Chapter 0101: A Powerful Enemy Approaches

In just the span of half a cup of tea, the Lightning Giant had suffered unprecedented torment.

Though its strength was enough to overpower the mightiest among Quasi-Witches, its weaknesses were just as conspicuous as its strengths. Its overall defenses were decidedly frail!

The wind vortex swirling around its body could deflect enemy attacks with powerful currents of air, while the lightning shield and golden armor protecting its frame could effectively dampen the force of incoming blows. With these three layers of magical protection in place, the Lightning Giant could attack its foes with confidence, shifting away in a flash before any counterattack landed.

With its lightning leaps, there were few enemies who could keep pace with it.

But when Glim ordered it to block the enemy head-on—and against a Flower Spirit whose overall strength surpassed its own—the consequences of its frail core defenses and lack of a solidified body became painfully apparent one by one. In just half a cup of tea's time, its magical shielding had been shattered seven times in succession, and its towering, imposing cloud-like form had been torn apart in numerous places by the Flower Spirit.

Had Glim not dispatched the Rock Python to reinforce it in time, the Lightning Giant would have been forced to shed parts of its body to protect the two most crucial crystal cores within its being.

But after all, the humanoid Flower Spirit was a Witch-tier monster. Every casual gesture it made—whether a witchcraft assault or a physical strike—inflicted unspeakably horrific damage upon both the Rock Python and the Lightning Giant. The Rock Python was wrapped in a thick, dense layer of underground sedimentary rock, and against a Quasi-Witch-tier opponent, as long as the enemy didn't manage to strike the same spot on its serpentine body repeatedly, it could rest easy knowing its rocky frame wouldn't be breached.

Yet when it faced a Witch-tier Flower Spirit, this rocky body—never tempered nor fortified by witchcraft—proved far too fragile. Under the relentless rain of emerald arrows of light, the Rock Python's entire body seemed to be soaked in a vat of concentrated strong acid, its surface corroded and eaten away into a thousand gaping wounds. In many places, bereft of earth-elemental constraint, the rock along its serpentine frame began to crumble away layer by layer.

The serpent's body had been whittled down by no fewer than three times its original girth.

Since the fury of the light-arrow barrage exceeded the Rock Python's ability to regenerate, its dissolution and collapse were merely a matter of time.

Yet in this battle, the Rock Python was hardly the main combatant. It was only responsible for supporting and coordinating the Lightning Giant's attacks and defenses, so merely enduring the battle's residual shockwaves from the two titans had brought it to the brink of collapse. From this, one could imagine the crushing pressure that the Lightning Giant was currently facing and bearing.

Its body—once as solid and cohesive as a physical form—was now riddled with holes and rents, wisps of cloud-like wind-elemental scattered and torn everywhere. These wind-elementals had originally been part of the Lightning Giant's body, but now they had been contaminated green by the Flower Spirit's alien energy, impossible to reclaim.

Its golden armor was even more shattered and fragmented, strands of lightning energy dissipating ceaselessly into the air—clear proof that the Lightning Giant's ability to constrain its own power had been weakened to the absolute minimum.

Yet despite clearly holding the advantage and initiative on the battlefield, that delicate, beautiful Flower Spirit seemed restless and furious beyond measure. Many times, it had cornered the Rock Python, and a single more determined round of assault would have been enough to pierce its triangular stone skull and shatter the crystal core within its cranial chamber. But it was as if it had some vital appointment it was desperate to keep; whenever an opportunity arose, it tried to break away, squandering one perfect chance after another to slay an enemy.

And so, relying on the Rock Python and Lightning Giant's alternating cover and desperate entanglement, the Flower Spirit fought while retreating, and a full quarter of an hour passed without it being able to shake off these two super-stubborn burrs.

But at that moment, the five Fallen Quasi-Witches from Paradise City suddenly appeared at the edge of the battlefield.

Their arrival was undoubtedly a tremendous shock to both sides present.

The humanoid Flower Spirit felt a sudden surge of crisis, sensing that driving out these people today might not be possible by its own strength alone. Meanwhile, Glim, lurking beyond the battlefield's periphery, inwardly cursed, realizing his plan had developed a massive flaw—today might not end well.

And the five Fallen Quasi-Witches, stepping slowly onto the battlefield, were stunned beyond words.

Earlier, they had sensed the earth-shattering battle within the Corrupted Jungle from afar, assuming that Glim had summoned an entire surface squad to besiege that Witch-tier Flower Spirit. Who would have imagined that when they arrived at the scene, it turned out to be... merely Glim's puppet squad fighting the terrifying Flower Spirit single-handedly. This discovery only filled them with even greater dread and awe toward this strange young man whose actual strength was only intermediate.

A creature like this absolutely must not be allowed to grow to maturity!

Facing the five Fallen Quasi-Witches bearing down on him with murderous intent, Glim reached out, recalled the Rock Python and Lightning Giant, turned, and began to flee.

The Rock Python, whose form was now utterly pitiful, caught up to Glim, swallowed him in a single gulp, then plunged headfirst into the earth and vanished without a trace. The Lightning Giant, meanwhile, vanished in a blinding flash of crackling electricity, only to reappear in an instant at the very edge of sight. But before they could give chase, another thunderous crack split the air, and the Lightning Giant vanished once more, its destination unknown.

Without the Lightning Giant's entanglement, the terrifying Flower Spirit had no interest whatsoever in the newcomers. With a flutter of its wings, it shot straight back toward the entrance of the ruins.

When it returned, the entire Demon Vine Forest was already a scene of utter devastation.

Scattered vines and branches, mixed with reeking, viscous green acidic slime, had transformed the area into the most miserable of battlefields. And the instigator, Red Mary, was nowhere to be seen.

The Flower Spirit let out a furious roar, folded its wings, and plunged headlong into the pitch-black entrance.

There had never been a path beneath the earth.

When the Wizard Tower activated its pre-set self-destruct array, most of its magical facilities had been reduced to shattered rubble by a chain of detonations, burying everything beneath collapsed brick and sediment. Yet one Human-faced Flower, originally planted in the magic garden, had fortunately survived.

Sensing the vast quantities of green plant-type energy radiating from the depths below, the Human-faced Flower began its tireless journey of burrowing. Driven purely by its abnormal craving for plant-elemental energy, it managed to bore through dozens of meters of dense, compacted debris, sinking its roots into a damaged elemental pool that remained within the Wizard Tower's ruins.

It was precisely by monopolizing the absorption of that alien energy that the Human-faced Flower had crossed threshold after threshold—barriers that ordinary magical plants could scarcely hope to cross—and became the first Witch-tier terrifying monster in the Corrupted Jungle.

Unfortunately, although its strength had advanced rapidly, its intelligence and knowledge of witchcraft were woefully deficient. This was, in truth, the flaw shared by all wild monsters. Though they could become beings as formidable as human witches through predatory plundering of resources, their lack of witchcraft heritage made it difficult for them to contend with human witches of the same rank.

Once exposed, they inevitably became prey to be hunted and captured by human witches. Where did all those Witch-tier rare materials in the wizard world come from? They came from these very wild monsters that human witches never acknowledged.

Of course, not all non-human witches were rejected by humanity.

From what Glim knew, in the wizard world, the numbers and quality of the Sea-folk witches were in no way inferior to human witches. Additionally, there were other alien races with peculiar talents that had been accepted into the wizard community, becoming members of the witch collective.

Take the terrifying Flower Spirit before them—had any human witch family been willing to embrace it, instilling in it the knowledge and traditions of the wizard world, it might well have been acknowledged. Unfortunately, in this benighted, dark underground cavern, it could only mingle with a host of low-intelligence, kill-and-evolve lesser monsters, while conversely fearing human approach and contact.

It was precisely this fear that drove the Corrupted Jungle to exhibit such extreme xenophobia and aggression toward the outside world. The underground races living around the jungle would come periodically to scavenge materials that interested witches, further intensifying the hostility and conflict.

In human eyes, this Corrupted Jungle was a magical treasure trove steeped in countless witchcraft materials. In the eyes of the Flower Spirit and the jungle's monsters, humans and underground races were merely fresh delicacies to be savored.

Under such mutually hostile gazes, any foreign species entering the Corrupted Jungle would trigger violent backlash from the jungle's monsters.

Flying rapidly down the pitch-black, narrow tunnel, the Flower Spirit's heart swelled with seething fury and mania, making it long to charge out and slaughter indiscriminately, cruelly killing every enemy that dared enter its domain.

But before that, it needed to ensure the safety of its source of power.

The pitch-black, deep tunnel was dug by its own hands, winding and twisting, barely wide enough for its slender, delicate frame to pass through. Countless side passages branched off along the way, most leading to treacherous traps or dead ends, with only one path leading directly to its lair.

Though the upper levels of the Wizard Tower had mostly collapsed, the first and second floors buried deep underground still retained some magical facilities. Emerging from the pitch-black tunnel, it found itself in a broken corridor that once belonged to the Wizard Tower's underground first floor. The stone chambers and magical secret rooms lining the corridor had mostly been breached by brute force. Peering through the collapsed stone doors, one could see they were empty—nothing within.

This had once been the Wizard Tower's storage depot, filled with no small quantity of standard resources, but over the years the Flower Spirit had broken into them one by one and looted everything inside.

The Flower Spirit did not linger here. It hurried through the corridor, following the spiraling stone staircase at the end, and soon plunged into the underground second floor where its true body resided.

But it never noticed that in one of those empty stone chambers, in the darkness where no light could reach, a pair of scarlet pupils suddenly snapped open.