Chapter 271: The Heroes Approach
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Rivers of gooey black ooze filled a large forest, as purple-colored mist filled the place with poisonous gases, most of the wildlife here had perished already, and the trees were coated in this black ooze, mutating into monstrous creatures.
The trees grew larger and taller, as their wood turned completely black and red, gaining many eyes and giant hooves which they used to walk with their roots. The upper branches of these monstrous trees held fruits which were also giant eyes, and each branch could move like tentacles.
However, a radiant slash of pure light and fire emerged from the skies, falling over one of such trees.
"Radiant Slash!"
FLASH!
The radiant slash of light and fire burned through the large, ten-meter-tall, mutated tree monster, as its remains quickly turned into ashes.
"Guuuooooonnn…!"
The beast turned into ashes as it dropped a large, purple-colored crystal, a Mana Core of Rank 4.
A young and radiant young man wearing yellow-gold armor stood over the miasma of the forest, his entire aura emanating a burning light that turned such deadly essence into ashes.
"Gruuuooooooonnn!"
Another giant tree rushed towards the man, as he braced himself and raised his Magic Sword, which was engraved with many magic runes and circles, letting him easily release slashes of sunlight.
Moving it incredibly fast, the man slashed the large tree with a strong and swift horizontal slash, as a radiant wave of blazing sunlight hit the giant tree, burning it entirely!
"Grroooaarr…!"
The man glanced around, as he found that there were no more beasts, and sighed in relief.
A young girl with short blonde hair and emerald eyes ran towards him with a concerned expression.
"Lanceeee! Are you okay?"
The young man was no one else than Lance, the Hero of Iridescent Sunlight, who represented the humans within Terra.
The young woman began to heal the man with her staff, covering him with bright yellow light.
"I am fine, Dranya, you don't need to heal me all the time…" sighed Lance, petting her.
"A-Ah! I-I was just worried about you!" she said.
"Huff… Why did you run so fast here? There were only two monsters, Lance. As your shield, it really makes me look pathetic when I cannot even protect your back," sighed a muscular man that appeared near Lance, with short brown hair and sharp aquamarine eyes, holding a large shield and a mace, he was the self-proclaimed "Hero's Shield" and Lance's childhood friend, Lacust.
"Haha, maybe I was a bit too rash? Though we are doing clean-up work, it is the least we could do… Seeing how Mizginneth does everything… I wanted to help even if a little bit more," sighed Lance.
"Sheesh! I don't understand you sometimes…" sighed Dranya.
"Well, let's get going, everyone should be waiting for us outside the forest, Reuberto-sama too. Now that we got rid of this Horror Spawn Nest we have to continue our journey, in a day or two we'll finally reach Westwind and we can finally meet with our final member," said Lacust.
"You're right, I am excited to see him. I am quite interested in how a human became the Hero of Beast-kin," said Lance, as the three walked out of the forest, seemingly immune to the poisonous gases spread all around, which was one of the effects of the enhancements over their bodies produced by their various magic artifacts.
When they reached the outside of the forest, a giant tree-like beast greeted their sight. Or well, its carcass, as most of its body was chopped off and its multiple eyes were bleeding, alongside its large tongue which was sticking out of its large and grotesque maw… this creature was an Abyssal Horror, an entity created by the Miasma Sea within the depths of Terra, who had come here through this forest, which had opened a large hole into the depths of the world.
This entity had the equivalent power to a Rank 5 Initial Stage Magus but was already defeated after a few minutes of the Hero's party reaching this place.
Although the other heroes helped a bit, most of the work was done by the Rank 6 Heroine of Demons, Mizginneth, the Heroine of Starlight Darkness.
Her beautiful and mysterious figure greeted Lance and his friends as she seemed expressionless as ever, her skin was black as charcoal, and her eyes shined brightly with crimson light, tired yet filled with wisdom. She had two small black horns growing at each side of her head but wore a large dress and a hood that covered most of her body and face anyways. Although she couldn't hide such beautiful hips.
Around her was the rest of the Heroes, alongside a mischievous black-cat-kin man, Reuberto, who wore his priest clothes rather proudly, and was the bishop that guided the Heroes through Terra, detecting where Abyssal Horrors would emerge through his special artifact that detected Miasma influx all across the world, an artifact of the Ancient Era made by an Ancient Sage.
"Ah! There he is… Hey, you idiot, don't go running away like that or you'll get killed! And we won't be held responsible for the death of an idiot!" said a cheeky young elven girl with blonde twin tails and emerald eyes, she was small and thin, yet had a pierce type of magic that could summon a tempest within seconds, she was Sylphid and represented the Elves, the Heroine of Storming Oceans.
"Now that you are back I guess we are done here, let's advance, in these perilous times the thing we have the less is time," said Grudgrug, representing the Dwarves, he was the Hero of Blazing Hammerstone, a prideful man who was dedicated to his family. His appearance was like that of any typical dwarf of fantasy stories, although he only had a small beard due to being quite young, his skin was reddish, almost tanned by being in the forge since he was a child, his hair was brown and he had sharp brown eyes, carrying a large hammer that no one else could carry except him.
"I agree, let's get going," said Reuberto, as he called upon a large flying beast resembling an enormous, winged lion with charcoal black fur, a Shadow Winged Lion, a Rank 3 Monster that Reuberto tamed.
Over its large back, everyone jumped in and flew into the skies, as they had been doing for a while.
The heroes had been battling any being that came from the underground since they gathered and started to journey through the continent, in these last months everyone had grown exponentially stronger, but compared to the menace that was the Demon King, they needed to grow even stronger.
Even a single second was precious, as they were doing a race against time to grow strong enough to defeat such a beast that would cause an apocalypse in Terra, one such way was to defeat the Abyssal Horrors and then use their strong Mana Cores to craft special potions made by the recipes that Reuberto has gathered over the generations by the secret organization he worked for.
Such potions steadily increased the cultivation of the Heroes as long as they gathered enough resources, but the journey has been perilous and filled with dangers at every corner.
Hoping to soon meet with Frank, although still quite far away from Westwind, Reuberto suddenly detects something within the crystal ball-like artifact he had, which detected large concentrations of miasma emerging around the world.
Suddenly, the artifact began to alert Reuberto about an area where a new Abyssal Horror would emerge…
"Oh? Another one so soon? Hmm… Eh?! No…!"
Reuberto was startled as the artifact suddenly showed more than one red-colored circle, in fact, they were increasing over time…
"Two… three… four… five…! It stopped at five! What?! Does this means that… Five Chaos Generals (Abyssal Horrors) will emerge?! And right around Westwind's capital!" he said, as the other Heroes were surprised.
"Five?! Are you joking with us, black cat? Because that joke is not very funny!" said Sylphid.
"It can't... be… Five?! Reuberto, are you sure?!" asked Lance.
"This is bad…" said Grudgug.
"So they are raising fast… The Chaos Child will soon emerge…" said Mizginneth.
"I am, this artifact was made by an Ancient Sage, it never fails!" said Reuberto.
"Then we need to hurry…!" said Lance.
"Even if we got at max speed, we would take a long time…" sighed Reuberto. The masses of miasma seemed that would emerge in two weeks from now, but Reuberto estimated it would take them more than that to reach Westwind.
"Let me assist you… Although your beast might be quite exhausted after this…" said Mizginneth, as she touched the lion and a sudden burst of shadow mana filled it with power.
"ROAR!"
The lion roared, as its wings grew larger and began to fly even faster, like a ray of darkness through the sky.
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