His father becoming a deserter, the fear of others bringing it up, the inability to ever say "no"—how he had to bravely charge forward into everything, even the things he wasn't good at, without ever retreating... and so on and so forth.
Oh, and the pressure was truly immense. Sometimes he found it hard to even breathe, terrified that he wasn't doing enough, scared that people would say he only had his position because he was lucky enough to have the Commander as a father. So, he wanted to prove himself. He wanted to become stronger, more capable—to stand tall before the Commander and show his grandfather his own achievements...
It was too much.
Back then, the Investigation Team Leader had poured so much out to Mirrorblade that the Glavenus didn't even know what it was about this annoying guy that had moved him, making him willing to act alongside him, investigate the wilds, and explore the secrets of the New World together.
Crash!!
Just as Mirrorblade was lost in these memories, a sharp sound of something collapsing made him and the Team Leader turn their heads. They were met with a face on the verge of tears.
It was Arun. Back when Mirrorblade had first arrived at Astera, Arun was the shaky fellow who had brought him meat. Now, the man was kneeling on the ground, staring despondently at the bullets scattered all over the floor.
Arun was a Light Bowgunner and a member of this special squad consisting of Mirrorblade and the Team Leader. The team only had the three of them, but compared to the Team Leader, Arun was a bit... clumsy.
Case in point: he had just knocked over his ammo box. A dense carpet of various bullets now covered the ground; just re-sorting and re-boxing them would be a massive undertaking.
"I'm doomed!" Arun let out a pathetic wail.
Shaking his head, Mirrorblade didn't bother watching the idiot mumble any longer and went back to resting his head on the ground.
As mentioned before, Mirrorblade was only calm on the surface.
Having learned everything related to the "Blue-ification" phenomenon from the Team Leader, Mirrorblade had been thinking a lot—from the anomalies in the Ancient Forest to the potential crisis facing the Glavenus Tribe. He had even imagined how the Grimalkynes would shower him with gratitude after he took down the dragon responsible for this evil.
Honestly, the feeling was pretty great.
He even had a reference point: the scene of the entire Glavenus Tribe celebrating when his father, Asterion, had made his grand return years ago after slaying a Velkhana.
Mirrorblade was finding it very easy to put himself in those shoes.
Prepare, set out, advance. Even though the hunters were efficient, the New World was vast. By the time the various investigation teams reached the Ancient Forest, half a year had already passed.
"Growl."
"The Little Boss says the feeling here is different than it used to be, meow!" Perched on the edge of the heat-dissipating shell on Mirrorblade's back, Caly translated with a serious expression.
"Growl, growl."
"The Little Boss can't say exactly what's wrong, meow. Maybe it's the air they're breathing, meow? He's not sure, meow."
One dragon, two humans, and one Felyne—this team was a bit of an odd mix.
"Ah! This is definitely not right!" Arun suddenly cried out. He hurried over to a vine wrapped around a tree, bending down to inspect it closely. "Come look, it's completely ghostly blue."
"Plants of this color aren't exactly rare now, are they?" the Team Leader said as he walked over. "They've been everywhere along the way."
"No, no, no, this is different, Leader!" Arun pinched the vine and turned around with a grim face. "This is Ivy!"
"What?!"
Instantly realizing the gravity of the situation, the Team Leader leaned down to look at the vine. In terms of the surface texture and leaf shape, it was indeed the Ivy from his memory, but—"Why is it so big?"
The Team Leader muttered the question subconsciously.
Exactly—it was huge.
At first, he thought Arun was just talking about the common vines found throughout the Ancient Forest. Those vines were thick, long, extremely tough, and everywhere—they could even form solid ground within the forest canopy. For those vines to turn blue wasn't surprising; it was just a color swap.
But if it was Ivy, that was a different story entirely. Ivy was usually thin with leathery, triangular-ovate or triangular-oblong leaves. Its petioles were slender and scaly, and hunters frequently used it to craft traps and items.
For decades, Ivy had always looked the same. It never changed. But the specimen before them was radically different: it was as thick as half a palm, a localized, eerie ghostly blue. The triangular leaves had grown to the size of a palm and a half.
Furthermore, the leaves were blue, with edges that were translucent and sharp like crystals. A faint light pulsed through the veins. Arun tried to shield the plant with his body to create a dark environment, discovering that the leaves emitted a beautiful, star-like blue glow in the dark.
It looked as if a ghostly blue river was flowing through the vine and the leaf veins, with mottled blue dots appearing from time to time.
"Hiss!!"
Suddenly sucking in a breath of cold air as if he'd been bitten, Arun jerked his finger back. A clear bloody gash had appeared on the tip of his index finger.
"Are you okay?!" the Team Leader asked seriously. "Any special sensations? Paralysis? Pain? Swelling? Hmm... the wound hasn't changed color."
"Uh, it's just a cut," Arun said awkwardly, looking at his overly stressed leader. "Sorry, I didn't realize it would be that sharp."
The Team Leader: "..."
"As long as you're not hurt. I'd hate to wake up and find you've turned blue," the Team Leader joked.
Meanwhile, Mirrorblade's massive head lowered. He nipped off a piece of the blue Ivy. As his sharp teeth crunched through it, he gave it a rough chew and swallowed it in a few gulps.
"Growl, growl."
"The Little Boss says it has a familiar taste, meow, but he doesn't remember where he's seen it before."
While relaying the message, Caly hopped down from the shell and ran over to inspect the edge of the vine where Mirrorblade had bitten it off.
"So weird, meow. Why would the Little Boss find it familiar, meow? There was never anything like this back at the tribe, meow," Caly said, scratching his head. "And is this really a vine, meow? Any harder and I'd think it was a rock, meow."
"Collect some samples, then let's keep moving," the Team Leader decided. "We need to gather as much evidence as possible before we rendezvous with the other teams."
"Right."
The squad pressed on, only to realize that the blue Ivy samples they had carefully collected were almost worthless—the stuff was everywhere in the forest. There was absolutely no need for a specialized collection.
Ivy, Butterworts... these plants that were once common throughout the forest had undergone massive growth spurts after turning blue. The Team Leader suspected that a single Butterwort was now capable of preying on small animals. He didn't even want to imagine what would happen if they grew any larger. Would they start preying on hunters who weren't paying attention?
The blue-ified plants seemed to possess a unique growth rate. They twisted around tree trunks like snakes, their fat, sharp leaves showing no mercy to any fragile thing that passed by.
Ugly burls even appeared on some vines, swelling like tumors into irregular, ghostly blue spheres. When poked with a hunter's knife, they would spontaneously combust, creating a ghostly blue flame with actual, high-intensity heat. In the blink of an eye, the vine would be reduced to ash, even igniting the normal grass nearby.
No, to be precise, only the normal grass became ash. The vine itself, after being burned by the blue fire, turned into a crystal of interwoven light and dark blue. It mostly maintained its original shape but would shatter at the slightest touch, making it impossible to collect as a specimen.
Left with no choice, the Team Leader could only record these occurrences, planning to report them to the scholars once they met up with the main force.
They continued their advance, but the further they went and the more they investigated, the more they realized the "Blue-ification" had spread to nearly every corner of the forest. From the very bottom of the food chain to the top, not even the smallest detail had been spared.
Scoutflies released from their waist-mounted cages flitted through the forest. These miraculous insects, unique to the New World, were discovered by the Commander when the Research Commission first made landfall. By giving these insects a specific scent or energy signature to track and providing clear instructions, the Scoutflies would automatically seek out similar targets.
After fifty years of continuous breeding, the Scoutflies had become smarter and smarter, becoming an indispensable tool for New World hunters.
But now, this reliable helper was lost in a daze.
After sensing a blue plant, the Scoutflies would fly left one moment and right the next, acting like headless flies. Part of the swarm even split off to the left while another part, as if in disagreement, flew to the right, leading the investigation team into uncharted territory.
The Team Leader easily deduced the cause. The blue phenomenon in the forest was simply too widespread. With blue plants everywhere, the Scoutflies had no idea where to go—in fact, they likely felt they had already arrived.
"Even... even the Vigorwasps have been blue-ified, meow?!" Caly couldn't help but let out a mournful cry.
The Grimalkynes quite liked the Vigorwasps that drifted throughout the forest. Their honey was sweet, delicious, and nutritious. If injured, one could rely on that honey to heal wounds. Many Grimalkynes would even intentionally get hurt in battle just to eat more of the honey; some had nearly had their legs broken by their peers upon being found out.
But now, the honey sacs of the originally vibrant green Vigorwasps had turned a ghostly blue. The entire insect was blue. Seeing the group approach, it didn't fly away, nor did it ignore them as they usually did. Instead, it charged at them angrily, looking ready to attack.
Good grief—a Vigorwasp homicide incident.
"Can we still eat this honey, meow?!" Caly was so anxious he was jumping up and down. "Are we never going to have honey again, meow?! We're doomed, meow!!"
"Calm down, Caly," the Team Leader said helplessly, catching the frantic Felyne. He gave the cat's head a firm rub. "Let's just verify if it's still usable—we have to check eventually, don't we?"
You can always trust the biomass of the Ancient Forest. It didn't take long for the Team Leader to catch a rat using his Clutch Claw. He then used his hunting knife to make a small cut on the rat's back.
"Uh, for safety's sake... maybe tie it to this?" Arun suggested, holding up a long branch he had snapped off.
"...Good point."
And so, the two humans and the dragon leaned back. The Team Leader held the branch with the injured rat tied to the end, extending it forward until it punctured the Vigorwasp's honey sac.
Pshhh—pshhhhhh!!!
It was like a firework going off in front of them. Instantly, the ghostly blue liquid exploded in mid-air and atomized. The process was no different from how a normal Vigorwasp sac burst, except the glowing green mist had been replaced by a ghostly blue vapor that sparkled like a starry sky.
"Squeak! Squeak!!"
The rat tied to the branch began to shriek frantically, making the Team Leader nervous. He quickly pulled the branch back from the blue spectacle. The group huddled together to inspect the rat, with even Mirrorblade leaning his head down from above to see exactly what had happened.
The rat... well, it looked like it had been hitting the gym.
It wasn't an illusion. The rat's entire body seemed to have bulked up slightly. The wound on its back had completely healed, leaving only a tight scar; even the fur there had regrown.
The four rat legs were struggling desperately, and they looked significantly thicker. Was that... muscle?
Before they could get a closer look, the rat actually broke through the rope tying it to the end of the branch. With a zip, it hit the ground and vanished into the thick layer of fallen leaves in a heartbeat.
A Vigorwasp "mouse-making" incident?
The group stared at one another in silence. The Team Leader looked at Mirrorblade, only to see the dragon shake his head.
"The healing effect is still there... it just has some extra side effects. We'll leave it to the scholars to figure out," the Team Leader said.
Regardless, until an official research report came out, he was absolutely unwilling to use these Vigorwasps to treat his wounds unless it was a dire emergency.
Who knew what would happen?
Investigation was supposed to be a task requiring patience and luck. However, in the current Ancient Forest, exploring new things was as easy as breathing. As long as they searched carefully, they would always find something worth investigating and recording.
"Even the fish in the river are affected?" Standing by the water's edge, Arun held his fishing rod but showed no intention of casting his line. He spoke with total disbelief. "I thought fast-moving water would be different."
On the riverbank in front of him, several fish had actually jumped onto the shore and were flopping around incessantly. Their scales shimmered with a ghostly blue luster.
————
Supporting me on Pa-treon to gain early access to advanced chapters and enjoy expedited updates. Your support is greatly appreciated.
pat-reon .c-om/Dragonhair
(Just remove the hyphen - and space, to access Pa-treon normally.)