The trees were wrong. Allen saw it from two hundred yards out, where the forest trail stopped being mud and started being something gray and flaky. The petrification spread in a spiral pattern, like a hurricane viewed from above, if hurricanes were made of stone and malice.
"That's not natural," Lina whispered. She'd gone into full scout mode—hood up, footsteps silent, every shadow a potential threat.
"Nothing about this world is natural," Allen said. "But this is definitely less natural."
Ella walked between them, her staff glowing with a low blue light that seemed to shiver as they approached the boundary. The elf stopped at the edge of the spiral, where living grass met dead stone. She knelt, touching the gray earth with bare fingers.
"Abyssal Resonance," she said. The words sounded like a medical diagnosis. "The Seal here is bleeding."
They'd left at dawn for the scouting mission. Just the three of them—Allen, Lina, and Ella. The "A-team," as Allen had mentally labeled them. Core management doing field research. The Shadowwood Catacombs entrance lay three miles northeast of Thornwick, close enough to be dangerous, far enough to have been ignored during the bootstrapping phase.
Close enough that Allen should have checked it weeks ago. He'd been busy with spreadsheets. The oversight gnawed at him now, standing at the edge of a dead forest.
The spiral pattern continued inward. Allen counted the rings as they walked. Seven full turns before they reached the center, where the entrance gaped. Not a cave mouth. A wound. The stone looked torn rather than carved, edges jagged like teeth in a shark's mouth. Purple light pulsed from deep inside, synchronized to a rhythm that made Allen's molars ache.
"Standard recon protocol," Allen said. "Twenty-minute observation period. Document everything. No engagement unless necessary."
Lina already had her bow half-drawn, scanning the treeline. "I'm seeing movement. Three o'clock. Low to the ground."
Allen followed her gaze. The shadows between the petrified trunks shifted. Not wind. The air here was stagnant, thick with a smell like burnt ozone and rotting copper.
Three figures emerged. Goblins. F-Rank mobs, according to the threat assessment system—Level 2 at most, barely a threat to an armed party. Allen had killed dozens of their cousins in the Fallen Stone Mine.
These ones moved differently.
They didn't charge. They didn't scream. They spread out in a skirmish line, flanking maneuvers, maintaining line of sight with each other while cutting off the party's retreat vectors. Tactical coordination. From goblins.
"That's new," Ella said. Her staff came up, defensive posture.
The lead goblin raised a jagged knife. Not in a stab, but in a signal. The other two dropped to prone positions, using the petrified roots as cover. Suppressive fire positions. Ambush tactics.
"Fall back," Allen ordered. "Controlled withdrawal. Now."
They moved as a unit, Lina covering the rear with an arrow nocked, Ella walking backward maintaining her shield spell, Allen monitoring the system interface for threat updates. The goblins didn't pursue aggressively. They held position, maintaining the perimeter.
That was the scary part. F-Rank mobs were supposed to be feral. Stupid. Aggressive to the point of suicide. These were acting like trained infantry.
At fifty yards, Allen risked a glance at the system overlay. Threat Assessment: Goblin Scout [Level 2] [F-Rank] [Behavioral Anomaly Detected] [AI Upgrade: Tactical Coordination].
"AI upgrade," he read aloud. "The system literally called it an AI upgrade."
Ella lowered her shield once they cleared the spiral boundary. Her face had gone pale, losing the permanent academic detachment she usually wore. "Seal Corruption. It's not just leaking energy. It's... optimizing the local wildlife. Teaching them."
"Teaching goblins military tactics," Lina said. She was shaking slightly, adrenaline crash hitting. "That's not a dungeon. That's a training facility."
They made camp two miles south, well outside the corrupted zone. Allen pulled out the manual—the same one he'd been so proud of that morning—and started scribbling amendments in the margins. New threat category. New engagement protocols. New warning labels.
"The Shadowwood dive is postponed," he said. "Indefinitely."
"We can't just ignore it," Ella said. She was pacing, scholar's instincts warring with survival instincts. "The Abyssal Resonance will spread. In a month, those goblins will be patrolling the roads. In six months, they'll be at our walls."
"Then we prepare," Allen said. He looked at the dead forest behind them, the spiral of petrified trees like a fingerprint of something vast and malicious. "We gather intel. We upgrade gear. We train for coordinated enemies, not feral beasts."
He paused, watching a bird try to land on one of the stone trees and fly away in obvious distress.
"And we update the safety manual," he added. "Section Seven: Hostile Takeover Protocols."
Lina laughed, short and sharp. "You just can't stop managing, can you?"
"Someone has to," Allen said. "Even when the world is ending, someone needs to file the incident report."
They headed home as the sun set, leaving the purple light pulsing in the darkness behind them. The OKRs had just gotten significantly more complicated.