I Explore Urban Legends - Chapter 154: The Polluted Cartoon World (Patreon)

The Elder’s enormous body was being eaten away before their eyes.

At the same time, a large crowd of treants had gathered around it, desperately swatting at the paint with their leaves. Nothing they did had any effect.

The moment Little Green saw the scene, it rushed forward in alarm and grabbed one of the nearby treants. “Little Flower, what happened?”

“Little Green? Where did you go just now? I don’t know how the Elder ended up like this either.”

Liam stared at Little Flower and could barely tell it apart from Little Green. Even the faces on their trunks looked almost identical. The only obvious difference was the sparse cluster of tiny flowers growing from Little Flower’s crown.

Treants clearly had a very unusual way of telling one another apart.

As strange as Liam found that, he knew the situation had already become critical. The same eerie paint had appeared in this world, which meant it probably would not be long before these treants started mutating into monsters too.

To be safe, he called out, “Little Green, get back here. It isn’t safe over there.”

“What?”

Little Green turned around in confusion, completely unaware of the horrifying change taking place behind it.

The human face on Little Flower’s trunk began twitching and twisting violently.

“Little Flower, what’s wrong?” Little Green asked anxiously, too frightened to move any closer.

Soon, Little Flower’s face stopped convulsing. Then it suddenly caved inward. A huge mouth lined with sharp teeth split open across the trunk, and two hollow eyes filled with ghostly fire appeared above it.

Little Flower had become a tree monster.

It staggered toward the group.

“Little Flower, what’s happening to you? Why won’t you say anything?”

Little Green was so frightened that its voice was on the verge of tears.

Liam, however, immediately understood what he was seeing. It was exactly the same thing that had happened in the real world.

This cartoon world had been polluted too.

He stepped in front of Little Green and conjured a toy chainsaw. With one pull of the starter cord, the engine roared to life.

Little Green trembled at the sight of it. “Friend, what is that dangerous-looking thing? What are you going to do to my Little Flower?”

Liam glanced back at it. “Little Flower isn’t even yours yet, so don’t sound so possessive. As for what I’m going to do, just stand there and watch.”

With that, he charged straight at the tree monster and swung the chainsaw.

“Bzzzt! Bzzzt!”

The shriek of metal tearing through wood echoed across the forest as sawdust and splinters flew everywhere.

The sound was so gruesome that the surrounding treants even stopped swatting at the paint and turned toward the commotion.

Before long, Little Flower had been sawed into pieces.

Little Green could only watch helplessly from the side. It knew Little Flower had already become a monster and lost what made it a treant, but that did not make the sight any easier to bear.

It bent its roots, knelt on the ground, and tried to gather up the pieces. Before it could, the fragments crumbled into black ash.

“Crack! Crack!”

Little Green looked up in horror.

Every treant around them had begun to change.

“Everyone... why are you turning into this too?”

Little Green was only a carefree cartoon character who had spent its whole life in this world. Something like this was far too cruel for it.

Liam could not stand watching it suffer, so he stepped forward and dealt with the tree monsters himself.

Little Green stared in shock as its own kind died one after another. Not knowing what else to do, it silently pushed its roots back into the ground.

After a while, Liam finally finished off the last tree monster and drew a deep breath.

He had just cut down enough trees to make every environmentalist in the country protest him.

Then he noticed that Little Green had fully rooted itself into the ground.

Liam walked over. “I’m sorry this happened, but the moment that paint got into them, they were already gone.”

To his surprise, Little Green closed its eyes and shook its head.

“No. I have to find a way to save them.”

Liam scratched his head. He was not a treant, so he had no idea how the ashes scattered across the ground could possibly be brought back to life.

“All right. I’ll leave that to you. I’m going to deal with the paint.”

He headed toward the gigantic Elder tree, and after a moment’s hesitation, Betty followed.

Up close, its condition looked even worse than they had imagined. Paint kept seeping out from beneath the roots, steadily eating away at them.

More than half of the root system had already been corroded, leaving behind an enormous hollow. For some reason, though, the Elder had not transformed into a monster. It simply continued to groan in pain.

Liam leaned over and peered into the hollow. “Why do you think it hasn’t changed yet?”

Betty thought for a moment, then answered with certainty. “I know where we are now. This is Forest Tales, one of Bendy’s cartoons. The Elder is the wisest creature in the story. It has to be strong enough to hold on.”

A violent gust suddenly struck Liam.

He looked up and saw an enormous branch hurtling toward them at terrifying speed.

There was no room to dodge from where he stood. Liam shoved Betty behind him and took the blow head-on.

Fortunately, the branch was covered in thick foliage, so the impact itself did not do much damage. The sheer force behind it was another matter. Liam and Betty were both launched sideways through the air.

Plants blurred past Liam as he flew.

Betty was tumbling alongside him when she suddenly forced her body sideways and hooked her hands and feet around two trees.

If I’ve become a cartoon character, then I should be able to do anything a cartoon character can do.

The thought flashed through her mind, and somehow it worked.

Her arms and legs stretched rapidly, growing longer and longer as their speed gradually dropped.

At last, the two of them crashed into a large thicket.

Liam was left dizzy from the impact. When he groggily lifted his head, he found himself staring straight at a face.

“Thank you very much for catching me.”

The thicket gathered up the leaves around itself as though lifting the hem of a skirt, gave an offended snort, and stalked away.

“Didn’t expect a bush to be so stuck-up.”

Liam muttered the comment as he climbed to his feet. Then he looked over at Betty and froze.

Her arms and legs had stretched at least a dozen meters, and she was staring at him helplessly.

“Help me. I can’t get any strength into my arms or legs.”

Liam immediately went over to the absurdly long limbs. The moment he touched one, Betty complained, “Be gentle. That tickles.”

“With you like this, gentle isn’t really an option.”

He kept working as he spoke.

Her arms and legs were unbelievably soft, so Liam simply rolled them up like fire hoses.

Betty stared at her distorted body in alarm. “What am I supposed to do? I’ll scare the tourists if I look like this.”

Liam considered that. “Think about how cartoon characters fix themselves when this happens.”

That gave Betty an idea.

She lifted the two coils that had become her arms and slammed them against the ground.

“Smack!”

A cloud of smoke burst out, and her arms instantly returned to normal.

“It actually worked!”

Astonished, Betty repeated the same trick with her legs.

Once she was back to normal, Liam turned around.

The Elder had finally transformed into a tree monster as well.

Because its roots had already been badly damaged, it could not move from where it stood. All it could do was thrash its enormous branches wildly through the air.

Betty stared at the towering monster and sighed. “How are we supposed to deal with something that big? Are we going to be stuck living here forever?”

Then another thought occurred to her. This was a cartoon world. Maybe living here would not actually be so bad.

Liam had no idea what she was thinking. He only smiled. “No. A big target that can’t move is the easiest kind to deal with.”

He led Betty forward until they were safely outside the Elder’s attack range.

After making sure the creature could not suddenly stretch its branches farther, Liam shouted, “Lily, Charlotte, lend me your strength!”

He drew his light gun and began charging it.

Brilliant light gathered inside the barrel. Even the gigantic tree monster realized something was wrong.

It thrashed its branches furiously, but no matter how hard it tried, it could not reach the tiny figure standing beyond its range.

While Liam continued gathering spiritual energy, the giant tree suddenly shook its entire body and whipped its crown forward. A storm of leaves shot toward him like blades.

“Watch out!”

Betty rushed in front of Liam and tried to block the attack with her body.

The leaves punched countless tiny holes straight through her, then continued onward without slowing and buried themselves in Liam as well.

“Are you okay?”

Ignoring the holes all over her own body, Betty hurried back to Liam and started pulling leaves out of him.

“Stop plucking them out. Just get farther back.”

Betty immediately obeyed and moved behind him.

Liam took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

He had been charging the weapon long enough to sustain the attack for a considerable time.

A pillar of light erupted from the barrel. Under Liam’s control, it swept across the Elder’s massive trunk.

“Sizzle! Sizzle!”

The smell and sound of burning wood filled the air. The beam slowly cut through the ancient tree until the enormous trunk was severed cleanly across the middle.

“The tree’s coming down!”

“BOOM—!!”

The impact shook the ground beneath them.

Liam shouted with a grin, then immediately felt his entire body go hollow.

The attack had drained a huge amount of spiritual energy, leaving him ravenously hungry.

He licked his lips and looked at Betty. “Did you bring anything to eat?”

Betty, who had somehow already recovered from all the holes in her body, reached into her pocket and pulled out a few pieces of candy. “Is this enough?”

“Not even close.”

Liam had already eaten everything in Watson’s chest pouch, so he needed to find another source of food.

While chewing the candy, he spotted a huge flower bed nearby.

He walked over and asked politely, “Ladies, could you spare me some nectar?”

The moment the words left his mouth, even Liam felt as though he had just said something indecent.

Fortunately, the flowers did not seem to mind.

They brought over an enormous leaf. Then each flower used its lower leaves to wipe its own face before flicking nectar onto the makeshift tray.

Before long, a large amount had collected there.

Without bees to process it, the nectar was thick and almost solid.

Liam dipped a finger into it and tasted some. It was not bad, just a little milder than honey.

He promptly swallowed all of it.

Afterward, he went down the row and shook leaves with every flower one by one.

“Thank you all for your generous help.”

Then he returned to the fallen Elder.

The giant tree was dead now, and the corrosion had eaten away its roots until only a pitch-black hollow remained.

The paint had clearly been coming from below.

If Liam wanted to end this event, he would have to jump into that darkness.