"How can there be so many demon patrol squad corpses?"
"What exactly happened here?"
"Could all these demon patrol squads have been wiped out by those people?"
...
The members of the Wind Fang adventure group stared at the demon corpses scattered everywhere before them, their faces a mixture of curiosity and dread.
The demon patrol squads served as a defensive barrier for the Burning Forest. In total, there were probably only around ten thousand of them, yet over a thousand had been killed along the route they'd traveled so far.
That was a full tenth of the Burning Forest's defensive force...
"Leader, I've got something over here!" Not far away, a masked Tier 3 Assassin suddenly called out in the team chat.
As soon as the Tier 3 Assassin spoke, the members of the Wind Fang adventure group became alert. Wind's Regret, the group's leader, hurried over at once.
The masked Assassin stood in a dense thicket where player corpses lay strewn across the ground. Nearly all of them bore no signs of having fought — some hadn't even drawn the weapons and equipment on their bodies. They simply lay there in silence, and there were over two hundred of them.
The players' formation was remarkably orderly, as though they had been marching through the dense forest when death descended upon them in an instant, giving them no time to react before it was all over...
However, when Wind's Regret spotted several Tier 3 experts among the fallen, his expression grew somber.
"Why are all the members of the Mist Ghost adventure group dead here?" Wind's Regret stared at the hundred-strong team, his mind racing with confusion. "What on earth happened?"
The Mist Ghost adventure group was one of the more prominent mid-sized adventure groups in Demon City. Though its numbers were modest — fewer than two thousand — the group boasted a remarkable thirty Tier 3 experts, including one Viscount-ranked Tier 3 and a full ten Baron-ranked ones.
Even the Wind Fang adventure group would have had serious trouble tangling with them.
Yet now the Mist Ghost group's main force had all perished here, seemingly without putting up any resistance. It was simply inconceivable.
"Leader, I don't seem to see Seven Stars, the Mist Ghost group's leader, among these people," the Tier 3 Assassin reported after a quick scan.
"He's not here?" Wind's Regret frowned and looked more carefully.
Sure enough, as the masked Assassin had reported, the group's leader — Seven Stars — was nowhere to be found. Wind's Regret let out a deep sigh of relief.
Seven Stars was the only Viscount-ranked demon in the Mist Ghost adventure group, and his strength placed him among the top ten assassins in all of Demon City. Even Wind's Regret himself would have found it extremely difficult to kill Seven Stars.
If Seven Stars had truly died here suddenly and silently, that would be truly terrifying.
"There are signs of combat over here, though. It's very likely that Seven Stars and the others left them," the masked Assassin said, pointing toward several towering trees in the distance that had been cleanly severed in a single stroke, still clinging to traces of potent life force.
"It looks like the fight was recent. The Mist Ghost group must have encountered those people, and they're probably still locked in battle with Seven Stars right now," Wind's Regret said after glancing at the felled trees. "Alert everyone immediately — no more hiding. We're charging straight in!"
"Understood!" The masked Assassin nodded and quickly relayed the order to every member of the group.
In an instant, the Wind Fang adventure group's thousand-plus members began sprinting toward the area where the clash of fighting spirit was emanating, abandoning all pretense of concealment.
However, before the Wind Fang group had been running for long, several squads emerged from the opposite side of the forest. There were a staggering four thousand people in all, advancing in a mighty formation. The sight made the Wind Fang members tense up.
"Well, well, Wind's Regret — I didn't expect you to be this fast either." Leading the four-thousand-strong force was a wild-looking woman carrying a pair of deep-blue great axes on her back. She grinned at Wind's Regret as she spoke.
"Now this is getting interesting. The three great adventure groups of Demon City have all gathered in one place — only the second time that's happened since the war against the super guild Battle Wolf," said a dignified man with a noble bearing, an ancient bow slung across his back, a smile playing at his lips.