Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 406: Uninvited Guests in the Swamp?

In the next few days, Lingge and others have been looking for Leticia's traces outside the swamp to find out what the werewolves of Silver Moon are doing, but they found nothing, not even a shadow of a strange creature, as if they had left the area where they lived and were swallowed up by some invisible force. The outer area of ​​the entire Virtual Root Swamp was as quiet as a dead zone, giving people a depressing feeling of an approaching storm.

The search continued until March 3, only three days before the Lunar New Year of the Great Brittany Kingdom. Linger began to seriously consider whether it was necessary to continue the search. If he wanted to continue, he would have to search deeper into the swamp, but they knew nothing about that place. As a human being, it would be unwise to rashly step into the paradise of aliens, so he hesitated.

Medien was very worried about the new friend she had just met. She kept asking her every day why she hadn't come to see her yet, whether she had encountered any danger, whether she had been injured... and so on. Gradually, she lost interest in studying and became depressed. Even the little braid on the back of her head was drooping, and she looked listless.

Unable to bear seeing his sister so worried and anxious, and the girls including Saint Shallia believed that it was necessary to search deeper into the swamp, Lingge went with the flow and agreed.

Now, everyone is making final preparations. It is not only Lingge, Alice and Saint Xia Liya who are going to enter the Virtual Root Swamp. Olvera, Metien and Shemi will also follow. Although Olvera is afraid of the dark environment inside the swamp, she still chooses to face the challenge in order to help everyone. Metien is not a suitable candidate. The complex terrain and environment in the swamp are too difficult for a little girl like her, but she is the only one who knows Leticia. If the vampire is found and the other party refuses to trust them, Metien can negotiate with her. Moreover, the pink-haired little girl is very strong and will never complain because of the bad conditions. Considering this, Lingge acquiesced to her joining the team.

As for Xie Mi, she is a channel for them to communicate with the swamp monsters. With her, some unnecessary battles may be avoided. In fact, both the boss lady Xiesta and the bartender Xie Liya are more suitable choices, but unfortunately they will not leave the sky island, so they can only settle for the next best thing.

Only Yieta could not enter the Virtual Root Swamp with them because she could not leave the windmill tower. This made her sad and guilty. She felt that she was useless and could not help at all. She could only watch everyone go on adventures and face the evil and cunning enemies.

This feeling of helplessness is clearly no different from the past.

She hugged her knees, drooped her wings, huddled in the corner of the room, and fell into a state of autism.

It wasn't until Xie Liya, who came to deliver snacks, discovered that something was wrong with Miss Angel.

"Ugh!"

Yieta, whose secrets were exposed, looked even more panicked. She wanted to break free from Shelia's hand, but was afraid that her strength would hurt her, so she stood there motionless, her face gradually turning red, making her look as adorable as if she was drunk.

She knocked on the door several times but got no response, so she just said sorry and pushed the door open. She saw the white quail curled up in the corner, covering its body under thick feathers, with only a melancholy little face showing. It had no reaction to the outside world and didn't even say hello to the guests when they came in. This was not like the usual Yieta.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to blame you, and I won't tell anyone else about this."

It was never difficult to guess what Miss Angel was thinking. After a little thought, Shelia understood the reason for her autism. She put the bamboo basket of snacks on the table, walked to Yieta, reached out her hand and gently held up her soft and smooth face, letting her look into hers. In those eyes as clear as the sky, she saw a trace of panic and helplessness.

"I know why you are so sad, Miss Yieta." The bartender said word by word in her usual calm and clear voice: "You feel that you are useless and can't help others. And you are afraid of being excluded by everyone and being alone, right?"

Xie Liya's words calmed Yieta down a little, and then she heard the bartender say, "But do you want to change this situation? Do you want to be able to help everyone? Do you want to... become an indispensable force for everyone? Miss Yieta, please tell me the answer."

This sentence perfectly covered all the thoughts that Miss Angel had ever had, and even made her think that her inner voice was being eavesdropped on. Of course, this was impossible, simply because she had no way of hiding her emotions. Analyzing Yieta's thoughts was as simple as analyzing what Alice would eat for lunch.

"I..." She finally spoke, and asked hesitantly: "Of course I want it, this kind of thing, but how can I do it? No, no, I can't do it..." Giving up before even starting, this is not okay.

"You can do it, Miss Yieta." Shelia slightly increased the strength of her hand, preventing the angel from looking away, forcing her to look at her, and said seriously: "This is something only you can do."

The white-haired angel's eyes were ignorant and blank. When his hair brushed past his ears, it was like drifting snow. Between those plump white feathers, a sound of falling snow appeared: "Only I can... do this?"

"Yes, that's it."

Xie Liya's voice, floating and echoing in the room, is like the devil's temptation, leading people astray - ahem, what I mean is, she patiently persuaded and persuaded, and finally made Miss Angel's eyes appear confident: "If you want to do it, you can do it. It depends on your willingness."

"Do you like everyone? Do you want to help everyone? Do you want everyone to rely on you?"

"Then, use your happiness to help them."

This is Miss Angel’s code of happiness.

……

While Shelia was deceiving the ignorant girl, the Fairy Sleep Inn also welcomed a group of special guests - they were a group of migrating rotten wood fairies. They probably thought that the environment of the sky island was good and the climate was suitable, so they decided to settle here. However, they did not expect that the island was owned by someone. As soon as they landed on the island, they were discovered by the crystal deer spirits and stone guards roaming in the forest, and they hurried to inform the proprietress.

Rotten wood monsters are a very strange species. They are distant relatives of wood monsters and tree spirits, but the bodies of wood monsters and tree spirits are trees with extremely strong vitality. They are born with intelligence under the nourishment of magic, while the bodies of rotten wood monsters are dead trees. In other words, they are monsters born from the corpses of trees, similar to the resentful spirits of humans.

However, rotten wood monsters are not as aggressive as vengeful spirits. They usually disguise themselves as dry tree trunks that can be found everywhere in the forest to avoid dangerous enemies. This disguise can last up to a month. Sometimes when they are used as temporary chairs for rest by passing mountain people, or when they are scent-marked by wild beasts' urine, they will not get angry, but silently wait for them to leave.

Because their bodies are already dead, wood demons do not need to absorb sunlight and water. They use their unique "corruption magic" to decompose dead branches and leaves and rotten fruits on the ground as food, taking only specific nutrients, while other substances are precipitated as humus and integrated into the soil, which is the best natural fertilizer. Therefore, where wood demons live, various plants always grow lushly, and they are also called "scavengers in the forest" or "selfless fertilizer applicators."

Only complete dead trees can give birth to rotten wood demons, so they still retain their branches and roots. When they become demon spirits, they will be twisted into parts similar to arms and feet. The overall appearance is similar to wood demons and tree spirits. The difference is that even if the dead roots form feet, they cannot effectively bear the weight of the rotten wood demon, let alone move forward. Therefore, rotten wood demons often coexist with a kind of ant demon spirit called heterognathus, using their bodies to provide shelter for these ants. When the rotten wood demons need them, the heterognathus uses a unique magic "ant colony form" to move them to where they want to go.

Imagine this: in the depths of a deep, dense forest where light can hardly penetrate, you see a group of huge, decayed tree demons. Their dry and decayed bodies are covered with strange plants such as death knell flowers, rain vines, and even ghost mushrooms. Countless ants with deformed jaws crawl in and out of their roots, constantly moving the scattered dead branches and leaves, animal feces, withered petals, and rotten fruits into the rotten wood, just like workers in a factory moving coal into a huge steam boiler... What are they trying to create? Some kind of evil poisonous fog? Corrupted miasma? Or terrifying smoke that can suffocate all living things in the forest? Isn't that a scene full of all the elements of a horror story and will make you shudder?
Therefore, in the ghost stories of rural farmers, the rotten wood monsters were nicknamed "evil tree spirits" and were believed to be the source of all poisonous fog, miasma and spring water pollution in the forest.

This is really unfair to these hardworking forest gardeners.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)