"Okay, now I'm convinced that there's sothing wrong with the ruler of these lands," expressed Alex as he observed the green and verdant forest that was beyond the illusion.
The forest was simply too vast, yet the entirety of it had disappeared after the illusion was cast on it, and the noble ruling those lands wasn't aware?
"It's impossible to be incompetent enough to not notice that a whole forest that is situated in your lands has disappeared, so he is either in cahoots with whatever is happening here, or he is manipulated, I can't see another possibility," added Alia.
"We will think about it later; for now, let's focus on the reason why we ca here," Lilia stated. "Cedrix's daughter should be in that forest, so let's go."
After that, the group descended from the mountaintop and walked towards the forest. They left the carriage and the pegasi on the top of the mountain because it was considered the safest place in this region.
Even though they proceeded by foot, it barely took them ten minutes to cross the few kiloters that separated them from the forest.
"Be silent. Don't talk unless it's necessary. We could be attacked at any mont, so be careful and alert the others as soon as you notice anything unusual," Alex instructed the girls before turning to Cedrix, "In which direction should we go?"
"The signal cos from this direction, my lord," answered Cedrix.
Alex glanced at the direction the old man was pointing to and nodded, then made a gesture to the girls to get in formation.
On the way to the forest, it was already decided in which formation the group would move into the forest, so it didn't take ti for everyone to take their positions.
Alex stood at the front of the group, with Cedrix behind him. Alia and Anna flanked the old man on either side, and Lilia was at the end of the formation. Their formation was a formation created to protect Cedrix since he was not a fighter and was their guide.
Before entering, Anna drew two blue twin daggers, while Alex expelled the smoke that was in his body and used so of it to create a gaseous barrier around them.
Alia and Lilia, on the other hand, didn't take out or do anything. Lilia didn't deem it necessary right now, and there was no need to in Alia's case. After all, there was no better place for a plant user to fight than in a forest.
After everyone was ready, the group began their march inside the forest.
The mont they entered the forest, Alex began feeling uneasy. There was sothing strange in this forest.
'It's too quiet,' he remarked.
Besides the sounds of their footsteps, he could barely make out any other sounds, which was odd for such a large forest in the middle of the day.
The further they advanced, the stronger the feeling of uneasiness grew until he suddenly felt a strange ripple in their surroundings. Then, the forest, which he found too quiet, suddenly erupted with all sorts of sounds!
From roars and howls to buzzing, etc., the forest seed to have suddenly co back to life. For Alex, who thought the forest was too quiet, hearing those sounds should have reassured him. However, the opposite happened; now, he was certain that sothing was wrong!
He was proven right when he felt a tremor running through the ground, and seconds later, various monsters, wild animals, and mindless beasts appeared, each running towards their group.
"That's quite the welcoming party," Alia chuckled.
"Indeed" Alex nodded with a smirk.
He quickly used his senses to gauge the levels of the monsters coming towards them and realized that almost all of them were just level 3.
Seeing that they were low-level monsters, he relaxed a bit, but remained cautious.
As the groups of monsters further approached, the tremor in the ground beca more intense, and the sounds produced by the monsters beca frenzied. One could feel in their gazes that they were eager to sink their sharp teeth into the flesh of the tender humans before them.
'Heh, co, co, let's play together,' Alex grinned.
The instant Alex thought this, he expanded the smoke around him before shaping it into several figures.
The constructs of smoke were obviously Alex's smoke knights. During the past few days, he has trained himself to be more efficient in controlling those knights, which ans that now, contrary to before, the level of control he has over the smoke knights allowed him to control up to five at the sa ti. Also, his smoke knights now don't have legs.
During his training, he understood that trying to make the smoke knights stand and walk like humans was useless since it didn't allow them as much mobility as when their lower parts are still gaseous.
Without wasting a single second, the newly created smoke knights charged at the monsters coming towards Alex's group. One of them brandished the sword in its hands and pierced the head of a deer-like creature with sharp fangs and antlers.
Two other knights, one with an axe and the other with a spear, attempted to slay a jaguar with jet-black fur and three horns on its head. However, just as their blades were upon the beast, it dissolved into the shadows before reappearing behind the knights and tearing them apart.
However, before the jaguar had ti to turn and search for a new prey, a spear pierced its belly, and following that, an axe descended on the beast's head, brutally severing it.
Similar scenes unfolded all around the place. While the beasts managed to destroy the knights, the latter reford just behind them, attacking from their blind side. In this manner, Alex's five knights slowed down the beasts' pace and even brought them to a halt.
The smoke knights were effective in slowing down the beasts, but their numbers were overwhelming. So managed to bypass the knights and charge at Alex's group. However, they never reached their target. The branches of the trees in the surroundings suddenly elongated, wrapped around the beasts' bodies, and crushed them until they exploded into a fountain of blood and gore.
In a matter of minutes, ninety-nine percent of the attacking beasts were killed, either by Alia or Alex's knights.
"Fortunately, they were just a bunch of level 3," Alex sighed in relief.
However, the instant he finished his sentence, he felt another tremor running through the ground. This ti, contrary to the first, the tremor was more intense, and soon, another wave of beasts was running towards them. The beasts in this wave were clearly of a higher level than those in the last wave.
"Way to go, brother. You just had to jinx it," Alia glared at Alex.
"Sorry, I guess..." Alex scratched his head while chuckling.
"Prepare yourselves this ti, I might not be able to stop them all," advised Alia to Lilia and Anna.
They just had ti to nod before the wave of beasts was upon them.
Alex imdiately sent his five knights forward, but contrary to the last ti, the knights were easily destroyed. Even when they reappeared behind the beasts, they couldn't slay them because before they had ti, another beast would destroy them.
The beasts quickly bypassed the knights and directly attacked Alex's group.
Understanding that his knights were useless, Alex dismissed them and instead shaped the smoke into different kinds of weapons that he used to attack the beasts coming towards them. Despite that, so of the beasts managed to approach them. For those that managed to do so, Alex didn't use his smoke elent to attack them, but his fists.
Since he didn't bother to hold back so of his strength, each punch, kick, or blow from Alex instantly killed the beasts. He was already strong enough to snap the spine of an ogre with one punch anyway, so those beasts didn't pose much threat to him to begin with.
Behind him, Alia skillfully utilized the trees nearby, either swatting the beasts to death, wrapping branches around them to grind them into paste, or transforming the branches into sharp blades to skewer the creatures. She was by far the one that caused the most damage to the horde of beasts. Yet, she didn't stop there; she created a protective cocoon made of vines to shield Cedrix, thus allowing Anna and Lilia to fight without having to constantly pay attention to Cedrix's safety.
The instant Cedrix's safety was guaranteed, Anna and Lilia could finally wholeheartedly concentrate on the battle ahead.
Lilia decided to join Alex on the front; Anna, on the other hand, remained to protect the cocoon. She activated her ability and instantly disappeared. It was as if she was never there in the first place – invisible, with no sight, scent, or sound revealing her presence.
The only thing that proved she was still there was the dropping corpses of the beasts that attempted to attack the cocoon.
As the saying goes, 'Unknown threats are often the most perilous.' With every monster corpse that fell, Anna continued to affirm the truth behind those words.
On the other side, the mont Lilia joined Alex, she noticed a beast trying to sneak up on him. She swiftly pulled out a light sword from her space ring and cleanly severed the beast's head. Lilia didn't possess as much strength as Alex to kill level 4 beasts with just a punch, so she relied on a weapon to either kill or fatally wound her enemies.
"Thanks," said Alex, delivering a sidekick to another beast, smashing its head.
"Don't ntion it," Lilia flashed him a smile before charging at the beasts.
Unlike Alex, who focused on killing the beasts that attacked him, Lilia chose to charge at them.
"And she says I'm too reckless," comnted Alex, watching his wife forcing her way into the monsters' ranks.
Alex grabbed a wolf's paw attacking him from behind, threw it on the ground, and crushed its head with the sole of his foot. The animal's blood splattering on his clothes.
He looked up just in ti to see Lilia's sword about to clash with another wolf's claws.
At the very mont when Lilia's sword and the wolf's claws were about to make contact, she swiftly sidestepped and severed the wolf's neck. Then, she spun around to evade the next attack, which ca from a jaguar. She stabbed her sword into the jaguar's side, gripped its leg with her other hand, and hurled the jaguar against three wolves that were pouncing on her.
The jaguar's body crashed into the three wolves, halting them in their tracks. Even before they could land on the ground, Lilia's sword flashed three tis, piercing the heads of the three wolves.
As the wolf's corpse finally landed on the ground, Lilia was already severing the head of another beast. There were no unnecessary moves in Lilia's attacks; she always sought the most efficient way to kill her enemies without wasting too much energy. She masterfully evaded the beasts' attacks, counterattacked, and killed her enemies, making her way deeper into the tide of monsters. Yet, it seed that none of them could even touch her, let alone wound her.
To Alex, who was observing her in between the attacks of the monsters, she seed like she was a dancer, albeit a dangerous and extrely deadly one. Each ti Lilia's sword flashed, one or many lives crumbled away like a fragile sandcastle succumbing to the relentless waves of her deadly strikes. On the other hand, with each beast she killed, her lips curved up a little into a smile, her eyes gaining a glint that wasn't there before.
As the battle progressed, Lilia's killing speed only increased, her battle style shifting from a graceful dance to a brutal onslaught, leaving a trail of fallen monsters in her wake.
anwhile, the smile on her face distorted, becoming manic, with a hint of ecstasy appearing in the depths of her scarlet eyes. She kept killing, killing, and killing until there was no life to reap anymore.
Lilia finally ca to a stop, the blood on her sword dripping on the ground. All around her, a litany of corpses lay on the ground like a macabre tapestry.
Observing the carnage she had caused, Lilia sighed, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the hint of dark glee that was in them had been replaced by her usual calm deanor.
She turned around only to be t by wide eyes staring at her as if she were an alien, making Lilia sigh again.
"What...the heck was that?" Questioned Alex with a dazed expression.
At first, he had admired Lilia's beautiful battle style, but as the battle progressed, he was left with wide, surprised eyes as he witnessed Lilia butchering level 4 monsters like they were re lambs. She seed to have entered a weird state in which the only thing that mattered to her was to kill, and by the distorted smile on her face, it seed that she was greatly enjoying what she was doing. It was to the point that she didn't even notice that she had drawn the aggro of all the beasts in the surroundings to herself.
'I'm beginning to feel like I really don't know my wife,' thought Alex with a bitter smile. However, the bitterness quickly disappeared from his face, replaced by a large teasing one.
"Hoho, it seems that-"
Before he could even finish the joke he was about to say, Alex felt another tremor running through the ground.
"Gods, not again!" grumbled Alia.
Once more, the ground trembled beneath them as another wave of monsters and beasts approached. Though fewer in number than the previous waves, the creatures in this wave were significantly more dangerous, posing a greater threat than all the previous waves combined.
"Level 5...." Anna muttered with a blank expression.
Alex, who was near her, heard what she said and patted her on the head while smiling at her, "Don't worry, I will take care of them. I was precisely wondering how I would fare against a level 5 being, and a bunch of them just appear before . It's the perfect opportunity to test out-"
"No, we aren't going to fight them," Lilia declared.
Now that she had regained her composure, she rembered what they ca here for, and it certainly wasn't to fight waves after waves of monsters, plus...
"We will lose if we fight more than three level 5 at once," she added.
Seeing Alex raise an eyebrow in question, she quickly explained, "Much like humans, monsters get an insane boost during their ascension from level 4 to level 5. If it were only that, it would still be doable to kill many of them, but there is another thing. Once a monster reaches level 5, they start to acquire intelligence, and it is much more difficult to fight an intelligent foe than a mindless one."
What Lilia explained wasn't all there was to the boost a monster gained when they attained level 5, but it was enough to make Alex understand that trying to fight a bunch of level 5 creatures currently wasn't a good idea.
"Okay, let's get out of here," Alex stated before turning to Cedrix, "did you manage to precisely locate where your daughter is?"
The old man nodded his head and pointed to the largest mountain in the forest, "there."
"Okay, then let's go!"
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