"That's a lot of them…" Lady Kang looked at the wide valley filled with thousands upon thousands of lava creatures.
"Those slugs we saw were indeed just one variant… there are more of them." Lin Mu said he saw lava creatures that looked like various animals.
There were lava wolves, lava foxes, lava tigers, lava snakes, and many kinds of lava insects. 'If there's so many of them here, there's bound to be a key nearby.' Lin Mu thought to himself as his eyes observed everything.
The lava creatures were all moving around randomly, as if they were mindless puppets. Which they may as well be.
But as Lin Mu and Lady Kang observed they started to find some patterns.
"There," Lady Kang pointed to a spot that was roughly half a kilometer away. "Look at that squirrel." She spoke.
"Oh?" Lin Mu narrowed his eyes as he glanced at a rather small lava creature. Unlike the others that were at least a meter in size, this one was just half a meter tall. Of course, compared to a normal squirrel it was still quite big, but it stood out here. "The other lava creatures seem to be moving around it but don't come too close." Lady Kang replied. "As if they are—"
"Guarding it." Lin Mu finished her words.
~SHUA~
His Immortal sense directly probed the lava squirrel and quickly found the reason. "Hah, so this time the key is kept with 'guardians'." Lin Mu laughed finding that the iron key was embedded inside the body of the lava squirrel.
"It's not the only one either." Lady Kang spoke as she picked up on more such creatures. "Look there," she pointed.
Lin Mu looked into the distance and found that another lava beast was surrounded by hundreds of its kin, but a distance was present between them. It was a small butterfly that flapped its wings and hovered in the same place.
And similar to the lava squirrel, the lava butterfly had the iron key embedded in its body too, contained within a sphere.
"Hmm, the lava beasts seem relatively uniform in terms of their strength." Lin Mu said as he used his immortal sense to analyze the beasts.
All of them seem to be at around the third tribulation stage of the Immortal realm. Though a few of them were weaker than that too.
At the very least, Lin Mu couldn't see any lava beasts that seemed to be as strong as a Fourth Tribulation Stage immortal beast or higher.
"With such numbers, it's best we split up." Lin Mu said before he called out a little more help. "We'll be able to cover more ground now." He said as two snakes appeared.
~HISS~
Xiao Yin and Xiao Yang looked at the sea of prey to them and hissed in excitement.
"Yes, you can eat them all but leave the key alone." Lin Mu replied to the twins.
~HISSSSS~
The twins swayed their heads in excitement, waiting for Lin Mu to give the go ahead.
"Now then… GO!" Lin Mu permitted as the twins turned into blurs that looked like a white and black ribbon.
~WHOOSH~
The two ribbons directly pierced through all the Lava Beasts that came in front of them as they started to weave through the area. The heat of the lava could not harm them, while the beasts were far too slow to react to them. ~SPLAT~SPLAT~SPLAT~
The lava beasts exploded while their energy was consumed by the twins, further energizing them.
"I'll go for the key," Lin Mu said before he disappeared.
~Growl~
Little Shrubby was left with Lady Kang and gestured to his back with is head.
"I suppose it'll be faster if I go with you." Lady Kang understood what the beast meant.
~grrr~
Little Shrubby nodded with a growl and let her climb up again.
~WHOOSH~
Then in the next second he jumped straight into the air and then dived down in an arc, landing smack dab in the middle of a large group of lava beasts.
~BOOM~
A crater was created where he landed, while the unfortunate lava beasts were all smashed into a puddle. ~SHA~SHA~SHA~
Lady Kang created tens of handseals as the power of stars exuded from her. Her eyes shimmered from the starlight before she activated her skill. Upon doing this, twenty stars flew out from her back, and hovered behind her.
"88 Constellation Series: Fifteenth form- Half Beast Archer!" As soon as she chanted that, the stars transformed and formed an illusory figure of a giant man.
But this man wasn't a normal human but rather a demihuman, having the upper body of a human while its lower body was that of a horse.
It was a demihuman that belonged to the Centaur Race!
Once the figure of the centaur had fully formed, it towered over her and Little Shrubby, almost overlapping with them.
Lady Kang's Immortal sense split into hundreds of fine threads and rushed towards the lava beasts that were around them. Once all the threads were connected to the lava beasts, she finished the hand seals.
"Sagittarius' Barrage!" Lady Kang shouted.
The illusory figure of the centaur stretched the bow in its hand as a long arrow condensed on it. Once the bow was fully arched, the centaur let it loose into the sky!
~TWANG~ The shimmering arrow shot into the sky and reached a great height before it split apart into hundreds of smaller arrows that rained down into the valley!
~feng~feng~feng~feng~
All the lava beasts that had been connected with Lady Kang's immortal sense threads were accurately targeted by the rain of arrows. Not a single shot was missed, and the lava beasts were splattered across the floor of the valley.
While this happened, Lin Mu had already reached the lava squirrel and ripped out the iron key from it. "Whoa…" He had just looked back when the rain of arrows happened.
An area of three hundred meters was cleared out in one go, as the illusory figure of the centaur pulled the bowstring once more.
