I Was Mistaken for the Reincarnated Evil Overlord

The Reaper Forest was starting to feel less like a place of terror and more like a never-ending grindfest in a bad dream.

Four Days Since Leaving the Center…

The journey away from the central anomaly had been… well, repetitive. Wake up. Pack up camp. Get attacked by a monster. Kill monster. Move forward. Repeat.

Every. Single. Day.

The scenery didn't help. Reaper Forest wasn't exactly known for variety. Gnarled trees, twisted vines, fog that never burned off even in full daylight, and an omnipresent feeling that something, everything wanted to kill you. Even the birds sounded judgmental.

Darin had stopped naming the monsters they fought. There were just too many. Some were small, scuttling things with barbed legs and acidic spit. Others were towering brutes with bone plating and zero brain cells.

The company made a game of it.

Mercs would bet on what direction the next attack would come from. Retired soldiers told stories around the fire about which limb they lost in which forest. One guy even claimed a beetle tried to marry him, though no one quite knew if he was joking or delirious from poison exposure.

Through it all, Grumble continued dragging back corpses way too big for his body. Steve, had slowly but surely begun to change. He walked with more confidence now. His shivering had lessened, and when he wasn't licking Darin's face at inconvenient moments, he was keeping pace at the front, sniffing the air with something close to determination.

"I think he's finally starting to settle in," Darin muttered one evening, watching Steve curl up near the fire with his tail wrapped around his body.

"He's adapting," said the Sorceress, sitting nearby with her legs crossed. "Dragons are attuned to the mood of the land. He's probably sensing we're nearly free of this cursed place."

Darin raised a brow. "You could've told me that instead of being all mysterious about it the last three weeks."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up."

"Too late. They're already up. So don't let them down."

On the sixth day of their march away from the anomaly, things started to feel different. The trees were still twisted, but the oppressive fog had thinned. The air smelled less like rot and more like pine. Light actually reached the ground now, and Darin could see color again. Grass looked green instead of grey. Birds that didn't want to eat their eyeballs chirped in the distance.

The mood in the company lifted.

There were jokes again. Laughter. Someone even tried to play a harmonica at lunch. It was horrible, but no one cared—they were almost out.

"Scout reports say just one more day and we'll break the edge of the forest," said Vincent, riding up next to Darin with a lazy grin. "You know what that means?"

"That you'll finally stop sweating on me in the tent?"

"Not a chance. It means we're going to survive this gods-forsaken tree prison."

Darin smirked. "You say that now. We still have one more night."

Vincent looked up at the canopy. "I'll take my chances."

They made camp in a rare clearing, ringed with jagged stones and strange, ancient-looking trees that somehow bent away from the firelight instead of toward it.

No monsters had attacked them all day.

Which was either a very good sign…

…or a very, very bad one.

Darin sat near the fire, scribbling on a map while the rest of the company settled into their routines. The cultists prayed in a tight circle as usual. The mercs and soldiers lounged around cleaning gear and bragging about kills.

Steve curled up nearby, his eyes half-lidded and calm. Grumble, true to form, was gnawing on the leg of something he dragged into camp. No one asked where it came from.

Darin leaned back and sighed.

Later That Night….

The fire dimmed. Guards rotated to their shifts. The Sorceress moved silently through the outer ring of camp, placing wards with murmured incantations and flicks of her hand. Faint glows pulsed along the ground where her magic settled, tracing protective lines in the soil like silver veins.

Darin lay in his tent, arms folded behind his head, staring at the canvas ceiling above.

One more day.

Just one more.

They'd fought their way through the worst part of the Reaper Forest. They'd survived abominations, anomalies, shifting terrain, cult weirdness, aggressive mushrooms, weather that shouldn't exist, and whatever the hell that reality-breaking thing had been back in the center.

The company had held strong.

Even Steve, who had gone from shivering like a leaf to patrolling like a junior guard dog.

He let out a slow breath, listening to the gentle hum of the Sorceress's wards and the occasional snores and muttered dreams from the rest of the camp.

Tomorrow, they'd see sunlight.

Tomorrow, they'd step out from under this cursed canopy.

"…"

But then—

The ground rumbled.

A low, distant tremor at first, barely noticeable. Like a shift in tectonic plates or the forest groaning in its sleep.

Darin's brow furrowed.

Then came the sound.

Grkkk-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

Like grinding. Like scraping. Like a thousand legs dragging against the earth.

He sat up, heart already climbing into his throat.

Outside, shouts rang out, muffled at first, then louder.

"Something's moving!"

"The wards are flaring—movement underground!"

Grkkk-ch-ch-ch-ch. THOOM.

The ground quaked.

Darin scrambled to his feet and burst out of his tent. The night was alive with motion now—soldiers grabbing weapons, cultists shrieking prayers, mercenaries shouting orders.

The firelight flickered wildly as the earth beneath their feet trembled again.

Then came the first one.

It burst from the ground with a shriek of splintering dirt and shattered stone, a giant ant the size of a warhorse, its chitin glistening black and red, mandibles clicking violently.

More followed.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Emerging from holes, from fissures, from underneath the very trees, a swarm of them, encircling the camp.

The ground itself began to crack under the pressure of so many legs, their movement creating a terrible, rhythmic thundering like war drums shaking the bones of the forest.

Darin barely had time to shout—

"TO ARMS!"

—before chaos erupted around them.

And overhead, the forest suddenly fell silent.

Too silent.

Even the wind had stopped.

Then came the high, chittering scream of something much, much bigger.

Darin's eyes widened.

"Oh… no."