Chapter 91: The Terrifying Flower Spirit

At the heart of the jungle stood the ruins of a wizard tower, a jagged heap of steep black stone and shattered masonry.

The tower, once seven stories high, now remained only in its lowest three layers. The collapsed bricks and stones had buried every entrance, and dense, rampant vines and flowering boughs had climbed over the ruins until the whole place was cloaked in green.

Even so, faint wisps of pale green mist still seeped from the rubble, and the enchanted flora here seemed far more robust and aggressive than those outside.

Thud. Thud. Thud...

Heavy footsteps rolled in from the far end of the street. As a monstrous crocodilian beast advanced, the green vines draped over the ruined roads and houses steadily shrank back, revealing traces of the human life that had once existed here.

With the crashing roar of collapsing walls and houses, an even thicker stone python came grinding forward, crushing the remnants of the buildings beneath its body as it moved. Upon its hide were unmistakable scars: corrosion from green acid, scorch marks from lightning, cuts from wind blades, and blackened traces of fire. Every mark told the tale of how perilous and brutal the five-mile jungle route had been.

If not for the Chip, which had mastered the basic knowledge of constructing puppet creatures and added a tempering sorcerous array to the crystal core of the earth-element magical golem, condensing loose earth into hard, dense stone, the crocodilian hunters could never have carved out a path of blood and fire to reach the core of this wizard tower ruin.

Behind them, from deep in the jungle, the howls of magical beasts still rose without end. Yet strangely, as if terrified by the stone python, they dared not set foot within the core area of the ruin.

Glim frowned, a cloud darkening his handsome face.

Those magical beasts were fearless and ruthless. They would never allow outsiders to destroy the source of magical energy that granted them such power. So the reason they did not pursue was clearly not fear of his group, but something else...

He looked up at the ruin, layered over with thick masses of enchanted plants, and his heart gave a sudden jolt.

Could there be a far stronger magical beast inside, one that kept the outer ones too fearful to enter its territory? It was only a guess, but somehow Glim felt it was the most reasonable answer.

Seeing the wisps of pale green smoke, Glim gradually understood.

It seemed the damaged wizard tower still had part of its elemental reservoir functioning, though not completely. Even after so many years, it was still stubbornly at work. Unfortunately, the elemental energy it gathered could no longer be properly stored, and so it had dispersed into this space, bringing about such a vast mutation.

"Go. Dig that place open for me."

At Glim's command, the stone python swayed its thick body and lunged straight toward the crumbling tower.

With a sharp blast, a green light arrow tore through the air and struck hard between the stone python's eyes. The burst of green energy instantly corroded a pit the size of a fist into its forehead. The python let out a savage hiss and quickly withdrew, coiling into a defensive ring on the spot.

Glim's heart tightened. Following the faint green afterglow left hanging in the air by the arrow, he quickly found the attacker.

It was a beautiful female with transparent light wings growing from her back. Her figure was supple and graceful, her short hair a deep green, her face delicate, her eyes a bright jade color. She was naked, with only vivid rose branches and green vines crawling over a few key parts of her body, barely concealing the tantalizing sight.

She floated above the collapsed wizard tower, gripping a magic bow covered in strange patterns, glaring at him with open fury.

Glim swallowed hard.

In his elemental vision, the dense green aura blazed so fiercely it was almost blinding. If he had not quickly lowered the intensity of the visual feedback, he would never have been able to look directly at such a beautiful, such a terrifying, and such a powerful magical beast.

"Chip, can you scan this species' origin and power level?"

"Beep. Collecting energy signatures..."

"Information gathered as follows:"

"Magical beast origin: flower spirit 70 percent, fairy spirit 17 percent, forest sprite 9 percent..."

"Power level: sorcerer grade."

"Elemental alignment: plant."

"Artifact scan: green magic bow. Can unleash elemental light arrows with 30 to 40 points of power. Attack type: single target. Can also unleash elemental light rain with 8 to 10 points of power. Attack type: area attack, 30 to 50 meters."

"Artifact scan: rose blossom armor. Seven mysterious branches have grown upon it. Each can withstand 60 points of physical damage and 40 points of elemental damage. Only when damage exceeds a branch's limit will that branch shatter and vanish. Only after all branches have disappeared will external attacks be borne by the magical beast's body itself. Additional note: after a branch shatters, one will naturally regenerate every five minutes. Additional note: fire particles and negative energy deal double damage to the target."

Hiss...

As a stream of data flooded into Glim's mind, he could not help drawing in a sharp breath.

Too terrifying. This was actually a powerful magical beast whose strength had reached sorcerer grade. And from the force of her presence, she was likely one of the most formidable among magical beasts.

Especially upon seeing the weapon in her hand, capable of such devastating area attacks, Glim's mind churned and his heart began to waver.

Unlike the artifacts crafted by sorcerer apprentices, these artifacts that grew alongside magical beasts were the truly fearsome weapons. Sorcerer apprentices, when forging their artifacts, were constrained by shortages of materials and resources; they could never fully choose items that perfectly matched their innate talents, so the artifacts they made were limited in power and lacked any capacity for growth.

The artifacts found on magical beasts, however, were mostly formed by fusing parts of their own bodies with rare resources. Not only were they immensely powerful, they could also continue to grow as their owners grew stronger.

Compared side by side, their superiority was obvious at a glance.

Just as Glim hesitated, the powerful flower spirit suspended in midair suddenly spoke.

"Heh heh heh... I never expected that after so long, there would still be a sorcerer apprentice foolish enough to come here and die! Little one, did your mentor never tell you there are places you must not barge into? But even if you regret it now, it's too late. Offer up your flesh and soul obediently. It has been a long time since I last tasted the sweetness of human flesh... Heh heh heh..."

As it spoke, the flower spirit bared a mouth full of serrated fangs, fully exposing the terrifying nature of a magical beast.

Damn it. A beautiful female exterior, yet with the rough, wild voice of a man. In an instant, the last trace of good will Glim had toward it vanished into thin air.

Before Glim could even exchange a few words with it, the androgynous flower spirit drew back the bowstring with its right hand, and the surrounding mountain forest's threads of green plant energy swiftly converged upon the string. The next second, a storm of hundreds upon hundreds of emerald elemental arrows came surging down like a violent downpour.

Glim's flame shield, along with the mud armor on the crocodilian beast's body, barely lasted three seconds before dissipating into nothing. If the stone python had not lunged in at full force and used its massive body to shield Glim, that single strike would have turned him into a sieve under the green rain of light.

Even so, one of the light arrows still pierced Glim's shoulder clean through. In the wound, as thick as a finger, faint green energy clung stubbornly and sizzled as it corroded his flesh, sending sweat pouring from his brow.

Glim endured the agony and drove a stream of searing, dreadful flame from the tip of his finger straight into the wound. The dense, powerful fire element quickly neutralized the lingering green energy, and only then did Glim grit his teeth and pour bottle after bottle of sorcerous medicine and ointment into the injury.

The dizziness from blood loss, the weakness brought by the corrosive green energy, the stabbing pain of self-ignition, and the itching numbness from flesh regrowing under the stimulus of magical medicine... all these strange sensations tangled together and surged through Glim's mind.

No longer daring to hide his trump cards, Glim frantically threw out the remaining two elemental crystals. With a terrifying shock that shook the earth, two new stone pythons burst up from the ground.

Glim's mental power now stood at 11.19, and with the plus one enhancement from the noble circlet, it could reach 12. Summoning one stone python required three points, and summoning a crocodilian hunter required two. With his current mental strength, he could barely sustain it.

Thus, the crocodilian hunter carried Glim as it slowly retreated, while three giant stone pythons charged madly at the terrifying flower spirit, engaging it in battle with their overwhelming bodies and brute force.

Heaven and earth seemed to split, and the ground itself trembled.

That was always how stone python combat was: ferocious and savage.

Their reckless attacks also caused the remaining city ruins to collapse and shatter at an even faster rate.

Yet even so, the three powerful stone python puppets could not conceal the terror of the flower spirit. Whether it was the precise single-target light-arrow shots or the sweeping volleys of arrows, each attack inflicted visible and horrifying damage upon the stone pythons' bodies.

And that flower spirit was clearly an agile type of magical beast. It flapped its wings and moved swiftly between the three stone pythons, and no matter how they snapped, rammed, or lunged, they could hardly touch it at all. Only the wide-area spray of sand and stone had any real chance of inflicting serious damage.

But as the flower spirit's rose branches bloomed again and again across its body, clusters of verdant green shields kept materializing to block every physical and energy attack.

Its close combat ability was no less formidable. Its slender hands, sheathed in a halo of green light, could smash and tear through the stone pythons' hard rock armor with a punch or a palm strike as easily as if those rocks were made of tofu.

And so, under such lopsided suppression, the three stone pythons were soon battered and bloodied, their bodies riddled with holes.