Rain was important not just for the fauna of this realm, but the flora. It was obvious, but it had to be mentioned.
After all, while it was far more difficult for plants to gain sentience, they still could once they had lived for long enough and gathered enough power.
A lot of the flora in the Forbidden Secret Realm was sentient, so when the rain came, they'd become far more active than they were in usual times.
Pria and her group were currently hiding. They didn't move an inch, crouching in place with their auras reined all the way in so they didn't have any presence.
They were petrified by the massive Godbeast that appeared above them, but they made the wrong decision.
Because the Thunderbird wasn't the one who wanted to eat them.
All around them, plants raised their leaves towards the sky, competing to gain as much water as possible while the Thunderbird was present.
They no irked a beautiful tapestry in the air between the great trees that made up the rainforest, like a three-dimensional painting made by the most talented of artists.
The plants themselves weren't harmful, but they did give off a slight air of poisonous particles as they finally rid themselves of the fluids injected into them by the species that feasted on their leaves.
And while those fluids were harmful and needed to be expelled, they also acted as a natural pheromone that attracted the very same predators that left them in the leaves.
The buzzing of tiny wings filled the rainy atmosphere. Tens of hundreds of bugs crawled across the ground and made their way to the plants they considered food.
Pria's group was left in the middle of this interaction.
They had to stay silent and still.
They couldn't move even now.
Those bugs were smaller. They spanned from as small as regular bugs to as large as a human head, but relatively speaking, they were quite small.
Yet, their power wasn't different from the rest of the ecosystem.
Thousands upon thousands of them flooded the area, each and every one of them with power that at least rivaled a Demigod.
Luckily, they were herbivores. As long as they didn't feel threatened, they wouldn't attack other fauna.
Pria and the rest didn't know this, of course, but they could gauge it from their extensive knowledge. They sat still, shivering slightly as these overpowered bugs crawled over their bodies to reach the leaves above.
'Khhhhh…'
It wasn't a sound she made outwardly, but she was making it excessively in her mind.
It was disgusting. This experience was the worst. She, as a God, couldn't believe she was being disgraced like this.
However, what else could she do?
She had to wait so she could survive.
She had to explore so she could survive.
She didn't have any other path!
So she could only watch as the bugs reached their desired plants and began their feast.
And she could only watch as a group of frogs that were roughly ten feet tall and twice as fat appeared in the periphery and started targeting those bugs.
'Damn!'
Pria gritted her teeth.
She ducked her head and laid down flat on the ground, prompting her group to follow her.
The frog tongues that whipped around held force enough to behead any one of them, and more importantly, they were covered in a poisonous liquid that splashed around the area as they carelessly hunted for their prey.
Despite the attempts they made to avoid detection or harm, they couldn't stop heaps of that poison from falling on their bodies.
It burned through their clothing and a bit of their skin, and when it made its way into their bodies, it inhibited their mana, making it even harder to counteract.
Pria finally realized the consequences of her decision.
'We have to leave. Now.'
Regardless of how difficult it would be to evacuate, they had to get out of this area and find a safer place to hide until the storm passed.
The rainy ecosystem that appeared along with the Thunderbird was far more dangerous than the regular relatively peaceful environment of the uncharted territory.
"Follow me carefully. Do not step anywhere but in my shadow."
Pria sent a mental transmission to her team and slowly began to crawl.
Humiliation was no longer an issue. Even if it meant she had to grovel and beg, she would find a way to live through this.
One arm after the other, one leg after the other, Pria moved away from the frogs and the leaf canopy.
Luckily, it was mostly concentrated in one area. While several similar leaf canopies existed in the surroundings, none of them were as violently packed with fauna as this one.
'One hundred meters.'
One hundred meters away, there was a cave to hide in. As long as they made it there, they would survive.
That was the truth.
The truth of the situation if it wasn't a trap designed specifically for them.
RUMBLE!
The entire world rumbled.
Bugs preyed on plants, frogs preyed on bugs, and snakes preyed on frogs.
That was the natural order.
And when the natural order ballooned to a scale where even the smallest bugs could be the size of a human head…
'We're dead.'
Existential dread.
That feeling filled Pria's entire body.
As for the Demigods behind her, they couldn't even think in that being's presence.
It was a massive python. Its body was as thick as several tree trunks tied together, and its mouth was large enough to swallow the entire area whole.
The second it appeared, it hissed loudly, striking fear into those frogs who were hunting wildly, and in the next instant, it snapped its mouth open and shut, devouring six of them at once.
It was truly a dreadful sight. To the python, humans who were weaker and smaller than those frogs, yet had the same amount of energy contained in them were easy prey.
Pria was aware of that.
She saw it in the python's eyes.
But it had yet to sense them.
"Just keep crawling."
She told her allies to do so, but it was a question whether or not they could follow her words.
After all, the python's aura froze them in place.
HISSSSSSSSS!
Its spine-chilling hiss filled the area again.
In a place filled with so much prey, how could it not be excited?
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
They weren't explosions. It was merely the sound of trees collapsing and slamming into the ground below as the python carelessly moved through them to capture each and every frog in the vicinity.
'It's moving away from us.'
Pria almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief.
Almost.
BANG!
Another tree fell to the ground.
It was roughly three kilometers tall, relatively small in comparison to its peers, however, it was the last straw among the tens of them that fell.
Hairline cracks spread across the ground.
Those cracks widened almost impossibly fast, spreading several dozens of kilometers in every direction.
That's when Pria realized it.
This whole time…
'...the ground was hollow.'
They were never on a stable surface to begin with.
It was fine when there wasn't much impact force striking the ground, but with the python thrashing around and the trees that weighed thousands of pounds, if not more, crashing down, the ground didn't stand a chance.
RUMBLE!
It quaked furiously.
And just as Pria came to terms with her fate, it collapsed.
The plants, the bugs, the frogs, the python, and the poor humans caught between them all fell into the huge sinkhole that opened up below them.
And deep in the depths under the piece of land where they once stood, a pair of eyes opened.
It was the last piece of Damien's plan.
The second Godbeast he'd found in this realm.
An Earth Dragon.
A hungry Earth Dragon that had been starved for over two weeks looked up at the ceiling that was crumbling above it.
And it saw them instantly.
The heaps of prey falling through the cracks.
