Gwen suppressed the spell as best she could, and then released it, like a muffled fist above the centipede's many eyes.

"Lightning!"

A muffled sound echoed through the clearing. A bolt of lightning flashed through her fingertips, in the distance between Gwen and the centipede, and then struck it right on the head, startling it instantly.

"Shah!!"

A pair of meat hooks shoot out of Caliban's stomach and grab the centipede's tail. It twitched frantically, dragging the still paralyzed creature towards its jaw. With a sound more akin to gurgling ramen, Caliban sucks its multi-legged food into its lamprey's mouth, effortlessly sliding its meter-long body into its bottomless esophagus.

When the last tendril of the giant centipede disappeared, everyone flinched.

"I don't know what I was expecting," Paul said, his face pale from the experience.

Gwen then pointed Caliban to the bottom of the plant. A thick kalim plate immediately melted on the soles of the feet of the deceased.

After a while, it rushed into a pool of salty water of game and splashed onto the forest floor. A disgusting smell exploded at the party, like the whole world was farting.

"My eyes are watering. Moyer covered his nose and mouth. "I can taste it. Why, Gwen. Can't you power up like a regular mage?"

The other three were silent, bearing the unique impact of the stench with silent perseverance.

"Control the wind!" Moyer spelled desperately, feeling the air move around them, blowing the stench high up. "Oh, the sweet breath of life. ”

At the same time, Gwen seems completely unaffected. She was staring through her mana-filled hallucinations at the black void mass of Caliban, sucking out the listless particles of negative energy. With a final crunch, Caliban ate the roots of the towering flower, and it began to crumble.

"Caliban!" Gwen hissed, and the creature vanished, back in its pocket.

The party watched the Titan konjac crash into the forest floor.

"Alright, let's keep walking," Jonas ordered, alert for any attention they might draw. "Paul?"

"Six o'clock. ”

Once again, the group jumped into the dense sea of green, cutting through a seemingly never-ending green barrier.

"How's our way home?" Jonas asked their translocation specialist.

"The traffic light started and everything worked fine. "Don't move," Paul said, after a moment of concentration, returned.

The day began to fade due to the slow progress of the group. Several encounters with ambitious local animals led to some spooky moments of fighting, but some of Jonas's contact with healing magic ensured that the group remained at the top.

By evening, the Group estimated that it had made some 10 kilometres towards the centre of the island, with only towering Bayan trees visible from the outside. With any luck, they should be able to infiltrate where the Dryads will settle down the next day.

Since most of the island's creatures are nocturnal, it becomes too dangerous to move through the dancing lights and the uncertain shadows cast by the daylight, both of which dazzle the human eye and make it impossible to distinguish the animal from the leaves.

Gwen made their shelter, the portable habitat, and put an HDM crystal into the trough at the bottom.

“!”

She invoked the activation symbol. This model habitat soon developed into a portal, glittering in the middle of the forest, invisible and shielded except for the registered members of her party.

Gwen walked into the shelter and found a large Bauhaus-style multi-bedroom bungalow made of aluminum and glass, nestled in a grey and quiet area. The lack of a sense of finitude in the space, even gazing at the white fence of the bungalow, gave her an uncomfortable feeling of being lost in a place of gray nothingness.

"I think it's obvious that you shouldn't go into the ethereal world. Jonas walked past Gwen. "Give me a decanter with endless water, and I'll set up the shower and kitchen. ”

"Is there a shower?" Gwen could feel the dampness condense between herself and her leather coat like salt water stuck to her body. When the moisture feels like a layer of warm water in the jungle, the fabric to breathe is useless.

"Well, it can only produce so much at once. Gwen grinned when he thought of taking a cold shower under fresh water. "Although I suggest you use your own spell if you're going to be there for a long time. You know, we also need to fill up our supplies and make dinner. ”

"I was glad to have a real shower. Gwen pushed the door open, and the alien anxiety in the gray void was forgotten. "What does Stephen Chow eat?"

"Noodles, I thought. Pasta and the like. Storage ring tank transport?"

Gwen had the widest storage space and thus became known as a food supply for mules.

"I'll leave them on the kitchen island, wait a minute. ”

It's such an unpleasant distinction, for a split second, they're trudging through a jungle in a black zone, and then all of a sudden they're in a safe pocket space with a working stove, shower, and real bed. She couldn't imagine what it would be like if they had to find a shelter in a tree, as she did on a field trip in high school. Again, as students, they worked in a green zone – an area where night movement was a recipe for constant ambushes and disasters.

Gwen walked to the table refreshed after a cold shower and found Jonas wearing an apron and carrying a few bowls of fragrant Bolognese dishes, and she felt that her every expectation had been met.

"Pepper?" Jonas asked.

"I'm going to get Parmesan cheese too. Gwen indulged herself.

When all was said, the group went to bed. Gwen left the master alone, while the men took over the living room. Her father, Moyer, had a guest room for his privacy.

As the night progressed, the snoring of the soldiers was like rolling thunder, gently shaking the windows of the bungalows. Gwen was pleased that her door was a stout oak door, thick and strong, enough to keep the three diesel generators running in sync.

Around six a.m., the alarm sounds, which means that the space in the pocket will soon be depleted and the residents inside will be evicted from their homes. A cereal porridge and rationed breakfast followed, and once again the member was ready for the dense jungle.

The Taj Mahal volunteered to go outside first, but Gwen persuaded them to replace him with Ariel. When the mink didn't immediately report the alarm or danger, the rest of the crew followed.

As the quartermaster said, the clearing they had cut down was completely restored to its original state almost while they were asleep.

"How's the lighthouse?" Jonas asked Paul.

The translocation specialist drew several signals in the air.

"There are a few left, enough for us to triangulate our way back. The lost hieroglyphs begin approximately 3 km later and continue to the 5 km long sign. ”

"Alright, let's go. Keep the traffic lights, Paul. ”

"Yes. ”

An hour later, the Taj Mahal stopped in an unexpected clearing, their progress being hampered.

It was an unusual sight, and the blue sky above unexpectedly caught them and amazed their lovers of dark vision. When the Taj Mahal's machete struck a tree, they kept slashing in the densest part of the jungle and found the nasty branches empty.

He staggered forward, missed the heavy blow, and unexpectedly walked into a clearing. They had clearly crossed a very unusual passage.

When others join the bewildered Taj Mahal, they begin to discover a wide variety of local life forms – bony ones.

Birds appear to be the bulk of the collected columbarium, scattered on fallen logs and branches without green leaves. The shells of large insects fill the space for the falling birds' bones to wither, and piles of chitin and shells form the vague shapes of their former occupants, creating a terrifying game of guessing the fauna.

"Gwen. ”

"On it. Detect the magic!"

Gwen made a mental note to learn more specific divination, as she turned her eyes to this unnatural clear space. The ground is littered with particles of elemental air. Underneath, is a solid, flowing elemental earth, thick and large, like an ochre-colored carpet moving back and forth.

"It's coming!" she shouted. "Get out of the clearing! they're down there with us!"

A soldier ant appears with its head forward, and a three-inch-long obsidian jaw greedily cuts through the air through falling vegetation. In an instant, another erupted, followed by a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, countless heads of all shapes and sizes, all expertly armed with scythe-like jaws and jaws.

The party reacted immediately, turned around and took the supposed circuitous line.

"Eight o'clock! two hundred meters later, five o'clock!" Paul ordered. Jonas discovers another sharp magic machete and opens the way forward.

"Shield of Faith!"

The Half Dome Shield of Positive Energy is not as effective against physical attacks as the average Old Mage armor, but it has to do so.

"Damn, they're catching up with us!"

By this time, the swarming ants had already emerged from the mound. When Gwen smoked another male goose between her twitching legs, keeping her as far away from the dark swarm landscape as possible, she noticed that they were needle-headed animals she had seen before. She noticed the long snout attachment on their heads, wondering if it was a stabbing tool, or some kind of feeding mechanism.

A handful of ants fell from above onto the Taj Mahal and landed on his mage armor. When the air was filled with the incantation of oxide stone, the group heard a sizzling sound. Gwen got her answer - needle ants were shooting some corrosive milky fluid from the top of their heads.

"By Shiva!, the Taj Mahal dispersed and re-summoned the mage armor to get rid of this pesky insect. "Can we hurry up?"

"It's too thick!" Jonas shouted from the front.

"We must fight them! Bad luck!!" Paul shouted, his hand rubbing a tree casually. "!"

What Paul grasps with a wayward hand in the heat has secreted a substance that causes a layer of skin on his hand to peel off.

"Don't touch the trees, some are carnivores!"

A utility related to Gwen flashed through her mind. None of her spells have enough AOE potential to clear millions of tiny insects at the same time, which is one of the fundamental fallacies of the lightning element. Gwen cursed - if Yue was here...

She could barely get by.

"Caliban!"

A snake slipped out of a crack in the darkness in the thin air.

"Get out!"

Caliban jumped into the ant colony and rolled around like a child in the new linen snow. Now it is almost a meter and a half long, carving a path in the middle of the ants. The swarm seemed to instinctively know that the empty Caliban was not food, so it parted from the slippery things, as if the empty Moses had parted the sea of ants.

A clump of ants, taking advantage of the height provided by the leaves, began to raindrop on them, blooming into sacks of poisonous acid as they suicidally landed on the mage's shield. The mage's progress became slower as their extended mana shield flickered, and the flickering of hemispherical buffers projected against each other hindered their progress as they tried to escape the swarm.

"That's all. We've got to get this out of the way!" Jonas ordered them. "Watch out for friendly fire and fire at will. Taj Mahal!Explosion Defense Glyphs!Maximum Range Centered on You!"

"Cover me!"

Gwen's shrill voice pierced through the baritone voices of the crew.

To Jonas's surprise, when Jonas begins to paint the repulsive glyphs, Gwen reveals the dark shield of the obsidian void. The barrier of darkness swayed with a hiss, devouring everything it touched. As the swarm of ants ran into its base, a sizzling sound was heard that resembled the sizzling of red-hot metal quenched by oily fat.

Gwen's face immediately turned white. Even the buffering energy left behind by Almuji was not enough to alleviate the drainage caused by the thousands of tiny insects that marched towards the end like kamikaze lemmings.

"!" Jon's face rejuvenated. "Taj Mahal!

"Five seconds!"

In the chaos of their frantic actions, in the rain of falling insects, their mana shields were scattered. Moyer performed.

"Authorized Conversion Salt!"

The group felt a surge of water gather around them like a gravity well, and their skin immediately became dry as their hair was covered with crystal strings of white pink salt. Moyer gathered the magical power in his hands and struck the ground beneath their feet, turning everything within a radius of thirty meters or so into a pink world.

It was as if a sudden frost had enveloped the entire forest. All water, including plants and animals, becomes fuel for the growth of saline snow.

The ants also suddenly turned into a pile of shriveled shells, and a veritable river of black sand mixed with white sand.

Morey's face turned pale from the effort, and he pulled his arm from the pillar of salt he was standing on. His clothes, bulletproof nets, hair, and bare skin were covered with a thin layer of saline.

"The first thing that should be done," Moyer said nonchalantly, as the others escaped from unforeseen circumstances and fled from looming doom. "Gwen, don't use that shield. This is the stupidest thing a void mage can do. You just lost life when you summoned it, and you lost life when you absorbed those ants. ”

"I must protect the Taj Mahal," Gwen replied sullenly. If Moyer could solve this problem, he should have done it in the first place. Why delay, why run, if he always had a solution, why is it dangerous?

"You have to live and learn. Moyer shrugged. "By the way, I think we'll have company. ”

The once verdant jungle, now a world of snow sculptures, begins to crumble around them.

By the way, thank you for the salvation. "Jonas is not one to scoff at gifts. Whatever his intentions, Moyer saved them from a costly victory, which in itself is commendable. "Enemies?"

Moyer patted his nose.

"I smell perfume. ”

There is a distinctly distorted sound of wood. It's a strange onomatopoeia, a squeaky sound that is both the rapid growth of wood and the fragmentation of wood fibers. Gwen had heard it many times before in the woods, where Sofina played against the backdrop of talking and lessons with Henry in the woods.

The treasure of pine trees on an island that survived the apocalypse of salt parted, revealing a giantess dressed in yellow and bronze, her face showing a stinging allure in her waist. A head full of autumn hair fell from her head like a shimmering waterfall, outlining delicate leaf-like eyebrows with shiny eyes that sparkled like emerald.

"Oh," Jonas muttered. "Oh my gosh. ”

"Wow," Paul said, his mouth turning into a perfect O.

Taj brushed the ant away from him, ready to finish Wodin's inscription.

Gwen felt a tingle in her spine with anticipation and anticipation, and a flurry of words welled up on the tip of her tongue. How should she go to war with Delaide?Should she mention Sofina at once and ask to enter Grote?Should they negotiate with them and negotiate the terms that passed?What does a dwarf want from them?Maybe HDM Crystals, magic items, conceivably it needs a man?

Her speculation about this moment had been going on for days, but now that they had discovered that it was a delicate three-meter-tall wooden statue with a chest as large as her torso, Gwen found that she didn't want to speak.

"Hey, Beauty Queen. ”

A hoarse voice sounded beside them, confident and without hesitation. Everyone turned and saw Moyer, for they had never seen him before, he was straight, tall, serene, with a cold, handsome face, and his hair was combed back and unblemished. When he smiles, there is an aura of exuberance and confidence, composed and confident.

"Hello," the giantess said as the leaves rustled as she looked down to see Moyer smiling, eyes sparkling. "Are you humans lost?"

"Lost and found. Moyer waved his hand gently. To the great surprise of the whole party, he approached Drade without even showing a salty taste. "But I'm also easy to be with you. ”

Gwen felt a cloud of vomit run down her throat and into her mouth.

"Oh my God!" Drade seemed taken aback by Moyer's frankness. "What can I do for you?"

"Ah, what we can do to make the garden even blush. Moyer replied calmly, without interrupting his eye contact. "But yes, we are looking for a Miss Sofina, but, for my part, I would be happy to get acquainted with you in the meantime. ”

Gwen wondered if Drade could pass a cold sweat because she was already stuffy from nausea.

"Oh, you're Sophie's friend?" the gnome's eyes lit up, casting a bright light on her face. "Then go this way, hee-hee, let me take you to Grote's way. I'm sure we'll have a great time. ”

When a group of people left the woods and walked along a dry path.

Gwen swallowed the phlegm down her throat and gathered around her intently. She turned away and saw the others, Paul, Taj and Jonas, looking at Moyer with admiration and adoration on their faces.

"Guys?"

"Wow......" Paul said to the Taj Mahal. "I guess he's in the car, right?"

Gwen turned, stamped her foot, and bit her lip in frustration.

Men!