“…… I don't want to go in. ”

She thought as she looked at the cave in front of her.

"I've had enough of drilling underground all day since the end of the road."

"But there are no fish or other creatures found here, are they all swept away by the undercurrent?"

Touching her belly, she is not afraid of starvation, because she is used to surviving in a cruel environment.

But Wendy outside is a pampered eldest lady, usually if the vampire girl doesn't appear, she's just like an otaku, just stuffed in the camp all the time, and doesn't want to go anywhere.

"Forget it, maybe when you come to this world, you will inevitably deal with caves and crypts, who made this an unscientific world."

There was no way, she finally chose to get in.

However, when she went in and returned to it, her vigilance was only stronger, and the dagger of the Divine Fall was stored close to her thigh, and the long sword in her hand was raised in front of her to open the way, and after a while, she came to a wide underwater space.

"Fish?"

Not far away, she noticed a group of strange-looking creatures gathered together, seemingly vying for something.

"These fish are so big, they seem to have great teeth."

Xia has dark vision, and the succubus is a creature in the dark, and he can clearly see the sharp teeth of Bai Sensen in the mouths of these creatures, so he did not approach casually, but swam around them far away.

In fact, someone doesn't know much about prehistoric creatures, and those dinosaurs are so famous and really interested that they know a little bit; She had never seen anything that looked like fish in the water, and she didn't know where it came from.

"Speaking of which, this place is full of holes all around...... There are many places where you can enter and exit freely, and it's like air leaking everywhere. ”

Along the way, I found more than one school of fish, but I didn't find a single one, so I didn't rush to them.

However, while cruising underwater, she accidentally found some aquatic plants and algae, these plants are generally edible, and after trying to avoid poison, she picked some and prepared to take them out as side dishes.

"Pay attention to dietary nutrition, both meat and vegetarian, and a balanced ...... of human elements"

Talking about the miscellaneous nutrition of the 28th century mixed with the world, she began to swim back with a bunch of aquatic plants, but as soon as she turned around, a small body suddenly threw herself into her arms, startling her.

"Why didn't anyone approach?"

She hurriedly wanted to fight back, but a familiar voice came to her mind:

"Master, you're finally here! Erin has been waiting for you here for a long time. ”

Holding the things in his arms, he said happily:

"Come with me over there and have a look, Erin has found something good!" Then he dragged her arm to the left, as if he wanted to take her somewhere.

“…… You little guy, you didn't know that such a sudden hug would scare people to death. ”

Xia is very helpless about this little Lori who still doesn't know much about common sense.

"I'm sorry, master, I'm so excited."

Erin stuck out her little tongue and said, her cute appearance made it difficult to scold her heart.

"What the hell did you find?"

Xia didn't plan to ask for this little Lori like Stephanie did, and asked as she swam forward with her:

"What about Gladys? Are there also members of the advance team underwater? ”

"I don't know where they've gone, master."

Erin didn't seem to care about it:

"But that spider-woman is very powerful, and the others listen to her, so there shouldn't be a problem."

"You ......"

Natsu was really angry this time, and instead of continuing to swim, he stopped at the bottom of the water.

"Master, the initial orders you gave me were: 1. Follow the members of the advance team and help them detect danger; 2. Look for clues to the main quest. ”

Erin sensed her anger, and hurriedly snapped her little finger and calculated:

"It's the two missions, but you didn't say which one is more important?"

Little Lori said aggrievedly:

"If you told me in advance to follow Spider-Woman and them, I would have done so, but Erin did find something related to the main quest here, and this is the most important quest for our God Shard......"

"Let's go see what you've found."

Xia adjusted his emotions and didn't open his mouth to blame her.

If it were an ordinary person, the answer just now would be suspicious of a hint of sophistry.

But the Fragments of God are different, and they don't lie to their masters; An unsophisticated type like Erin, sometimes if she doesn't make it clear, she will often make some laughable mistakes like this.

"What are these?"

She and Lori came to a group of rocks that were surrounded by a lot of fish, but nothing else was to be seen.

"--get out of here!"

Erin took out a long knife from her skirt and began to chase the fish around, this scary-looking creature was not hostile to her, and even if she was driven away, she quickly fled in all directions, and did not attack the artifact Lori.

"These guys always wanted to rob the master's pieces, so I hid them in the cave."

Erin explained her intentions to Natsu, and then struggled to push a rock to reveal the hole behind her.

"Shards?"

Because Erin mentioned the main quest just now, Xia's first reaction was the fragment of the god and she was taken aback.

But then he laughed dumbly:

The shards of the gods are not cabbage, and it is already a great luck to be able to find fish like Sescia in the memory world, and Irene said 'them' before! Is it possible to meet a bunch of them here at once?

"Whew!"

When the hole was revealed, the fish suddenly swam in this direction as if they were crazy, and they all seemed to want to enter the cave.

"Get out of here."

A blue light flashed in Natsu's eyes, and he unleashed a powerful coercion on the fish, forcing them to stay away from the place.

There are more of these fish, and the strength of a single fish is not strong, and she doesn't want to engage in senseless massacres, so she just drives them away.

"Look, master."

Erin pulled out a purple crystal about a meter wide from the hole like a treasure, and it looked like a broken eggshell, but if you looked closely, the surface was not smooth, but had a bumpy appearance.

"Stronghold Crystal?!"

After recognizing what this was, Xia froze for a moment.

Under Erin's expectant gaze, she reached out and picked up the crystal, and then the system flashed a prompt:

"You've found the core of the colony."

"-This is a treasure that guards the realm of the gods, but it has changed to its current state for unknown reasons, and if you want to restore it, you need the following conditions......

Natsu didn't look at what it would take to repair the crystal, because she knew that it would be a very scary list, and it would be bad for her heart after reading it.

"Some of the pieces are too big for me to bring back to the owner."

Erin explains why she stays here:

"I've found a total of seventeen crystal shards here, but I've only managed to get twelve from the fish......"

She told Natsu how she collected the crystals in the face of the attack of the fish, and then managed to hide them here:

"Those guys hurt when they bite people, but Erin held back."

Little Lori puffed up her chest and said:

"It was hard to get crystals from them at first, because when I got them, they would attack me; But then they didn't know how to do it, and suddenly they became docile, so I moved the pieces into the hole piece by piece, and then each time I sealed the entrance with rocks, and they couldn't do anything. ”

"Schools of fish gather around crystals because they contain divine powers, which are good for the evolution of living things."

Xia gently held Erin in her arms, and she was very heartbroken when she heard the experience just now:

"And you are the Fragment of God...... He also has supreme divine power, and is the source of elemental magic in itself, and the pure and powerful water elemental is not much less attractive to the fish than those crystal fragments, so they don't attack you anymore after that. ”

"Is that so?"

Little Lori tilted her head and thought:

"So, do they like me?"

"As long as I've been with you for a long time, everyone will like you."

Natsu touched her head, then put the crystal back into the cave.

In order to prevent the energy from leaking out, she first drove all the fish away, gathered all the remaining fragments together, and then applied a very dense magical enchantment in the cave to temporarily seal the crystal's divine power so that it would not attract the attention of outsiders.

Although no one else has been seen in this area yet, the base established by the Empire on the island in the middle of the lake has made her wary, and it seems that the so-called new area is not really a paradise.

"The broken stronghold core is actually useless...... However, those crystal shells are very hard, and there is residual energy on them, and Sadonan has been studying the application and transformation of divine power, and it would be good to experiment with him when the time comes, maybe he can make something useful. ”

Xia and Xiao Lori carefully searched around the neighborhood again, and felt that there was nothing missing, so they swam out from the bottom.

"Whew!"

Even if there was magic that could make people breathe underwater, it was not a comfortable experience, and after emerging from the water, Xia gasped for breath and climbed ashore wet.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Shortly after coming ashore, Wendy rode a dinosaur and came over, looking unhappy:

"There's no terrain here, I thought you had gone far away to find food, and left me here...... Hey? ”

She suddenly saw Erin, who was covered in emerald green:

"Isn't that your magic, Gladys and the advance team have found it?"

"Not yet."

Natsu asked Lori to fly next to her incognito, and she jumped on the back of the dinosaur and sat with Wendy:

"But now that Irene's found, the others shouldn't be far away......"

The two began to ride the dinosaur to chase the herbivorous dinosaur group in front, without the enemy's pursuit, the speed of the brontosaurus group and the triceratops group was much slower, they kept looking for edible plants in the process, these dinosaurs are all big bellies, it is usually difficult to fill their stomachs.

"Master, as Sister Stephanie said, these guys aren't very good."

Erin is a little fellow who is not willing to be lonely, and immediately after meeting up with her master, she chatters:

"But if we go north, there will be some terrible monsters, and that's where we got out......"

From her words and the sketchy map drawn in the system, Xia gradually became clear about the area.

Judging from the map, it was probably an irregular circle, and the domination area of the carnivorous dinosaurs should be in the center so that they could easily hunt around.

And the scope of this hunting ground is very large, radiating almost to most places; Only marginal areas and harsh areas (such as the hot wilderness) are not favored by carnivorous dinosaurs, and they don't approach them if there is no reason to do so.

"Although the herbivorous dragon knew that there were natural predators, it had to eat in dangerous places, but except for the dinosaur with magic crystals, there was nothing that could threaten creatures like Brontosaurus and Triceratops, after all, monsters like Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus would not easily appear on the periphery."

Xia calculated the direction of his progress, and found that the route of the Brontosaurus group was around the center of the circle, and it seemed that they also knew that they could not approach the central area, where there were too many terrifying predators.

"Even the brontorons, who don't have much intelligence, know this, and Gladyse can't possibly not know."

Constructing a virtual roadmap in her mind, she fell into deep thought:

"But the periphery is too vast...... And there were very few places to hide, and Gladys's spider silk did not play much role in this environment, and her advantage was not on the plains, but in deep caves and forests. ”

"Some high mountain peaks, or an unusually dense grove of trees......"

She slowly raised her head, confirming the hiding place that the spider beauty might choose:

"It's possible to underworld, but it's too difficult to find the entrance, so let's look for it last."

"Erin, fly stealth."

She sent an order to little Lori:

"Focus on forests and mountains, and if there are any other suspicious places, remember to let me know."

"Do you know where the front is?"

Xia used mental telepathy to talk to the dinosaur under him:

"The food was scarce...... And some danger? ”

She analyzed the thoughts passed on by the other party, and for a moment she couldn't figure out what the dinosaur was trying to say.

"Natsu, can you communicate with it?"

Wendy couldn't help but be a little surprised to see that the dinosaur under her often turned around and barked at Natsu, as if talking to her.

"I can only understand the general meaning, this guy is too stupid."

Xia sighed and said, and then said to himself with a sad face:

"Occasionally, my companions would sink into the ground and never be able to escape...... But the big herbivorous dinosaurs weren't afraid of this danger...... What the hell is it talking about? ”

"By the way, the swamp!"

Her eyes suddenly lit up.

The size of the Brontosaurus is too large to be trapped even if it occasionally falls into a quagmire, and the so-called bottomless swamp is actually only for small animals and humans; The kind of swamp that can drown huge creatures is rare, and the brontosaurus wouldn't be stupid enough to approach large swaths of anomalous ground and avoid them when they spot them.

"Dinosaurs and velociraptors had a hard time moving in swampy areas, but large dinosaurs like Brontosaurus could; Moreover, this swamp is located on the outskirts, and the powerful carnivorous dinosaurs have many rich hunting grounds, so they will not easily try their luck in the barren swamps. ”

"Master, I found a gray area in front of me, except for brown and black, it looks so strange."

Erin, who was in the air scout, also had a message:

"These big monsters with long necks seem to be going in that direction...... The whole West is almost all of this color, and at my current height there is no end in sight. ”

"Gladys's spider silk can come in handy in the complex environment of the swamp, and compared to the outside, there are not many strong enemies in the swamp, she must have gone there!"

Natsu told Wendy about her idea, and the double-ponytail student council president carefully analyzed it and agreed with her:

This scenario is most in line with the current reality...... Gladys is actually a very smart girl, and since she knows that the north is dangerous, and she has acted with Erin in the vicinity, there is a good chance that she will go to the swamp. ”

She hadn't seen the spider beauty herself, so even though she knew that the other party was not an ordinary person, she still assumed that Gladys was a "girl".

"Alright then, let's go take a look at the swamp."

Xia squeezed the dinosaur's physical energy, not only urging it to run forward quickly, but also ordering it to try to keep it as steady as possible, making the carnivorous dinosaur miserable, and it took a long time to meet her requirements.

"Wendy, remember to stay by my side later, don't run around."

Natsu is a magician, and the succubus state itself can fly, so he is not afraid of falling into the swamp at all. Even if you are too unlucky to fall in, you can't get out for a while; A Wet Hardening spell can get a person stuck on the surface without sinking at all.

However, in addition to the swamp, lurking snakes and poisonous insects, as well as various bees are also threats that cannot be ignored, although Erin can be used as a radar to avoid danger, but for the sake of safety, it is best for the two to keep a close distance, so that she can rescue as soon as possible.

"I'm also a magician, don't underestimate me."

Wendy put her face on her back and whispered:

"Although my combat power is not that strong, support is also a sorcerer's specialty, and I can also play a role when the time comes."

Natsu patted her hand lightly and didn't say anything more.

A smart woman like Wendy doesn't need to remind herself, those words just now are just to show concern for the girl she loves.

"Master, the place I just mentioned is right away."

Erin descended from the sky to the ground and began to fly ahead to guide them:

"I don't know what those big guys are doing here, should we continue to follow them in a moment?"

"Maybe their nest is in the swamp."

Xia said uncertainly:

"We won't go along, Erin, your task is mainly to detect danger and lead us to avoid it in advance; And then by the way, feel the breath of human beings......"

"And the main quest, master."

Erin, like the little Lori in black, attaches the most importance to the main story:

"Although those crystals were broken just now, we will definitely be able to find a complete core in other places, and we only need to find more than 4 of them to proceed to the second stage of the mission!"

"How can the two strongholds be so close, let's detect them honestly."

Xia said angrily:

"Also, all actions in the future must be the highest priority to find people! Don't leave your companions behind to find any crystals, that's an order. ”

"Got it...... ...... hosts"

Erin, somewhat frustrated, received the new order and flew forward with her head drooping.

The swamp is actually a kind of wetland, but this huge swamp in front of you obviously belongs to the high-level swamp (poor swamp), there are many sphagnum mosses, the peat layer is very thick, the living environment is relatively harsh, many animals and plants are difficult to survive in it, and the oxygen-deficient soil makes the material decomposition process relatively slow, and the nutrients are also low.

As a result, the swamp plants they saw often exposed their roots to the ground, and their undeveloped rhizomes adapted to the hypoxic environment, so they often had special reproductive abilities.

"This swamp lacks water and can only be replenished when it rains, but you won't be afraid of it."

Wendy has a wide range of knowledge and understands this aspect, so she said to Xia with a smile:

"I'm a bit of a habit of letting you carry me, though...... It's a lot more comfortable to lie on top of you than it was to ride one of the dinosaurs, and if it weren't for the unexplored area, I wouldn't have walked on my own. ”

"The water here is very acidic, not very suitable for direct drinking, if you are thirsty, I will make you a magic water ball."

Xia didn't care about acting behind her, but she didn't dare to be too careless:

"Help to see if there are any large rock formations and suspicious buildings, I suspect that the Empire has not only established a base here, the lack of ferocious carnivorous dinosaurs in the swamp, and the easy concealment of their tracks, is a good place to set up secret facilities." (To be continued.) )