61: Chapter 61 The Request to Recover Lost Belongings

Richard withdrew his gaze from those Silver-rank Adventurers.

That kind of intermediate quest wasn't something he needed to consider at his current stage; he could only participate once his rank was higher.

He returned to his chair and picked up the quest commission list on the table to flip through it again.

After flipping through a few pages, his finger stopped on a novice-difficulty quest commission.

Commission Details: Deep within the Black Forest lies the ruins of a lost elven watchtower. Preliminary investigations show that a pair of Displacer Beasts have nested there, using their illusion abilities to distort the surrounding light and turning the entire ruins into a natural illusion labyrinth.

The client is an elven scholar who suspects that a secret chamber in the watchtower holds an elven tactical codex written during the War of Kingship.

The objective is to traverse the illusion labyrinth created by the Displacer Beasts, find the watchtower's secret chamber, and retrieve the ancient elven codex.

The commission also included a note: The displacement ability of Displacer Beasts makes all attacks aimed at them highly prone to missing, unless you can first dispel the illusions using spells like Faerie Fire, Revealing Powder, or True Seeing.

Additionally, the ruins themselves still contain arcane traps left behind during the elven retreat, so you must watch your step while evading the Displacer Beasts.

The reward for bringing back the ancient book is 120 gold coins, paid by the library where the elven scholar is based.

This wasn't a simple hunting quest; a non-lethal route could be chosen to achieve the objective, and the client had even written down the Displacer Beasts' weaknesses.

Richard's team possessed methods to dispel illusions and had members who could track real positions, making this quest extremely suitable for them.

"Let's go with this one. Take a look."

He placed the commission sheet in the center of the table, and the others huddled over to read it.

Morpheus's eyes lit up when he read "elven tactical codex from the War of Kingship."

Selina looked at the reward, then at the quest description, and nodded in agreement.

Her divine dispel magic could temporarily suppress illusion effects, and her Storm Sense should be of great use in the illusion labyrinth.

Jinbao was already pulling out his stock of Revealing Powder from his toolkit: "Don't worry, a mere illusion can't stump this great one! It's just that this powder is quite expensive, so this has to be counted as a collective expense!"

"No problem, I'm not a stingy captain," Richard said with a smile.

After sorting out their supplies, the group headed to the carriage rental in Blackwater City's port district. A row of carriages was parked at the entrance, and the drivers were either squatting or sitting under the awning, rolling dice.

Richard and his group only needed two carriages—one for passengers and one for supplies.

The rates were basically standardized at one copper coin per kilometer. The destination was the outskirts of the Black Forest; upon arrival, the two drivers would return first and come back to pick them up at the same spot a week later.

One of the drivers, a middle-aged man wearing a faded headscarf, puffed on his pipe after hearing the route and said, "That place isn't very safe..."

But he didn't complain further. Taking the deposit, he drove the carriage out of the rental yard.

The two carriages bumped along the path for nearly four days.

The scenery on both sides of the road gradually transitioned from farmland and orchards to shrub-covered hills, and then from hills to increasingly dense coniferous forests.

On the evening of the fourth day, the driver reined in his horses by the roadside, pointed his whip at the dark forest edge ahead, and said his horses refused to go any further.

The last time he sent a hunter into this forest, that hunter still hadn't come out.

Richard paid the fare in full. The driver turned the horses around, the wheels drawing a half-circle on the muddy road, and quickly disappeared back in the direction they had come.

"Let's go, time to start our quest."

Richard slung his backpack over his shoulder, shouldered his halberd on the other side, and took the lead onto the path leading deep into the Black Forest.

The Black Forest was exactly the same as when they had passed through last time. The pine trees blotted out the sun, and the pine needles on the ground had accumulated for who knows how many years, feeling too soft to be soil when stepped on.

The air was thick with the scent of pine resin, and the canopy overhead filtered out most of the sunlight, leaving only a few scattered, pale green beams of light piercing diagonally into the woods, illuminating the moss and ferns.

Birdsong gradually grew sparse after they stepped deep into the forest, until finally, only the occasional cry of a crow could be heard, its direction impossible to discern.

On the first day, they encountered a small band of goblin bandits. A dozen green-skinned little runts jumped out of the bushes, brandishing rusty daggers and wooden clubs tied with stones, gibbering things like "robbery!"

Jinbao didn't even bother to throw a flashbang. The black cat picked off the two running in front with her hand crossbow, Richard swiped three away with his halberd, and the rest threw down their weapons and bolted, running much faster than when they had arrived.

Afterward, they encountered a few giant spiders and a python coiled around a tree trunk, none of which posed any real threat.

A giant spider had its cephalothorax carapace split open by Cecilia's sword, while the python was touched by Selina's Shocking Grasp and stiffened like a frozen rope, allowing Richard to casually chop off its head with an axe.

They gained a total of twenty experience points—better than nothing. He immediately put the experience points into his Mage class.

By noon on the second day, they approached the zone marked on the map as the "Illusion Anomaly Zone."

On the map provided by the elven scholar, a thick red line was drawn around this zone, with a line of small text annotated in Elvish next to it:

"Approximately one kilometer from the watchtower. Illusions will begin to interfere with vision. Do not believe your eyes."

And now, they were already standing on that red line.

The surrounding scenery began to grow subtly contradictory, with misplaced environments everywhere.

On the left was an old tree stump that had been struck by lightning. When Richard passed by, his peripheral vision caught it right there.

But when he took three steps and looked back, the stump was gone, replaced by a patch of low brambles.

The path behind them turned into a dense thicket of thorns at the edge of their vision. The black cat walked over and touched it; her hand passed right through the thorns—it was an illusion.

An extremely faint humming sound filled the air, its frequency so high it was almost inaudible, but it made their eardrums throb slightly, as if the air pressure had suddenly dropped.

"The Displacer Beasts' illusion ability distorts the surrounding light."

Morpheus pulled a small notebook from his sleeve, flipped to a page filled with scribbled sketches and notes, and kept his voice very low.

"The entire area near their nest will be affected. The closer we get to the nest, the denser the illusions. Relying solely on vision is unreliable; we need to switch to a different method of navigation."

The black cat squatted at the very front, not using her eyes to find the way.

Pressing her fingers to the ground, she felt the growth direction of the moss—moss always grew on the shady side.

Then she stood up, closed her eyes, tilted her head to listen to the wind for a moment, and sniffed the air with her nose.

"This way," she pointed in a direction with her eyes closed.

Selina, the priest apprentice, also closed her eyes, clasped the Eye of the Storm holy symbol at her waist with both hands, and muttered a few incantations.

A very faint silver-blue static electricity erupted from her wrist, spreading down her arm to her fingers, and then rippled outward with her as the center, as if something in the air had been pushed by her divine spell.

Storm Sense activated.

When she opened her eyes, a thin halo of static electricity had appeared in her silver pupils.

"Within thirty meters directly ahead, there are two living creature outlines moving, but they don't appear at the same time. Every time I sense them, their positions are different from before."

"They should be two adult Displacer Beasts. Prepare for battle!"