The interior of the forest, which should have been dim and decaying, was filled with an orange-red light from twilight. Where it was dense, it burned like a fire, but it inevitably carried a sense of fading glory, a feeling of irreversibility.
Derrick Berg, holding the "Cross of Lightlessness" condensed from pure light, walked slowly straight ahead. To his left was the white-haired "Demon Hunter" Colin Iliad, holding two straight swords, and to his right was Haine, carrying the giant hammer "Thunder God's Roar". This over-two-meter-tall "half-giant" was ready at any time to exchange the sealed artefact he controlled with Derrick.
The radiance emitted by the "Cross of Lightlessness" became more and more dim here, like the sun had already set to the horizon, leaving only a golden afterglow.
Of course, the people of the City of Silver had never seen such a scene; they could only imagine it through descriptions in ancient texts. Similarly, today was the first time they saw what twilight was.
Woo!
As the exploration team delved deeper, wind began to howl in the almost frozen decaying forest, as if countless creatures were weeping in the depths.
However, Derrick and the others didn't feel any breeze at all.
Woo!
The howl became more and more intense and soul-shaking. Derrick suddenly felt a chill at the back of his neck, which made his hair stand on end and his body and mind grow cold.
Normally, human instinct would be to retract the neck, raise an arm to block the rear, half-turn to observe the situation, and prepare an attack. But Derrick did not do this because in a dangerous environment, rashly turning around often leads to extremely terrifying things. Moreover, behind him were the chief and his teammates; he fully trusted them to respond in time and placed his life in their hands.
With a whoosh, a silver-white blade entwined with thin electric snakes flew past Derrick's neck, taking with it a blurred and distorted figure that evaporated in the twilight light.
At the same time, the "Cross of Lightlessness," as if stimulated, suddenly broke free from its dim and dull state, and the light it emitted became bright and pure again.
The surrounding area immediately came to dawn. Countless black shadows without definite forms were highlighted in the morning light and quickly melted away.
After everything calmed down, Derrick looked ahead and asked in confusion:
"What are these? They don't look like resentful souls, shadows, or evil spirits..."
The "Demon Hunter" Colin glanced around and said slowly:
"Some kind of residual aura... They seem to have combined with the power of twilight and undergone some mutation."
He had never seen such monsters... Derrick tightened his grip on the "Cross of Lightlessness" and moved another finger that hadn't been pricked to the thorns.
Relying on the targeted abilities of the "Cross of Lightlessness," the exploration team advanced fairly smoothly. Soon, they reached the depths of the decaying forest and could vaguely see through the trees the distant cliffs and orange-red mist.
Here the damage was not yet severe; branches and leaves connected in the air, blocking the frozen twilight, making the environment suddenly dim.
Carefully bypassing this area, Derrick's eyes suddenly brightened, and he saw two standing, grayish, mottled stone tablets.
Before he could observe them closely, the multiple beams of twilight shining through the gaps in the leaves simultaneously refracted strangely, interweaving, and condensed into a huge figure nearly ten meters tall.
This figure was very blurry, exuding an eternal and unchanging aura, like a projection from the mythic era.
Its skin was grayish-blue, it wore silver-gray armor stained with blood-like patches, and its face had a mass of light like the setting sun, which seemed to be the manifestation of its eyes. Its mere existence caused the surrounding trees and even the void to warp, making everything involuntarily begin to decay.
Witnessing this, without any reason, a thought rose in everyone's mind:
"Giant King, Ancient God Ormir!"
Joshua, Haine, Antilna, and other members of the exploration team felt their skin prickle and turn grayish-blue, and at the brow, flesh began to writhe as if some monster was about to break out.
They simultaneously entered a state close to losing control.
They hadn't even seen the mythical creature form; just by approaching this figure, they began to show signs of losing control one after another, growing more severe.
Derrick Berg was relatively better off because the pure light of the "Cross of Lightlessness" enveloped him, bringing a sense of warmth that allowed him to resist the decaying erosion for a short time.
At this moment, Colin Iliad had already bent down and, holding two straight swords smeared with ointment, rushed toward the terrifying figure at a speed that stirred up a hurricane.
However, this "Demon Hunter" didn't charge in a straight line; his footwork was peculiar, swaying his body left and right, approaching the enemy in a wave-like motion.
The giant figure standing in the twilight looked at all this with sunset-like eyes, without any emotional fluctuation, like a carved stone statue.
Suddenly, the light on its face flickered.
It then bent down and pounded its fists heavily on the ground.