“The fumes are slightly toxic, if one’s injured it would be pretty hard to make it out. ” Jianmen said as he walked first into the land of oily swamp lakes: “Where is your teammate? Let me know when we’re close enough. This place should be mostly safe, but still, be careful.”

“I think one of the devices should be just around us somewhere. But it might be buried somewhere under this tar pool.” Josephine Wong pointed at a tar lake on their right side: “Let me try a bi-directional detection spell - they’ll know it’s me.”

“Okay. Be careful. You know that a bi-directional detection spell sounds like something a patiently waiting predator would pick up.” Jianmen stood beside her and said: “Please proceed. Want me to hold your bag for you?”

“That would be splendid, thank you.” Josephine Wong handed Jianmen her makeshift backpack made with animal fur.

After a short moment of concentration, Josephine Wong conjured up a small purple energy snake from her hands, then let the snake slither into the lake.

Shortly, a balloon made of some kind of animal hide floated to the surface of the tar lake. And on the top of the animal hide balloon, was a small bracelet.

“Hmm, looks like it was used as a distress beacon instead of personal tracking.” Josephine Wong frowned and said: “I think this was Professor Kapur’s. Strange thing is that she actually warned us before coming here not to use this method lightly - it would drain the energy and increase risk of the signal being picked up by dangerous entities.”

“So she’s in danger.” Jianmen nodded: “And she’s nearby. Can you find the clue that could lead us to your professor?”

“Give me a sec. She did teach us that if we’re about to do anything like this, we would need to leave the teammates some kind of clue on where to find us.” Josephine Wong started examining the animal hide balloon, and when she broke it and flipped it inside out, she found some handwriting in it: “I went south, towards the volcanoes.”

“She went south, towards the volcanoes.” Jianmen was standing behind Josephine Wong, and he also saw the writings: “... Wise choice. That place might be dangerous and hot, but it’s closer to one of the jump points one can use to get away from this realm. And the exit is on the dark side of the moon. I meant - the earth moon, not the other hundreds of moons.”

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“Okay, let’s go.” Josephine Wong nodded and looked in the direction of the volcanoes, they were not that far away, just maybe half an hour to forty five minutes of walking distance on their right.

They were able to make their way to the edge of the volcano lands in under ten minutes. The swamp and tar lakes were barren and had almost no living animals, even insects.

“Hmm, this might not be the best time.” when they set foot on some newly hardened lava rock from one of the small volcanoes that seemed to have become dormant some time recently: “But some of those tar in the tar lakes - they might be the new oil.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll be fucking rich.” Josephine Wong kept looking around, and started calling out using her magic: “Professor! Professor! Where are you?!”

Jianmen looked waited beside and did not stop her - this was because though she was worried, she still called out with diligence by applying a special magical encoding to her voice, so that her callings would sound just like normal voice to those who were not paying attention, but to those who were familiar with Josephine Wong’s magical signature, they would be able to easily decipher her call. The volcanoes here were not big, but they still covered quite a lot of land for just the two of them to search.

This was of course not without its risk. Just shortly after Josephine Wong started calling, Jianmen sensed that something seemed to be crawling towards their position from underground, and through some of the tunnels in the lava rocks beneath them.

“We have something incoming.” Jianmen pointed his rib sword in the rough direction of the crawler: “We should go. We should go.”

“Boom!” just when Jianmen grabbed Josephine Wong by her arms and tried to leave the area, a huge chunk of lava rock was broken off from the ground and thrown into the air by a giant snake with red flaring scales and spikes on its back.

“Holy fuck!” Josephine Wong started running with Jianmen: “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

“Bang!” Jianmen took a very heavy step forward, essentially slamming his foot on the ground and delivered a jolt of his energy into the ground.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Josephine Wong reached into her robe pocket to grab the rib bone shards Jianmen made for her, and she turned to Jianmen to tell him what she felt from the energy in the air: “I think it’s got some kind of tracking spell on us. We need to disable it or it’s gonna be able to track both of us anywhere.”

“We’ll need to worry about it later. Unless you wanna fight that bastard right now!” Jianmen swung Josephine Wong up forward, sending her quite a distance forward: “You go first and find your professor and find a place to hide as soon as possible! I’ll stall it for now!”

“Fuck! What are you thinking!?” Josephine Wong protested, but she also knew that this would be the best option for them for now: “Be safe! I’ll contact you on the way to remove the spell once we figure it out!”

“Just go!” Jianmen turned back and drew his rib sword against the giant snake.

“Fuck, Jianmen, you better live.” Josephine Wong whispered to herself and started running away from the scene while analyzing the tracking spell placed on her by the giant snake with red flaring scales and continuing the search for Professor Kapur.

“Bang!” the snake and Jianmen clashed into each other behind Josephine Wong.