Chapter 88: Wood Demon

With a long whip in hand, Han Kexin approached the Frost Slime slowly, carefully tending to Xiao Yu’s instructions. Suddenly, she covered her ears and landed a hard slam on the humanoid creature’s chest. A deafening sound of glass shattering echoed as the Frost Slime was thrown back several meters, leaving a deep depression and spiderweb-like cracks on its icy exterior.

“It’s pretty sturdy!” 

Han Kexin thought to herself: she knew the power of her whip. Even the strongest elementary level monster would have their bones and tendons shattered upon being hit by it, not to mention the barbs on the whip that could strip away layers of flesh.

The Frost Slime was whipped but quickly healed and solidified the cracks on its chest, leaving no trace behind. As it began to heal itself, it charged towards Han Kexin with two poisoned blades in hand. Acting quickly, Han Kexin caught the creature’s neck with her whip and yanked it down, causing the Frost Slime to stumble and fall. With a swift flick of her arm, Han Kexin released the creature and struck it hard on the back with her whip, shattering ice and causing it to scatter in all directions.

Xiao Yu silently nodded, marveling at Han Kexin’s increasing mastery of the whip. Her timing was impeccable, her strikes were ferocious, and her attacks were cunning, flexible, and adaptable, fully exploiting the advantages of her weapon.

However, the Frost Slime was not an easy opponent either; it had simply been caught off guard by Han Kexin’s tactics. After suffering two losses, the Frost Slime made some adjustments to its body, its arms splitting apart and becoming four slender limbs with sharp blades that were better suited for close combat.

A gaping hole appeared in the creature’s smooth chest, and a blast of frigid air rushed out, leaving a trail of ice in its wake. The ground beneath them quickly became covered with a layer of frost wherever the cold current passed.

Han Kexin’s quick reflexes allowed her to dodge the intense cold breath skillfully.

The Frost Slime charged forward, gliding astonishingly fast over the ice with both feet. Four razor-sharp blades came at Han Kexin from different directions, causing her expression to shift. Swiftly, she pulled her arm back with force, using the whip wrapped around the blade to yank the Frost Slime’s body into the air. She was about to retract her whip, but, to her surprise, it wouldn’t budge.

It turned out that when the whip coiled around the Frost Slime’s blade, it froze solid with the blade!

The Frost Slime’s three sharp blades descended simultaneously. Han Kexin grasped the whip and pulled it down forcefully, while her left hand equipped with the poisonous claw rose up. With a snort, ice fragments scattered all over as the Frost Slime’s neck suffered four deep fissures. However, it seemed to remain unharmed as it abruptly jumped up from the ground, slashing at Han Kexin with an ice blade. Han Kexin pulled on the whip, dragging the mutated slime towards her, and met its attack with the toxic claw.

Bang, bang, bang!

After several rounds of fighting, Han Kexin’s attacks repeatedly landed on the body of the Frost Slime, leaving deep cuts in its arms. However, the Frost Slime ignored all of this and focused only on swinging its blade horizontally and vertically. Its movements were initially stiff, but as the battle progressed, the Frost Slime continuously adjusted its body shape to make its bombardment faster and more fierce.

“Stop! I give up!” Han Kexin declared a ceasefire, angrily stating, “This damn thing is completely immune to normal attacks, and I wasted all my energy for nothing.”

Although the mutated slime had transformed, its essence remained that of a semi-liquid slime. This type of slime was completely immune to physical attacks but incredibly vulnerable to magic. After the transformation, it still retained the physical immunity property, while its magic resistance greatly increased, which was the advantage of the transformation.

However, after transforming into the Frost Slime, although its defense against magic had greatly improved, its speed and strength were only average among first-order monsters. Its ability to spew cold air was not particularly powerful either, and it was unable to use strong mental attacks in this state, showing that it wasn’t invincible.

After evolving, the mutated slime has undergone such a significant transformation, and there was undoubtedly still ample room for improvement.

Xiao Yu returned to the camp with the mutated slime. Zhao Changping took out all the supplies and piled them up in the center of the camp. Among them were some dried meat, fresh meat, vegetables and fruits, pure water and drinks, as well as various condiments, dried animal skins, equipment and weapons, and other jars and bottles.

After all, this was a camp that had housed thousands of people. Even after being “plundered” by monsters, there were still plenty of remaining supplies that needed to be distributed evenly among everyone to carry along. As for ordinary food, they didn’t need to carry too much, as there were plenty of beasts and fruit trees along the way, hence, food sources were not a problem.

Xiao Yu put all the extra supplies into his thirty-square-meter large space ring.

The Tiger, Bear, and Hawk squads spent dozens of lower soul gems to fully repair their equipment, and they stood together with bulging backpacks in a neat formation.

“Reporting to the leader, Tiger Squad is ready!”

“Reporting to the leader, the Iron Bear Squad is ready!”

“Reporting to the leader, the Goshawk Squad is ready!”

Xiao Yu nodded. “Alright, let’s get ready to go.”

Zhao Changping envied Xiao Yu’s elite teams. After all, compared to these three squads, his own hundred-man elite team lagged far behind in both strength and momentum. He sighed quietly and then waved his hand, shouting, “Everyone, let’s move out!”

The group of people departed from their camp and headed north. After walking for approximately three hours, they arrived at a short cliff, less than 100 meters away. Gazing upwards, the dense forest stretched out like a placid lake, occasionally disturbed by a passing wind, causing ripples to form in concentric circles. At the forest’s edge, mountains rolled up and down, resembling dozens of black dragons intertwined with one another across the vast, boundless land. Enveloped by a thick layer of mountain mist, the mountains appeared to be shrouded in a mysterious veil.

On the short cliff, hundreds of people looked like the fabled aborigines, unkempt and donning dirty, tattered clothes while gripping various cold weapons in their hands. A refreshing breeze blew head-on, filling their lungs with the clean air.

Finally, the time had come to leave this cursed forest behind.

But what did the world outside look like?

At that moment, everyone was filled with excitement and confusion, not knowing what the future would hold. But that didn’t matter now. The mountain range was a difficult challenge, and instead of worrying about what’s to come, it was better to focus on the present situation.

Descending from the low cliff, everyone continued to weave their way through the woods.

The trees in this area weren’t very tall, but they were vibrant and grew incredibly lush. The dense canopy blocked out the sunlight, leaving the forest shrouded in darkness. Except for the moss and fungi that grew on the twisted roots of the trees, there was no other vegetation on the ground.

As everyone walked, they suddenly noticed several objects moving in front of them. Upon closer inspection, they were surprised to discover that they were several blue wooden stakes, each about two meters tall. They looked like ordinary wooden stakes, but they had eyes and mouths, with many green shoots sprouting from their bodies. They had short, thick feet made of tree roots and branches that functioned as arms.

Everyone noticed the monster and couldn’t help but exclaim, “What is this thing?!”

Xiao Yu explained, “This is a green wood demon, probably a middle stage elementary monster, not a difficult foe to deal with. However, there are likely to be many of them, so everyone should prepare for battle.”

Wang Chao rushed forward and knocked down a green wood demon. He found that the monster’s movement speed was very slow, but its body was extremely hard. It took two attacks from his mace to smash one of them. Another green wood demon turned around and let out a hoarse roar from its mouth as two strong branches fiercely whipped towards them. At that moment, a hissing sound was heard, and a flaming arrow pierced through the demon’s body. The power of the flame had a miraculous effect on the demon, causing it to roar and spew flames from its eye sockets and mouth. It fell to the ground and burned to ashes.

After two green wood demons were killed, more and more demons were alerted and slowly approached. There were an extremely large number of them—at least a hundred of them.

Zhao Changping’s face slightly changed, “There are really a lot of them, everyone be careful!”

Killing two of them had alerted hundreds of elementary level monsters, which was previously unimaginable for them. Fighting against a hundred middle stage elementary monsters was equivalent to fighting against a first-order monster.

Green vines shot out from various angles in the forest, and the crowd quickly dodged the attacks. However, one person was accidentally caught by the vines on their hands and feet and pulled up into the air. The person dropped their weapon and helplessly shouted,

“Ah, help me, help me!”

However, before anyone could come to his aid, it was already too late.

The two vines pulled forcefully in opposite directions, accompanied by a bang. The man didn’t even have a chance to scream before his body was torn apart alive, and his blood splattered like raindrops in the woods.

Upon witnessing the guy’s death, Xiao Yu immediately threw out the mutated slime, releasing a violent mental shock that spread out. Dozens of green wood monsters were hit by the attack on the spot, almost falling into a trance. Taking advantage of the opportunity, everyone rushed forward to fight the wood demons.

Although the wood demons had a relatively high defense, their movement speed was very slow. 

The Tiger team split the wood demons in one round of charging, followed by several rounds of back-and-forth attacks. Eventually, the monsters were beaten to pieces and were almost completely defeated.

“Green Wood Demon Leaf”, a low gray item, can be used in alchemy and increases the success rate by 5%.

The most common drop from the green wood demon was this seemingly useless leaf. There were almost no equipment or soul gems, which disappointed everyone except for Xiao Yu. Although the quality of the branches and leaves of the wood demon was low, their value in the future could be significant, since they can directly increase the success rate of alchemy. Xiao Yu gave up on the equipment and instead exchanged ten lower soul gems, accepting all the wood demon leaves that were dropped.