It was as if the very composition of the trees had shifted from wood to luminous crystal; branches, buds, bark, and even the fine veins of the leaves pulsed with a deep, profound blue.
This was especially true of the willow-like branches and vines that draped down from above. During the day, one could still discern the faint silhouettes of their original botanical forms, but as night fell, they began to emit a ghostly blue bioluminescence from within. They hung like shimmering curtains of pearls, swaying and shimmering gently with the wind that drifted through the forest.
Even the ground beneath their feet was no longer soft earth—or rather, one could still find the original soil by digging down, but the surface was covered in a thin layer of glowing dust that crunched underfoot. These particles would even float briefly a few centimeters off the ground, flickering intermittently before slowly drifting back down.
Bio-energy had completely saturated this land. From the deepest veins of the earth to the surface flora and even the local fauna, every living thing here had bid farewell to the color green. It could only be described as a Crystallized Forest.
There was no wilting, no rot, nor any of the twisted deformities usually found in areas suffering from energy pollution. There was only this absolute, tranquil blue.
When the hunters of the Fifth Fleet first beheld this sight, they instinctively held their breath. The hunters leading the vanguard came to a halt, and the rest of the column followed suit. No one spoke; even the rattling of their armor fell silent.
The entire group stood at the exit of the underground tunnel in silence, gazing at the scene before them—a landscape so beautiful it felt unreal. A few hunters with more artistic temperaments immediately pulled pen and paper from their waist pouches, desperate to capture this dreamlike vista.
Their companions didn't mock them. Everyone was doing the same—this was a discovery worth remembering for a lifetime.
"It's like we've walked into a world from a fairy tale..." Eileen murmured, her mouth agape as she took in her surroundings. "It's absolutely breathtaking."
Since becoming a Guild-certified Handler, Eileen had gained access to the secret knowledge stored in the Guild's restricted archives and had conducted investigations in many locales. Yet, even so, this forest made her feel as though she were opening her eyes to the world for the very first time. Something deep in her chest was quietly stirred.
"It is," Sophia agreed, bending down to touch a small, light-blue blade of grass near the ground. As her fingertip pressed down, she let out a small cry of surprise. "The texture is so soft. It doesn't seem different from a normal plant—ah, wait, I feel something hard. There are tiny granules at the base of the leaf. Is this crystallized Bio-energy?"
She turned her hand so the others could see the tiny blue particles on her finger. They were incredibly fine, like grains of sand, but they refracted the light with a uniform blue luster. They didn't look like inorganic minerals; rather, they seemed like something secreted by a living organism.
Sophia gently flipped the leaf over. The others watched as a pale blue, translucent liquid slowly oozed from the "wound" where she had scraped away the blue particles. Within seconds, the tiny breach was plugged, and the color melded back into the rest of the leaf. It was almost impossible to tell it had ever been damaged.
Shush-la!
A sudden rustle made everyone look up toward the canopy. A squirrel with fur of shimmering blue sat perched on the edge of a branch, nibbling on something. It tilted its head, looking down at the group with curiosity. Its eyes were a deeper shade of blue, round and completely devoid of wariness, treating these intruders as nothing more than interesting curiosities.
The hunters let out a sigh of relief, their shoulders relaxing. As long as it wasn't a monster, it was fine.
"Hmm... the erosion from the high-concentration energy is incredibly thorough," Eileen muttered, pulling her goggles down from her forehead and adjusting the magnifying lens. She began to observe the leaf in Sophia's hand with intense focus.
"The surface of the leaf also has many fine bristles. They're also light blue, but very soft, which is why they didn't scratch your finger, Sophia. This structure shouldn't have existed originally... It's fascinating. Despite being saturated by energy, it has developed entirely new characteristics. And they aren't useless growths; they're..."
"That is why we call it evolution," a Wyverian scholar's voice suddenly rang out from the back of the group. He had come running to catch up, his breath slightly ragged, but his face carried the usual composed air of an academic. He straightened his glasses and surveyed the forest.
"A theory now accepted by many scholars is that Bio-energy is actually a 'living' energy. Unlike other high-concentration energies that simply erode a subject's body, it attempts to merge with the target, existing in a symbiotic form."
As he spoke, the scholar reached out and snapped off a thin branch to show the group. There were no torn wood fibers at the break; instead, there was a dense cluster of tiny blue tubes, from which the translucent liquid seeped.
"In this process, the subject undergoes changes in color and elemental properties. Their internal potential is unearthed, and their inherent strengths are enhanced. Ultimately, they evolve into a new form of life that transcends the standard concepts of energy and crystal. This applies to plants and animals alike." The scholar tossed the branch aside. "It doesn't simply harm the life it invades like other energies, nor does it form unabsorbable crystals in the body that cause physical agony."
"Until the Wind-Soaring Dragon confirmed it himself, no one had linked these changes to evolution. Well, perhaps that's a bit too absolute. Maybe someone thought of it but dismissed the idea?" The scholar looked at the beautiful scenery with an enchanted expression. In this forest, the boundary between day and night had blurred; it was hard to tell if it was light or dark out. There was only the omnipresent blue glow filling every gap between the trees.
"Isn't it marvelous?" he continued slowly. "It's the same forest, yet we can conduct two completely different investigations. It's as if we've discovered a New World within the New World."
"Ah, when you put it that way, isn't it such a shame?" Eileen said, her face falling as she pushed up her goggles. "We missed out on exploring an entirely unknown forest!"
She sighed genuinely. This girl was truly disappointed that she had been deprived of the experience and hardship of discovering the unknown.
"Oh? You're actually disappointed by that?" The scholar looked at Eileen with surprise, then chuckled. "You might actually have the makings of a scholar yourself, young lady... Well, it's not too late. The 'Blue-fication' phenomenon caused by the Wind-Soaring Dragon hasn't affected the entire Ancient Forest yet. It's spreading outward indiscriminately, centered around the Giant Tree where the Glavenus tribe resides."
He raised his hand, gesturing toward the far distance.
"If you're curious about what the Ancient Forest originally looked like, you can try exploring further out. There are still green forests in areas the Bio-energy hasn't reached yet—but you'd better hurry. The more Bio-energy accumulates, the faster it spreads. If you wait much longer, you really won't see it again."
"That's great! Partner!" Upon hearing this, Eileen immediately turned to Karl, her eyes shining with obvious anticipation. Karl didn't say much, merely nodding his consent.
The answer was yes.
"Um, is now really the time to be thinking about that?" the Ace Hunter said with a wry smile. "With a change this vast and deep... the Wind-Soaring Dragon... I mean, the Glavenus Boss, Asterion, is definitely no ordinary Elder Dragon. It's hard to imagine how we're supposed to persuade a monster like that..."
The topic turned somber. The group had no heart to continue their research and instead followed the main force toward the Forward Research Base, their footsteps growing heavy.
Being an enemy to an Elder Dragon with such extraordinary power—no, even the mere possibility of being an enemy—was incredibly high-pressure.
However, the further they walked, the more alarmed the hunters became. The "Blue-fication" here was far more severe than what they had seen at the exit of the rocky tunnel. The original bark of the trees was no longer visible; the outermost layer was encased in a thick shell of Bio-energy crystals. The color was deeper, the luster stronger, and the texture entirely different.
One hunter drew his carving knife and hacked twice at a tree about as thick as a bowl. The blade only left a shallow white scratch on the bark; he failed to even penetrate the surface. Instead, the recoil left his hand numb. He could only frown and sheathe his knife in silence.
In the previous area, if one plucked a leaf, it appeared blue at a glance, but holding it up to the sun would reveal a faint hint of green. The chlorophyll was still there, and life remained; the Blue-fication was merely surface-level, like a coat of paint.
But this part of the forest was different. These trees seemed entirely crystallized. They no longer brought the word "tree" to mind; they looked more like fossils or stones shaped like trees. This applied to the moss, the small plants, and the vines. Even the deadwood lying on the ground remained perfectly intact, fixed from the inside out by the Bio-energy crystals.
Yet, when a hunter couldn't resist trying to bend a sculpture-like shrub, he found it was soft. It yielded to his strength and slowly bounced back to its original position when released, just like a normal branch.
This contradiction left everyone speechless, like an unexplainable illusion. Your eyes told you it was stone; your hands told you it was wood. Both were right.
With complex emotions, the Fifth Fleet hunters finally reached their destination. The Forward Research Base was built in a relatively open clearing. The surrounding trees were also blue, but the branches had been cleared in advance to ensure a wide field of vision.
The specimens stored here were eye-opening. Samples of many creatures before and after Blue-fication were displayed on long tables. For the same type of beetle, the one on the left was green while the one on the right was blue. They were roughly the same size, but the blue one had a more complex pattern on its wing covers, and tiny crystalline spines had grown on its back.
Leaving the specimen rooms, the rest of the base felt heavy with the solemnity of a pre-war camp.
Cannons were lined up neatly in the corners, their muzzles facing the same direction, the barrels gleaming from recent maintenance. There was even a Dragonator disassembled in the clearing, surrounded by technicians performing maintenance. A female smith was crouched by the barrel, using a tool to make fine adjustments with intense focus. Beside her lay a neat row of parts and a barrel filled with an unidentified grease.
Without needing much explanation, the Fifth Fleet hunters were immediately infected by this atmosphere. They began accepting tasks one after another, throwing themselves into the tense preparations for battle.
To be honest, in the eyes of the few who knew the truth, they didn't see the point of preparing for a battle they never intended to fight. The matter of the Wind-Soaring Dragon was still undecided, and the Commander's (Hara's) attitude was clear: avoid combat if possible and prioritize friendly negotiation.
However, that doubt was soon answered. The preparation wasn't for attacking Asterion; it was to survive the attacks of Blue-fied large monsters and ensure that investigation work could proceed smoothly.
It was as if they had already accepted that the Wind-Soaring Dragon would refuse to leave. The investigation base had transitioned directly into studying the new environment, as if the Ancient Forest had always been this way and they were simply arriving for the first time.
Admittedly, this realization was somewhat depressing for Karl and the Ace Hunter. On their first night in the New World, they had called themselves the "White Winds of the Investigation," hoping to complete the fundamental mission of the Research Commission. And yet, before they had even gone on a single quest, were they already preparing for the investigation to fail?
Disappointment, emptiness, and a craving to prove themselves.
On the contrary, their two Handlers seemed completely unaffected. They spent their days soaked in the forest at the edge of the base or in the scholars' specimen rooms, scribbling away in their notebooks. Their lives were incredibly fulfilling.
Which was probably for the best.
As the Fifth Fleet hunters continued to take on requests, they personally experienced the special abilities and combat prowess of the Blue-fied monsters. They realized these creatures hadn't just changed color or grown a few crystals.
They were faster, stronger, and had thicker hides. Some could even actively release Bio-energy, firing breath attacks with corrosive effects, or mixing Bio-energy into their original elements—such as Water, Fire, or Thunder. They attacked their enemies with ghostly blue torrents, flames, and lightning.
They had many tricks, and they hit hard. One moment of carelessness was all it took to pay a heavy price.
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