Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 104: A Sense of Familiarity
“Me? I’m fine for now. This target is truly out of the way.”
Kai casually tossed and caught the communication crystal. The translucent crystal refracted a few shards of light.
He was currently riding his Divine Blood Puppet, traveling through a swamp forest filled with miasma.
The puppet’s limbs were spread apart, its body blocks connected by pitch-black bone. If Myss had been present, he would have discovered that this thing was exactly the same as the one they had encountered in the “Sea of Concepts.”
The Divine Blood Puppet danced with its long, twisted limbs, moving across wet mud, tree roots, and poisonous gas as if walking on flat ground. Kai sat steadily on the puppet’s back with his many bags and luggage, not even the hem of his clothes getting splashed with mud.
Only, the puppet’s face was identical to Kai’s own, creating a rather uncanny scene.
“…But this is fine too. That group of nobles’ ‘Journey to the Old Lands’ is taking place far from here. No one will discover me.”
Kai continued, “Otherwise, even if I took ‘Resolve to Elope,’ I’d still have to personally slog through the swamp.”
A string of muffled sounds came from the communication crystal.
“What, there was a teleportation error during the Journey to the Old Lands? The Karns family? …Mm, if Peyton Karns is involved, it shouldn’t be a big problem.”
“All right, the connection here isn’t great. That’s enough small talk. I’m going to handle proper business, the legendary great ruins, the Celestial Canopy. I still haven’t found any clues.”
After saying this, Kai stuffed the communication crystal into his pocket and heaved a heavy sigh.
If Jocelyn’s Divine Blood Puppet hadn’t been destroyed, and if he hadn’t possibly attracted the attention of that Kendrick, he would never have accepted such a thankless task.
Exploring the Celestial Canopy ruins was, bluntly speaking, purely a matter of luck. There were many uninhabited regions in Mondicia, and the relatively famous ruins had all been explored by nobles. What remained were the most remote and dangerous areas, places where the ruins were hidden the deepest. They could only be slowly searched with one’s own legs and eyes.
The Stargazers Society had never stopped exploring ruins, but unfortunately, their manpower was limited. Nine explorations out of ten yielded nothing. Even if they were lucky enough to find a ruin, it might have long since been damaged and have no research value at all.
Kai rubbed the extinguished communication crystal and prepared to meditate for a while. The Divine Blood Puppet suddenly braked hard, and Kai’s suitcase almost slid off. He hurriedly scrambled to grab it.
“Uh-oh.” After clutching the suitcase tight, he drew in a cold breath toward the ground.
Not far away, a human face was embedded in the ground.
…One of the alchemical monsters left behind from the Night Scourge era, a Human Mushroom.
Despite the name, this thing had absolutely nothing to do with actual humans.
It was a kind of giant fungus. The portions poking out of the ground were connected beneath the soil and belonged to the same main body. The parts aboveground were only the tip of the iceberg, bait used to lure living creatures, especially humans, closer.
Once it sensed magic fluctuations, those faces would grow upward and, within two or three days, grow into a humanoid shape. However, this thing had no intelligence and didn’t understand what real humans looked like, so its “human form” would always have unsettling dislocations that made one’s hair stand on end.
If one were “seen” by a human mushroom, its main body would quietly spread through the wet mud and secretly track the prey.
When the prey stopped walking and closed their eyes to rest, the human mushroom’s main body would burrow out of the mud, drag the sleeping prey into the swamp, and eat them clean, bones and all.
As for what this thing’s main body actually looked like, Kai truly didn’t know and had absolutely no desire to know. To be able to make such a thing, who knew what mental state the people of the Night Scourge era had been in.
That human face stared fixedly at the sky. It hadn’t yet noticed Kai’s existence.
He wasn’t a combatant. Kai touched the goosebumps on his skin and prepared to carefully take a detour.
Just then, that human face suddenly twisted. Its two eyes rolled wildly. One eye twitched madly, while the other locked onto Kai amid its chaotic rolling and stuck firmly to him.
Damn it, who stimulated this thing?
Animals couldn’t cause such a large reaction. There were people nearby!
Kai painfully put away the Divine Blood Puppet. He downed a strengthening potion, picked up two suitcases, and ran with all his strength toward the direction where the trees were sparse.
The human mushroom’s agitation didn’t stop. That face frantically squeezed upward, revealing the unformed, flesh-folded neck beneath it, like a fleshy snake with a human head.
It chased after Kai without regard for anything, opening its mouth to bite at his body.
At the same time, several more human heads popped out from the surrounding bushes, their huge mouths almost splitting their heads in half. The features on those heads hadn’t fully grown. Eyes, noses, ears, and mouths were stacked at random, and muddy water streamed over their faces.
Had the Human Mushroom gone mad?
How badly had it been injured to attack living creatures so desperately like this?
Kai gritted his teeth and pulled a pocket watch from his pocket.
There were no common time markings on the pocket watch’s face. Instead, it was divided into three layers, corresponding respectively to “Strength,” “Number of People,” and “Distance.”
The three hands were trembling as they pointed to “Extreme,” “More than Five People,” and “Within One Kilometer.”
The second hand pointing to “Within One Kilometer” jittered as Kai advanced, on the verge of jumping to “Within Five Hundred Meters.”
Screw it. The other side had most likely already discovered him. With the Human Mushroom watching him, it was still safer to seek refuge with the strong!
Within three hundred meters… within one hundred meters… Kai’s legs almost flung out afterimages. With several heads entangled behind him, he charged toward the point where the conflict had erupted, and then…
The instant he saw the people on the other side, Kai staggered in place and almost got bitten by the head chasing behind him.
The Human Mushroom’s main body had completely arched out of the mud. Beneath countless incomplete and deformed human heads was flesh that surged like slime mold. One spine-like structure after another grew from the soft flesh, like tangled weed roots freshly lifted from mucus.
“Kendrick Karns” dodged in small steps. His movements appeared slow, yet he always avoided the attacks at exactly the right moment.
He stood back-to-back with Myss, the latter’s wrist wrapped with a snake-shaped sleeve arrow. Myss swung his arm nimbly, and black magic arrows cleanly pierced through those heads and one segment of “spine” after another.
The two of them kept their backs pressed together the entire time. Myss didn’t even look around, merely moving along with “Kendrick’s” movements. One of them was responsible for defense, the other for offense. Their movements were even more coordinated than the Human Mushroom’s. They actually seemed more like one body.
Father Kalen’s movements were much simpler.
He truly treated the Human Mushroom as a mushroom. Whenever he caught a head, he pulled it out, and after pulling it out, he threw it far away. In this way, he forcibly tore off a large chunk of the Human Mushroom’s fungal body, which was larger than a house.
The famous “ascetic” Peyton Karns held ritual daggers in both hands, his movements lighter than feathers. He weaved through this chaotic battlefield, and rather than attacking, he seemed to be observing, observing everyone’s reactions while ensuring their minimum level of safety.
…What was wrong with the Stargazers Society’s intelligence? Hadn’t it said the “Journey to the Old Lands” was in the Crimson Marsh? What was going on with this group of Karns?
But now that he had already shown his face, Kai charged into the battlefield in one burst. As expected, in the next instant, all the heads behind him were beheaded by Peyton.
The next second, Kai was lifted by the collar by Peyton and directly dragged away from the center of the battlefield.
“And who might you be?” Peyton asked politely.
Kai glanced at Myss and Salaar, who were busy fighting. He could tell that the two of them were not using their full strength. Right now, both of them had their ears pricked up to eavesdrop, and even the expressions they used while secretly watching were cast from the same mold.
Mondicia was so huge. How could he still run into acquaintances in an uninhabited region? Kai wished he could sigh his lungs out.
“…A Stargazer, Kai,” he said in resignation.
Perhaps Professor Gentry hadn’t exposed him, but those two definitely knew he was a Stargazer. There was no point in hiding it anymore.
As a devout of the God of Cadence, the moment Peyton heard the other party was a Stargazer, his brows instantly furrowed.
But he kept his temper in check. He only pointed in a direction for Kai. “Since you have escaped danger, please leave as soon as possible.”
“Apologies, I cannot. I have already been remembered by the Human Mushroom. I have to confirm that you eliminate it completely… Otherwise, I won’t be able to sleep peacefully tonight.”
Kai bowed politely and stayed where he was.
Peyton was slightly stunned. “You know what this thing is?”
“As everyone knows, the Stargazer Society is obsessed with the Night Scourge knowledge.” Kai rubbed his hands together and reflexively revealed a merchant’s expression. “How about this? Let’s make a deal. I’ll tell you this thing’s habits and weaknesses, and you let me stay until the battle ends.”
A deal with guaranteed profit and no loss. Peyton agreed instinctively.
On the other side.
“How did this guy pop up again?”
Myss muttered toward Salaar behind him. “Hey, Salaar, you actually know what this is too, don’t you?”
“I know, but Peyton has been observing us the whole time. I don’t want to act too suspicious.”
Salaar muttered back quietly. “Who is that person? Judging by your reaction, you seem to know him.”
It was hard to explain in just a few words. He would have to start with that annoying organization, the Stargazers Society.
Myss kicked away a head trying to ambush them from below with a smack, then shot another one apart. Only after a long while did he pick up the topic. “Not important. A bit of a nuisance, but there’s no need to attack him.”
Salaar paused for a few seconds and gave a soft hum. “That’s fine too. This way, we can end the battle naturally.”
Myss actually didn’t mind ending the battle a little later. Beating up monsters was merely a way to pass time. This feeling of being back-to-back with Salaar was more novel. He could feel the rise and fall of every one of Salaar’s breaths, the tension and slide of his muscles, and that balance as firm as a boulder.
It was completely different from the hero cushion he was familiar with, but it also had a relaxing sense of familiarity. So much so that he almost forgot that the one pressed tightly against him wasn’t the Salaar he knew.
But in the end, he still couldn’t forget.
Whether intentionally or not, young Salaar had almost turned his physical body into an extension of Myss’s own. He had completely surrendered the initiative. His movements were precise and standard, without that subtle aggression.
Myss couldn’t help arching his back against Salaar, wanting to squeeze out a little vitality this way. Salaar froze slightly, then tentatively arched back, having completely failed to understand the deeper meaning.
“…You can’t compete with its regeneration. You need to wrap more than half of its body with high-concentration magic and burn it with flames.”
At the same time, Kai quickly explained, “Combining everyone’s magic works too. In any case, it has to be dense enough to form a solid body. It’s best to solve it during the day. This thing’s recovery ability is even stronger at night.”
This was one of the reasons the Human Mushroom was classified by the Stargazers Society as “extremely dangerous.” It didn’t ask for technique or intelligence, only pure strength without any dilution.
Perfect. He could take this opportunity to properly observe those two deeply mysterious guys.
Rumble.
Before Kai’s thoughts finished turning, pale blue magic spread out.
Peyton Karns, who hadn’t had a strong presence just now, suddenly radiated an oppressive aura that made one’s heart shudder. Pale blue magic climbed along the Human Mushroom’s yellow-white main body like a thick, pure layer of ice.
That magic made a chill rise from one’s internal organs, trembling faintly without end.
Myss couldn’t help looking at Peyton a few more times. He didn’t know whether it was his imagination, but he always felt Peyton’s magic had an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Peyton’s complexion was somewhat pale. But he straightened his back and stood in place, murmuring something under his breath.
The next moment, those pale blue “ice layers” actually ignited with blue-white flames. The Human Mushroom’s heads that hadn’t yet been severed shook wildly, releasing strange sounds that didn’t resemble human voices.
Its viscous body rapidly dried out under the wrapping of high-concentration magic, like a slug sprinkled with salt. Once the magic flames burned, the dried flesh immediately cracked apart and turned into flying ash. Only those spinal structures hadn’t fully burned away, rolling messily into the sludge.
“…Thank you for your information.”
The Human Mushroom completely stopped moving. Peyton put away the ritual daggers in his hands and nodded toward the Kai who was standing there with his mouth agape.
His breathing was slightly hurried, yet his gaze remained calm as ever, as if he had merely tossed a few scraps into a wastebasket.
Never mind Kai being surprised, even Myss’s brows flew high.
Leaving aside that sense of familiarity, Peyton had hidden his strength even better than Father Kalen. Before that burst just now, Myss had actually failed to estimate Peyton’s magic level.
“Mr. Peyton Karns, I have a new proposal.”
Kai raised his hand again. “I’m guessing everyone was swept into a teleportation error. I can provide a communication crystal. In exchange, I would like to ask for your help with something.”
Peyton shook his head. “We have our own matters to attend to.”
“Even if I am willing to provide a clue to a large-scale ruin from the Night Scourge era?”
The author has something to say:
Here we go!
There are so many people in the party this time. (?
But the groundhog isn’t important, so he doesn’t count. [doge]
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