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"Turn left. Keep going. Stop, now look to the right, there's a crack in the wall, crawl in. Stick to the right wall as you walk, good, stop here. Look up, yes, that's the hole, you have to jump in." Pannis hung back all the way, merely using instructions to guide the team. In no time, they arrived at the end of a cave, looking up at a very covert hole in the ceiling.
"Is the lower level of the cave up there?" Catherine asked uncertainly.
"Of course not, the people naming it aren't idiots." Pannis went under the hole, looked up and answered, "But we're not far off. We need to jump directly into it, remember to activate the Aggression Shield before jumping if you don't want to dirty dance with a demonized rat."
"Of course, I understand." Catherine's body suddenly became somewhat blurry, a transparent aggression covered her entire body. In the world of Yarra, only advanced physical professionals above Silver Rank possess Aggression, and the protection afforded by Aggression for physical professionals far exceeds that of armour. When a physical professional opens the Aggression shield, there are only two ways to attack him, either fight a war of attrition, because the consumption of the Aggression shield is far greater than the consumption of attack skills, so after a certain period of battle, the user's Aggression will often be consumed, and the Aggression shield will naturally cease to exist; or use an energy far greater than the total amount of Aggression in a certain range of the Aggression shield to break through, including using skills with special penetrative properties such as penetrating arrows to attack or similar skills to the knight's charge to forcibly break through.
For professionals at the Gold and Silver Rank, the consumption of the Aggression Shield is too astonishing, and the total consumption is far greater than the recovery. Therefore, almost no one would maintain the Aggression Shield for a long time in battle, otherwise, just a few minutes would be enough to exhaust an elite Gold Rank professional's Aggression, and next they could only rely on their physical strength to continue the fight. When one is fortunate enough to advance to Legendary, the value of Aggression recovery is near the consumption of the Aggression Shield, and it is possible to support the Aggression Shield for a long time. But even so, if the battle lasts too long or the battle is too fierce and the consumption is too large, there is also a possibility to fall into a situation of Aggression exhaustion.
Only a Demigod, at the apex of all beings, can instantly transform energy from the surrounding environment into his own energy to supplement the consumed energy, completely eliminating the problem of consumption, and will turn the Aggression Shield into a solidified state covering the body's surface. Therefore, the universally accepted rule in the world of Yarra is that only a Demigod can kill a Demigod.
Catherine, having opened her Aggression Shield, jumped into the hole above her head without hesitation. After carefully inspecting her surroundings, she yelled out, "It's safe, come on up." Although Lina was a Priestess, she was obviously agile and vanished into the hole with a slight leap, treating the three-meter distance as if it were flat ground. Only Vivian couldn't jump up, but she pointed her finger on the ground, and a rope as thick as her finger appeared out of thin air. It wrapped around her waist like a living thing and lifted her up, sending her safely into the hole.
"You're all very energetic." Pannis, who was originally in the back of the team and planning to help, just shrugged and jumped up himself.
The upper cavern was narrower than the lower one, it could only accommodate one person passing through, but the intersections were numerous, densely packed like a beehive. Faced with the densely packed roads, just when Catherine felt at a loss, Pannis didn't direct, but instead, stuck to the wall, moving in a weird twisted manner a few times, before arriving before Catherine and taking the torch, "I'll lead the way, the paths here are a bit troublesome."
"Of course, you are the explorer, you call the shots." Catherine stopped talking, followed Pannis, and the four fell into silence, apart from the sound of footsteps, there was only the crackling sound of the torch burning.
"Watch out, we're going to jump." Pannis stopped in a slightly spacious space and pointed at the ground below.
"So sneaky." The three young girls of the adventure team came up upon hearing this and were taken aback. A cave suddenly appeared on the ground; the dark hole was hard to see clearly under the flickering light of the torch. If someone who didn't know passed by, there would be a high probability of falling in without any preparation and getting seriously hurt.
"Falling in would be fine." Pannis lit another torch and tossed it directly into the hole. He leaned over to take a look and said, "This is the only entrance from our level to the demonic bat's territory."
"Demonic bat?" A visibly uninterested Lina, without a book to read, responded weakly, "Didn't you say the entrance to the lower level was in the territory of the demonized rat?"
"Entering from the territory of the demonized rat is a shortcut, which can go straight to the entrance. If we take a detour, it would take two days." Pannis went down first and shouted, "Hurry up and come down. Follow me and run, this is the territory of the demonized bats, they find enemies by sound. If you don't hurry, the bats will swarm over."
Hearing Pannis's words, Catherine, who had turned around to catch Vivian jumping down, didn't even put her down. She ran behind Lina with Vivian in her arms.
After several turns, the four people ran into a narrow passage. Hearing the dense flapping of wings not far away, Pannis pointed to the ground and said, "Miss Catherine, the entrance is inside. Vivian and I will go in and open the passage, you stay here and guard it, don't let the bats fly in and disturb us."
"Not necessary, don't underestimate me." Seeing that all four of them had entered the narrow alley, Lina stretched out her right index finger, slowly drew a rectangle in front of her chest, and murmured, "In the name of Denia, goddess of the earth."
As the rectangle neared completion, sparks gathered around Lina's finger. In an instant, her finger became dazzlingly bright. As the rectangle was finally completed, Liana pointed her bright finger at the entrance of the narrow alley, "In the name of God Denia, Holy Words, Barricade." Following the direction of her finger, the sparks exploded, evenly spreading out to form a transparent luminous wall at the entrance of the narrow alley. A few swift bats had already rushed up and hit the glowing wall, sliding down slowly on the surface.
"Let's go. If it's just a bunch of demonized bats, we can last at least ten minutes here." Lina imitated the Crystal Gunner's move from a novel, stylishly blowing on her fingers and flipping her hair without caring about Pannis's odd look at her. She boldly took the lead, heading into the narrow passage.
"This is the place." Around a bend where the light from the glowing wall grew dimmer, the three girls still saw where Pannis had halted. The long passage continued forward, and Pannis's spot was just an ordinary cave wall in the middle of a narrow tunnel, with no special features.
"This is too insidious." Lina made this comment again: "The guys at the Adventurer's Guild are so cunning, setting the trap here. Who could possibly notice it? "
"This is to prevent greenhorns from stumbling into it. Experienced veterans at the upper rank can easily detect it." Pannis felt around on the rock wall, then suddenly stopped at one point, speaking to Vivian. "Miss Vivian, point here with your finger and prepare to shake this spot nine times with Fire Element energy. Remember, nine shakes within three seconds. A Silver Rank Mage can do this. Got it?"
"No problem." Vivian's youthful face was filled with interest. "So, this is what the mechanism is like. It's fun."
"There's even more fun to come. Remember, the next step involves using Ice Element." Feeling the fast oscillation of the Fire Element coming to an end, Pannis continued to grope on the rock wall. After silently calculating for a while, he suddenly instructed rapidly: "Here, Ice Element energy, five times in two seconds, now."
Prepared for this, Vivian quickly moved her finger, just as she was told, muttering: "Piece of cake, don't underestimate an alchemist."
"Perfect, the rest is up to me." Pannis seldom complimented others beyond his guidance and instructions. With experienced movements, his finger located the third point, and after waiting for a few seconds, oscillated his Aggression on it eleven times before dusting off his hands. "It's done, the passage will open for one minute."
The three girls curiously stared at the wall in front of them, but the rock wall remained unchanged. "Where's the passage?"
"Follow me." Pannis moved backwards towards the opposite direction of the mechanism without turning around. This section of the cave tunnel was not too narrow, but after Pannis went back a few steps, he collided with the rock wall. Strangely enough, he gradually sank into the wall as if it didn't exist.
"What a devious mechanism." Unable to help herself, Lina criticized again, then being the first to follow Pannis, bumping into the rock wall and blacking out. Contrary to what she had anticipated, passing through the rock wall did not feel like hitting a solid object, nor was it sensationless like passing through an illusion. Instead, she felt like sinking into a sort of jelly until she took three steps forward in the dark, getting past the rock wall, and returning to normal senses.
After passing through the rock wall, Lina found herself in another not-so-spacious rock tunnel, strangely enough, even though Pannis had extinguished the torch, there was still a faint glow emitting from the rock wall. Under the dim light, Lina saw where she came in was again a rock wall, and out of nowhere, ripples flowed across the wall, as Vivian and Catherine came in one after another.
"What's this?" Lina looked at the wall, and when she reached out to touch it, she found the rock had returned to its original state, cold and hard. She couldn't help but exclaim: "Incredible!"
"Clearly, this is the work of a demigod." Vivian also pressed her face to the rock wall next to Lina, focusing intensely to perceive something, mumbling: "Reversal of illusion and reality, it must have taken a grandmaster in Alchemy, Morphology and Energy Transformation each, working under a demigod operation, to achieve this effect."
Seeing Pannis leaning against the wall impatiently waiting for the two girls to return to their senses, Catherine clapped her hands, startling Lina out of trance: "Ladies, we should move on."
Startled, Lina dragged Vivian, still immersed in the world of magic, along, not forgetting to ask curiously: "What's on the wall? Is that the noctilucent moss mentioned in the books?"
"Indeed, it is noctilucent moss." Pannis replied as they walked, "Unfortunately, they only exist in a few spots in the lower cave, or the adventure would be much easier."
"Why so few?" Vivian asked puzzledly.
"Because they got eaten. There are quite a few common magical creatures inside that are omnivorous, including plants. But if you do come across noctilucent moss in the cave below, beware. Such places often house powerful magical creatures that deter the common ones from even approaching." After walking for a few hundred meters, Pannis turned around, upping his volume to announce: "Well, ladies, welcome to the lower level of the Crying Cave."