As Eren was leaving Lord Pitrosg’s side, he found Marry bent over in the corridor leading to the library. The young girl was focused on a microscopic shimmer on the carpet where the Lord had just passed in a hurry.

  "What did you find, Marry?" Eren whispered.

  Marry pointed to a nearly transparent, blue-veined mushroom spore suspended in her tweezers. "This is a Lumen-Mushroom spore, sir. It only grows in the deepest underground shelters of the White Forest, where the mana is most intense. It dies within minutes once it reaches daylight. It must have fallen from the Lord’s shoe."

  Eren looked at the mushroom’s dying, pale glow. "So the Lord has just come from those depths where his son died."

  "There's more," Marry said excitedly. "For this mushroom to grow this much, the mana must 'stand still.' You won't find this mushroom on a flowing river. Something under the White Forest has lost its natural flow."

  Eren nodded. "Good work, Marry. Now we have a real trail."

  After leaving the manor, Eren entered the inn's tavern alone in the late hours of the evening. The interior was filled with thick tobacco smoke and the smell of stale beer. He immediately recognized the red-haired woman sitting alone in the corner. Macan

  Eren sat directly next to her. "I have a job for you, Macan."

  Macan chuckled without lifting her head. "You know I’m expensive, old man. You can't get me into that forest on a standard police salary."

  "I know," Eren said, lowering his voice as if it were coming from a secluded corner of a cellar. "But this job is different. We’re entering the White Forest. We’ll have an official evidence collection bag with us. A sealed bag with a half-kilogram capacity that the guards will never search..."

  Macan’s gaze sharpened instantly; her hunter instincts had awakened. She leaned forward. "So you’re going to turn a blind eye... so I can smuggle mushrooms, is that it?"

  Eren shrugged, perfectly relaxed. "You know me. Half of what you sell is mine. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to find a blue mushroom."

  Macan leaned back and burst into laughter; several heads in the tavern turned toward them. "Luck, my ass! I work for 70% for me, 30% for you."

  "60 to 40," Eren said, reaching for his glass without losing his composure.

  "65 to 35," Macan said, spat in her hand, and extended it to Eren. "Plus, tonight’s beers are on you."

  Eren gripped the extended hand firmly. "Deal. But don't drink too much; we set out before dawn tomorrow."

  The next morning, Eden, Aslan, and Marry were waiting in front of that transparent barrier of the White Forest. When Eren approached with Macan, who wore tattered clothes and had three axes slung crosswise on her back, Aslan frowned.

  "Sir, who is this lady? For the secrecy of the operation..."

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  "This is Macan," Eren said, nodding toward the hunter. "She knows the White Forest like the back of her hand. She will guide us as our 'evidence collection expert' in this operation."

  Macan looked at Aslan’s polished armor and Marry’s ironed robe and smirked. "Wow, are we going on a nursery school field trip, Eren? This knight friend is a bit too shiny; he'll blind the stags in the forest. And the little mage girl... I hope nothing happens to her while she’s talking to the trees."

  Marry glared at Macan. "I am one of the academy’s top graduates..."

  "The academy doesn't count here, kid," Macan said, checking the sharpness of one of her axes. "Here, only the earth, the mana, and the traces left by the killer speak. Now line up behind me and stop only when I say 'stop'." Marry was quite surprised by the strange way the woman spoke to her, especially considering they appeared to be the same age.

  Eren looked at his team: an experienced policeman, a knight, an academy mage, and a hunter with a background in thievery. "Forming up," he said, the authority in his voice suddenly making the air heavy. "Mage in the center, knight and hunter in front. We are entering the heart of the White Forest."

  As they moved toward the depths of the forest, the shadows of the snow-white trees blurred together, turning into a labyrinth. Macan stopped suddenly, tilting her nose up to sniff the wind.

  "The scent intensifies here," Macan said, pointing to the moss-covered rocks ahead. "But there’s something strange. The forest has gone completely silent here. Not a bird song, not even the rustle of a single leaf..."

  Between the rocks, a pitch-black cave mouth appeared, creating a sharp contrast with the whiteness of the trees. At the entrance, the Lumen Mushrooms Marry had mentioned clung to the rocks like leeches, emitting a weak and sickly blue light.

  "There it is," Marry said, looking at the flickering screen of her analytical device. "The point where the underground river exerts the most pressure is right under this cave."

  Eren ignited the lantern at his waist, cutting a corridor of light into the heart of the darkness. "Aslan, go ahead. Marry, stay in the center. Macan, watch our backs."

  When they stepped into the cave, the first thing they felt was that the air inside was at an uncomfortably high temperature, contrary to the coolness outside. The walls, unlike the white trees outside, were full of quartz veins; these veins stretched into the depths of the cave like silvery paths resembling neural networks.

  They reached a wide gallery after advancing about fifty meters. In the very center of the gallery stood the corpse of a man with goat horns, nailed to a gargantuan log as if it were a piece of art.

  "It's him," Eden murmured, his voice trembling. "He was one of the Lord’s private guards. He was known for his swordsmanship."

  As Aslan took a cautious step toward the corpse, Eren focused on the structure of the sand on the ground. The sand was in a perfect level, as if someone had specifically spread it there.

  "Stop!" Eren said, his voice echoing off the walls of the gallery. "The sand on the ground... it's too even. It's not natural."

  When Marry held her lantern to the floor, she noticed the glowing capillary veins hidden under the sand. "Sir, this is a seal... But it’s still dormant. As if it’s waiting for something to enter the cave."

  At that moment, a sharp beep rose from Marry’s pocket. The communication device had begun to malfunction uncontrollably. "I can't send messages; the device is giving an error! The mana density inside the cave is disrupting the crystal frequencies!"

  In that instant, the faint daylight coming from the cave entrance was cut off as if by a knife. A massive crystal curtain descended from the cave ceiling, sealing the exit. The quartz veins on the walls began to turn from a bright purple to a poisonous, neon green.

  "This isn't a trap," Macan said, gripping her axe tightly, her eyes shining in the darkness. "This cave... it just turned into something living."

  The ground began to shake like the heartbeat of a giant. The sands on the floor flowed toward the magic diagram they had just noticed, filling a void that opened like a massive mouth. They were no longer in a cave, nor in the White Forest... The walls had begun to throb, to breathe.

  "Welcome," said Aslan, drawing his sword and taking a defensive stance. His voice was coming from everywhere in the cave at once. "I think we just descended into the stomach of a dungeon."