By the time you had woken up, it was already in the early afternoon. Your eyes gently opened and you gave a soft yawn. After following Master's orders to get some rest, you had immediately gone up to your personal den in the cottage attic to sleep and get rid of the magical addiction you had been affected by.
Now after a nice rest, the desire to read from the dark spellbook was still present but much weaker than before.
Giving another yawn you walk down the attic stairs down to the lounge. Master Harauphar was there, quietly reading from a non-magical book when he looks up and notices you.
"Ah, you have returned from your rest I see, how do you feel? Do you still have an addiction?" Master Harauphar asks with a casual hint to his tone. If he was worried that you were still addicted to dark magic, he seemed to show no sign.
"As of now, I have still not been completely relieved of my addiction to magic however after resting the desire to read from the book has significantly faded." You say
"As expected, I believe it will fade completely fade within a few more hours, most likely by late evening, for now, you have my permission to explore the surrounding forest if you wish to do so, however do not interact with any humans what so ever, no matter the circumstances, if you do encounter a human return and inform me immediately." Master Harauphar says, still in his casual tone.
"Very well, thank you Master Harauphar, I will be exploring the forest now and will ensure that I will follow your condition to the best of my ability and will inform you of any humans I see." You reply, bowing your head to Master Harauphar before crawling through the rabbit hole and running into the forest, your paws treading softly against the forest floor.
Like before, you could sense the souls of every living thing nearby, though you pay no attention to them, you weren't hungry as of yet and you wanted to spend more time familiarizing yourself with the forest. After an hour you estimated you had gone over thirty miles south of your Master's cottage and you could feel the differences.
Because of the dark energy Master Harauphar's cottage emits from its various magical wards and your Master's own dark experiments had changed the landscape overtime the local wildlife being affected by your Master's fel energy. The trees were twisted and curled into thousands of pointy branches with the animals also being larger and almost always having green eyes that would glow softly in the dark. However the wildlife here was different.
From basic knowledge you had, fel energy would take years upon years before any major changes to a living being would occur, possibly even centuries at times. However here, a strange magical energy filled the air, not fel magic, but also not holy magic either. The forest around the cottage was dark and dank, almost like a swamp however here was different, it was.... alive almost. The trees instead of having bark, were covered in a fungus like surface groups of magenta mushrooms growing out of the wood. When you try and pick some of the fungus off, you had gotten sprayed by thousands of tiny purple spores which had made you gag and choke for several minutes before you recovered.
Even the animals seem to be different. Rabbits instead of having brown, white, or maybe even black fur were corrupted and were instead a deep purple, their visible teeth seemed sharper despite their herbivore nature, and you saw clusters of magenta colored mushrooms growing on their back, almost creating a miniature forest of mushrooms on them. They made no hostile moves against you and still retained their skittish nature, running away when you come too closely but you vividly remember the rabbits you had hunted a night before did not show signs of corruption like these did. These rabbits were different, the magical energy you sensed within them was definently not of the fellish kind your Master used, but different. It certainly wasn't "holy" or good. It seemed more... otherworldly. What had happened?
These signs of corruption surely couldn't be due to your Master's acquisition of the dark spell book? The cottage was miles away, far away from any possible influence the spell book could have here. Or perhaps there is another reason? Maybe they were always like this and this was just a natural phenomenon in this world?
Curious you closed your eyes and stopped moving and focused for a second, letting go of your previous senses you activate your soul sight peering into the very souls of one of the rabbits a few meters away, which seemed to watch you with a hint of intelligence in its eyes. As you thought, it's soul which would normally be white, swirled with a streak of a dark purple in it. The white and purple almost seemed to clash with eachother, as if their presence together was unnatural and chaotic.
You open your eyes and regain your normal senses, the rabbit running off into the forest as if it knew you your senses had returned.
As of now you had encounter five colors of a soul. A fiery red which Master Harauphar said was the color of demons, a pure white which seemed to be anything nonmagical in nature (If souls themselves would be considered nonmagical), the deep green which represents the color of fel magic, and now the dark purple color. What did it represent you wonder?
You look up to the sky and consider turning back to the cottage, your Master would like to know about you finding this. It was still early in the afternoon, night wouldn't arrive for about six hours or so. Maybe you should investigate further. You could find more informations, however you werent sure about the risk, perhaps this "fungal" trait is actually a disease and it could infect you as well.
You take a moment to think, surrounded by a forest of purple mushrooms.