Translator: CinderTL
Pixie Tracy hovered in mid-air, unresponsive.
She remained rigid, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at her unrecognizable homeland. Fear and confusion filled her gaze.
Suddenly, her tiny pixie body trembled violently, as if a drowning person had grasped a life raft. A faint, almost imperceptible voice, tinged with barely suppressed excitement, escaped her lips.
"Wait! I... I sense her!"
Tracy's voice was urgent and weak.
"It's the Pixie Queen! Her aura... it's faint, very faint... but it's still there! Deep within the forest, near Startear Lake!"
"Calm down, Tracy."
Roland gently stopped the pixie, who was about to fly off in a panic, with a fingertip. His voice was firm.
"I understand how you feel, but panic won't solve anything, do you understand?"
"I... I understand, Roland."
Tracy sobbed, her voice barely a whisper.
"Can you... can you help me?"
"Of course..."
Roland nodded gently.
Leaving aside the many ways the pixie had helped him along the journey, they had also become quite friendly.
Roland's primary objective for this journey was to find the Pixie Queen, hoping to use her temporal magic to escape this perilous land.
Logically and emotionally, he should offer his assistance.
Moreover...
Roland's gaze swept over the sap still slowly flowing from the roots of the trees.
He already knew the identity of the demonic beast that had ravaged this region.
Though its abilities were tricky, defeating it posed no problem now that he had discovered its weakness.
Thinking this, Roland gently soothed Tracy with a few words.
The pixie nodded vigorously, struggling to suppress her inner panic.
Gathering her spirit, she dimmed her own light and silently navigated through the low-growing luminous shrubs and twisted tree trunks, guiding Roland forward.
As they cautiously ventured deeper, the surrounding sounds grew clearer and more intense, punctuated by a teeth-grinding, acid-corrosion-like sizzle.
"Just ahead..."
Tracy's voice was as thin as a thread, her tiny wings vibrating rapidly as she hovered on Roland's shoulder, pointing toward a clearing surrounded by enormous, withered fungi.
Roland used the faint light cast by a few flickering luminescent fungi to make out the scene in the clearing.
A battle was unfolding, but it was far from an even match.
On one side were countless violently thrashing vines.
They were the same ones he had seen earlier, covered in dark purple mold.
Now, they writhed like dying pythons, erupting from the ancient trees and decaying earth around them, lashing out, coiling, and piercing with frenzied desperation.
But such attacks were utterly ineffective against their opponents.
These were a group of grotesquely distorted demonic beasts.
They resembled amorphous masses of murky dark purple and grayish-green slime, constantly writhing and shifting.
At times, they split open to reveal maws lined with razor-sharp teeth. At others, they bulged with multifaceted eyes that flickered with chaotic light. Then, they would extend tentacles covered in barbs and suckers.
Dark purple ichor spread beneath them like a tide.
Wherever it flowed, moss and plants instantly turned to charred ash, filling the air with a pungent, corrosive stench.
"Void Mayflies..."
Roland confirmed his assessment without a trace of anxiety. He simply raised an eyebrow, recalling his past encounters with these demonic beasts during his travels.
Like the Slaad Toad they had encountered before, Vanessa explained that Void Mayflies originated from the outer planes and were a type of chaos creature.
Their attacks were simple, but their greatest threat lay in their astonishing speed, which belied their appearance, and their deadly corrosive slime.
This slime could corrode anything it touched, and being sprayed by it had dire consequences.
However, if one could avoid the slime and destroy the "eyestalks" at their core, which served as their sensory and command structure, they could be effectively killed.
As Roland analyzed the situation, the Void Mayflies in the clearing had already gained the upper hand.
Tentacles made of slime easily ensnared the wildly thrashing vines, producing a teeth-grinding sizzle as they corroded.
A dark purple corruption rapidly spread along the vines, causing them to wither and become brittle.
Meanwhile, the gaping maw at the core of each Void Mayfly greedily devoured the sap that flowed from the severed vine ends, which shimmered faintly with starlight.
The vines' strikes grew weaker and their range of movement was steadily compressed.
Deeper within the clearing, through gaps in the writhing demonic beasts and dying vines, Roland glimpsed a small body of water.
It was as clear as the purest crystal.
Flickering weakly on the lake's shore, almost completely submerged by the chaotic aura emanating from the demonic beasts, a soft silver light stubbornly persisted.
"Your Majesty the Fairy Queen! It's right by the lake!" Tracy's voice was unusually urgent.
But Roland's composure remained unshaken. His gaze, like a cold blade, swept across the battlefield.
"Twelve. Not too many, all things considered."
He drew his Mithril Longsword, his eyes fixed on a slightly larger Void Mayfly whose body writhed with even more chaotic eyeballs.
Just as it idly scanned its surroundings, still unaware of their hiding place, Roland shouted, "Tracy, take cover!"
With a low growl, he moved.
Without hesitation, the unassuming ring on his left finger flared with a faint glow.
A semi-transparent membrane instantly unfurled before him.
Simultaneously, a surge of scorching energy erupted from within him, like molten lava awakening, coursing through his body along specific meridians at breakneck speed.
The Void Mayfly moved with incredible speed.
Previously, when Roland had fought it, he had only been able to kill it by activating Battle Frenzy and coordinating with Freddy.
But now, things were different.
A stream of cold, pure psionic energy, as if originating from the depths of his soul, suddenly surged into Roland's consciousness and spread throughout his limbs and bones.
Mind Self-Shaping
This psionic energy flowed like an icy river, distinct from the scorching Battle Qi fueled by his breathing technique, yet perfectly harmonizing on a deeper level. It precisely enhanced his neural response and muscle coordination.
Unlike Battle Frenzy, which required sustained combat to stack attributes, this psionic energy-induced amplification was instantaneous.
In that instant, the world seemed to slow down.
The Void Mayfly's movements, previously too swift to track, became crystal clear in Roland's psionically sharpened perception.
"Now!"
Sensing the Void Mayflies' tendency to converge after consuming the vines, Roland left a faint afterimage in place and charged directly at the tentacle poised to spew its sticky mucus.
The sword flashed like lightning.
In the instant the Void Mayfly's chaotic eye, wide with shock, violently contracted, Roland's longsword had already transformed into a deadly silver thread, piercing with unerring precision through the fragile, red-glowing eye stalk at its core.
"Screech!"
A shrill, grating cry, like countless shards of glass grinding together, pierced the air.
The Void Mayfly's massive form stiffened abruptly, then convulsed violently, collapsing inward until it melted away.
The chaotic matter that composed its body, freed from the constraints of its core will, quickly dissolved into a foul-smelling puddle of bubbling sludge.
One strike, one kill.
But this was only the beginning.
Roland's movements never faltered.
Under the influence of Mind Self-Shaping, his senses spread across the battlefield like a spiderweb, and the power of his breathing technique, perfectly coordinated, reached its peak.
He sidestepped!
A faint glow of Shield Spell flickered, deflecting a stream of corrosive mucus spewed by a Void Mayfly from his right.
The acidic liquid grazed the edge of the shield's membrane.
He lunged forward!
His longsword carved a fiery arc through the air, Battle Qi surging as he cleaved through a Void Mayfly attempting to wrap around his ankle.
He spun and swept!
Utilizing the centrifugal force of his spin, Roland's sword sliced through the air with a piercing shriek, cleaving another Void Mayfly in two, along with its gaping mandibles.
The battle erupted in a flash of lightning and concluded even more swiftly.
Roland's figure darted between a dozen Void Mayflies, dodging, weaving, and striking with deadly precision.
Each movement perfectly evaded the trajectory of their sticky mucus, and each strike targeted a vital point—a fragile eye stalk or a critical node connecting a tentacle.
The extraordinary reflexes and coordination granted by Mind Self-Shaping allowed him to effortlessly anticipate the attacks of these speed-oriented demonic beasts, while the explosive power of his breathing technique ensured each blow dealt fatal damage.
In less than half a minute, the last Void Mayfly, its desperate screech echoing through the clearing, was successfully dodged by Roland as it spewed a stream of mucus. He then closed in, his Mithril Longsword striking like a venomous serpent, piercing its core and shattering the writhing mass of chaotic consciousness within.
Only the sizzling remains of rapidly decaying mucus and the limp, drooping guardian vines—their last strength spent after losing their target—remained in the clearing.
The air was thick with the stench of blood and burning flesh.
Roland panted slightly, ceasing his breathing technique.
As the scorching air currents subsided, the icy flow of psionic energy quietly receded, leaving only the exhaustion that follows intense mental concentration.
He glanced down at his ring. The glow of the shield spell had faded and vanished.
"Ro... Roland..."
Tracy's trembling voice called from behind him.
Her tiny form fluttered over and landed on his shoulder, urgently pointing toward Startear Lake.
"The Pixie Queen! Hurry!"
(End of the Chapter)
------------------------------------------------------
- Read ahead up to Ch398 (KNIGHT) on CinderTL; free chapters up to Ch278.
- No sign-up required. Find CinderTL via Google search.
------------------------------------------------------