Woodland Animal Report $$/%%/XX

Q1) Did you see a cute female elf with charcoal black hair passing here these past few months.

Pigeon 1: You dare ask me! I am-

Pigeon 2: He is a loser! Ask me! I am the Balteford of Flowing River. Cheh! Those lesser being.

Woodpecker: Demons! Begone!

Carp: They died. $#@$. Serve them right.

Trout: Go to hell.

Salmon: I need a wife. Can you find me a woman?

Q2) How often did you see her in a month.

Pigeon1: You think I will answer? Replying to a mere mortal!? I am the King who seals Heaven, Master of Thousand Wonders! All heavenly god serve me! Now bow to my feet!

Balteford of Flowing River: Balteford 360 worlds 1000 tonnes kick!

Woodpecker: You shall not get anything from me! Begone Demons!

Carp: (Swam away)

Trout: (A Pelican ate it)

Salmon: Please, I need to talk to someone.

Q3) Where do you think I can find her?

Pigeon1: You dare question me I am-ack

Balteford of Flowing River: (eaten by a minx)

Woodpecker: Go back to the depth of hell, Servant of Malufa! I Woodstantine commands you!

Salmon: My wife left, my children died, my parents are now skeleton at the bottom of this pool. All I want is to die. Kill me and carve me up to sate your appetite, please, I beg you.

..

Rem read the report calmly. His face was unchanging, but his stiff posture suggested that all trace of his remaining emotion was clamping down his desire to set the forest on fire.

It was nearly late morning in the forest. Aromas of nature filled the air as sunlight broke melancholically through the leaves above the boy. Balls of light the size of marble floated in the air like snows suspended in the land without time, creating an image of a heavenly winter. Despite the serene, relaxing aura of Lightwell Forest, the rabid noise behind him was anything but calm.

"What the heck did you say about me?! Answer me, you damn bird!!!" A blonde goddess was strangling a foaming woodpecker. It was bullying in all its glory. The unfortunate thing already lost half its feather as the goddess squeezed any traces of life out of the bird.

Rem sighed. He had rejoiced when Cytortia told him she could communicate with the wildlife. He thought the if the bumbling squad of a badger, human and goddess couldn't find an elf, maybe the wise and peaceful animal of Lightwell Forest could give them much-needed counsel.

Alas, such a thing was too good to be true.

Cytortia finally let the bird dropped into a twitching heap and approached Rem with a sparkling smirk.

"Rem, I finally get a clue! The girl often wander near a nearby lake to hunt!" Cytortia shouted happily.

Rem nodded.

Someone landed behind him in a thump, knocking the leaves up with the impact.

Cytortia screamed like she saw a ghost.

"We have a problem!" Said a familiar voice of a honey badger. Rem turned toward a concerned wild animal, dragging something tied-up in a rope with her.

Scathach threw a corpse at the gang's feet. It was the body of a goat, but there was a problem.

Goat's body wasn't supposed to be toxic green and reeked month old roadkill at this time of death. Purple-black sour-smelling liquid also dried the corpse's gum. Rem automatically flagged the black liquid with the sweat on the goat's fur as a problem. Another red alert was that the white of its eyes somehow turns purple.

But what truly made sent Cytorita scampering away as fast as possible was the purple appendage resembling a bramble sprouting from its spine. The strange limb was leaking with sickly sweetsmelling fluid that spelled trouble. Rem was new to Phantasia, but even he knew that these features shouldn't be on a goat.

"Kiddo," Scathach said worriedly. "We have a problem--a World Enemy problem."

...

It took the gang two hours and three rounds of equipment-hauling, but Dr. Cytortia finally completed her analysis.

Her conclusion:

"This isn't good," Cytortia, in her green safety glasses and face-protector, held the beaker containing black liquid against the sunlight. Inside the container, the green thermometer rose.

"Cross that," She said, taking a closer look at the reading. "This is not only bad. It is a full-blown disaster."

Rem glanced at the dissected body of a goat. He gulped. Despite feeling almost no sympathy for the dead mammals, looking at its glistening organ like this was just queasy. Once again, the goddess surpassed his expectation when she put on a pair of rubber gloves and autopsied the thing without a single complaint. Hell, Cytortia barely batted an eye when the organ unnaturally transfigured into chalk and crumble away.

"What is its Mana Activity reading?" Scathach asked.

Cytortia faced her. Scathach's eyes widened at the young goddess's scowl.

"You don't have to tell me if it is that bad." She raised her hand in a placating gesture.

Cytortia turned away and looked over her workspace.

"The concentration of its fluid, the mana reading..." She listed. "Everything points toward this thing, whatever it is, sitting on top a fountain of magical source with ample nutrients to support supply itself."

Rem investigated the corpse of the goat with the same numbness he observed the world around him.

"Autopsy report," Rem calmly said. "Please tell me you got something that can be used to kill whatever this is."

Cytortia took out a sheet of paper and handed it at Rem while explaining in a soft voice.

"The corpse displays a late stage of corruption matching a signature found in a corrupted Grand Empire's knight who died fighting a World Enemy thirty-years ago. Evidence suggested the same beast appeared in a Demonic Continent once, but due to the continent's totalitarian authority, the data is uncertain. In both case studies, the World Enemy took root in the water sources and corrupted the entire area. The Demonic Continent managed to repel the world enemy by firebombing the area, killing the target, and 78% of the local civilians. Meanwhile, the Grand Empire attacked the site three times, losing thousands of conscripted soldiers to corruption before finally managing to derive the cure for the early stage of the corruption, and scored a victory in that incident."

Rem nodded grimly. The loss of life in both cases was horrendous.

"Any exploitable weaknesses," Rem said. "In case we ran into it."

"Officially, the World Enemy's name is Paracis Corrupter." Cytortia sighed, spraying a gallon of disinfectant onto the table. "The previous record from the database said it is a plant species in general, so fire works. Multiple researchers I know talked against using herbicide on it."

Scathach nodded.

"Yes, I heard about that World Enemy. When it corrupts a person, the root will take three hours to take full-control but once it did, it-"

Cytortia finished the sentence.

"-It seeps into your muscle and colonizes the cells," Cytortia nodded. "This is only something known among the doctors, but the corruptor first infects you by dousing your brain with its hormone. It was a hot research topic back when I visited the Grand Empire. Their supersoldier research branches show interest in augmenting that mechanism."

Rem nodded.

"You said something about the cure," Rem said. "Can you made it?"

Cy and Scathach eyed him with a shocked look on their faces.

"You think we will be running into a World Enemy!?" Cytortia asked incredulously. "Rem, this is serious. It is something that we need to notify the elves!"

"Yes, you would die. There is no means you could cheat your way out of that," Scathach nodded.

Rem sighed.

"Notify the elves, but given how the Drakokia is against us, they will likely drag out the responses to rub it in our face," Rem said emotionlessly.

For him, that was how society works; a disgusting place where money and power rule everything. It's just like how a particular CEO of a distinguished company said. The aim was not to create art or to make a statement. No, the goal was to produce as much money as possible. Substitute money with power, and the true nature of humanity revealed itself.

Was it any wonder the boy who got pressed into the mold of evil against his better judgment lost the ability to care. Was it any wonder that he worshipped the incarnation of hope in that cynical world.

Rem sighed. In a certain way, he was no different from a fanatic or a weapon.

"Just prepare it," said the boy who was more weapon than man. "We might run into that thing in this forest. Murphy's law existed for a reason."

...

Cytortia's mana surged.

Jasmine's essence, an Angel Tear stone, and 350 ml of water from a consecrated ground age 100 years upward all laid in front of her; the water in a transparent vial, the pale-blue tear-shape stone with smooth ivory texture and a miniature bottle of sweet-smelling liquid.

The goddess, much to her witness's awe, swirled her mana into a whirlpool.

Most Alchemists would use flames for refining, but Cytortia's disagreed. Fires would destroy the quality of the ingredient. Sudden temperature alteration might affect the material's microstructure, forcing unnecessary aging processes for metallic raw material. The best method was to distill the natural property in the ingredient directly, but that required a massive level of practice, which most Alchemists didn't have due to their laziness.

Cytortia might be many things from tad naive to overactive, but she was diligent. She uncapped the bottle and the vial, throwing its content into the whirlpool with a practiced motion. The mixture merged to form a smooth glittering fluid spinning in the whirlpool.

The main challenge of this formula was the Angel Tear Stone. Common alchemists would grind it into powder for a faster diffusion rate, at the cost of wasting 80% of the stone content to the background. Thankfully, through trial and error, Cytortia developed another method. She saved the stone preparation for last, wrapping it in Jasmine+water solution before using her mana and [Phase Manipulation] to breach the stone and combine the mixture.

Inside the whirlpool, invisible energy coiled around the stone and fragmented the object a suppressed flash.

From her sleeve, Cytortia produced a glass vail the size of an average thermos and guided the whirlpool inside it with a wave of her hand. While stainless steel is an okayish container, a cure like these would require an especially forge crystalline glass to maintain the product quality.

The goddess in green smiled smugly.

"Tadah! The Corruption Cleanser is complete," She turned toward her audience with a smile. "95% purity cure that could be used to treat at least a hundreds of people once diluted. Most of those money-grubbers would only manage something half as good."

Scathach gave a smile like a cat finding her prey. Rem shivered. He knew this aura. It was the same aura that the honey badger emitted when he won that game of Monopoly. As for the goddess, her cheerfulness shrunk into a pitiful tremble. A forbidden memory of a pitiful goddess carried off to a slaughter resurfaced with a roar.

Between the cleanly disinfected table and the carcass smoldering in the background, the honey badger looked almost like a tiny innocent animal about to get dissected. It was a facade. The badger's eyes sharpened with killing intent. Spear of fire blazed into her hand. Scathach spun around, frightening the duo into near-death and stomp one foot firmly on the ground.

"YOU FOOL HAD BEEN SPYING ON THIS IDIOT FOR AN HOUR!" the badger gave a war cry, shocking the birds above into a panic flight. "IF YOU WANT TO WATCH, COME OUT OF THE TREE LIKE TRUE MEN!"

The badger's posture was perfect, inspite of her diminutive height only reaching up to Cytortia's knee. Her leg lent the strength to her arm, which launched the spear of flames. The spell signed the air and grasses around her to a cinder.

The spear pierced a thick branch of a tree, cleaving it from the trunk and leaving behind a trail of fire.

"HEEEEEEEEEEELP!"

The branch and wood fell with a certain girl with a bow slung behind her shoulder. Rem stared in fascination, but Cytortia was faster. Her volunteer spirit pushed her body to catch the girl in distress.

Yet, Cy was never good at timing or catching heavy objects, and thus, instead of a beautiful princess carry, the goddess received the girl with her back in impact painful enough to make Scathach winced.

The impact which would kill a mortal wasn't lethal to a goddess, but it was, without a doubt, going to sting.

Cytortia's body twitched like a dying cockroach before laying dead still, sandwiched between a dazed elf and hard, unforgiving ground.

Rem took this a moment to grab a piece of towel and used it to choke out the fire. He didn't want the elf to go to war with Scathach. His selfless moral-code wouldn't allow the pointy ear prick to suffer as he did.

As for Scathach, she investigated her newest victim. The elf had jet black hair and eyes as blue as the summer sky. She wore an old tatter tunic that was beginning to resemble a rag. It was clothing that was getting too small for her. Her hair was raw and dirtied with twig and leaves. A black ring was fully visible under that eyes.

Yet, despite the wild dragging her down, the elf was beautiful. Her face was dazzling. Her lush lip and refined nose fit her perfectly. Pair of long elf ears fanned celestially within that hair.

Her feature caused Rem to pause. Yesterday, he rubbed the hair very similar to the one before him. But unlike that little heiress, this girl looked a bit more down to Earth--a feat that shouldn't be too hard with how thin she was.

"Magnolia Drakokia?" Rem said, stunned.

The girl's eyes widened.

"You know my sister," the elf said quietly. "How is she doing?"

It's appeared Murphy's law got abolished because their target just landed on them--literally.