The Martial Unity

After all, it would mean that the Divine Doctor could cook up a fear-hallucinogen from just about any organic matter.

"That's a bit of a stretch, but… not impossible." Rui tutted uncertainly. "But regardless, he said it was not enough."

Rui narrowed his eyes. "It stands to reason that if it's not enough, he'd want to get more."

"…Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

"In which case, I think I know where he went next."

"And where would that be?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"The Forest of Fear," Rui replied with a hint of confidence.

There were three avenues that the Divine Doctor might have pursued. The Caves of Penance, the Forest of Fear, and the Sea of Solitude.

Rui previously had absolutely no inkling where the Divine Doctor might have gone based on the data of the Adventurer's Guild, but now he had a good idea.

"I think there's a very solid chance that he went to the Forest of Fear in order to make stronger fear-hallucinogens," Rui remarked. "After all, I already know that he is able to harness vegetation in pretty incredible feats of bio-engineering."

The Forest of Fear was a region with natural fear-hallucinogens. Its vegetation released substances that, when inhaled, triggered deep fear in a person. This was an evolutionary ability that highly predicted survival and reproduction, causing the species to thrive wildly.

The fauna of the region, in turn, had evolved such that they had almost no sense of natural fear. Their fear had returned to a normal level after being elevated by the flora of the region.

Thus, an extremely unique ecosystem was born in the Beast Domain that the Adventurer's Guild had taken to calling the Forest of Fear.

"If you're right," Kane said, turning to Rui. "Do you think he succeeded?"

"Yes, he definitely did." Rui nodded. "There's no doubt about that."

The three regions that were possible candidates for where the Divine Doctor had gone after the Valley of Prisms were considered candidates because each of them had had a major disruption in their ecological parameters not too long after the mass exodus of the Valley of Prisms.

Rui used to consider the Beggar Sage's advice of 'following the unique chaos' to find the Divine Doctor extremely dubious.

However, after going through the memories of the catoblepas, Rui had to agree that the Beggar Sage was truly accurate in the advice he gave on how Rui ought to track the Divine Doctor.

The man had single-handedly caused millions of animals to run away from the Valley of Prisms for a time period by mentally torturing them with horrifically induced fear and enslaving them.

It was chaotic and certainly unique.

However, what Rui was focused on was the disruption that had occurred in the Forest of Fear.

"The Adventurers' Guild records that for a certain time period, the vegetation of the Forest of Fear stopped releasing its fear-inducing gases into the air," Rui continued. "This got rid of any and all fear in the fauna of the region, causing them to go berserk and do things that no other creature with any sense of self-preservation would do."

"What does that have to do with the Divine Doctor?"

"I think he might have caused that ecological disruption," Rui remarked. "It makes sense. He probably went super overboard."

"And did what?" Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "Drain the entire forest of its fear juice to upgrade his fear-

hallucinogens?"

"I think so," Rui replied. "With such a powerful base, it probably allowed him to create extremely powerful fear-

hallucinogens that would probably satisfy even him. With that, he would be armed with the necessary tools to go even further into the Beast Domain without dying to powerful Squire-level and Senior-level creatures that would otherwise kill him with a blink of their eyes."

Rui was starting to understand why the man had come to the Valley of Prisms and gone through this specific route. He probably intended to extract resources along the way that would help him in the deeper and more dangerous parts of the Beast Domain.

"Well, I hope you're right."

Rui did too.

Whether he was right or wrong would decide whether it was worth spending eighteen months on Project Telepath instead of searching for more clues in other avenues. However, Rui did think that searching in any other direction would not have yielded anything even remotely close to the litany of information that he had from the memories of the catoblepas.

There was only one issue with this when it came to the Forest of Fear.

The fauna of the Forest of Fear had largely died off due to the lack of fear causing them to not fear death, which naturally led to their deaths.

The Beast Domain was too dangerous for any creature without a sense of self-preservation to survive.

"Unless they're the Divine Doctor, I suppose," Rui muttered.

As someone who was functionally immortal, the Divine Doctor probably had very little sense of self-preservation after all these years.

Which didn't make too much sense to Rui, considering that the Beggar Sage had told Rui that he was not going to be functionally immortal and that he could still die. Yet his father and Sage Sayfeel had told him that the Divine Doctor had died many times and had been spotted alive sometime later in a different place as though he respawned to life at a pre-

designated save point like a video game character.

That suggested that the Divine Doctor's immortality was different from what the Beggar Sage was offering Rui.

This was even more weird because the Beggar Sage's words made it clear that they were the same.

Rui was unable to understand the contradiction. But, alas, he didn't have the answer. Clearly, the immortality that the Divine Doctor had was one of the reasons he was confident of walking into the most perilous part of the Panama Continent all by himself.

Rui shook his head. "Let's go, we're done with this place.

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