Unlike what we thought at first glance the giant weeping willow tree wasn't inside the lake but slightly over it supported by its roots.
The willow was the genesis of the whole forest, the roots gave birth to all the other trees, flowers, and plants. Their mission was to supply the willow with blood, the same blood that right now was dripping from its leaves and created the lake under it.
As the bull's body got near the lake, the branches moved and grabbed the corpse, bringing it inside the lake where it floated towards the center until we lost sight of it because of the roots blocked our view from this edge. The bull wasn't the only beast that was brought to this place… on another side, I was able to notice that another corpse, a lot smaller than the one before, it was also taken by the willow and threw it to the lake.
"Move to that side I want to see where they go."
Hope following my request moved the ball to and proceeded accordingly to my instructions as I followed the track of the sheep that was the next victim…
The willow never stopped feeding the lake, but the level never changed. Thanks to my enhanced sight I was able to notice that the flow of the blood was always toward the center of the lake.
This time I had a better sight of what was happening to the sheep and was a little surprised to find a vortex under the tree. I looked at it for a few seconds, since the corpses were thrown there, it was likely for that place to lead towards the fourth stomach.
"Hope… I have good news and bad news…"
"Just talk…"
"I might have found a way for us to go to the fourth stomach…"
"…aaand?"
"We might need to dive into the lake and be sucked by a suspicious looking vortex under the willow…"
… Hope looked at me for a few seconds as she digested the news
"Can this even float?"
"Sure… we have to seal the zipper tho."
"But if we seal this completely, we will run out of air…"
"And if I don't do it, the place will be filled with blood, and we will drown here… if things get bad, I'll just get oxygen masks or something from the system."
After a few seconds of doubts she nodded and moved the ball, so I could have the zipper near.
Usually, the zipper wouldn't let anything go through, but it was the weakest part so if we reinforced something it has to be this, I opened it a little first help some air get inside it before working on it.
Using the same super glue that I used for the wires, I added an extra layer to the zipper and put a patch on top of it. I didn't want to spend too many points on it, so I secured the borders with the last remaining of the glue and prayed for it to work.
As I was focused on the patch, I didn't notice that we have been moving slowly in the direction of the lake. My sixth sense alerted me at the time that I understood what was happening.
"Go!!!"
Hope jumped on her place and without wasting time the ball started to rotate. At the same time, I used my time infusion to accelerate the ball as I slowed down the willow branches that were coming in our direction.
The ball shot into the lake as the willow branches did their best trying to grab us.
The weeping willow probably noticed that our blood wasn't drained, so it wanted to fulfill the job before throwing us into the lake.
On top of the blood lake, the ball was floating and being carried by the flow towards the vortex. Hope also did her best to speed the process making the ball rotate.
"Left."
After what just happened, Hope just followed my instructions when she heard something. The ball changed the direction avoiding a root's spike that came from under the lake.
I used my time ability and all my senses to support Hope as we moved to the center. It wasn't perfect, but most of the time those impacts were so late that they just managed to push us around without causing any damage to us.
Of course, this wasn't going to be like that forever. As we avoided the branches, a spike came, and before we could completely prevent it, the ball was punctured on a side, every time that part of the ball was under the blood level, some blood will enter our ball and make us sink a little. The wire structure was under the influence of Hope electromagnetic field, so it managed to support the fragile exterior and prevent it from collapsing on itself.
Without thinking too much, I took out an oxygen tank from the system and opened it. The theory was simple, I wanted to create a higher pressure inside the ball to prevent the blood from entering. For the moment it will also prevent us from running out of air as Hope was worried about.
It wasn't a perfect plan, but I had no way to patch the ball in the current situation and just because it managed to hit us once it didn't mean that the willow was going to let us go like that.
The closer we got to the center the more difficult it became to dodge the attacks, and by the time we arrived at the vortex a fifth of the ball was filled with blood.
The last push.
I accelerated the ball and slowed down the danger sources under the lake. One of them tore a side of the ball, but at the same time, they gave us the last impulse to get to the vortex. The ball rotated out of control in the center of the lake as we were sucked by it and were lost under the lake.
_________________________________
"Where are they coming?!?!"
After the first semi-human and the first chimera appeared two more rat-based beings followed them. They all came from nowhere after the cow's army retired… when we saw the rat based beasts, I thought that it was Pinky backstabbing us, but the goat-rat was attacked by the rats themselves as we heard Pinky's proclamations.
"Abomination!!! This evil being was the result of the evil god experiments, let him rest in peace my brave fighters and show them what happens to those that go against the Snake Goddess teachings!!"
It was either an amazing performance, or he was really not related to the attack in any way. Using his rats to fight against them was also stupid if he wanted to defeat us, so I changed my mind about the possibility of him betraying us.
The man bull was giving Gerhard a hard time. With the rat's numbers and our abilities, we could have won fast, but the battle stretched for a long time as their abilities were too annoying.
The man bull and a man-rat kept using a space ability, we have seen jumpers before, but their control was higher than those we have seen before as they could keep jumping almost at will.
The goat-rat had what I thought is a type of illusion ability that made it so from time to time the rats would fight each other.
For me the most troublesome was by far a sheep-rat chimera that had a weird mental power, a constant screech sounded on our heads provoking us a headache and made us constantly lose focus. I couldn't use my power to his full extension as I could use precise attacks because of it. I only managed to use large area effect debuffs, but I couldn't focus my ability in a single point to freeze one of them despite how much I tried it.
When someone tried to attack the sheep, the other three would cover it making it incredibly difficult for us to get the upper hand in the fight. On the other hand, they didn't have much attack power so they couldn't do any real damage to us either.
If it were just those four beasts, it wouldn't have been as troublesome as it was, but goats, cows, and other more normal looking beast appeared and fought with us stretching the fight for a couple of hours already.
The support from the snipers was good as they weren't affected by the sheep-rat ability, but every time we take down a minor beast a new one appeared…