Hearing what The Hanged Man said, Klein's heart suddenly skipped a beat. He had a bad feeling about this. Without bothering to maintain his persona, he put down the lantern, took two sticky notes from his pocket, crumpled them into balls, and stuffed them into his ears.
Seeing that Gehrman Sparrow didn't ask any questions and simply followed suit, Alger couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. He inwardly remarked that cooperating with an experienced guy was really easy and worry-free. Even an adventurer with a title like "Madman" could listen to reason and knew what to do and what not to do.
He was just about to throw the still-warm dead rat in his hand toward the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree to lure it into grabbing it when he suddenly saw the bushes and weeds beside him rustle, and a yellow tiger with black stripes crawled out.
Amidst the beautiful, tinkling wind-chime sounds, the tiger walked step by step toward the strange tree ahead. Its movements were normal, but its gaze was dull, carrying an indescribable sense of evil.
Seeing this, Alger lowered his arm, temporarily giving up on throwing the dead rat. Enduring a splitting headache, he calmly watched as the yellow tiger with black stripes walked right up to the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree amidst the increasingly urgent and loud melodious sounds.
It crouched down, raised its right paw, and *snap*, extended its sharp claws, slashing its own throat.
Blood gushed out, but the tiger seemed to have lost all sense of pain. It kept dragging its claws, making the wound deeper and longer. Then, it slowly began to peel off its own fur, revealing a bloody, exposed "naked" body.
The wind-chime sounds gradually subsided. Those branches suddenly came to life, stretching downward and piercing, one by one, into the tiger's body that had lost its protective fur. It was a sight too gruesome to look at.
Alger, who had been prepared for a while, immediately drew the short blade from his waist, opened his mouth, and sang hoarsely:
"Dash, dash, dash, O sea, dash against the cold grey rock! Dash, dash, dash, O sea, shatter at the rock's foot!"
His singing was rough and bold, but completely off-key, going against all normal human and living perception. It carried a metallic, roaring noise filled with a power that was irritating, nauseating, and headache-inducing.
The branches of the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree all trembled at the same time and retracted backward, as if trying to curl up together. The beautiful ringing sounds that followed slightly diluted the horrible noise.
Although Klein, standing beside Alger, had blocked his ears and actively restrained his spirituality, at this moment the veins on his forehead were bulging, and an impulse to kill the singer and destroy everything before him instantly surged within his heart.
What's more, his mind felt like it was being torn apart, and the muscles and blood vessels under his skin began to squirm slightly on their own.
Others sing for money, but Mr. Hanged Man sings for your life! Klein used this inner sarcasm to fight the rage inside him.
"Dash! Dash! Dash!"
Alger's every word burst out, gradually drawing closer to the sound of waves pounding against reefs. One silver-white lightning bolt after another fell from the sky, like wave after wave of applause.
The silver lights flashed one after another, all striking the surface of the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree. The strange tree trembled incessantly from the blows, its branches swaying stiffly and chaotically, unable to produce a coherent hypnotic chime.
Seizing this opportunity, Alger dropped the dead rat and thrust the short blade in his hand forward.
A whirring sound suddenly rang out. Invisible sharp blades whooshed across, slashing into the highest branch closest to the trunk of the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree.
Crack!
The fist-sized, colorless, semi-translucent fruit fell straight down. A strong gust of wind swept it up and sent it flying into Alger's palm. The tree, whose surface was covered in eye-like cracks, stiffened, and its remaining branches simultaneously drooped, losing all vitality.
Indeed, as long as one gathered and mastered the correct information beforehand, Beyonder plants with relatively lower intelligence were easier to deal with than animals of the same level... Alger took out a prepared small metal cylinder and stored away the fruit of the Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree.
Then, he turned sideways and looked at Gehrman Sparrow.
"We continue..."
His words suddenly cut off. The phrase "moving forward" died in his throat.
At this moment, he saw that Gehrman Sparrow's stern face was slightly distorted. The whites of his eyes around his brown pupils were tinged with red, as if he might lose control at any second and attack him.
Alger's nerves immediately tensed. He took a slow breath and completed his previous sentence:
"We continue moving forward."
"Let's go," Gehrman Sparrow responded hoarsely, taking the lead to bypass the withered Hallucinatory Wind-bell Tree and walking into the depths of the dark forest.
He didn't bother gathering the bark, branches, and other materials rich in spirituality because he would surely encounter many more Beyonder creatures later. Since he didn't have a spatial storage item, he naturally had to reserve space for more valuable gains.
Besides, carrying too many heavy things on his person was clearly not conducive to leveraging the agility of a Clown.