Chapter 805: Chapter 791: Darean’s Doubts

The night wind blew from the wilderness, but it was kept outside the Mushroom House.

Anna leaned against her mother, listening to the sound of the mushroom cap creaking from the wind above, and slowly closed her eyes.

Mom gently patted her back, saying, "Sleep now, everything will be better by dawn."

Meanwhile, Dad was with the uncles who had also escaped from the village, thankful to find such a patch of Mushroom House on their escape route, sparing them the ordeal of resting in the open air.

No one noticed a shadow flicker across the night sky.

It was not a bird; it was a bat, flying high, circling once before heading into the distance.

A scream pierced through the night, jolting Anna awake.

She heard someone yell, "Run!"

It was Uncle Hansen’s voice, the chubby uncle who always secretly slipped her candies.

Her father grabbed the hatchet and pulled Mom and Anna out of the Mushroom House.

In the darkness outside, countless silhouettes moved, with familiar screams echoing one after another.

Anna hid in her mother’s arms as they started running, but footsteps followed closely behind.

"You go quickly!" Anna’s father shouted lowly before falling back behind them.

Then, there were several muffled sounds, and the footsteps chasing them came again.

Mom covered Anna’s mouth and found a ground hole, stuffing her into it.

"Be a good girl, don’t make a sound, okay?" Mom had tears in her eyes but mustered a smile for Anna.

After Anna nodded, Mom turned and ran in another direction.

However, she didn’t manage to flee far; an arrow pierced her heart, and Anna watched as her mother collapsed in the open space at a distance.

"I just saw a kid, probably still around here." The voice of the Demon Race echoed from nearby, and Anna could only cover her mouth, swallowing back her scream.

Footsteps approached, crunching over gravel, stepping on dry grass, growing closer.

A pair of scaly feet stopped at the hole’s entrance, and the demon squatted down, poking his head inside.

The hole was dark, with nothing visible. He reached in further, his fingertips touching nothing.

"Could she have burrowed deeper?"

Another demon came over to look, "I advise you not to put your face at the entrance; it’s a Puki hole, very deep. If she’s gone further inside, there’s nothing we can do. Forget it, a few escapees are inconsequential."

After the two demons left, Anna remained inside the hole.

At this moment, tendrils wrapped around her ankle, dragging her deeper underground.

She wished to struggle but couldn’t break free.

With her body straightened, she could just pass through the long tunnel.

She couldn’t tell how long it had been when the path suddenly widened a bit, and she was dumped into an open space, landing upon a Big Mushroom.

After dragging her here, the Puki disappeared into another passage.

Above her head, there was a faint fluorescence from several small Glowing Mushrooms.

The underground space wasn’t large; kids huddled in corners already, some hugging their knees, some lying down, others staring at the glowing overhead, motionless.

Anna’s gaze moved around, and just as she wanted to say something, a boy with mycelium on him spoke first, "Don’t cry loudly, don’t make noise, everyone is tired. The great Mushroom Lord will send us to a safe place, until then... stay quiet."

Anna could only nod, curling herself up in a corner, finally daring to sob silently at this time.

Who knows how long it was, when two more children were dragged from different tunnels, and a super-elongated Puki arrived before them.

The kid with mycelium on his face grunted twice then began urging the other children inside the elongated Puki’s body.

This Puki’s body was very thin, thus able to carry all the children held within as it moved through the underground network.

Space was a bit cramped, as the elongated Puki moved, Anna could barely move.

However, there was no feeling of suffocation, nor any bumps; the soft mushroom body absorbed the road’s unevenness.

After a long time, the elongated Puki finally emerged from underground, reaching the outskirts of Mushroom City.

Soldiers stationed nearby immediately rushed to assist, lifting the children from inside, evidently Anna and the others weren’t the first batch.

"Damn Empire!" On the high walls of Mushroom City, Fa’er watched Anna and the others below, cursing under his breath.

He knew that each child brought here by tunnel Puki represented countless deaths.

And Mushroom City has already received nearly a thousand such children!

The Empire, in order to force Oath City to divert its defensive forces, sent several small squads to attack those areas lacking defense, hunting down refugees.

Now, other than saving some children small enough to pass through the network with Puki’s help, they couldn’t do anything else.

Even Mushroom City isn’t truly safe.

"We can’t count on Oath City; humanity’s hopes all rest there, reinforcements from there are impossible. When will the reinforcements from Fungus Castle arrive?"

"Two days," replied Mira Belle from behind Fa’er.

Fa’er nodded, "They should make it."

But that evening, a demon army appeared on the horizon.

"Already... this quickly?" Fa’er’s face turned dark as could be.

In the Demon Race army formation, Prince Darean’s expression was equally grim, not because of the sturdy defenses before Mushroom City.

He was profoundly confused by Lord Demon King’s orders.

Darean was unlike Sigmund, a novel generation of the Blood Race; before Demon King’s return, he could only learn about the Demon King through Mortis’s falsified and hard-to-discern historical texts.

He had genuinely experienced the Demon King’s reign, had seen firsthand the Empire at its peak as part of the Blood Race leadership.

Because of this, he found the order harder to understand than anyone else.

Sigmund and the others worried about the void at the rear, susceptible to Fungus Castle’s exploit.

His concern, however, was Lord Demon King’s command of "leave no survivors."

The Demon King was not a bloodthirsty tyrant, at least previously not.

Darean still recalls, before the human Hero decimated everything, the Empire’s final agenda focused on how to minimize interspecies hatred within the Empire to pave a peace-oriented path for absorbing the South.

He attended those meetings; he personally heard those discussions.

The Demon King sat in the main seat, patiently listening to debates, occasionally speaking words like "reconciliation requires correct guidance" and "hard suppression will backfire."

Such a Demon King, how could he order massacres?

Darean didn’t understand why a wise and stable post-return Demon King would choose such a radical, potentially hazardous stance.

Staring at Mushroom City, he resolved to personally ask Lord Demon King about his considerations upon return.

Behind him, the rune on a stone tablet flickered intermittently, absorbing and devouring countless souls unseen to the average person...

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