Actually, finding survivors wasn't exactly easy. Because of all the bodies that had been beaten to pieces by the creature, Jared was forced to wander beyond the ones that had been torn apart or devoured to look for the ones that at least appeared to have all their limbs intact or still had a breath left in them. Caroline and Tawana stood at a distance, watching him from afar while keeping a lookout. If there was one monster here, it meant that there could be a second one or even more lurking somewhere in the forest. Then, after casually kicking an arm out from under him, Jared finally found a survivor.
She looked to be about Caroline's age, was wearing wizard's robes, and appeared to be unconscious. The reason Jared mistook her for a corpse was because the large bloodstain on her white robes was so shocking, and in fact, if she hadn't coughed softly, Jared would have recognized her as a corpse.
Walking over to the woman, Jared crouched down and carefully examined her injuries, only to find that the woman was virtually unharmed, and that even the blood on her body had been left by the barbarian warriors around her. So Jared reached out and gently patted her face, trying to wake her up from her slumber.
"Miss? Wake up. Are you alive?"
"Woo ..."
The woman just moaned and didn't seem to regain consciousness.
"Miss?"
"... woo ..."
Seeing that it wasn't working, Jared reached out, took a deep breath and slapped her across the face as hard as he could.
"Wooah!!!"
The woman finally cried out at the intense excitement. At the same time she opened her eyes and sat up, looking around in horror.
(... Jared? Be gentle with women...)
"It's called shock therapy."
Jared showed no remorse in the face of Caroline's accusations. At that moment, the woman finally seemed to come to her senses. She stroked her cheeks, which were aching with pain, and scanned Jared's face with a blank look, as if she had no idea what kind of situation she was in.
"I'm ... right! An undead troll! Where's my guardian?!!!"
The woman screamed as she rose to her feet, but before she could do anything more, she came to a hard stop. She stared at the body beside her with round eyes. Her body began to shake uncontrollably, a natural human reaction to fear. Then the woman seemed to realize what was happening in front of her, her eyes slowly shifted downward, and she jumped away as if electrified to avoid the darkened blood sausage at her feet.
"She's the only one."
Meanwhile, Jared, who had checked everyone and made sure that all but her had been turned into corpses of their own kind, stood up and turned to Caroline. It was then that the woman turned back to Jared and slowly walked over to him with her teeth clenched. Jared was so confused that he felt a gust of wind, and he took a half-step back so he wouldn't get slapped in the face. Then the woman began to roar in anger.
"Why are you guys coming so slow!!!!! What if I get hurt?!!!"
"... seems brain dead."
Jared shrugged his shoulders at Caroline, then turned toward them, leaving the woman alone on the pile of bodies.
(Is this the result of too much shock?)
"Wait! Where are you guys going?!!! Hurry up and come protect me!!!"
Jared covered his ears, helplessly realizing he'd made a big mistake.
Ms. Williams stared in horror at the magical array of flashing purple lightning, her usual expression of silence and calmness long gone.
"What's going on here? What happened to the teleportation spell?!"
"My lord, someone has tampered with the teleportation spell formation! There's something ... there's something!!!! Ooohhh!!!"
Before the mage who was trying to maintain the magic formation could finish his sentence, a bright light shot out from the stand created by the purple lightning, hitting the mage right in the middle of his body. As he didn't have time to dodge, the mage screamed and turned into black charcoal. In the face of this situation, the remaining two magicians also began to involuntarily retreat, and they began to summon their guardians while chanting a magic protective shield. Soon, several heavily armed warriors with weapons stood in front of them. From the angry roar of the spirit of magic, the wizards had sensed that the entire spell formation had been altered for some unpredictable reason, and had become another being of the same essence, but completely different. It was clear that the changed spell was activated in a forced manner, and that it was not subject to any external force, and would continue to do so until it was destroyed.
The purple lightning faded away, and when Ms. Williams saw the huge, two-winged figure that appeared in the golden light, her face finally became too grave to be stark.
"It's the Devil!!! Prepare to fight!!!"
She gave the order immediately.
Two-meter-tall monsters with long horns and huge bat wings came out of the magic formation, gazing at the beautiful world with greedy eyes. At the same time, they were excited about destroying all these things, and the burning purple flames appeared on the surface of their bodies, and the air was filled with the smell of Juan for a while. They looked at the humans and their little resistance in front of them with a sense of triumph and contempt, and waited for them to finish their preparations with a sense of "goodwill". The pride of the demons and their natural inclination to play with the souls and feelings of others, giving these people enough time to prepare themselves and in the end letting all their efforts be in vain and in despair, is the favorite style of the demons.
Three devils?
Ms. William sucked in a breath of cold air, now that the five great chanting envoys in the academy were all gone, and against this kind of low-level demons, it was not impossible for ordinary magicians to win. So she watched the three demons vigilantly and raised her hand to give the command to attack. At that moment, the teleportation spell once again flashed with a purple light.
Are there reinforcements?
This sudden turn of events worried Ms. Williams, and in fact she was surprised to find that even the demons looked back in amazement, as if what had happened there had nothing to do with them at all.
The light on the magic array began to change, the purple lightning couldn't stop roaring, and then transformed into a golden light, and then, a few blurred figures gradually emerged from the light, and when she saw their faces clearly, Ms. William even thought she was dreaming.
"So it is."
One of them looked at the demon standing right in front of him as if it were a tame kitten.
"Is that what you call 'trouble'?"
He said easily, while stretching his backhand and summoning his black twin blades .
The woman stretched out her hands in front of her, her expression was grave, and her slender hands gestured rapidly, while her mouth chanted a fierce burst of incantations. Then the corpse in front of her eyes burst into flames, and in an instant it turned into a huge fire that engulfed everything in it.
"They're so pathetic ..."
Tavana whispered as she gazed at the bodies being burned in the flames.
"Hmph... this group of trash, even this lady can't protect well! What's the use of coming? There's no need to hold a funeral for them!"
The woman snorted in disbelief.
"Words can't be said ..."
Jared shook his head.
"If there are any more of those creatures, I'm afraid they'll follow the scent of blood to this place, and in order to minimize our chances of encountering them, it's necessary to destroy the bodies." Here, he turned to the woman, who, in her half-reluctant introduction, had been known to the group as Kylie Vitale, one of the other participants in the trial. Jared merely glanced at her blood-stained magical robes and ordered with a frown.
"Take it off."
"What do you want?!"
Kelly turned, took two steps back, and eyed Jared warily.
"You've got the smell of blood all over your clothes, and I don't want a live bait on my team."
"So what do I wear!"
"Caroline?"
(Okay.)
Caroline took the small bag Tawana had brought with her and proceeded to pull a new set of clothes out of it and hand it over. Kelly took it reluctantly, frowning at Jared.
"When do you plan to see this place?"
"Then I'll go look around."
With that, Jared shrugged his shoulders helplessly, turned around and disappeared into the forest. Kylie, on the other hand, watched his back as he left and let out a cold snort. Then she chanted a spell again and released a cloud of dark smoke that enveloped her.
"Sister Caroline, what the hell is going on here?"
Tawana asked uneasily, realizing that in the academy, Kylie Vito was a well-known genius. At the age of seventeen, she had attained the rank of Magician, a level that ordinary people would never reach even after decades of struggle. But even for her, there was still nothing she could do in this withered forest, and even her guardians had been killed. Is this test so difficult that even a magician can't pass it?
"This isn't even a test!"
After changing her clothes, Kylie stepped out of the black fog, and perhaps because of the clean clothes she was wearing, her expression was not as intense as it had been earlier. But she still had a cold anger.
"We've come to the Forest of the Dead!!!"
At those words, Tawana froze in place in terror.
There are several so-called no-go zones on the mainland.
It's not a forbidden area, but an area that would be extremely dangerous for humans.
The Forest of the Dead is one of them. Legend has it that a thousand years ago, during a battle between an undead chanter and an elf, the elf shot and killed his wife, causing the undead chanter to become furious and unleash the final level of the Great Chanting Magic, "Death to All Things". Under the aura of death, the lush forest was drained of life in an instant, and all the creatures that lived in it were turned into a pile of white bones. The undead chanter also lost his life because he had exhausted all of his energy and lost his life in the backlash of the magic spirit. It was a sad, crazy tale. After that, the place originally known as the Forest of Water was renamed the Forest of the Undead. It is said that even now, the grudges of the beasts and elves that were brutally killed still hover here, looking for something to vent their anger on.
Even a magician, not to mention a magician, would never enter such a forbidden area.
"How can ..."
Tawana's feet gave out when she realized what was going on, but Caroline was there to hold her up.
"How did we end up here ...?!"
"How do I know?!"
Kelly grumbled indignantly, while glaring at Tawana.
"And you, you lowly magician, show some courage. If you're so scared after running into a restricted area, what are you going to do if you're in danger?!"
"Woo ..."
With Kelly's aggressive demeanor, Tawana had no way to say anything. Seeing her like this, Kylie raised her eyebrows and was about to say something else when Jared walked out of the forest.
"We should be on our way."
He glanced at Kelly, then to Caroline and Tawana.