It was my last coffee before entering the forest, our attack force was currently camping on its border and having a final full rest, since it would be impossible to sleep soundly in that place. Maybe it was a curse, maybe some sort of different air, but this forest certainly didn’t like humans entering it. Even though I’ve never experienced it, almost everyone returning would complain about the unending nightmares they had when they slept here.

For me personally the aura of this place felt kind of comforting, but I was an odd one in the human society. Maybe I’m just too strong to get affected with whatever thing is floating in this forest. But again, I visited this place when I was young and inexperienced, but the feeling I got back then was exactly the same as now, so the individual strength shouldn’t be connected with getting creeps.

The most obvious answer would be me not being fully human, which I accepted quite a long time ago since I exceeded normal life expectancy of one by leaps and bounds, but it was still disheartening to get reminded of this fact. Maybe one day, I will get to know what I am, but for now, I’ll just cling to whatever humanity is inside of me.

I have respect from my students, and they don’t see me as an outcast, but rather like some sort of parenting figure judging by their behavior, so that’s enough for me to feel happy. I liked to think about them when I had a moment, to remind myself that I had a reason to exist, to guide all these young souls into better future.

Speaking of young souls, one just flew by me… literally. And that was quite a big rock his head got stuck in.

“PERVERT!!”

Ah yes, the youth, so full of energy. The river was quite a distance from there, but I still heard Eva’s voice clearly, and more importantly, the force which Lex was thrown with hadn’t diminished slightly even though he must have flew more than a few hundred meters. He was a sturdy boy, so I wasn’t really worried about him being alright, but trying to peek on bathing girls will surely become his demise one day.

Just as I surmised, he just took his head out of the stone and after brushing off a slight nosebleed, he got up with a smile on his face.

“I think I saw it.”

I didn’t need to ask what he meant, it was pretty obvious what he wanted to see when he was spying on women’s bath, but I still should take some measures to stop him from doing that. It was my duty as a teacher to straighten up my students.

“You will die one day if you keep doing that.”

It was important to inform him of the consequences.

“Oh hey there director, as you see, I’m perfectly okay, but I think I just beat all my previous records of flight time after spying on girls.”

“No, you were about five meters short. But you still managed to have your face wedged deeply into a solid stone, so I would say it was the record for the force you got thrown with.”

“Yeah, I think Eva started working out more lately, she was really excited for this dungeon expedition”

“I saw you training too just like her and others, I guess it’s a first expedition of this size for you guys huh? But don’t get too excited, I doubt you will get to explore the new dungeon.”

“And why is that?”

“If the queen attacked us with her full strength, she wouldn’t even need her army to wipe us all out without even needing to move, and there are still her children we will have to defend against. If it wasn’t for the information that the queen was weakened from giving birth to a new albino, we wouldn’t be here.”

“But she’s weakened now right? That means we can kill her finally!”

“Only if her child didn’t evolve. The strength of the royal breed is out of this world, so while you guys take on the weakened queen, I will have to make sure her child won’t interfere.”

“Wasn’t that child an incredibly weak one? I heard it was the lowest of lesser species.”

“Don’t you remember where the spiders live? Right underneath the only unexplored dungeon known to humanity, and what do you think that could mean?|

“But it was proven by research that monsters from outside the dungeon can’t enter it, and even if they are a part of one they can’t move between different zones.”

“We don’t know all that much about royal ones, and these restrictions were put up by gods and that means the god defying being like the queen should be able to just ignore this restriction.”

“Don’t say scary stuff like that director.”

“This is the most dire scenario I’m able to think of, I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to happen, but I still have this ominous feeling about this whole expedition that just won’t go away.”

Right, that feeling that haunted me ever since I knew we will be going here. The feeling of unavoidable death and slaughter, even if with the force we were with should be able to take over a small country-city, I still had this premonition of us failing.

I looked into the sky at the gathering clouds, they all seemed to flow into one spot, somewhere around the giant tree in the middle of the forest. Something was surely happening there, and it didn’t seem like a matter of mortals.

I wiped off the cold sweat from my forehead, and tried to focus on my coffee.

It was going to be a long night.