Skendus, Arvena, and Ortana crossed the portal that they’ve discovered. They were immediately overwhelmed by the exclusive shades of red here at first, and then they made sure to be cautious of every step they took, because they didn't know what to expect here. For all they knew, they could be overwhelmed by a bunch of Demon Beetles at any second, and they would've been none the wiser, because they couldn't even tell the trees apart from the bushes around here. Caution was beyond necessary!
“Aah, do you smell that?” Arvena asked, after a deep sigh. “Do you smell the mana? This has to be a needle universe, they're so secretive, and very hard to get to!”
“A needle universe, huh? That's interesting, but I can't really smell mana like you can.” Skendus admitted, and Ortana was just as helpless.
“There’s a lot of mana in the air, more than in Valporovus, actually.” She insisted, and then she pitched. “Maybe we can stay here for a while? Assuming that we don't get attacked by bugs. My mana pool is becoming impossible to fill recently, I'm not even halfway there.”
“I'm not so keen on accumulating mana right now.” Skendus admitted, “It's best to avoid climbing levels until we get blessed by the Church of Ontarum, or else we'll upset those darn gods more than we already have. It pains me to say it, but I’ve been shooting bolts at the sky yesterday to prevent my mana from accumulating.”
No one in the group agreed with his method there, they despised it, but they didn’t bother fighting over this matter, because they were to get blessed by the priest sooner or later. After that, their individual opinions over mana wouldn't matter as much, as they could all ascend through levels regardless.
Anyway, one could say that they entered this portal less than prepared, as their mana pools were far away from being full. Ortana's pool was only halfway full as well, on the count that she’s been hunting for five days now, it wasn’t a great amount. They could all use the extra mana that this needle universe provided, as they were hunting bugs, after all, on top of looking for Timothy.
The three of them progressed towards the red forest, they walked for about thirty meters now. Though this place confused them as much as one would expect, they were still eternally grateful that they weren't being attacked by any random bugs right now, because they didn't know if they could fight them off! They instinctively guessed that every bug in this forest was perfectly camouflaged, so they were on their toes as they walked.
Eventually they made it to a giant, dead mantis. They almost stepped over its carcass, but its stench helped them figure out what was in front of them. After they discovered its head, they were both amazed, and terrified by how big this mantis actually was!
“I don't want to cross paths whoever dismembered this poor guy, this is some psychotic work.” Ortana expressed, as she was sure that Timothy couldn't have killed the mantis. “Don't get me wrong, I dismembered plenty of things before, but our Timmy isn't strong enough to do damage like this, he's just a goofy kid.”
“Hey, you actually got his name right for once! He won't believe it, haha!” Skendus joked, that was the only thing he focused on.
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One could say that most of their assumptions regarding this place, and Timothy were somewhat accurate, but a couple of their guesses were dead wrong. They weren't the greatest detectives, but this wasn't a big issue, as long as it wouldn't get them killed. They kept moving.
After they crossed the Giant Mantis, they wanted to progress through this universe even further, but then they were stunned, as they noticed a few of creatures that were very much not camouflaged, they were dark brown by color! These insects were confident with their stride, and slithered towards the team at full speed.
“Are those snakes?” Arvena asked, she was very confused about what she was seeing here.
“Snakes aren't flat. Those are centipedes!” Skendus exclaimed, and after that point, he didn’t bother talking anymore, and attacked.
Using both of his palms, he started shooting tens of Blunderous Bolts each second, right towards his target! He has gotten the hang of this new ability over the last few days, and now, he started using it almost instinctively, especially since he hadn't practiced his other new powers that much.
The bolts struck one of the giant centipedes, and thankfully, the bolts stopped it on its spot. Skendus didn't manage to kill it, and that wasn't surprising, but at least he had slown one of them down for a moment. The two other centipedes were still on the move, however, and they were just a terrifying twenty meters away!
Although they were all terrified, Ortana and Arvena hadn't been standing throughout this exchange either, no. They shot against the centipedes as well, and tried to do as much damage as they could!
Arvena shot twenty fireballs against them, in a span of two seconds! When she noticed that the fireballs weren't hot enough to burn the rock-like heads of the centipedes, she decided to take another course of action. She summoned that new ability of hers, and focused it on one, single centipede this time around, rather than the both of them.
Using a few laser shots, she first attacked its head, and then its fat legs. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t kill it either, but she noticed the centipede jitter after she lasered one of its many legs, so she decided to work with that clear, but tiny advantage. Arvena blasted about forty Laser Shots from her palms, focused them on a single point on the target’s leg, and gained enough of an advantage to hear the centipede squirm!
“Haha!” She celebrated, and saw that centipede back away, with a permanently damaged leg.
Afterwards, she was about to do the same thing against the only other giant insect that stubbornly charged forward, but suddenly, she didn't have to.
Ortana had followed her example, apparently, and nailed one of these brown fiends against its legs so many times, that it eventually bled out whatever liquid its body held. It made sense that she managed to spear it tens of times, including on its legs and sides, because a centipede moved in a slithering manner, it had been exposed to the countless spears that Ortana summoned!
“You actually killed one of them?!” Skendus asked, he was shocked.
At the same time he managed to scare the third centipede away, because one of his new powers gave the illusion of a hundred thunder bolts. The centipede would be scared of the sound, if the ‘fake pain’ hadn't gotten to it already. This was called the Fool's Thunder ability, and it was very useful if one wanted to put their enemies into shock, both internally, and externally! It was useful enough today.
Anyway, they went over to look at the carcass afterwards, and as they observed it, they were racking their brains trying to figure out just why an insect would grow this big. This was both unnatural, and weird, because they couldn't even picture a dragon being this big, not to mention anything else! A one-hundred foot long centipede was difficult to fathom.