2866 Beguiled
Four hours passed since I stepped inside the forest, and till now, I seemed to be fine; my meta-scan is telling me I am fine, though every second I am fighting the effects of beguiling.
Currently, all of them are being warded off by the defenses of my armor, but there will be a time come when they pass by it.
It is that time I will be in real danger.
I once again shook my head as I went to overestimate my abilities; many Grand Lords have fallen under the beguilement, and I am just a Grand Lord. I am more in danger as it affects the people like me the hardest; those with strength beyond their level.
It seemed like this place hated them or, in better words, challenged than harder than the other people. I am worried about myself and also my friends; they are an exceptional bunch.
I should stop worrying about them and focus on me; they are well capable of passing such challenges, and their powerful inheritance and Bloodline will protect them till they reach the last lead, where the test will happen; passing it means clearing the challenge.
I may be moving slowly, but if I continue at such speed, I will reach the last leg in around two days. I plan to finish this challenge in three days and get out of here the moment I pass through the exit.
A little more than half an hour passed when my soul sense came across another human, a High-Grandmaster moving at a very cautious speed; his defenses also seemed quite strong from what I could tell.
I watched him till it had moved out of the soul sense circle and continued with its journey, getting more and more cautious with the passing of time.
So, it was eight hours, and I had crossed nearly 15% of the distance; currently, I am moving according to the plan. If I kept moving according to plan, I would reach the final leg in two days; I hope I do.
Hun!
A few more minutes passed when I heard something; it was not something; it was the sound of battle. It is quite rare here; I have seen Grimm and humans glaring at each other before they pass each other, avoiding the battle.
They would not have done that in any other place, but this place is dangerous; if they lost the grip on their mind, rather than killing each other, they could beguile, and the consequence of that would be death or worse than that.
The battle was quite a distance away that my soul sense could not go there, so I flew toward it for more than a minute before the battle could the battle with my eyes.
As with their level, their battle easily covers an area of five miles, so, it is better for me to just watch with my eyes. It is not like they could see; these High-Grandmasters do not have those abilities.
Still, these people are quite powerful; both of them are peak High-Grandmasters. I watched the battle for a minute before I flew away. The battle is interesting, but I do not have time. I would have waited if the Grimm had a bloodline, but it did not.
As for humans, she is powerful, no less weak than Grimms; whether she could win against them or not will depend upon her abilities.
Soon, it was twenty hours since I had entered this forest, and I had just killed my fifth Grimm; this one did not have the Bloodline, which is a little disappointing, but when I compare my overall harvest, I had made a killing.
I had killed five Grimm, all of them High-Grandmasters, and of five, three of them had the Bloodline. Now all of the plants in my core, once again, had reached the High-Grandmaster class, including the new guzzler.
It made me a little happy, but only a little.
My level had advanced, and so have my priorities; now the reality is, the resources of High-Grandmaster class won’t cut for me. I could still use them, but they will not have the necessary effect on me; I need Grand Lord class resources.
Getting them is easier said than done; most of them come from ruins or secret realms, even I will need to work hard to get them.
The easiest and quickest way for me to get them is to kill a Grand Lord, but that is an easy thing. First, I will need to find the bastard, and even if I do, killing it would be hard; they are full of tricks, and I would be needed to use my everything for the faintest chance to kill them.
Still, if I am able to accomplish that, the reward would be great; I would be extremely happy, even if I were able to kill a non-bloodline Grand Lord.
It will deal with the great danger of my race, and that is a reward enough for me.
Before I knew it, I found a Grand Lord, the Snakeman, and began fighting it immediately.
It was a strong opponent that I had given everything I had just to fight, and finally, after fighting for hours, I was finally able to pin it down and raised my great sword for one last blow when I suddenly stopped, with my eyes wide.
“Fuck!”
I cursed loudly with the cold sweat appearing all over my body; I immediately began to circulate my soul method faster and begin to reinforce the seals even tighter.
‘The gas from a combination of those flowers passed through the armor and affected your brain and soul,’ informed the clone.
It did not have to tell me; I guessed that much, but still looked at the data and my meta-scan and reinforced a few more things reading the data.
It took less than a second to infiltrate and affect me; I was in the dream for one and a half seconds, which was huge.
Any Grand Lord could finish me off ten times in such time.
After reforming the defenses, I looked at the group of flowers; there are seven flowers, two are a soul in nature, three affect the body, and one is hybrid. They are very powerful but not enough to pass the defenses, which change when faint vapors or smells come from them merge.
The combination of that is so potent that it took less than a second to pass through my defenses and affect me.
Honestly, it scared me shitless; these little flowers affected me, one of the strongest people in the world, but it was still able to pass through my defenses and affect me, and all it took was a second.
I wish I could say it is the last time.
No, this is just the beginning; things are going to get even more dangerous, and I need to be cautious, before if not, then it wouldn’t be long before something stronger affect me, and I wouldn’t be able to get out of its effect in one and half a second.
I looked at the flowers carefully, and a second later, they disappeared; I had not even left behind the roots. They are dangerous, and it would be better if I had them in my core.
After collecting them, I once again checked my defenses before resuming my journey, this time in a much more cautious mind.