Damien didn't have the mind to count the ti, but considering the moon's trek over the horizon, it had been over an hour since they started dispersing the crowd.
The original number was in the tens of thousands, but now, they'd been cut down to only a thousand or so birds chasing Damien and the girls through the rainforest.
They'd already left the Aegis Tree grove behind, along with the many birds who were stuck there,
The best part of Damien's plan wasn't splitting the crowd, it was turning them against each other!
It was inevitable for the ssenger Birds who got separated at the beginning to recover before the chase ended, but Damien kept cutting down Aegis Trees and producing more nectar!
When those who finished their al returned to the chase, they were subjected to several shattered trees covered in nectar that was being fought over by their comrades.
But when it ca to Honeydew Nectar, there was no such thing as camaraderie.
Like a domino effect, the birds piled on top of each other and killed each other for food, getting too involved in their own conflict to care about Damien and his group!
Damien turned back and glanced at the birds that were still following.
'With this amount, we should be able to win after a few minutes of battle, but without a guarantee that the ones we left behind will stay behind, that's too long.'
The solution was simple.
"Rose, work with on this!"
Damien called Rose off Zara's back and wrapped his arm around her waist, teleporting away as Ruyue and Elena accompanied Zara in fending off the crowd.
"We're setting up a minefield!"
"Got it!"
Rose didn't need more instruction to understand her role.
Every ti Damien rematerialized, he tapped his foot into the ground and set a delayed reaction mine ford from spatial mana, Vector Control, and just the tiniest bit of lightning to act as a fuse.
Once he was done, Rose followed up and drenched the area in the scent of their group and hid the mana fluctuations from the bomb, even adding the sll of Honeydew Nectar into the mix with illusions to attract the enemy.
They repeated the process ten tis, creating a true minefield that spanned several hundred ters before flashing forward and leaving the area.
"Zara!"
Damien's call echoed through their spiritual connection and rang in her ears.
Her eyes imdiately turned solemn.
Bang!
She slamd her paws into the ground and pivoted on her ankles, lurching as she abruptly shifted direction.
"Woah!" Elena exclaid, hurriedly clutching her fur to avoid falling off.
anwhile, Ruyue jumped in the air and put her hands together in a strange formation.
'Marking of Death.'
The spell she used essentially did the sa thing as Rose's illusion in this situation.
It amplified the sll of death coming from her body, driving the ssenger Birds mad with provocation and rage!
Ruyue flipped back and landed on Zara's back just in ti to catch her acceleration.
The birds lost all sense of reason in their tiny brains and rampantly pushed forward in chase.
Zara danced through the environnt gracefully, shifting from side to side and impossibly twisting her path, naturally throwing off the birds and—
BOOOOOOM!
A massive explosion went off behind her, swallowing a good portion of the pursuers.
Her steps led her through the minefield without stepping on a single trap, but the ssenger Birds weren't so lucky.
Because even though they didn't touch the ground themselves, ti was up!
The tiny strand of lightning mana Damien incorporated in the traps snapped, starting a chain of chaotic interactions that led to an even greater explosion of mana!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
With Damien's space mana as a basis for these explosions, every single one twisted the atmosphere and ripped the birds who got caught in them to shreds.
But…
They were remote-activated and heavily disguised.
These kills didn't carry Damien or his group's traces at all!
"Run! This is our chance!"
Damien instantly roared, his voice booming over the explosions.
He dashed forward, angling his body slightly to the right and moving almost 5 kiloters to the east until he found a cave hidden by foliage and naturally disguised in the forest.
He and the girls rushed in, instantly covering its entrance with concealnt formations.
And without hesitation, they combined their power once more to create a greater concealnt formation that could even hide them from boss-level creatures like the Ghost King.
"Haa…haa…haa…"
Heavy breathing was the only sound filling the air. All of them needed to catch their breaths, and more importantly…
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Their bodies collapsed to the ground.
They could barely hold themselves up on their jelly-like legs anymore.
But for now, they were out of trouble.
For now, at least.
Damien shuffled through his spatial storage until he found a large mountain of strange glimring stones, of which he withdrew a chunk and threw on the floor.
"Spirit stones?" Ruyue imdiately remarked in surprise.
"Right, I stole a bunch of them back in the Cloud Plane, but I never found sowhere to use them. Since we have to conserve mana, we might as well use them now to power the formation," Damien replied with a shrug.
"Fair enough," Ruyue nodded, "but they won't last very long."
"Haha, they might not have before, but did you forget? We're only using 2nd class power right now."
"Ah!"
Ruyue nodded in understanding and stopped asking. Since it was taken care of, she could recover without worries.
"Oh, right," Damien suddenly said.
"You should be able to access my spatial storage through the engagent rings I gave you. If you ever need anything, just check in there. It's stuff that's been piling up for over a decade at this point."
The engagent rings he gave them weren't common rings.
In fact, they were rings he crafted himself with a very special functionality.
They let the individuals they were soul-bound to enter the Sanctuary without Damien as a dium.
It was a thod that could be used for self-protection, but also one that allowed him and the girls to et at any ti, regardless of the distance that separated them.
Damien just rembered that accessing his subspace was also a byproduct of this connection.
It would definitely be useful for them in the future to use his resources, especially since he'd hoarded so much in recent years.
'Even on Holy Light Star, Elena ca up with that whole plan to plunder all the treasures and extort the geniuses by auctioning them off at the end, but the Nox didn't let that happen, so all those treasures are just collecting dust in my inventory.'
Damien shrugged it off and focused on recovery as well, conversing with the girls and watching the outside situation to make sure the ssenger Birds didn't find their traces.
Hours passed.
There were several close calls, and the incessant screeching that got more furious with the passing of ti got closer and closer, but in the end, Damien and the girls were able to see light entering through the gaps in the cave's entrance, indicating the coming of dawn.
And the coming of dawn ant—
OOOOOOOOOOOH!
'As I thought.' Damien grinned.
'It's here.'
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