The path towards the giant tree was a long one and it was filled with all sorts of annoying plants that the party had to be wary of. Not only were the apes constantly attacking them with their seemingly endless numbers, but there were also many plants that would attack as well.
Huge man-eating flowers would suddenly spring alive after someone came close to them and try to devour a person whole, there were other smaller flowers that would produce toxins that they would shoot out in the atmosphere in order to poison and kill anyone nearby. Flesh-eating plants that used vines to attack their prey would launch sneak attacks on the party each time they walked past them.
The vines were as thick as a normal person's arm and they would bind a person before trying the squeeze them dead, similarly to how a snake would. All of those plants, although not fatally dangerous to Reign and the others were still incredibly annoying to deal with, sometimes they wouldn't even be able to find the plant that was using the flesh-eating vines to attack them and would need to spend some time in order to search for it as Reign's mana sensing was useless when it came to the plants for some reason.
The apes would sometimes launch an attack at the same time the plants did, luckily for Reign and the others, the plants and apes were not allies and would fight against each other as well. The situation would turn chaotic during that time but since the party didn't need to fight two different groups of enemies that were attacking them together they would simply back off a bit and let them fight against each other before bombarding them from long range.
Everywhere the party passed through would turn into carnage, a trail of destruction followed after them as nothing was left intact each time they fought. Previously they thought that there would be about 200 apes in the park but after seeing the huge jungle and fighting so many groups they understood that they grossly underestimated their numbers. There could be upwards of 1 000 apes in the jungle and even they would have a hard time if they were to be attacked by all of them at the same time, not to mention that there was still the giant ape they had to deal with.
The attacks from the apes became more and more frequent as not only did more elites appear but some variants and even mini-bosses as well. Even though none of the apes were really that experienced in battles they were still difficult to deal with as their sheer strength was still something the party had to be on the lookout for.
Previously they had fought against groups that had tens of normal apes in their ranks, but as more powerful variants appeared the harder the battles became. The mini-bosses especially were a tough cookie to crack, there were some that were simply huge and could tank a great deal of damage while there were others that were even smaller compared to the normal apes but were many times faster.
Even after going through so many battles and being more than halfway to the giant tree the party had still not gained any exp or items. Since the system didn't give them any notifications then that meant that the whole jungle was considered a special area and in order to finish it they either needed to kill the leader of the apes or completely clear the area.
The thought of needing to comb through the whole jungle in order to find all of the apes and kill them was a horrifying one as that could take days. Not only was the jungle huge but the apes wouldn't stay in the same place and the party would probably have to split up and search the whole jungle multiple times before managing to find and kill all of the apes.
Time and time again the apes attacked, only to be completely decimated by the party, of course, it wasn't all for naught as Reign and the others were forced to use their mana in order to kill the apes, if things continued this way then it might become dangerous later on when they face the giant ape. If they spend too much mana then they might not be able to go all out against the monster, but if they conserved mana too much then they would use up too much stamina in its place.
Thankfully they did buy a lot of potions previously and they were planning on using them during the fight, there were even a couple of mana potions that would quickly restore their mana without any side effects. It seemed that the mana potions were made using the mana crystals as the main ingredient and they quickly negotiated with the vendors to see if they could trade the crystals for the potions.
The conversion rate was 14 crystals for one potion, even though the party had hundreds of mana crystals in their inventory they were not willing to trade so many of them as 14 crystals would replenish a lot more mana compared to one potion. After talking with the elves however they were elated to find that their alchemists could produce the potions themselves. Of course, the crystals were just one of the ingredients, and more would be needed in order to produce the potions, still, after hearing that only 5 crystals were needed in order to make a potion Reign and the others decided to go for it.
They posted multiple missions in the Adventurers Guild in order to get the players involved and find the other materials needed for the production of the mana potions. Some of those missions would even reward the players with mana potions and currently, they were incredibly popular. Money and items were great rewards, but a mana potion could potentially save lives as almost all of the players had exhausted their mana at one point and struggled to survive against the monsters.
Different herbs, monster parts, and even some minerals would be needed in order to create the mana potion. The herbs and monster parts were the most important ingredients as the alchemists only needed a few minerals. They would simply scrape off a small part of them and put the dust in the potion, thanks to that the players could completely focus on finding the plants and killing the monsters in order to fulfill their mission.
Right now Reign and the others had 3 potions for each of them, one potion wouldn't completely replenish their mana, about 60% would be replenished with each, while Reign would only get 30% as his mana reserve was bigger.
The party was soon surprised after seeing a new ape approaching them with a group. Just based on the mana it was giving off, the ape was more powerful compared to the mini-bosses and was probably a boss-ranked monster. The party constricted their eyes as they didn't expect something like this. The giant ape was much more powerful compared to normal bosses and could probably kill about 10 of them by himself, that much was true. But they didn't expect that it would even have bosses serving under it as well.
The powerful ape boss charged at them ferociously, all of the branches in its way were destroyed and even the trees would shake each time it swung from them. The powerful 8-meter-tall boss appeared in front of the group before the other apes and immediately started attacking them. Its giant arms would create holes on the ground with each attack while his powerful mouth could bite through the tough trees and rip off a part of them with ease.
Reign and the others immediately started their counterattack, Beast and Laura fell back as Beast summoned his pets immediately. There were apes behind them as well and they needed the beasts in order to use their long-range attacks effectively. The normal apes were easy to deal with and after a mere 2 minutes, almost all of them were killed during the fierce battle that was taking place.
Beast's beasts were currently locked in battle with the elites and variants while Tank and Greenie were fighting against 3 mini-bosses. Thanks to Tank's powerful defense he was able to block the attacks of two of the mini-bosses while Greenie was dealing with the third one. Occasionally he would get help from Beast and Laura as the two would attack the mini-bosses before switching their focus to the boss who was currently being dealt with by Reign, Wolf, and Shadow.
The variants and elites who were currently without an opponent tried to interfere in the battles only to get seriously injured in a matter of seconds. The boss was quite simple when it came to its attack pattern, it was just like the rest of the apes and simply used its fearsome strength to smash everything in front of it while tanking attacks with its though fur.
That kind of tactic, of course, would never work against the party and after about 10 minutes of fighting fiercely, the boss was down on his knees. One of its arms was almost fully cut off while an eye was gouged out by Shadow's daggers. Burns and deep cuts could be seen on its body as it hatefully stared at Reign and the others before falling down to the ground and dying.
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