Realm Greenrock, named after its looks from afar, was a special realm roaming in a space somewhere inside of the Solar system.

No one knew exactly where it was yet, due to it being a floating realm only loosely connected to other realms outside. There were a couple of relatively stable connected portals, one seemed to lie somewhere in the Saturn Rings, and the other was somewhere quasi-deep in the Pacific Ocean, less than a hundred miles from the coast of California.

A giant metal capsule, enclosed with several layers of severely damaged, expensive but still expendable protective wood and bamboo was pushed to the surface of a lake with beautiful blue water. Several fish with giant razor sharp fins and knife like teeth tried to take a bite at the metal capsule, but a sudden shock of electric energy drove them away.

When the capsule’s position was stabilized, all the damaged wood and bamboo layers were released from the body of the capsule. Then engraved enchanted patterns on its body lit up and started jetting compressed air through small holes, pushing the capsule to the closest shore.

It was not long before the capsule was pushed onto the ground. Then a door opened up, and a team of mages and a knight walked out of the capsule.

“Area seems to be secure.” the only knight in the team conjured a broadsword and a tall shield from his belt and looked around him: “Area’s secure!”

“Thank you, Tony.” a tall woman in a robe that was styled like a full saree walked out of the capsule with three other female mages behind her: “But unfortunately, this place is suboptimal for a campsite, even worse for an outpost. The energy field in the area - it’s way too volatile, violent, even. We can’t build a portal here, not one that could last anyway. Let’s scout the area and find another place. Josephine, Dorothea, Glenda, be prepared and let’s move away from the area. From what we learned from the initial scouting team, some pretty dangerous beasts were roaming in the area around the lake. Once we get further from it we would be safer.”

“Yes Professor. Kapur.” Josephine Wong jumped from the capsule and onto the ground, but then she smelled something and turned back to the team: “Any of you smell something? Something animal-like.”

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“Probably this.” Tony Barnes knelt down and pointed at a footprint on the ground before him. The footprint was from some kind of monster with four and a half toes, the footprint was still relatively fresh, and it had some blue blood in it: “Not sure about what it looked like, but this footprint does fit their description.”

“Let me try something.” Dorothea Clarkson tried casting a spell on the footprint, a white shadow made of energy started growing from it, but before it could grow any bigger, it just fell apart and dissipated in the air. Dorothea Clarkson sighed and said: “Whatever it was, it’s gone for more than half an hour. So I don’t think we are going to run into it if we don’t linger.”

“Yeah, I bet she’s right, let’s go.” Glenda Grimes looked back at the lake, making sure that there were no dangerous creatures creeping up on them from the water, and she was met with the disturbing sight of a giant shadow slowly floating up to the surface: “Let’s go, the water is not as peaceful though. We have something incoming, let’s go, let’s go.”

“Go, gogogo!” Tony Barnes also sensed something approaching from their back, and thus he immediately rushed to the position behind the four mages, and an energy shield made of golden light formed right before him: “Before it’s too late!”

“Boom!” a giant head of some kind of worms rose from below the surface of the water, its hundreds of eyes, shimmering of red, blue and green were staring at all five members of the team, its mouth was wide open, revealing layers and layers of crooked teeth inside, with dozens of tentacles extending from inside of the its mouth, flailing about like uncontrollable whips made of flesh and tendons in the air.

“Go!” Tony Barnes pushed his shield forward, the energy shield he constructed exploded and released an extremely bright beam of light onto the monster. The monster was instantly stunned and shocked by the light, its head backed off and fell back into the water.

The team did not stay and fight, instead they took advantage of the window of opportunity created by Tony Barnes and just escaped the area. Before they completely left the area, Glenda Grimes cast a disruptive spell to clear out most of the traces of their energy signature, along with most of their scent and footprints.

The team rushed away from the lake and into a mountain forest. This forest was not like those on earth, where trees were relatively closely grown and sometimes the tree branches and roots intertwined with each other. In this forest, the trees grew really far apart, and each of them had abnormally big tree crowns that are not very far from the ground. And strangely, the leaves and branches of these trees were not that dense, allowing a lot of sunlight to hit the ground directly. Normally this wouldn’t be the case in any other place, if not for special soil conditions.

When Professor Kapur took time to examine the soil, she found out the reason for this: most of the ground below were either hardened rocks or consisted of thick and sticky clay-like soil. Tall vegetation only grew in the large spots of cracks in the ground, and these spots were few and far between. The trees took up the especially big spots along the cracks, which were even more thinly distributed across the land.

“Be careful of the trees.” Josephine Wong reminded everyone from the team: “The first scouting team reported that some of the trees are poisonous and could trigger some pretty serious reactions.”

“We’ve all read the same reports, Josephine.” Dorothea Clarkson walked to the head of the team: “We better hurry, the energy fields seems to become less and less stable around us.”