“Uhm, guys, can I get a little help?” Mage Young’s voice asked from the pile of rocks that was the remains of the Red Rock Golem.
“Are the rocks worth anything?” Damion asked. He could move the whole pile into his personal spatial storage and free Mage Young without any digging required. But he was unsure if it was even worth collecting these stones.
“They aren’t,” Mage Abney said. “The Red Rock Golem is strong, but once exposed to water it permanently begins to weaken. Even you dry it all out, the stone will remain brittle and fall apart the mont you touch it.”
“Still have to find the Demonic Beast Core though,” Simon Beck said, moving a rock aside in his effort to unbury Mage Young.
“I’ve got it here,” Mage Young shouted from the inside of the pile.
“Guess that ans we have to free him,” Peter said as he started to shift the rock as well.
Instead of joining them in the manual labor, Damion started picking up rocks and tossing them with his Telekinesis spell. He would pluck a stone up and toss it into the distance. Since, according to Mage Phinn, only the champions and the guardian were left, Damion did not worry about upsetting a random Demonic Beast.
After they had moved about a third of the rumble pile, Mage Young was able to push his way out. In one hand he held the Red Rock Golem’s core, which he handed to Damion to store.
“Now that our healer is out of his tomb, let’s move on to the next guardian,” Mage Phinn said. “It should be over the hill there, just outside the petrified forest. Most likely, we will have to find both of the remaining guardians together.”
“Why is that?” Damion asked.
“The two plant champions are both Seraceaes are usually together, not always, but if one isn’t in the petrified forest, then usually they are both in a little crater on the other side of the hill.”
“I read that the plant Demonic Beasts like to wrap you up in so sort of mouth and then slowly eat you,” Peter Beck told the others.
“Yes. They have a kind mouth that they can trap you in and then it closes around you. If you don’t have a way to cut your way out you better hope we can rescue you before it starts digesting you,” Mage Phinn confird while looking to Mage Young. “That ans, don’t just run in. For these last fights, you need to behave like a healer.”
Mage Young gave a sheepish smile and lowered his head but did not object to Mage Phinn’s order.
“Jas, you should be fine, even if caught, you can probably Blink out. Just try not to get in anyone’s way, unless you have a Fire affinity artifact you can use?”
“Sorry, just Earth affinity and my canteen,” Damion replied with a smile.
“The plants have a sort of pod on their main body, it houses their cores and once it is cut off, the rest of the plant will die. Think of it like their heart or brain, just be careful, we don’t want to damage the core.”
When the group arrived at the crest of the hill and looked down at what Mage Phinn had called a small crater, Damion felt the Lightning mage needed to work on his descriptions. The small crater was easily 30 ters in diater and most of it was covered in leaves and vines that ran back to two main stalks in the middle.
The two Seraceaes in the center of the crater looked to Damion to be giant Venus Flytraps. There were a number of mouths, as Peter Beck called them, lying on the ground and handing from high stalks, seemingly waiting for prey to co close. Damion could not rember what the proper na of the traps were but with the long vine like hairs at the edges that looked like teeth, he could not fault the knight for calling them mouths.
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Where the two Seraceaes t Damion could see the pods Mage Phinn ntioned. The had a faint glow to them and where quite close to each other. Seeing their proximity, he could not help but wonder if they were able to communicate in so form.
“Let’s get started,” Mage Phinn said as he cast a Lightning Bolt at the closest of the mouths.
When the bolt hit, the mouth exploded, sending bits of plant material everywhere and leaving a charred stump of a vine left. The Seraceae that was hit spasd in pain and the stalks of both plants began to move around, as if looking for their attacker.
Damion figured the traps had so way to recognize prey aside from touch. The creature had no eyes, so that could not be it. Most likely, it was by sll, but he was not ready to rule out sound just yet.
Simon and Peter Beck advanced slowly towards the Demonic Beasts. They took care to slice every vine and leaf they approached to pieces, least one of them turn out to be able to pull them in. However, as they got closer to the main body of the Seraceaes, it beca harder and harder for them to slice through the thin vines. Damion supposed it was due to them being C Rank and this being a B Rank. Unlike the Red Rock Golem that was weakened by Mage Abney’s Water magic, no one here had any fire related magic to weaken them.
Damion could have burned the Demonic Beast with anyone of his nurous Fire spells, but since he was pretending to be a Spatial mage, he had to think of a way to fight the creatures through that thod.
“Are the mouths valuable?” Damion asked Mage Phinn.
“Not really. There are so alchemists that have experinted with the acid that the mouths have as a sort of saliva, but as far as I know no one has found a safe use for it. The stuff can eat through pretty much anything, but it is fairly slow acting. Because of that, most alchemists stick with more easily attainable acids for their work.”
“In that case, try not to get in my way,” Damion said as he strolled closer to the Demonic Beasts.
He followed a different path forward than the Beck brothers, so there were plenty of mouths and vines in his way. However, each ti one of the vines tried to entrap him, Damion used Blink to escape. When he finally ca into range of one of the mouths, he cast a spell he had been itching to use for a while, Exile.
Raising his hand and pointing at the mouth, a small black rift appeared right inside of the plant’s maw. A mont later, the Seraceae’s mouth and the black rift vanished, leaving only a torn stalk behind.
Feeling confident after his success, Damion pressed forward a small way, channeled the mana for the spell and waited for the next mouth. Each cast of Exile was 2,000 mana and took a few seconds for him to channel the necessary mana. While Damion could cast two fairly quickly, it still took him ti to replenish the mana he spent and he did not want to risk having to wait to cast a spell if he got in a tight spot, even if the wait was only a few extra seconds.
“Did he just…” Mage Abney started, in disbelief.
“Yeah, I think that is the tier 5 Spatial spell. That spell is said to quite dangerous.”
“Look, he just cast it again,” Mage Abney said as another mouth simply vanished. “I am never going to piss off a Spatial mage. Not if they can do that.”
“Upper tier spells are in a class of their own. You know that from your Water Cannon spell. I just wish I had a tier 4 or 5 Lightning spell.”
Step by step, Damion moved closer to the center of the crater where the main bodies of the Demonic Beasts were. Even though he was only casting one spell, and even then, only occasionally, he was making more progress than the Beck brothers. The two knights had been besieged by vines they could not cut through and were actually trying to retreat.
Seeing that they were in trouble, a well-placed Lightning Bolt from Mage Phinn scattered most of the vines and let the pair escape. Once they were out, they started watching Damion as he moved closer and closer to the main body.
Once he got close enough, Damion took out one of his Aurichalcum daggers and prepared to use it to cut the core from the nearest Seraceae. Despite him being right at the main stalk, neither of the Demonic Beasts sent their mouths to attack him anymore. Either they had figured out that this attacker could instantly destroy their mouths, or they simply could not bend their stalks enough to get to where Damion was now standing.
Stabbing into the flesh of the plant to cut out the core, Damion realized there was one flaw in his plan. His dagger was only D Rank. It was not one of the artifacts he had upgrade and the mont it tried to pierce the flesh of the B Rank Demonic Beast, the blade snapped.
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