Capítulo 17: These Creatures Exist?!
One week passed ever since Helena and her squad entered the Forest of Echoes.
Before they ventured deep into the forest, the only mutated beast species that they encountered were mutated wolves and one mutated bear.
After a week inside the forest though, they realized that their way of thinking was too naive.
They encountered lots of different predatory species such as mutated tigers, mutated hyenas, mutated pythons, and other such dangerous beasts.
There was even one time where they encountered a mutated lion pride with at least 20 mutated lionesses and 1 mutated alpha lion.
Fortunately, they were not detected by the mutated felines.
After surviving the close encounter, the squad marked the territory of that lion pride as an extremely dangerous area in their map.
The squad can't deny that they've been extremely lucky during their expedition since there were multiple times that they narrowly escaped extremely dangerous situations.
Nevertheless, they still continued advancing deeper since all of them were still in good condition for combat.
They have to head back once their bandages and food rations run out though.
"Halt! We stop here for tonight. The trees here seem quite tall, sturdy and safe. Setup camp above the trees and rest."
Helena ordered the squad to camp for the night.
The squad climbed the trees and set up their sleeping bags on the thick branches of the trees.
They were quite used to camping in strange places by now.
One week of surviving in the wild while doing reconnaissance missions inside the forest made them grow as warriors.
Even Eden who was shaking one week ago is used to the sensation of danger now.
This night was uneventful and morning came.
The squad quickly ate their morning rations and proceeded to continue exploring the forest.
Although they have been exploring the forest for a week now, they haven't even explored a tenth of the total area of the forest.
There were still a lot of areas for them to explore.
They've been through zones with different soil color and seen many kinds of glowing plants.
They divided these zones and called them the green zone, blue zone, and red zone.
Although they had seen the red zone, they haven't actually gone in yet as it is too dangerous.
There seems to be poisonous fumes in the air around the red zone and they need some kind of special armor or equipment before they can explore this area.
After a while of travelling, the expedition group were finally back to walking on normal colored soil.
Animals like foxes, raccoons, and coyotes could be seen scurrying around.
Seeing that they're back to normal grounds, the squad's vigilance visibly eased up a little.
The easygoing mood didn't last for long though as they heard strange snarls and growls that seemed to be a conversation.
"Hooorgh, Hoerrghh!"
"Hoooarrrghhh!"
The group quickly hid around shrubbery and slowly peeked at where the sounds were coming from.
"What the fuck are those?" Helena whispered to the squad.
Unexpectedly, Eden responded.
"Based on their green colored skin, those seem to be forest trolls." Eden whispered back.
"Trolls? What the hell? They were actually real?"
Helena could not believe what she was seeing.
She had heard of such foreign races only in story books when she was young.
This is very likely the first time that all of them saw the trolls.
"It's hard for me to believe as well. When I was young, I loved reading stories of soldier explorations regarding the forest of echoes."
"There was one article that claimed there were other species like trolls inside the forest but they were quickly debunked as lies."
"The soldier that said the trolls were real was even confined in a mental facility and was labeled as crazy."
Eden explained.
The squad soon snapped out of their disbelief and they raised their vigilance again.
The trolls had protruding fangs on both lower sides of their mouths, had big bulging muscles, and were at least 2.5 meters tall.
In addition, the trolls were holding battle axes made of wood and metal and were wearing light leather armor.
These trolls were capable of processing metals just like humans!
Although the quality is far from human blacksmith's works, they were certainly enough to kill someone.
Lastly, Eden explained that according to the claims of the man that saw trolls inside the forest, they were lucky to find a lone troll but their squad of 10 men were still defeated.
The troll had regenerative powers and was able to heal its injuries at least 5x faster than a human can.
After hearing Eden's explanation and a careful consideration, Helena called out a retreat.
They navigated around the area where they encountered the trolls and quickly marked it as another extremely dangerous area.
Three hours passed.
The expedition group seemed to have navigated successfully around the forest troll territory.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and continued on with their journey inside the forest for another week.
"Our findings this time should be good for now. Everyone, let's head back and report our findings to the village chief."
Helena ordered a retreat.
Their gains were quite huge this time as they found a cave with different kinds of glowing mushrooms.
In addition, they were able to mark dangerous beast lairs, collected different kinds of rare herbs inside the forest and lastly, they discovered the existence of trolls.
The squad started to head back towards the direction of the village.
They had to hurry due to how badly damaged their equipment was from the constant fighting.
Fortunately, they were confident on the way back because they already knew which route was the fastest and safest to take.
They were quite fast on the way back, only two days passed and they were already half-way back to the village.
"Two more days and we should be back to the village." Helena muttered.
The group started to reduce their vigilance as they got closer and closer to the village.
"kiiikiiikii.."
Suddenly, grating giggles can be heard in the surrounding shrubbery.
After a momentary confusion, the expedition group quickly got into formation and prepared for another battle.
REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES 
Meowder
Meowder Third chapter for the day :) - Chapter 17 is out!!
I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. <3
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