“Can you not jump so much?” Xania sighed.

“Jealous?” Tina stood straight, but because of the water level, only her head was visible.

“Of your nonexistent brain?” Xania snorted.

“Ooh... good one.” Hana air-fives Xania.

“Whose side are you on?” Tina’s final words turned into a bubbling sound as she stared at Hana, sinking deeper.

“Don’t you dare?” Hana erected a mana barrier.

“Hey! That’s cheating,” Tina protested, turning to Xania for a ruling. But Xania was already lost in thought, gazing at the tall trees a few meters away. “Geez, despo. Boys don’t fall for you if there isn’t any challenge,” she snickers.

“Why did you come here?” Hana questioned.

“Came to stop him,” Xania replied without looking at them. “Gathered he was heading this way. I wanted to stop the pervert, but somehow I reached, and he still isn’t here.”

“Heard or saw?” Tina giggled.

“What is the difference?” Xania glared at Tina, who was now paddling to stay afloat.

“One makes you a despo and the other a creep.”

“I can see the light left by any affinity. I used it to trace his signature.”

“That’s something bigger than a creep.”

“Stalker.” Both Hana and Tina nodded at each other.

Xania ignored them and stared at the tall trees. ‘But I lost the trace after entering the forest. Is it the trees, or did he vanish?’ The next moment, she felt the wet embrace of water and glared at Tina.

“What?”

“I told you—” Xania peered down and found herself knee-deep in the river. “Did someone move me?”

“No, but someone moved the water,” Hana said.

The girls struggled to stay afloat while those washing their clothes on the shore were dragged into the river.

“Use your eyes thingy!” Tina yelled at Xania.

“What can—”

“Don’t argue, and do as I say!”

“Light trace.” Xania activated the skill and scanned the area. “What am I looking for?”

“I don’t know how your skill works. Find anything that’s out of place!” Tina yelled. “The rest of you, be ready with offensive and defensive skills. When I point, do not hesitate and follow my instructions.”

The other women nodded, and Xania endured the pressure building up on her and her skill.

“Oceanic peace,” Hana cast a skill on Xania.

A cluster of clouds covered Xania, soaking in her tension. Xania nodded with appreciation and concentrated on the task.

Light was ubiquitous. The trees attempted and failed to turn it green, while the river couldn’t manage to tint it blue. Amidst these ethereal white waves lay a dormant transparent hue, which many might overlook, but to her eyes, they were bound to reveal themselves.

“Eliminate areas and focus on others,” Tina instructed Xania.

One by one, Xania discarded her comrades, then the trees, and finally the river. “The river!” Tina mumbled, lost in thought, and Xania followed it upstream until she found a cluster of white energy saturating the entire area with a unique aura. “The river!” she muttered.

“That is why I couldn’t find you.” Xania smiled and pointed toward the dense aura. “There!”

“Attack!” Tina yelled, and spells soared toward the stream of water.

Icicles, fireballs, boulders, and thunderbolts flew true and vanished after crossing fifty meters. A massive explosion shook the earth on the other side of the mystical barrier. They assumed it was their spells, but when the barrier shattered, they realized it was the beast’s roar that had shaken the earth.

The elemental resembled a blobfish, towering over twenty meters, with its lower half molded from the water itself. The fish dragged every spell into its body and fashioned armor around itself. The group closest to the monstrosity screamed, trying to swim away, but found themselves stuck in place.

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“Domain skill,” Tina cursed. “No one should get them so soon.”

“That bastard is at level six,” Hana said, extending her aura to boost the others. Tina flicked her hands away, disrupting the skill. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure we live,” Tina replied with a stern gaze.

Hana wanted to yell at her before recasting the skill, but she had never seen Tina so serious—No, so calm and in control.

“Save your energy,” Tina ordered. “Position the shields above its mouth,” she added. The others complied without hesitation, creating a barrier fashioned like a net that prevented the creature from engulfing the nearest group.

“You did it.” Both Xania and Hana looked at Tina with newfound respect.

“I just bought us some time. Nothing more.” Tina gritted her teeth, devoid of further ideas.

“We should’ve stayed closer to the boys when they offered.” A girl lamented.

“Yes! We shouldn’t have been so rude and acted independent.” Another added.

“If you want to embrace the lifestyle of a hoe, do it on your terms!” Tina yelled at them. “And in case you didn’t notice, it came from upstream, which means you can still explore that lifestyle in its belly, where the boys must be.”

“That thing already ate all of them?” Hana gaped at Tina’s analysis. “There were twenty members, including the sixth and seventh elite squad.”

“Best-case scenario, they’re in its belly.”

Tina turns away for a moment before refocusing. Hana sensed her reluctance to entertain the worst-case scenario, so she preempted further questions that might push Tina to reveal it.

“Let’s prioritize saving the hopeless boys first, then you can consider your other options,” Tina forced a smile, masking her inner turmoil.

The group roared in defiance, though they knew it was futile. Engaging an opponent one level higher was a fool’s errand, and this creature had already surpassed the first threshold, deemed impossible by their elites.

Xania wiped away the blood from her nose, hoping her action had gone unnoticed.

“What did you observe?” Tina inquired. Anticipating Xania’s hesitation, she added, “I don’t need details. Just any valuable insights?”

Xania nodded, her heart throbbing with anxiety. “I’m not sure if it’s valuable or not.”

“Every insight counts,” Tina reassured with a smile.

‘How can she smile in the face of such daunting odds?’ Hana and Xania froze at the sight.

Before Xania snapped out of her trance and response, a piercing sound, distorted by the fish’s domain, grabbed their attention. None of them could discern the direction, except for four individuals.

The blobfish turned to its right, curious about the sound. Tina, assuming the distortion wouldn’t affect the caster, followed the fish’s gaze to her left. Hana and Xania followed Tina’s line of sight.

Yet, all of them were too late.

The projectile whizzed past their vision, plunging into the fish’s eye and tunneling through to the other side. It continued its trajectory, piercing through a tree and only coming to a stop as it embedded itself into a second tree trunk.

“An... arrow?” Hana stuttered.

“Can you trace it to the source?” Tina turned to Xania.

None of them had witnessed the arrow piercing the creature’s eye, leading them to assume the archer had missed. Tina aimed to assist the archer, and for that, needed to find out their position.

Xania followed the arrow’s trail of light. Fresh sources of power glowed brighter, making it easier to track. “About a hundred meters away, and it’s not in a straight line,” Xania exclaimed.

“How can it not be in a straight line?” Hana questioned.

“We’re in a magical world, remember? Even so, at such a distance...” Tina followed Xania’s gaze into the forest. “Who is it?”

>[Before the group screamed]<

“Good blob of weirdo,” Tetsu addressed a blob attached to another blob by a slender thread. “We don’t have to do this.”

An arrow flashed towards him, but with a flick, Tetsu diverted its path, causing it to pick up even more speed as it shrieked past the landscape.

Tetsu shifted his attention to one of the archer’s arrows a while ago, as the nearby pebbles were too fragile to keep up with his rapid movements. In his excitement, he walked straight into this blob, an obvious error made by the system when painting this realm. The painter shook their brush a bit too hard and two splatters of grey spluttered to life.

His list of system complaints only continued to grow each day. It was evident that the creators had rushed this project, and he was left to bear the brunt of every mishap.

The blob in the back used the string between them to rotate the first one around itself, while the first blob revolved within itself, sucking everything in its proximity.

Tetsu had long since fled, quite uninterested in the splatter’s peculiar abilities or its oddity. Meanwhile, the blob gathered huge boulders, sand, and broken branches, fashioning them into a massive golem construct adorned with three horns.

Each horn spun in a different direction, creating additional vacuums that sucked in more rubble. The golem, now animated and fueled by the blob’s frustration, chased the human who had dashed its hopes with a foolish flying arrow.

Amidst the chaos, Tetsu heard a scream and assumed that where there was noise, there should be people capable of dealing with this unfortunate problem.

The once simple fist-sized blobs coalesced into a massive rock golem, adorned with three menacing horns. These horns pulverized everything in their path, while the vortex created by their rotation greedily sucked in scattered debris, augmenting the golem’s colossal form.

One misstep and Tetsu would be reduced to minced meat, a fate that wouldn’t satisfy this abomination's canvas.

“That’s so cool!” exclaimed Tetsu. “But why the hell is a creature like you even interested in me?”

Tetsu notices the sudden shift in rotation and dives out of the way in the nick of time as several spikes crafted from various materials skewered the area where he had stood mere moments before.

“No more negotiations, it seems.” Tetsu sighs, sliding behind another massive tree trunk.

The conjured golem was stronger and faster than Tetsu. He recalled the acolyte’s words, and her shock after listening to his triumph against two high-level beasts was well-founded.

The splatter of paint known as [Splatter Creant] stood four levels higher than Tetsu, doubling its attributes and power while defying the laws of physics. Were it not for the protection provided by the massive tree trunks, Tetsu would have become another addition to the creature’s collection of rubble.

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