Chapter 259: The empty forest

One month had passed since Eva and Joshua first met, and things had changed greatly, even in such a short period of time.

Joshua believed it was all thanks to Eva’s incredible leadership, but he did feel a little more confident in himself as well. If such an incredible woman believed he could be useful, then maybe he didn’t need to hate himself so much.

"So, small guy, what do you have to tell me?" Eva murmured, looking at the small, ant-like creatures that had begun crawling all over his body.

Unfortunately, communicating with insects was impossible. They simply didn’t have the mental capacity to communicate in a complex way. If Joshua could actually speak with those little creatures, they would be ideal spies.

Of course, if he had such an obviously useful skill from the start, he wouldn’t have been thrown into the mines like that.

That said, it was still possible to obtain a lot of information using his abilities. Most normal people probably wouldn’t see any use for them, but Joshua understood insects.

For example, the small creatures now crawling over his body liked to feed on corpses, especially the corpses of creatures with large amounts of mana. Having so many of these creatures gathering near the mine clearly indicated that the plan had begun.

"Tell me, little creatures, where should I go?" Joshua said, observing the insects crawling over his hands.

Carefully, he entered the Empty Forest, a gigantic area on the eighth floor that had never been directly claimed as territory by Matra’s Bank Guild.

There were several reasons for this. First, the forest was practically empty, which was where it got its name. There were no valuable monsters there, so spending money to expand the guild’s territory into the area simply wasn’t worthwhile.

But the forest had an even more sinister function, one that Joshua and Eva would soon uncover completely.

Many former members of the Matra clan fled there to escape working in the mines. Joshua himself had heard about them.

However, instead of finding a paradise, these fugitives encountered villages that lived in isolation and claimed to resist the rule of the tyrannical Matra clan.

However, after Joshua secretly placed females of a flea species that didn’t exist on the eighth floor on the leaders of these resistance groups, he discovered something a short while later. The same species could be found around the guard dogs that the mine overseers liked to walk with.

That confirmed one of Eva’s theories: the resistance was nothing more than a fabrication, a scheme created by the clan to make even the most dissatisfied workers eventually return to work and generate profits.

They would flee, establish villages under the leadership of these supposed resistance leaders, and eventually be slaughtered, with all the money and resources they had accumulated in the forest being looted.

After all, although the forest was considered useless, there were still monsters living there, meaning the deserters could accumulate some money by hunting them. There were also some mineral deposits that could be found within the forest.

Not to mention that, for Matra’s soldiers, killing a bunch of low-level System users was actually a good source of XP.

That said, an entire forest that wasn’t under the guild’s direct control would be the perfect place for Eva and her group to create hundreds of new guilds and claim the territory for themselves.

The only problem was that the forest was being heavily guarded. First, to prevent too many miners from escaping there, and second, to prevent anyone from entering the area and creating a guild.

Of course, Eva had already seen the supposed resistance groups there, but they were under the clan’s control. And even if they weren’t, it would have been extremely difficult for anyone there to obtain the money required to establish a guild.

The queen and her group could only do it because they had received a generous investment from Arlo. After all, opening a guild was expensive.

Anyway, after a short while, a group of around forty men approached Joshua, all of them guided by a single butterfly under his control.

"The guards have been killed by our queen," Joshua quickly explained. "And the man-eating ants are already around them. That means I’ll know when someone finds the corpses because the ants will scatter. We don’t have much time, so follow me."

He said this as he marched into the forest.

He still felt nervous about the fact that he had somehow become the leader of such a large group in such a short amount of time. Even if they had all been recruited by Eva, and not him, they were under his leadership, and the men followed him, hoping to find true freedom from the Matra clan.

Joshua led the group using the insects under his control and his knowledge of the forest to search for a good place inside the Empty Forest, somewhere they could at least hope to find enough food to survive.

But soon, he noticed the antennae of one of the ants in his hand twitching. The corpses of the guards had probably been found.

"We must run," he said.

The men looked at one another hesitantly, but they quickly began moving. Hopefully, the guild’s soldiers wouldn’t find them anytime soon.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get far. Three soldiers soon emerged from between the trees, chasing after the fleeing group.

"Keep running!" Joshua shouted.

The soldiers quickly caught up to the stragglers. An old man who couldn’t run fast enough fell behind, and before anyone could help him, one of the soldiers swung his weapon.

His head was severed from his body.

Joshua froze for a moment, then he gritted his teeth. He couldn’t just watch; he had to do something.

He raised his hand, and dozens of insects immediately began swarming toward the soldiers.

"I will create the guild, everyone keep running," he ordered, as the insects covered the soldiers’ faces and bodies, slowing them down for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, Joshua opened his System, spent his System Points, and bought his freedom from the Matra clan.

At the same time, the soldiers got free from his insects and lunged toward him.

Joshua barely had time to react as one of the men swung his sword, jamming it to his neck. But he ignored it and quickly spent the money on creating a guild.

Then, just as the blade was touching his neck and opening a small cut, the man saw a notification before his eyes.

{The guild [Joshua’s Guild] has been successfully created.}

At the same moment, another notification appeared before the soldier.

{You have entered an opposing guild’s territory. You are not allowed to cause any harm to a member of this guild unless the Guild Bank of Matra officially declares war on [Joshua’s Guild].}

Another notification immediately appeared beneath it.

{Due to the ongoing Newcomer Examination, guild wars are temporarily disabled.}