The minotaur began to raise one of his hands. At that instant, everyone thought that the confrontation would begin. However, the minotaur's hand passed by Emily's side and then took the axe that Nina was carrying.
Hito slowly looked at what he was doing and carelessly looked into the minotaur's eyes.
He realized that the Minotaur was looking directly at him, as if he felt that Hito was different from the rest.
Despite having exchanged direct glances, the Minotaur began to return the way he had entered with the axe in his hand.
When the minotaur finally left. Everyone started breathing normally again.
"Damn, he took my axe!" Nina exclaimed.
Klein again opted to leave the forest, the presence of minotaurs was something that was a level above them.
The hope of finding the flower and motivation had been destroyed in a moment.
At that instant, the system showed a new notification to Hito:
«New Quest: Defeat Persephlora» « ? »
This time, the alert brought an option to get more information. So he quickly selected « ? ».
«Persephlora is a being created with the roots of the tree of life, it controls vegetation and can harvest small skeletons, which are controlled with roots that go all the way through its interior»
"Is this related to the appearance of the minotaurs?" wondered Hito.
Then, he closed the system and said, "There is no explanation for a minotaur to enter a forest and neither should it. Even knowing this, do you still want to continue?"
A tense silence ensued....
When Nina was about to speak, the bushes began to move.
Flowers of different colors could be seen moving from one side to the other.
"Can those flowers walk?" asked Emily.
It seemed that the flowers were moving through the bushes and were getting closer and closer to them.
"The flower!" shouted Sebas as he pointed to it.
The flower they were looking for appeared and Klein didn't hesitate for a second to run quickly towards it.
Suddenly, it began to move away. It seemed that the base of the flower was covered by a small bush which moved with it.
"Wait!" Nina shouted.
However, Klein did not hear her, and continued to chase after the flower.
To avoid leaving Klein alone, everyone started to follow him.
All the flowers that had appeared began to run in one direction, along with the flower they were chasing.
Little by little, Klein was shortening the path and just as he was about to reach it, it stopped, and suddenly, a small skeleton with the flower on its head came out of the bush and jumped at him.
Before it could attack him, a spear pierced him from the side, pinning him directly to the ground.
Klein thanked his friends and at the same time apologized for having reacted in disregard of their opinions. However, at that moment, he could not contain himself. After days of searching for the flower, he could not allow it to disappear before his eyes.
The small skeleton was still alive. However, he was unable to flee, due to the large spear that had pierced him.
Everyone began to look at it, this skeleton had nothing inside but thick roots that served to control its joints.
Leo quickly cut the flower with one of the swords. To everyone's surprise, the skeleton did not react to the cut.
"A bait?" asked Nina as she looked at the flower.
Despite being a weak skeleton, Hito knew perfectly well that this had been created by Persephlora. To prevent any of his companions from getting hurt, he asked again, "Should we continue?"
"Damn it!" Klein exclaimed and after a short pause continued, "First a minotaur shows up and hopefully let us live and now, a damn weakling using the flower as bait."
At that moment, Sebas decided not to think any more and proposed to go ahead on the journey, with the condition that, if they were in danger, the others would flee leaving him behind; somehow, he would manage to survive.
"You know perfectly well we wouldn't do that." Emily replied.
"True, but still, I'm not going to stop you.", Nina replied. Then, with a quick swing of her new sword at the small skeleton, she continued speaking, "Now that I know these flowers are here, I won't leave without getting them first, either."
Finally, they all decided to continue with the quest.
-
-
The initial objective had not changed, they were all following Hito to find that field of flowers he had talked about. However, it was clear that they were heading towards something dangerous.
The other flowers with bushes continued to walk near them, it was as if they also wanted them to walk towards that direction.
"It's a clear trap, isn't it?" asked Klein.
Hito nodded his face and replied, "It's as if they are watching out for us, or rather, watching that we don't run away."
-
-
After a while, several minotaur corpses began to be seen on the ground.
"What the hell happened here?" asked Leo.
"These skeletons, were they able to defeat these minotaurs?" asked Emily.
Nina denied the question, there was no way those little skeletons were able to break through the skin of a minotaur. Besides, they didn't look like they had died from a cut.
All the bodies were wrapped in small roots and not only that, it seemed that these roots, were slowly eating them.
"I think we're getting closer to the mommy of these little ones." Leo said.
Nina could not believe that a large number of minotaurs had been killed. On the ground some stone mallets and small lifeless skeletons could also be seen.
'Were these their weapons?' wondered Hito.
Suddenly, Emily asked, "Is it possible that they are fighting each other?"
To them, that was an option that made sense. However, it was something that had never been seen since the world had been invaded by those strange creatures.
They all continued walking, observing the disaster that had occurred in that area.
In addition, besides the minotaurs, they could also observe, many marching roots in the surroundings.
-
-
Suddenly, they came to a small river.
They all rejoiced, seeing that the main source of life was before their eyes. They did not hesitate to approach to refill their containers.
Hito, not having a container, tried to drink with his hands. When he drank a small part of this water, the system displayed an alert:
«Poisoning effect received: Your HP will decrease by two points every five seconds, for the next 25 seconds»
Hito quickly spat out the water still in his mouth and shouted to the others, "Wait!" and then warned them of the danger.
Quickly, he opened «Statistics» to see it reduced.
< Level 2 >
< Hp 108/110 >
< Mana 20/20 >
< Exp 16/110 >