Chapter 1 The Black Forest

Thunderous roars echoed from all directions, and the black mist collapsed like an avalanche. The entire illusion vanished in a matter of seconds. Lily swayed her head, feeling dizzy. When the scene before her stabilized again, she was back in the Black Forest.

Lily blinked, a trace of confusion flashing in her golden eyes. False perceptions and real memories clashed for a moment before her memory gradually broke free from its icy prison. The previously blocked memory returned. She remembered how she had arrived at this place, the beast horde army she led, and even her landlord, who had been missing for many days.

Recalling the braised spare ribs she couldn't eat in the illusion, the husky girl couldn't help but pout, a look of grievance on her face.

Then she saw the monster struggling on the ground, trying to escape, surrounded by smoke and black mist.

"Don't run!" Lily immediately raised her hand, but when she tried to grab, she realized that the "brick" she had touched in the illusion didn't exist here. Although the conflict between reality and illusion made her a little confused, she quickly reacted and summoned her Frostmourne and Fiery Very Happy, pointing the two claw blades crossed at the twisting mass of flesh. "Run again and I'll stab you to death! I can poke five holes in you with one claw!"

At this time, the commotion she caused finally alarmed the others in the camp. Lights came on in the human encampment, and Kalaxius and two High Templars grabbed their weapons and crawled out of their tents. The two dire wolves and the old magic ape, Gluglu, who were guarding the edge of the camp, also ran towards them. Although the monster enveloped in smoke had shown terrifying mental power in the illusion, it seemed much weaker in reality (of course, it could also be that it was smashed by Lily's brick, causing mental trauma and limb paralysis). It hadn't even crawled two or three meters before being surrounded.

After the two dire wolves arrived next to Lily, they immediately lowered their heads and respectfully touched the "head wolf's" shoes with their noses. The old magic ape immediately realized what had happened when it saw the smoky thing on the ground. It showed a look of panic: "Head wolf! I was on guard just now, this weird thing is..."

"I know, it's not your fault," Lily waved her hand, pointing to the two goblin slaves lying on the ground. "They brought it in."

The goblin slave leader also arrived in front of the head wolf at this time. After hearing this, it immediately let out a terrified scream, and then tried to rush up to make trouble for the two unlucky guys, but Lily waved her hand to stop it. "Hey, hey, don't be anxious, it shouldn't be their fault either – if I'm not mistaken, they were parasitized without realizing it."

The goblin slave leader and the old magic ape looked at each other, looking a little at a loss.

At this time, Kalaxius stepped forward: "Head wolf, what exactly happened?"

"This thing has been hiding in the shadows of these two goblin slaves," Lily pointed to the "smoke monster" on the ground. "Just now, I saw these two goblin slaves suddenly get up and walk towards your camp, and I felt something was wrong. Then, when I called them to stop, I was attacked..."

As a dog who graduated from Peking University four times and usually makes a living writing, Lily explained what happened just now in a few words, and also said her guess – she had been running around with Hao Ren for three years. She hadn't improved in other ways, but at least her knowledge was much higher. Therefore, all kinds of bizarre and strange things were not uncommon to her. She guessed that this smoke monster might be something based on the victim's mental power, or even…this thing could parasitize in the host's spiritual world.

Kalaxius was startled when he heard Lily's guess. He had been a scholar in the church for so many years, but he had never heard of any "monsters parasitizing in the spiritual world." He had seen many Chaos creatures that were good at mental attacks in various ancient books, but something that could emerge from a nightmare and drill into the real world was a bit challenging to his worldview.

He stared at the head wolf with wide eyes, wondering how this mysterious and powerful leader of the beast horde came to this conclusion, and deeply curious about where the other party's bizarre knowledge came from.

"I'm not guessing blindly," Lily knew what the other party was thinking when she saw Kalaxius's expression. She shook her ears. "First of all, you were all present when these two goblin slaves came back, so you can be sure that no other 'things' mixed in at that time. Secondly, I personally watched them come out of the camp just now, and I can be sure that the monster really emerged from the shadows out of thin air. Finally, I just had a fight with this thing."

Lily curled her lips, and thought of the spare ribs she couldn't eat again. She shook her head: "It created an illusion in my head, and then I knocked it down with a brick in the illusion. When I woke up, it fell in the real world. My brick was something made up, but this..."

As she spoke, she turned the smoke monster over with her foot. Sure enough, on the other party's...she didn't know if it was the back, head, belly, or something else, in short, many tentacles in a certain position were broken, and some black substance was constantly flowing out of there, forming a small puddle like mud on the ground. Obviously, this was a wound.

Lily had just discovered this wound, which was enough to prove her guess:

She injured this monster in the spiritual world, and the other party also had the same wound in the real world. Therefore, this thing fell out of the spiritual world.

Reasonable and well-founded, convincing.

Kalaxius frowned. He instinctively felt that there was something wrong with the head wolf's guess, but he couldn't say exactly what was wrong, so he could only skip this topic in the end. Anyway, one thing was beyond doubt:

The ability of this "smoke monster" was inextricably linked to the spiritual world and the real world. It possessed unheard-of attack methods, and its threat to unprepared ordinary people was huge.

Moreover, it was not afraid of the Light of Order.

The smoke monster twisted and struggled on the ground. The pure Light of Order released from Lily shone on this demon, and seemed to cause it some pain. However, no matter what, it maintained its normal ability to move under the Light of Order, and could even attack. This level of resistance was not only far beyond ordinary Chaos minions, but even surpassed corrupted demons.

"This is obviously a minion of Chaos, but it is a form I have never seen before..." The High Templar bent down and cast a few protective spells on himself before reaching out to touch the monster's entity. Under the cover of smoke and black mist, he felt a cold, soft, and constantly changing disgusting body. The touch made him want to vomit. "Disgusting...like some kind of cold-blooded mollusk."

Lily also used Fiery Very Happy to poke at the semi-transparent tentacles floating around the monster. Surprisingly, her claw blades directly passed through those jellyfish-like tentacles: "And these tentacles don't have a physical body, look...it's like special effects."

The High Templar didn't know what special effects were, but he could understand what Lily was trying to express. These untouchable tentacles seemed to further confirm the head wolf's statement: this was a nightmare demon between reality and illusion.

"Head wolf, I hope you can lend me this prey," Kalaxius lowered his head to Lily, with a sincere attitude. "Just borrow it for research. I am a scholar, and researching this kind of demon is my job."

"Whatever," Lily waved her hand indifferently. "Anyway, this can't be eaten, so you can have it. But try not to kill it, maybe he can figure out what this thing is after we find the landlord."

The head wolf always said strange things, and often mentioned a person called "the landlord," who seemed to be an important person she had been looking for. Kalaxius had become accustomed to this, so he didn't ask any further questions. He just nodded gratefully, and then ordered the Templars behind him: "Go get the Containment Stone."

The two Templars had been watching the monster on the ground with great trepidation since just now. When they heard the order, their reaction was naturally half a beat slow. Kalaxius frowned dissatisfied when he saw this: "Why are you so nervous? We came to this continent to investigate the Chaos anomaly. Now we can finally start working. Hurry up, don't think that the spaceship crashed and you are really refugees. The people of the Holy Dominion are not so easy to be discouraged!"

The two Templars then woke up as if from a dream and ran towards the camp. Soon they brought the Containment Stone used to imprison Chaos demons, as well as the matching rune chains.

The so-called Containment Stone was actually a pitch-black stone, about the size of a fist, with a metallic luster and a faint red light wandering on the surface. This stone was inlaid on a shield-like metal plate. The metal plate was densely engraved with the original text of the Holy Covenant bestowed on mortals by the Creation Goddess, and four chains with a faint blue cold light extended around it.

This set of equipment was specially manufactured by the Theocracy to capture Chaos demons: it had two functions, the first was to bind the monsters and prevent them from escaping back into the Sea of Cernos, and the second was to block the Light of Order, preventing the bound demons from dying prematurely in the world of light.

It was precisely because of the Holy Dominion's complete procedures for capturing and studying Chaos demons that they were able to understand the enemies that mortals had to face, and constantly create various targeted holy objects to maintain the Theocracy's territorial order of the world of Corvus from completely collapsing.

When the Containment Stone approached, the monster twitched violently. It suddenly raised half of its body, and many blood-red eyes suddenly appeared from the black smoke-shrouded body. These terrifying eyes stared at Lily, revealing a deep-seated hatred.

It finally shouted – in a thunderous voice: "You damned, stupid, ignorant, short-sighted mortal! You have no idea what you're up against..."

Lily put her hands on her hips: "If you're so capable, conjure up my bowl of spare ribs."

The monster let out a miserable cry, and then fell silent.

Lily shrugged: "I knew your act was all fake, who are you trying to fool?"