Kaiser of the New World

A gnawing feeling (78)

The army of moon beasts and their human companions continued to venture closer and closer to the Mother Tree. By now, around four hours had passed on their journey. They had yet to take a break, but Kai wasn't sure if they would be at all.

It was now he realised that maybe he should have shifted some stats into Stamina along with Strength. He was like a glass cannon right now. He would be incredibly strong for a short amount of time when he fought, but after that...

He was slowly starting to get tired, which was not a good thing. He had to be in perfect shape to even hope to survive what's to come. In fact, he doesn't even know what's to come. He knew it was a war, sure, but how would the abominations fight? They organised an air ambush on them after all, who knew what else they had planned.

So while it pained Kai to do, he spent some of his unnasigned stat point reserves.

Command received

Stamina: 10 -> 30

Some of his lethargy went away, giving him a small boost of energy, but it wasn't anything major. Still, it was enough to be noticeable.

He still had a lot more unnasigned stat points saved after all, and he knew what he was going to do with them.

They continued their march, slowly getting closer to their final destination.

Failure continued to attempt to keep the morale high. It was comforting to say the least. He gave speeches, told stories, at one point, he even sang a song that he said was popular back in his homeland. That got a few reactions from the army.

It was a lively song, one about a bard trying to seduce a maiden he met one day in a tavern, but it turned out that the maiden was actually a man in a dress that attempted to swindle money out of men who tried to seduce them.

The bard, of course, got swindled and made a song about it.

Of course, Kai had a rough idea of what homeland he was on about. Failure must have been one of the survivors of the kingdom Eye of the Moon destroyed after Princess Ethania left, but as to how Failure survived, Kai had no idea.

After all, the moon killed anything that gazed upon it without discrimination. It wasn't that implausible that a few people survived after seeing people die by looking up, but would that really be that probable? The destruction of that kingdom must have happened a long, long time ago after all.

It was a strange thing to wonder about. What would a kingdom like that have been like? Would it have been as big as a city? Maybe it could have even been the size of a small country, or even bigger.

But there was one unchangeable factor about it.

The whole kingdom was destroyed by one singular being.

And now Kai was traversing through a forest that was technically created by said being.

How times change, litteraly.

But as they got closer and closer to the Mother Tree, the eerier the area surrounding them felt.

The trees stayed the same, but the roots that would normally be hidden underground started to grow larger. They even started appearing overground. The large, wooden ligaments acting like nerves in the human body.

Each root connected one tree to another, and then that tree connected to another tree. It was like all the trees in the forest were connected by their roots.

Almost like a hivemind commanded one single organism.

But that wasn't where the eerie feeling came from, it was something else. Something hidden.