“Gale!” shouted all three Allos in unison. The three whirlwinds combined with each other, forming a vicious tornado that ripped through the swamp. Mud flew up and into the air; moments later, as the tornado spread, the deathadders joined it. They flew above us, spinning in the whirlwind.
‹Nice, Allo!› I could use this opportunity to rescue Treant! I landed in the swamp with a splash, then grabbed the smaller Treant with my paws and took off into the air again. ‹You too, Treant! You did some serious damage!›
The deathadders’ defense and max HP stats weren’t that high. Treant could nearly kill one of them with a single Meteor Stomp. This was the perfect way to level it up.
‹A-and then I can finally evolve, right…?›
‹Well…I don’t know if you’ll evolve just yet, but you’ll get some levels for sure!›
It was hard to gain a bunch of levels when you got close to max. I doubted that Treant—who struggled to level up even when it was in its mid-level range—would be able to make it all the way to evolution right here and now. We couldn’t afford to get our hopes up.
‹Oh, I see… When I evolve, do you think I’ll be even more powerful than Miss Atlach-Nacha and Miss Allo?› Treant asked.
‹Is…is that what you’re aiming for? That seems a little ambitious…› Hmm. I wasn’t sure. Both Atlach-Nacha and Allo had their specific strengths. Atlach-Nacha got to rank A pretty easily, while Allo had reached A+ by using her impressive hunting skills. Treant always seemed to be slightly behind the two of them.
I glanced at my back. Allo glared at Treant with narrowed eyes.
‹So…where is the one I seriously injured? I want to take it down before it heals itself. It seems like the one who kills it gets the most experience points.› Treant twisted its body around, searching the swamp for its prey. In the last fight, with the kesaran pasarans, Treant had used Heat Beam to kill the kesaran pasaran that Allo weakened. It seemed like Treant had gotten a taste for that strategy.
“Oh…” Allo breathed, looking contrite.
‹What is it, All—oh.›
I realized at the same moment Treant did. The deathadder Treant weakened was already dead, caught in Allo’s triple Gale. Just its snout floated gently on the swamp’s surface, but it was clearly dead.
“S-sorry, Treant…we didn’t do it on purpose, we swear!” one of the Allos piped up.
“Y-yeah!” said a second one. “We weren’t aiming for that one! But it’s hard to control Gale from a distance, so…”
Then the third spoke up. “Uhm…was it bad to attack it? I thought it would be better to take it down…”
The other two Allos looked at the third with wide eyes. Then they grabbed the offending Allo and shoved her into the original, main Allo with a flash of black light.
Are the clones made with Dark Kaleidoscope capable of thinking and behaving differently from the original?
“We’re so sorry about that, Treant!” the other two Allos apologized profusely.
‹Ah, Master! Again! Drop me again! I’ll kill one in one shot this time!›
All right, all right… No need to be in such a rush.
Part 2
AFTER THAT, Treant’s deathadder farming went surprisingly well. I flew high in the sky, and then Treant jumped off me, deactivated Tree Spirit Transformation, and dropped on the deathadders with Meteor Stomp. After that, I flew back down and retrieved Treant from the muck with the help of Allo’s Gale and my own Dimension Claws. Using this method, we succeeded in killing a total of three deathadders.
I rescued Treant from the swamp again and escaped into the sky. The maneuver had felt risky at first, but now it was more familiar. With Allo’s help, I had no trouble keeping the deathadders at bay and retrieving Treant without a hitch.
‹I…I’m not sure I can do it this time…› Treant said, clinging to the tip of my claws and shaking like a leaf.
Oh…is it scared? I guess I don’t blame it. As I collected Treant, I checked its level. It had gone from Lv: 71/85 to Lv: 78/85. Whoa! It went up seven whole levels?! Deathadders were rank A−, which was just above Treant’s B+. Between that and the doubled experience from Demon King’s Blessing, Treant could reach max level in no time at all! And there were still plenty of deathadders lurking in the swamp.
‹Treant! You went up seven levels!›
‹R-really, Master?! Okay, then go ahead! Drop me!› Treant flapped its wings happily.
‹You got it! Go, Treant!› I gently tossed Treant back into the air. It deactivated its Tree Spirit Transformation in the air and careened toward the swamp with Meteor Stomp. I dropped down right after it and stopped the deathadders’ movement with Gravity—by now the deathadders knew the drill. If I just dropped Treant, they’d figure out how to avoid it soon, if they hadn’t already.
Treant slammed down on deathadder with another direct hit. Blood and guts splattered out of the deathadder’s mouth to rest on the swamps surface. A swarm of deathadders surrounded Treant, looking for a free meal, but Allo blew them away with Gale.
‹All right! At this rate, you’ll level up again in no time!›
I dropped to the edge of the swamp and managed to swipe Treant up with the very ends of my claws. At that moment, the swamp seemed to rise around Treant, and multiple columns of muck rose into the air. They began to wriggle, then attached to my hind legs. I shook my legs to break them off, but they just kept coming from the swamp, one after another.
Wh-what the heck?! What was going on?! Were the deathadders using Clay?! No, even if they were, there were too many of them…
Then, a swarm of deathadder heads all rose up from the depths around us. There must’ve been nearly twenty of them. There were that many rank A− monsters hiding just below us?!
It seemed like while I was busy dropping Treant from the sky, they’d all been gathering beneath us, hiding their presences.
All of our new opponents stared at me with their three wide snake eyes, faces filled with rage. Even under the influence of Mad God, they seemed to have some ability to think left—enough, at least, to identify a threat to their nest.
I’d underestimated these guys. Of course they’d come after us if they noticed us slowly killing off one nestling at a time. But if we hadn’t, we’d never get Treant leveled up. Our Meteor Stomp strategy was the safest way for Treant to take out superior opponents.
‹We gotta get into the air right now…!› The deathadders all opened their mouths in unison. Purple flames appeared between their fangs; moments later, flaming purple orbs shot at us from every direction.
That had to be their Cursed Fireball skill. I used Illusion to create a decoy of myself, then leapt to the side. One of the orbs hit me in the leg, but it was nothing compared to the damage I’d take if I stayed. The deathadders, now locked on to my Illusion, fired another round of Cursed Fireballs at it.
Okay, we’re out of the thick of it for now. Despite the initial shock, I was glad the twenty deathadders had showed themselves. By using our own skills, Allo and I had managed to avoid them anticipating Treant’s Meteor Stomp. Now we just had to use Treant’s crazy combo to kill as many of them as we could.
I took to the sky once more to toss Treant again, and that was when it happened: Something shimmered on the swamp’s surface. As soon as I noticed it, something broke through the surface and shot toward me, much faster than the deathadders’ orbs.
I reacted late; there was no indication anything was amiss until the moment it flew toward me, and my focus was trained on the deathadders. The figure coming at me was humanoid, but reddish-purple, and far longer than any human being. Its eyes glowed an icy blue, and slippery, sticky mucus covered its entire body. It had no arms; it was just a torso that stretched all the way into the depths of the swamp.
The newcomer opened its mouth and sank its fangs straight into my flesh. The moment it did, I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me.
It broke through my Poison Resistance…?
“Gaaagh!” I swatted at it with the paw I wasn’t using to hold Treant, but it wriggled its body in midair and quickly spun around to come at me from behind. I jumped back and threw out my paw to stop it. The newcomer ricocheted off my claws and splashed back into the swamp even faster than it’d come out of it.
Wh…what the heck was that…?
Whatever it was, it was clearly much stronger than the deathadders. I just couldn’t get over that bizarre shape…
“M-Master Dragon? What was that…?” Allo asked me, voice shaking in fear.
‹No clue… S-some kind of snake, maybe? But watch out, it might come for you next time.› I scraped out the infected flesh on my chest and healed myself with Regenerate. The corroded flesh around the bite reformed and healed over. It was a good thing I was strong enough to handle the damage and effects of its venom, but still… It had a nasty bite, that was for sure.
‹My guess is that it’s the ruler of this swamp,› I said to the others with Telepathy. ‹It must be controlling the deathadders; that’s why they suddenly pulled off a coordinated attack.›
It was way too dangerous to throw Treant back into the swamp with that guy around. Thank goodness it’d gone after me instead of the other two. If it had showed up even a little sooner, Treant would be toast.
‹A-are we…going to retreat now…?› Treant said, looking up at me anxiously. It seemed torn; on one hand, things were getting dicey. On the other, if it didn’t evolve now, it probably wouldn’t get another chance for a while.
I shook my head. ‹We’re on a tight schedule here, which means we need to take some risks. I wish there was a completely safe way to evolve you here, but in a place like this Ngai Forest, that’s a lot easier said than done.›