trees had leaves—the blight was certainly more alive than the grey wastelands—but anything that was normally green was either black or a dark red. Ether oozed out of the forest.

Vivi approached the treeline. She wrinkled her nose. The ground was still some sort of dark stone, but the stone was steaming-hot and filled with cracks. Steam hissed out of the cracks, filling the forest in a light fog. The steam was a deep red. Its presence was what gave everything a crimson appearance. Even the air itself appeared as a corrupted red. The steam was briefly mentioned in the guidebook. It wasn't poisonous to breathe; it just smelled horrendous, like burning worms.

Stepping onto the stones, Vivi had to protect the soles of her boots with ether. She felt ether moving underneath her. The ground reacted to her step. The feeling wasn't new; the main dungeon had done the same, though something was far more creepy about the ether underneath her now. It felt as if a school of fish were swimming in the ground beneath, and Vivi could feel their movements. Worms, perhaps?

Doesn't feel too bad yet, Vivi thought. It was dark and difficult to see, and human-eating worms were possibly underneath her, but she hadn't been killed yet.

She took a step deeper, and a screeching insect ambushed her from a tree branch.

The monster was the size of a child. Its shape reminded Vivi of a fangling, though its exo-skeleton was hard like a golem's and coated in barnacles. Its ant-like face opened its mouth, and a spinning ball of teeth shot at Vivi like the tongue of a frog.

Shivers ran through Vivi's spine. She summoned Abyss Destroyer and slashed at the disgusting tongue. The tongue bounced backwards like a ball hitting a wall, and the monster attacked Vivi with its clawed-arms.

Vivi slashed wildly with Lucius's claws, activating all of her skills at once. She swung again, praying that the monster would die and get out of her sight.

Her sword connected, and venerium's rot ate into its exo-skeleton. The disgusting monster turned purple, and for a moment, venerium made it even more disgusting, until the void-like effects kicked in, and the monster collapsed on the ground, finally dead.

Vivi stared at it for a moment. She had the urge to gag. The smells around her were getting overwhelming. The insect monster's corpse remained on the ground. No ether sizzled out of it.

"The book didn't mention a monster like that…" Vivi said. "How much ether did it drop?"

Lucius reluctantly collected everything. "Half a wisp…" he said. "Vivi, that wasn't a monster. It wasn't a reanimation. That's an animal."

"An animal?" Vivi asked. She had a bad taste in her mouth.

"I told you the blight is disgusting," Lucius said. "Those things are called tongue devils. You'll have to make good friends out of them if you want to live here."

Vivi gave its corpse a nervous smile. She'd exhausted almost a hundred wisps in a panic to kill it, all for half a wisp in return. This place was insane.

As she studied the corpse, she felt something still sizzling inside it. Something ethereal. Subtle dark wisps were rising from its core.

Void ether.

Vivi reached for the wisps, just as she did when collecting skills. She pulled with her void core. The dark wisps flowed from the monster's core, into hers. She collected a single void wisp from the fallen monster—animal—taking her reserves to 101. Lucius watched nervously.

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"How much void ether do you think we can carry before maxing out?" Vivi asked.

"I have no idea, Vivi," Lucius said. "We just need to make sure you don't eat too much to fall insane."

Vivi already felt insane. Not from void ether, but from the fact that she was already walking deeper into the forest. She was far from excited, but a part of her head looked forward to killing more monsters; to slash insects in half with all of her anger.

"Our main goal is to find food and water," Vivi said. "Let's fight anything that tries to kill us and see if we can find a river."

***

After an hour of trotting deeper into the blight, Vivi did indeed find a river.

The water was corrupted. The soil beneath the river was redsoil, as described by the guidebook. Just by touching corrupted soil, the water became undrinkable.

As for food, Vivi found a cluster of the tall-headed poison mushrooms. The mushrooms were dark grey, and the caps were covered with a black rotten mold. They grew on the corrupted redsoil, as the book described. Picking them by touch was impossible. Vivi had tried to dig one out with her sword. Immediately, hungry worms had bit into her venerium sword.

Luckily, the worms died to venerium poisoning before they could cause damage to the metal, but Vivi decided it was best to avoid stepping on redsoil. The soil itself was easy to distinguish; it looked almost like hard red bread, spoiled by spots of black mold.

Vivi would need to find a solution for picking the mushrooms. Right now, she wouldn't have benefited from picking them anyway. According to the book, she needed clear water to boil their roots. So far, as convoluted as the guidebook was, its information seemed to be accurate. The author seemed to know what he was talking about.

Vivi cut down another monster—a corrupted ghoul similar to ether sticks, and Lucius collected two wisps from its body. The ghoul was an actual monster; it turned into a clump of redsoil after being killed.

By now, Vivi must have killed over twenty tongue devils, seven of the ghoul-things, and a half a dozen more weird monsters whose attacks and appearances Vivi would have preferred not to memorize. The most dangerous one so far had been a ten-foot tall troll monster wielding a club, very similar to the mace-skeletons Vivi had fought.

The troll itself was easy. Vivi could dodge its attacks and follow with an easy counter-attack. What made the troll annoying was the trembling shockwave its mace caused. If it hit the ground, redsoil was splashed everywhere. If it hit a tree, leaves fell. One had fallen on Vivi's arm, and the spot grew rashes.

Overall, however, the outskirts of the blight weren't that dangerous. Everything Vivi came across died when hit by her sword. If they didn't die to being cut in half, venerium always finished them off. The poison was an effective counter to the blight's corruption, it seemed.

Vivi had tried to fight with her regular runesword. The sword did cause wounds, but the blight's monsters were stubborn to die. The ghoul monsters could move even if their heads were cut off, and the tongue devils weren't much easier. After witnessing that, Vivi decided to exclusively use Abyss Destroyer.

The journey so far had netted Lucius and her just under a hundred wisps of ether, as well as seventy-eight void wisps. Void wisps dropped inconsistently. Some monsters dropped up to five full void wisps. Others dropped none at all.

"It'll only get more dangerous from here," Lucius said. "The blight is almost like a dungeon. The deeper you go, the more surges will spawn, and the more dangerous monsters become."

"We might actually start earning ether, then," Vivi said.

Lucius smiled at her awkwardly. "Our food problem isn't solved yet either. We should probably head back and eat on the fourth level. Then we can come back to see if we find better food sources."

Vivi frowned at that. She didn't want to head back. They'd only been here for an hour. But she knew Lucius had a point. She wouldn't find the entrance to the fifth level if she couldn't even find food or water.

The guidebook hadn't offered much help. According to it, the best water source in the blight came from tree cones. The cones were poisonous on the outside. Inside, however, the cones sometimes had a drop or two of clear drinkable water. If she collected and hacked open a thousand or so cones without poisoning herself, she would be left with a mug of drinkable water.

Except, the cones only grew during what the book called "water season." Any other time of the year, entering the blight without a water source from outside wasn't wise.

Vivi hadn't seen any cones growing in trees. Whatever season it was right now, it definitely wasn't water season.

She glanced at the river. The liquid flowing within was water, though Vivi didn't have the slightest clue on how to remove its corruption. Perhaps there was a method to distill it?

Vivi sighed. "We might need to get clever with spatial storage. We'll need to store water somehow. Let's explore a bit more. Then we'll head back for water and food."

Vivi continued deeper, killing anything she came across, until fifteen minutes later, an ether surge spawned fifty feet from her.

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