VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 76: Bookworm

The fact that her Grimoire was itself magic and seemed to have some kind of sentience did not surprise Belladonna in the slightest. It was a little unexpected, for sure, but it was a magic book given to her by a mystical wizard.

If it was just a regular book, then that would have been the most surprising thing of all.

Upon discovering the true magic nature of it, she couldn’t help but perform a few tests. She let it go, only for it to float in the air where she had been holding it, and she could make it disappear or reappear with a dramatic flair of her hand.

Granted it was only disappearing back into her Bottomless Bag, but really the ability to conjured a floating book with a snap of her fingers was so quintessential to the image of a true mystical mage that it was too good to pass up. Even if her fighting style was absolutely nothing like a true mage in the slightest, but that was beside the point.

Armed with her new crystalline pen, Belladonna fed a tiny trickle of mana into it to generate the ink as she detailed notes on the scroll, slowly but surely breaking down the components of the spell.

For instance she made quite a few details just based around the rune that represented ’Lightning’ and jotted down a few speculations on how she could use it in her own combat, such as giving herself taser punches.

Her queries into components also led her to take notes on possible replacements, which led to an entire section of her book dedicated to the plant-life they passed by. She tried tapping her temple, but the carving that had been placed there by the Wizard had disappeared when she had died.

So to activate her Mana Vision, Belladonna had to do it the old fashioned way by concentrating and stirring her mana in her eyes the way she remembered for her mana vision.

It was after a few minutes of squinting like she had dust in her eye, that her vision finally switched and she could analyse the plant life. Within her eyes, the different plants glowed with soft lights that indicated the different types of mana and elemental energies that flowed within them.

The brightness of the lights showed their quantity, while some showed a blend of colours representing a mixture of elements.

She still didn’t know what most of the colours meant, since she didn’t actually have a name for some of the colours she was even seeing, but that didn’t stop her plucking samples to take with her, all whilst imagining herself as the wicked witch brewing potions with her mysterious black cat.

A mental image that Beans not only saw in his own head, but caused him let out rumbling purrs of agreement.

"Get down!" Saige whispered as their hand landed on her shoulder, snapping her out of her fantasies as she was dragged down to the ground.

Saige placed a finger of his lips, silently shushing Belladonna before they both crawled across the forest floor until they joined Lilith at the crest of a small hill that was shielded by foliage.

Poking her head through the bushes, and doing her best not to rustle them in the process, Belladonna examined the sight before her with a mixture of shock, disgust and morbid curiosity.

A herd of deer was peacefully grazing in a clearing beside a tranquil lake that was fed by a small waterfall that created slight sparkles in the air where the water crashed down. But the sight before them was anything but beautiful.

Long fangs, like you would see on a tiger, tore through flesh without issue, pulling chunks from half rotten, fly infested carcasses. They didn’t even try stripping it from the bone, they just ate it whole. Crunching on the bones and grinding them to dust before going in for seconds.

With every bite, the sickening crunching and snapping of bones filled the air as they ruthlessly devoured their prey.

As if this behaviour alone wasn’t strange enough, there was something seriously wrong with the Deer in terms of appearance. They were... twisted and demented. Their bones jutted out in the wrong directions for some, others had spiked spines that burst through their skin along their back.

A few others had two heads, or multiple legs, as if they were two deer that had fused together.

The most disturbing of all was what could only be assumed to be the leader. It was a buck with large, ten pronged antlers that glistened like they were made of pure silver. Rotten flesh and dismembered body parts hung from its antlers, the previous victims it had skewered and then twisted itself free from.

Its legs were twice as long as they should be, and its torso was nearly three times as long as it curled around like a python. Finally, from its shoulder blades sprouted a pair of disgusting arms formed of its own bone and covered in strips of its torn flesh, as if they had burst out in a hurry instead of developing naturally.

These hands were tipped with talons that were twisting bodies apart, snapping them like crab at the buffet, before shoving them into the slobbering, blood soaked maw of the demented deer.

The creatures these deer were devouring with endless gluttony were similar to a blend between Crocodiles and Crabs, which resulted in a deadly armour plated predator perfect for ambushing.

It was one of the natural predators of these Silver-antlered Deer. Although now it seemed that it was with an emphasis on the word ’was’ as these twisted abominations were the new predators.

The sight before them was enough to churn Belladonna’s iron stomach, but beside her, Saige was trembling like a leaf. However it wasn’t with fear. Instead the adorable little fox-kin was trembling with barely contained rage at the wretched and disgusting affront to nature, and it seemed that his God agreed with his righteous anger.

Saige’s eyes glowed with a soft white light before he stopped clenching his fists, letting a few trails of blood trickle from his palm.

"The Divine Decree has changed... This is no longer an investigation. It is an extermination."