Knight-Commander Kristoph moved through the Valgothian Deepwood with the silent grace of a hunting cat, a stark contrast to Saitama's more… direct approach. His dark green, almost black, leather armor, scuffed and worn from countless campaigns, blended seamlessly with the deep shadows cast by the colossal, alien trees. Every footfall was deliberate, placed with an economy of motion that disturbed not a single twig unnecessarily. His keen, grey eyes, accustomed to piercing the gloom of dungeons and the murk of twilight battles, scanned his surroundings constantly, missing nothing – the faintest tremor in a fern's frond, the distant snap of a branch, the subtle shift in the wind's direction and scent.
Behind him, Sir Zenon, a man whose lean, rangy build spoke of endurance and whose weathered face was a roadmap of tracking expeditions, moved with similar stealth. His senses were preternaturally sharp; he could distinguish the scent of wolf from goblin at fifty paces, track a single man over stone, and hear the heartbeat of a rabbit hidden in dense undergrowth. He was currently focused on the ground, his gaze occasionally flicking up to assess the broader environment, his expression one of deep concentration.
Bringing up the rear, her staff of polished rowanwood held ready, was Sorceress Elara. Her robes, dyed in muted forest hues, were embroidered with subtle arcane symbols that shimmered faintly in the dappled moonlight. Her youthful face was serene, but her sapphire eyes held a focused intensity as she continuously monitored the ambient magical energies, her fingers occasionally twitching as she mentally cataloged the strange, often unsettling fluctuations that permeated the Deepwood. A small, silver locket around her neck pulsed with a soft, rhythmic blue light – a warding charm, constantly active.
They had been traveling for the better part of a day since entering the Deepwood's oppressive embrace, following the subtle traces of the unusual energy signature pinpointed by the Royal Sorcerers. The forest was living up to its grim reputation. They had already skirted a nest of Shadow Weavers – giant, phase-shifting spiders whose venom induced paralyzing hallucinations – and narrowly avoided a territorial dispute between two hulking Grotesques, creatures of stone and rage animated by crude earth magic. The air was thick with an unnerving silence, broken only by the unsettling calls of unseen creatures and the constant, low thrum of aberrant magic.
"Anything, Zenon?" Kristoph murmured, his voice barely disturbing the air.
Zenon paused, kneeling beside a patch of disturbed earth. He ran a gloved finger over a series of deep, almost perfectly circular indentations in the soil. "Tracks, Commander. Fresh. Within the last few hours." He frowned. "Odd. Very odd. Too uniform for any beast I know. Almost… mechanical, yet organic too. Heavy. Whatever made them isn't treading lightly." He pointed towards a series of snapped saplings. "And it's heading deeper, towards the epicenter of the energy readings."
Elara, who had been tracing patterns in the air with her free hand, her eyes half-closed, spoke softly. "The ambient magical taint is stronger here, Commander. It's… chaotic, as the Royal Sorcerers reported, but there's an underlying resonance. A deep, rhythmic pulse, almost like a colossal heartbeat. And overlaid on that… spikes. Sharp, intense bursts of raw power, almost like miniature, uncontrolled detonations. Recent. Very recent."
Kristoph nodded, his expression grim. "The 'Unknowing Tempest,' perhaps? Shadow's words seem to gain credence with every step we take." He looked in the direction Zenon indicated. "Those 'detonations'… could they be signs of conflict?"
"Possibly," Elara conceded. "Or simply the byproduct of such immense power being… exerted. It feels less like a battle and more like… a force of nature passing through, unconcerned with what it disrupts."
Suddenly, Zenon held up a hand, his head cocked. "Wait." He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. "Blood. And… something else. Cooked meat? Faint. Very faint. And… ozone? Like after a lightning strike, but concentrated."
Kristoph signaled for them to advance cautiously. They moved slower now, weapons at the ready. The forest around them seemed to grow darker, the trees more gnarled and ancient, their branches interwoven like skeletal fingers, blocking out much of the twin moons' light. The air grew colder, and the unsettling thrum Elara had described intensified.
They rounded a colossal, moss-covered boulder and stopped dead.
Before them lay a scene of utter devastation. A clearing had been violently carved into the forest, trees uprooted or snapped like twigs. At the center lay the mangled, smoking carcass of a creature so monstrous it beggared belief. It was reptilian, easily sixty feet long, with scales the color of tarnished bronze that shimmered faintly even in the dim light. Its head, almost crocodilian but broader, with multiple rows of needle-sharp teeth, was crushed almost beyond recognition. One of its massive, leathery wings was torn, the other bent at an unnatural angle. Acrid smoke, smelling of burnt flesh and sulfur, curled from its wounds. This was a Bronzehide Wyrm, a lesser dragon-kin known for its ferocity, thick magical hide, and devastating fire breath – a creature that would normally require a full company of knights and several mages to bring down, and even then, with significant casualties.
This one looked like it had been swatted out of the sky by a god.
"By the Sacred Light..." Zenon breathed, his usual stoicism momentarily shattered. He'd seen dragon-kin before, but never one so utterly, casually obliterated.
Elara's eyes were wide, her hand instinctively going to her warding locket, which was now pulsing erratically. "The energy readings here… they are off the scale! The residual power… it's pure, unadulterated force. No discernible magical discipline, no incantation signature… just… impact." She pointed a trembling finger at the Wyrm's crushed skull. "Whatever did this… it wasn't a spell. It was… something else."
Kristoph, despite the shock that rippled through him, forced himself to remain analytical. He scanned the clearing, his gaze sweeping over the devastation. His eyes narrowed. Near the Wyrm's shattered flank, almost obscured by a pile of smoldering debris, was something incongruous.
A small, makeshift campfire. Or rather, the remnants of one. A few blackened sticks, a circle of scorched earth. And next to it…
"What in the blazes…?" Kristoph muttered, stepping forward cautiously.
Lying beside the pathetic campfire, looking utterly out of place amidst the draconic carnage, were several large, purplish mushrooms, spitted on a sharpened stick and roasted to a blackened crisp. One of them had fallen off and lay half-eaten in the dirt.
Zenon and Elara joined him, their expressions bewildered.
"Mushrooms?" Zenon scratched his head. "Someone… camped here? After this?" He gestured at the dead Wyrm.
Elara, however, was looking at something else. Footprints. Not the deep, clawed prints of the Wyrm, nor the strange, circular indentations Zenon had found earlier. These were… smaller. Humanoid. Boot prints. Surprisingly ordinary, if a little large. They led from the direction they had come, circled the dead Wyrm, approached the makeshift campfire, and then… led away, deeper into the forest, in the same general direction as the strange, circular tracks Zenon had been following.
"Commander," Elara said, her voice hushed. "These footprints… they are fresh. Made after the Wyrm fell."
Kristoph knelt, examining the boot prints. They were clear in the disturbed earth. Simple, utilitarian tread. Nothing remarkable, except for their audacity. "Someone was here," he stated, the obviousness of it almost absurd. "Someone who seemingly dispatched a Bronzehide Wyrm, then… attempted to cook mushrooms."
The sheer, baffling incongruity of it was almost harder to process than the Wyrm's death. A creature of immense, destructive power, capable of felling a lesser dragon with apparent ease, yet also bothering with a poorly cooked snack of dubious forest fungi.
"The 'Unknowing Tempest'?" Zenon ventured, looking around nervously, as if expecting the mysterious entity to materialize from the shadows. "But… why the mushrooms? And why so… casual?"
"His power is 'raw,' 'unrefined,' 'utterly overwhelming'… 'like a sledgehammer in a world accustomed to rapiers,'" Kristoph quoted Shadow's words, a new understanding dawning in his eyes. "Perhaps 'casual' is precisely the point. Perhaps, to such a being, felling a Wyrm is no more taxing than… swatting a fly. And hunger remains hunger, regardless of power."
Elara shivered. "A being that treats a Bronzehide Wyrm as a minor inconvenience… what would it consider a genuine threat?"
Kristoph stood, his gaze following the direction of the boot prints. "That is what we are here to ascertain." He then noticed something else, glinting faintly amidst the debris near the Wyrm's head. He carefully picked it up. It was a single, large scale, roughly the size of his palm, bronze in color but with an unusual, almost iridescent sheen near one edge where it had been sheared cleanly, as if by an impossibly sharp blade or force. "A Wyrm-scale. Intact, despite the… impact." He turned it over in his fingers. It was surprisingly light, yet incredibly durable. "Proof, at least, of what transpired here." He carefully tucked it into a pouch at his belt.
"The tracks lead further northwest, Commander," Zenon reported, having circled the clearing. "Both sets – the strange circular ones, and these boot prints. They seem to be… converging."
Kristoph nodded. "Then we follow. But with extreme caution. We are no longer just tracking an energy signature. We are tracking something… or someone… who defies all known paradigms of power." He looked at his companions, his expression serious. "Remember our orders. Observe. Report. Do not engage. If this 'Tempest' is indeed what Shadow described, direct confrontation would be… unwise." Understatement of the millennium, he thought.
They moved on, the image of the casually annihilated Wyrm and the bizarrely mundane campfire seared into their minds. The Valgothian Deepwood had suddenly become infinitely more dangerous, and infinitely more perplexing.
Miles ahead, Saitama was grumbling. The arrow on the crude sign had indeed led him further into the woods, but so far, no sign of civilization, no friendly Bigfoot, and certainly no supermarkets. Just more trees, more weird glowing plants, and an increasing number of unnervingly large animal droppings.
"Stupid sign," he muttered, kicking a loose pebble. "False advertising. Should report them to the Better Business Bureau. If there is a Better Business Bureau in… wherever this is."
He had, however, encountered the Bronzehide Wyrm. It had swooped down from the canopy with a deafening roar, its maw wreathed in flames, clearly mistaking him for an easy afternoon snack. Saitama, annoyed at the interruption to his already frustrating quest for food and irritated by the sudden, intense heat ruining the ambient temperature, had simply punched it.
The Wyrm, mid-dive, had abruptly ceased to exist as a coherent entity. It had, in fact, exploded rather spectacularly, showering the immediate vicinity in bits of dragon and smoldering debris.
"Man, messy," Saitama had commented, brushing a charred scale off his shoulder. He'd then noticed the purplish mushrooms again, a patch of them having miraculously survived the draconic detonation. His hunger, amplified by the brief exertion (if one could even call it that), had overridden his earlier caution. He'd managed to get a small, sputtering fire going using a piece of still-burning Wyrm-flesh he'd found (it smelled awful but produced a decent flame) and had attempted to roast the mushrooms.
The results were… suboptimal. They were mostly burnt on the outside, raw on the inside, and tasted like bitter ash. He'd eaten half of one before giving up in disgust.
"Guess I'm not much of a chef," he'd sighed, abandoning his culinary experiment and continuing his trek, still following the general direction of the giant footprints he'd seen earlier, which seemed to have passed through this area before the Wyrm showed up.
He was currently navigating a particularly dense thicket, pushing aside thick, thorny vines. His jumpsuit, already tattered, was snagging on everything. "Seriously need a new suit. And maybe some bug spray. These things are huge." He slapped his neck, where a mosquito the size of his thumb had been attempting to drill for blood. It left a surprisingly large welt.
As he emerged from the thicket into a small, gloomier clearing, he stopped. The giant footprints were here, clearer than ever. And they led directly towards a dark opening in the side of a low, rocky hill – a cave entrance, wreathed in shadows and exuding a palpable chill. Strange, spidery runes, glowing faintly with a sickly purple light, were carved around the entrance. A faint, unpleasant smell, like sulfur and old bones, wafted from within.
"Huh. Bigfoot's house?" Saitama peered at the cave. "Doesn't look very inviting. No welcome mat. Probably doesn't get a lot of visitors." He sniffed the air. "And it kinda stinks. Hope he's not cooking whatever that Wyrm thing was. That stuff was nasty."
His stomach rumbled again, a plaintive, hollow sound.
"Well," he said with a sigh, looking at the dark, ominous cave entrance. "Only one way to find out if they have snacks. Or maybe a map to a town. Or at least a working toilet. This forest is seriously lacking in public amenities."
Ignoring every primal instinct that would have sent any sane creature fleeing in the opposite direction, Saitama, Hero for Fun, shrugged and began to walk towards the ominous, rune-etched cave, his mind still primarily occupied with the tragic lack of readily available food. The Unknowing Tempest was about to knock on a very, very dangerous door.