All good things must come to an end. To be more specific, as fun as that fight was, the hares had a very predictable movement and attack pattern, not to mention they almost always fell for his clones, attacking them first, it did not last long.
Nero used a number of cards to scan the surrounding sugarcane, but there was too much interference so they did not yield any substantial results. In the end, he could only trust his instincts to move on when he felt like there was nothing else watching him.
Before he moved on, however, Nero kneeled down to observe the hare corpses. Its grey fur was thick and tough, yet warm and comfortable to touch. Nero felt an urge to take it with him just for how amazing of a pelt it would yield, but he had no room to carry such a large creature.
The greatest loss he felt was not for the pelt, however, but the horns on the hares head. They were wild and grew without any proper sense, but they were tough, and they were sharp. His glaive, which was meant to be a superb weapon, now bore many scratches on its blade from clashing against those horns.
If Nero had not been quick enough, and had been stabbed by even one of those, no amount of armour would have protected him.
If Nero had a card similar to Pot Prison that shrunk and sealed items instead of just plants, he would have definitely taken the corpse with him - or at least the horns. Nero was certain that the army was overlooking countless valuable items, focusing instead on Sage level items only - not that they could be blamed for such a thing.
Nero touched the horn of one of the hares, and channeled his aether into it, until he detected exactly what he suspected the horns contained: a spell model.
It was unfortunate that Nero could not see, nor understand, spell models simply from sensing them like this. Then again, even if he could, it wasn’t like he could recreate the spell model. Even if he could, the complexity of the spell model carried within these horns far outranked the modest spell model he had sensed within his pinecones.
Nero got up and looked all around him. Another reason he had squatted down was to present an opening to any creature stalking him, baiting it to attack. Since there had been no such attack, Nero switched to Virtuous Moonlight and continued on his journey.
Nero had tested his glaive with aether, as well as his Cyroflame, but hadn’t yet tested it with the Virtuous Moonlight, so he took this opportunity to try. The price was steep, as expected, and coated the very edge of the blade in pale moonlight, though it did not seem to have any other effects.
The sugarcane was no easier to cut down, nor was the blade sharper suddenly because of it. But the true test of it would come when Nero encountered something cursed.
But as if restrained by the faint remnant aura of moonlight, all curses in the vicinity avoided him, or hid well enough that he could not detect them at all.
The absurd deterrent of his ability on curses still confused him, but Nero did not allow himself to become arrogant because of it. Each step he took with caution, his mind stretched to observe for any abnormalities. Yet it was as if he was alone, and there weren’t even any more hares to bother him.
In fact, Nero suspected that the smell of hare blood on his blade acted as some kind of warning.
Whatever it was, Nero was fully aware that he was not witnessing the full danger of this place. After all, if it was only a few animals guarding this place, then the team of Arcanists would not have left this place unexplored.
Nero completed the original trip, for which the time allocated was around one and a half hours, in twenty-five minutes, even after the fight with the hare and his slow and cautious approach.
In the heart of the sugarcane field there was a sudden patch of empty land, covered with dry soil, as if everything within it had been devoured whole, including the moisture. Yet this barren area also served as a divide, for after it was a festering jungle of decay.
The sugarcane Nero had encountered so far had all been lush and vibrant, its stalk thick as if bark, and the leaves atop green. Yet what was in front of him now was just a jumbled mush of black and grey plants, growing haphazardly, forming a literal barricade. Nero could see remnants of what must have once been the stalk of the sugarcane, but whether it was through being cursed, or through some twisted mutation, it was all unrecognizable.
Unlike the sweet scent that had filled the air previously, only the smell of death lingered in the air now. More importantly, Nero felt like he was being observed!
He did not sense the gaze of another animal on him - no, this felt more like something dangerous and insidious was aware of him. The threat level did not reach nearly that of the Exarch, but it did cause Nero to sweat within his suit.
Nero coated his glaive in moonlight, and slowly extended it towards the wall of black plants, whatever they were, and watched with relief as they moved aside.
Yet within his heart, Nero couldn’t help but suspect that this wall of cursed plants was putting on an act - baiting him to come closer. With all the strangeness he had witnessed so far, he didn’t doubt it was possible. So the question that now remained was, could he risk it?
Did he trust that his ability would have enough of a deterrent even against this thing, allowing him to pass through and acquire the Sage level herb?
Although technically speaking, his only mission was to ensure the safety of Vanessa, he was fully aware that getting more Sage herbs would count as having better completed his mission. It wasn’t just the fact that Lieutenant Earl had low-key threatened with ’death before dishonour’, meaning he would rather see Nero die than come back from a failed mission.
That didn’t exactly mean that the Lieutenant would kill him if he survived, but it would definitely not make his life any easier. As someone accused of fratricide, even if he was proved innocent, others would have a bias against him. The only way to get rid of that bias was through having a stellar record that could speak on his behalf.
Even if this was mandatory service, a successful mission would go on his record. The better his performance was, the better his treatment and future opportunities would be - it was as simple as that.
Nero suddenly realised that he was hesitating. He never did that before, even if he understood the weight and risk of his actions, he was always decisive. The fact that he was now standing in front of the black wall of cursed plants and not directly walking into it was a sign that a hint of hesitation had crept into his actions.
Caution was not bad, but he could not allow his will to weaken. Learning from experience and avoiding stupid actions was one thing, but suffering from trauma and hiding it under the guise of caution was inexcusable.
He knew that he was going to step in there no matter what, for Virtuous Moonlight had not failed him yet. Hesitating, despite knowing that, could be called caution if it was within a certain degree. More than that meant he was still suffering from the mental and psychological repercussions of nearly dying.
The expression in Nero’s eyes firmed as he took control of his emotions, and suppressed them completely. He coated himself in Virtuous Moonlight and walked directly towards his objective, not even slowing down as he reached the plant.
The grass, the shoots, the cane and everything else in his path moved away, as if Nero was the plague, but immediately returned to its original place as soon as he was gone. In a split second, he was surrounded, but he allowed not a hint of fear or doubt to taint his heart and mind.
One of the most important, most significant lessons that the human race had to learn was that in Neire, weakness was death, whether it was a weakness of the mind, or the body.
One of the reasons why Nero enforced such a strict training routine for himself was to train himself to do what he needed to do, not what he wanted.
Who didn’t want to rest when they started to get tired? Who wanted to wake up early when they could still sleep? Which maniac wanted to waste hundreds or thousands of hours training with a weapon, while are of the stark reality that someone with a single card, or a single piece of unexpected cursed grass could kill him, leaving his training pointless?
The answer was simple: those who wanted to survive. Although physical weapons became less common as one went higher up as a Card Master, one had to live long enough for that first, and for that using weapons was necessary. For that, forcing himself to wake up early, to shower in the cold, to train till he was tired, to face death and keep on walking was all necessary.
For the things that Nero wanted to achieve, the slightest flaw could become a roadblock, so he could not allow them. He walked through the overgrowth of black death without so much as a single stir in his heart, right up until he entered another clearing, and saw before him the target of his venture.
It was a golden sugarcane shoot, and it was as thick as a tree.