The light crystals were still shining.
Seris was also awake. Perhaps she had not slept at all.
Her hand was on her sword’s hilt. No enemy could be seen in the range of the light, but both strongly felt it.
"Be careful, something is near us, but it can hide well." Lian warned and activated Predator’s Instincts.
He tried to track any sign of danger, but there was nothing other than the feeling of danger.
However, suddenly a sound came from within the mist!
"Lian!"
It was Ravian’s voice!
Lian narrowed his eyes. The voice was exact, the same tone, the same inflection, and even the anxiety in it seemed natural.
"Lian, where are you?"
The sound came from the left, and Seris did not look in that direction and only said quietly.
"There is something there."
A few moments later, another sound was heard, this time a human girl’s voice, trembling and crying.
"Help me..."
Lian’s heart reacted for a fraction of a second.
Seraphina.
One of his group members, his childhood friend, and someone he had been separated from after entering the Special Area.
The voice sounded exactly like hers. Not like a weak imitation, completely real! So accurate that it could make anyone doubt.
"Lian... please..."
The voice came from within the mist, but Seraphina could not be there.
She was probably hundreds and thousands of kilometers away, maybe even in another forest.
"I don’t know what you’re hearing, but it’s not real." Seris said briefly.
Her tone showed that she was hearing something different, or maybe hearing nothing at all.
"I know." Lian answered. He is not foolish enough to fall for such a trick.
But now he finally understood what the documents meant when they talked about strange sounds.
And even though he knew the sounds were false, they did not stop.
And suddenly he heard a sound he did not expect.
"This way!" Kain... his closest friend.
"Lian, don’t go alone." Liana’s worried voice.
"We found you! Do you know how long we’ve been looking for you?" He even heard Selina’s serious and familiar voice.
Then Sera, Nemi, and Ravian again.
The sounds came from different points, sometimes close, sometimes far, sometimes from behind the camp, and sometimes right next to the massive ribs.
They all had one goal, to pull him out of the light’s range, as if they could not get close or enter the light.
"If my guess is correct, they all want to pull us away from the light." Lian also noticed this.
Suddenly, shadows moved in the mist. For a moment, Ravian’s figure was seen and then disappeared.
A little further away, a shadow with Seraphina’s height and posture stood.
But the crystal light reached the mist, and the shape faded.
"So not only sounds, but they can also imitate appearances." Lian said with admiration and of course noticed the weak point, which was light.
"They’re getting closer." Seris said.
Lian nodded and turned off the crystals, waiting for the monsters to get closer so he could hunt them if possible, and turn the light back on if necessary.
One opened its jaws, lowered its body, and prepared to attack.
Nemi’s voice came from very close.
"Lian..." From behind one of the ribs.
"I told you to come back..." Someone came out of the darkness.
It was Nemi, at least at first glance.
Height, scale color, clothes, and the small bands beside the antennae, all were exact.
But a few things were wrong. Her hands were slightly longer than normal, her antennae moved in opposite directions.
Her eyes did not blink, and her smile was too wide, so wide that the corners of her mouth were almost stretched to the sides of her jaw.
"Nemi." She took a step toward them.
"I told you to come back..."
Lian moved without a moment’s hesitation. Before the creature could take a second step, he appeared in front of it.
His fist hit the fake face. The creature’s head was thrown back with a dry sound.
The fake skin tore, but beneath it was not flesh, but black bones and white, moist strands, a parasitic tissue that moved among the joints.
The panel appeared before Lian’s view.
[Grave Mimic]
[Level: 22]
[Rank: Normal]
Despite its broken neck, the creature was still standing. Its head turned at an unnatural angle, and the fake smile remained on its face.
"Disgusting." Lian threw a second punch directly at its chest.
The outer shell cracked, and a black heart was revealed among the white strands. At that same moment, several shadows came out of the mist.
One had Ravian’s shape, one had Sera’s, and another looked like Liana and Selina. A few human faces were also seen among them.
Marcus and Kain, Seraphina, and people Lian did not even recognize.
Some were perhaps shapes of previous victims, some perhaps images pulled from Seris’s mind.
The Grave Mimics attacked with fast and irregular movements. Their joints turned in directions that a normal body could not.
One of them ran on all fours, another jumped forward without bending its knees.
Lian crushed the black heart of the creature in front of him. The fake body trembled for a moment and then collapsed on the ground.
But before he could step back, white strands shot out from inside the corpse.
Directly toward his face, and Lian moved his head aside. The strands passed by him.
Seris’s sword moved at that same moment, and the strands were cut into pieces in the air.
She stood behind Lian. Without needing coordination, the two stood back-to-back.
Another Grave Mimic with Sera’s face attacked Seris.
The silver sword moved, and the fake body was split in half from shoulder to waist, but before the two halves could reach the ground, they were pulled back together by white strands.
"They regenerate." Seris narrowed her eyes.
"The heart is in the chest." Lian answered.
"Behind you!" one of the Mimics shouted with Kain’s voice.
Lian did not react to the sound. The creature attacked from the right. He grabbed its wrist, turned the body, and broke its ribcage with his knee.
The black heart came out.
Lian crushed it with his fingers, and the body immediately became still.
Seris changed her movement. She no longer only cut limbs.
Every cut went directly to the center of the chest. One silver line, then tearing the fake skin, breaking the black bone, and destroying the heart.
Three Grave Mimics fell in less than a few seconds.
One charged forward with a muffled roar. Its jaws closed around one of the creatures’ bodies.
With the pressure of its jaws, its bones were crushed. Another creature jumped on One’s back. White strands came out of its open mouth and searched for gaps between the armor plates.
Lian felt One’s sudden terror through Hive Link.
He immediately turned around. The creature had inserted its hand into one of the gaps.
The parasites were trying to enter the ant’s body. Lian grabbed the strands.
He pulled.
The white strands came out of the gap and twisted around his hand like living worms. They tried to stick to his skin.
Lian concentrated mana in his hand. The strands burned and dried up, and then with a direct strike, he crushed the Mimic’s heart.
The fake body fell off One.
Seris split the last creature in half, and Lian destroyed the heart before the two halves could reconnect.
For a few moments, silence returned. The Grave Mimic corpses lay on the ground.
But they did not remain. The white strands came out of the broken bodies one after another.
They crawled on the ground, moved toward the massive bones around, some sank into the cracks of the ribs.
Some disappeared under the soil. In less than a minute, nothing remained but pieces of fake skin and black spots.
Lian looked at the cracks in the bones. These creatures were not separate from the graveyard, they were part of it.
Perhaps the entire valley was connected like a living network.
Seris lowered her sword’s tip and looked at one of the cracks.
"These weren’t alone."
"Unfortunately." Lian said. Now he could understand why none of the lizardman tribes had been able to get out of here alive.
They hadn’t even entered the graveyard yet and had already encountered such strange monsters.
At that same moment, a massive cracking sound rose from the valley’s depth, not like the movement of a small monster, but like a bone hundreds of meters long being dragged on rock.
The ground beneath their feet trembled, and white dust fell from the ribs.
"What now?"
One lowered its body.
Seris turned her head toward the mist, but nothing could be seen.
The rest of the night, neither of them slept. The sounds did not return, but sometimes distant movements could be seen in the mist.
Sometimes the sound of bones rubbing, sometimes a weak tremor under the ground. When the gray light of morning passed through the sky, the mist parted for a few minutes.
Lian and Seris came out from between two ribs and approached the cliff’s edge.
This time, the Giants’ Graveyard showed all its grandeur. An endless valley stretched beneath them.
Hundreds of giant skeletons lay there. Some were humanoid, some had multiple arms, and some had skulls with twisted horns or animal jaws.
Skeletons of monsters that bore no resemblance to natural creatures could be seen. Spinal columns stretched like white roads across the valley.
Massive swords, spears, and axes were sunk among the bones. Black chains were wrapped around some bodies.
And in the center of the valley, the largest skeleton sat.
A sitting giant.
Its height, even in a sitting position, was greater than many mountains.
A broken crown was on its skull. A massive sword was sunk into its chest.
Black chains were wrapped around its neck, arms, and legs, and their ends disappeared into the ground.
Lian opened the map.
The marked path passed exactly under that same skeleton.
Seris looked at it. Instead of fear, calm excitement formed in her black eyes.
But before she could say anything, one of the giant’s fingers moved. The movement was very slow, so little that it could be attributed to a tremor in the ground.
But soil and small bones fell from its hand.
A red and incomplete panel appeared before Lian’s view.
[???]
[Level: Unable to Determine]
[Status: Dormant — Awakening 1%]
Seris placed her hand on her sword’s hilt, the spark of interest in her eyes grew stronger.
"Finally, we found something interesting."
Lian also placed his hand on his weapon, his gaze moving from the panel to the massive skeleton.
"I hope it doesn’t wake up before we pass." Just the aura he felt from this sitting giant was comparable to the Dreadmaw.
If his guess was not wrong, this thing could be an Unholy!
He preferred not to face such a thing...
But at that same moment, the writing before his view changed.
[Status: Dormant — Awakening 2%]