Chapter 165: Silver Fern Layer

" The Deep Marsh layer is the second layer of these forests, it is inhabited by Heron, Ape and Tiger type monsters of this region.

The Marshes are too deep and treacherous for travel that unless you are a Super mage you cannot survive after stepping off the mount or the tree roots.

See those tree roots intertwining together, it's the best foothold you can get in this forest" said Captain Rai pointing to the mangrove trees of the Region.

The trees themselves grew to insane heights in these marshlands and were home to various Monster beasts and predators. The deeper the group went the taller the trees seemed to be, however if one were to check the arial view they would find that the level of canopy remained the same in all the layers, meaning the swamps got deeper and deeper with each layer.

Just the first Silver Fern Layer could exert a force a few tons on the feet of mages if they stepped into it. Dragging them to a fatal chokehold they couldn't free themselves from.

The strength exerted by the marsh grew stronger with each passing metres. This is were the Green Demons Alligators showed their value, first of all they were built like iron and steel ships.

These ships were denser than the water the traversed in but were able to stay afloat using air to lower the overall density of the structure.

These Alligators had a pocket of air in their underbelly that allowed them to float like ships.

" This is the Silver Fern Layer, see those ferns growing between the tree roots, they are used to make the antidote we gave, hence the name of this region, one cannot find these ferns further up the region and these are kind of endangered in this forest." Captain Rai continued with his introduction to this place.

What Captain Rai excluded from his conversation was that the military for sure had a plantation of these Silver Ferns somewhere else for the sake of the antidote but this was probably a classified subject.

" Wait if it's just the Marsh that's poisonous why do we have to take the antidote, we are riding these Alligators and probably won't step into the Marsh. Is it some sort of prophylactic treatment."

" It is a great question but the answer is yes and no" Captain Rai couldn't finish his sentence as a loud boom went off in front of the military convoy travelling in a straight line.

Captain Rai looked ahead and waited for any signal of distress from the group in front of him and urged his group forward as he saw none, before speaking up again.

" It's because of the Marsh gas expulsions, occasionally there are random expulsion of marsh gases from beneath, these expulsions carry the poisonous substance for which we have given you an antidote.

By the poisoning is constant while the body builds up a resistance to both the poison and the antidote. Which is why we have to leave after fourteen days, as for those who are wondering why, the poison here can affect one's spiritual world after prolonged exposure. Your cultivation can drop if you can't build a tolerance for the poison fast enough.

So far we haven't found any severe backlashes of these drop in cultivation as you can recover it with effort and resources like normal, but it is a waste of time for most young mages"

So this is also a good place to train a mage's resistance to the poison element naturally, any competent military would have such a project ongoing.

Cao Guang mused to himself as Captain Rai spoke about some more things that they should watch out for, while fighting his urge to steam some marsh water and soil.

If cultivation can drop without any side effects this place is like the option of resetting stat points in a game, you can start again if you go wrong, for people who have deviated or unstable cultivations as long as they are sent here they can recover in a roundabout way.

Their problem is a deviation and this place is like using the reverse gear on a car, you might have go back quite a distance and will loose a lot of time to get back to the place you were before, but atleast you will on the correct path. Yeah but for anyone else this place is torture.

And there is probably no point stealing this marsh water, the cause of the phenomenon is deeper and probably why they are sharing so much information.