323 Dreadful Night!

In the forest spanning for four to five kilometers, the scouts of the Armen Kingdom entered in batches on the order of their superiors.

One of the group maneuvered through the dense forest trying to quite as much as possible. They were alert of their surrounding since this was very dangerous terrain. The forest was eerily quiet. 

With a grave expression, the squad leader of that group of scouts replied, "I feel something is very wrong. Stay on your..." 

The squad leader found his vision turning upside down as he fell to the ground. He saw the look of horror appearing on the faces of his comrades and soon knew why. With a thud, his headless body fell to the ground as it came in his sight, his vision slowly became blurred. He fell into an eternal sleep.

Beside the corpse of the squad leader, a white-haired female with sharp claws materialized from the air like a ghost. The devilish grin on her beautiful face made the soldiers stricken with fear.

"Mons..." 

Swish!

Arrows came flying and hit the rest of the guards right on the mark, their heads. 

Thud!!!

Nora looked at the dead bodies coldly before she disappeared into thin air again. The next group was waiting for her.

In another part of the forest, another group of enemy scouts was running towards the eastern side of the forest. Their goal was to install traps, find about the position of their enemy scouts in the forest and if possible destroy them completely. Each scouting group under the Armen Kingdom had around twenty soldiers, each group with an Eight stage or a Ninth stage Body Tempering Realm cultivator designated as the squad leader.

"Halt! This is a good place. Lets set the Exploding Fire talisman in this area," said the squad leader as the group arrived at a small clearing in the forest. 

"Sir, look to the right..." one of the scouts keeping his eyes on the surrounding explained when he spotted something moving to their right.

Before he finished speaking, someone shouted ahead, "Release the arrows!"

Swish!

Suddenly the squad leader roared in haste, "Disperse! There's an ambush!"

But to their surprise, on both sides, arrows poured at them like rain. 

"Aghh!!" Screams rang in the forest alerting the people about the skirmish in the nearby area.

"Quickly, hide behind the trees," the squad leader shouted but even then only four people including him survived the arrows, fired from two opposite directions. 

"Hold it, reinforcement will arrive soon due to the commotion," said the squad leader to the comrade he saved. But then he looked up in fright as he felt a presence above him. It was a person holding a dagger, pouncing down on him.

His comrades soon followed after him.

Just after three minutes, three scouting groups arrived at the place of the ambush only to see their fallen comrades. They were late. 

"Find them, they must be near!" Suddenly another group clad in armor arrived but it was bigger than the scouting groups and had a Middle Stage Dantain Formation Realm Cultivator as a leader. His name was James, someone from the family of the big clans in the Armen Kingdom.

"Stay closeby, the enemy had already expected us coming tonight." James and his forty-something subordinated moved ahead but after crossing half a kilometer, they did not come across anyone.

"Keep looking," ordered James as he tried to focus on the surrounding. 

One of his subordinates suddenly suggested, "Sir, I think, they moved to another direction, there are no tracks on the ground, we...!" 

James was dumbfounded, he saw something suddenly wrapping around the soldier talking to him, and then the soldier vanished from his vision as he was pulled by that thing in the direction where they were heading to.

This happened too fast, James couldn't react. Some of the soldiers rubbed their eyes, confused. 

'Was... Was that a tongue?' James thought as he couldn't completely capture it, because of the darkness.

But soon his doubt was cleared as he noticed that thing shooting out from behind from the depth of the forest, this time in his direction. All James could see was a blur before he felt a stinging pain in his chest.

"Cough..." James coughed up blood as he looked down at big hole in his own chest. He lifted his head in great difficulty to find the thing that made the hole. He only saw two yellow eyes shining in the darkness peering at him.

'Peak stage Rank 2 Demon... Beast?' James before he fell forward.

Swish!

Swish!

Swish!

Godzilla shot out her barbed tongue at the soldiers stricken with fear. Sometimes head would explode, Sometimes, the soldiers would be blasted with the impact of the tongue or they would be pulled towards the Iguana only to be squashed under her tail.

Whoosh!

Arrows would fly out from behind the trees and hit the Armen soldiers taking out the survivors or the ones that tried to escape. Their screams resounded in the forest.

The sea Iguana walked up to the dead body of James, with the intention to consume him but a person arrived at her front and stopped her.

"Need his head, you can eat the rest of the body." The puppet said as he bends down to cut James head off. 

...

Oliver was still in the outer perimeter of the forest on the western side. His group was the second wave that was going to follow on horses behind the tracks of the first batch as they would open a path for them. Fortunately, the commander did not let the kids participate in the night battle as it was more dangerous. But experts like him had to go inside and lead the soldiers.

"Ru... Run! Run back!"

Oliver's attention was attracted to the soldiers wearing the armor of their kingdom, escaping in their direction, scared.

"Stop!" Oliver shouted and asked one of the scouts that survived the massacre of his group, " What happened? Tell me"

The scout panted but he immediacy the tragedy they faced in the forest. The sheer number of dead bodies he saw along the way was making his soul still quivering in fright. 

"They... They are all dead," Another surviving soldier screamed in terror.

Realizing their situation was far from good, Oliver shouted his order for a temporary retreat.

While leading a dozen or so his personal guards and the soldiers forcing their way out of the forest, suddenly ahead of him his men were thrown away, their horses flipped over by a talisman explosion.

His response could be considered quick as well; immediately he abandoned his horse and soared onto the top of a tree nearby. But when he was about to leap to another tree, a white-haired girl suddenly appeared on a horizontal branch of a tree ahead of him. 

Their eyes met.

Oliver felt a chill running through his spine, he felt a great threat from the white-haired women in front of him.

Oliver did not recognize her, he knew about the experts in the enemy camp but he did not remember someone like her at all.

"Who are you?" Oliver asked. The screams of his injured soldiers down below overshadowed his voice but Nora heard him.

"Your death," Nora replied in a cold voice.

But just as she was about to make a move, a person jumped on her branch, he was Sparrow who she recognized at glance. 

"You cannot kill him. He's an acquaintance of Lord Alex. We will now move back." Sparrow whispered in a low voice but Oliver heard him clearly. Sparrow then turned to face Oliver and said as he pulled out a letter from under his armor, "Lord Alex of the Seashell island told me to give you this letter."

Sparrow threw the letter towards Oliver who caught it with a confused face. 

"Retreat," Sparrow shouted as he ordered a retreat.

"We will take our leave, Oliver Eberhart," Sparrow said humbly before leaving, Nora too followed behind Sparrow after remembering Oliver's face.

The puppets immediately stopped attacking and dispersed back into the forest.

...

The enemy ranks of the scouts had been completely shattered.

They were cleanly defeated and hadn't posed even the slightest threat because of Nora and the subordinates she brought with her. Most of the soldiers under General Parson hadn't even lifted a finger because they were ordered to not go deep into the forest.

At present, the uninhabited area of the forest had become extremely dreadful for the scouts of the Armen kingdom. Some even started running back but only a few of them could make it out.

Oliver and the other two of Dantian Formation Realm cultivators of the six experts that went inside the forest were the only ones to come out. They lost two Early-stage and one Middle-stage Dantian Formation Realm Cultivator inside the forest of death.

No word could describe the shock in Iran's heart, the commander of the Armen Kingdom.

"Can anyone tell me, what happened?" Iran yelled at his soldiers in anger and frustration.

---(Read Authors Note: Important)