Magical Ascension Chapter 27 (Patreon)

From the shadows of the thick forestry around us came the sound of harsh clicking noises and my head snapped to the side as a dark green flash blurred to the side just of my vision before I could hear the scratching of something hard scratching wood as the green blur shot up into a tree.

"It's testing us," Keqing spoke as we all kept an eye above us as we kept moving as we knew that we literally couldn't just stand in one place to let the predator make the first move. We needed to keep moving as it would force the predator to make an attack on the move giving us more time to react.

"Any idea what it is?" I asked as Nahida was summoned beside me with her standing ready to feel the stress I was holding within myself.

To my question, Keqing only gave a grunt of denial so I just frowned as I we kept moving deeper into the forest. But as we were moving Nahida grabbed my leg and spoke into my mind. "There is a pit trap with a monster in it, in front of us."

I in turn held out my arms to block everyone and it seemed like the very wind that was passing through the dark forest died off as we were pinned between a corner and a hard place. A trap door using a monster in front of us. And another highly agile monster using the fog-filled tree cover above our heads to stalk us.

"Furina, flood the trap door, Keqing electrocute the water," I ordered and both girls started their spells while I looked to Nahida and ordered her. "Nahida use your roots to put a thicker lid atop the trap and keep it from opening," I ordered and she grinned and I could feel her drawing bits of my mana to do so as she sent a happy message to me.

"Yay! You are making me monster soup!" My face twitched hearing that but I didn't react and instead matched the two ladies in forming a spell but instead, I summoned the glowing orb of Venus as I used my Astral spell and as Furina's water spell slammed into and filled the hole.

I saw the monster that was within the trap door hole was a large centipede with thick frontal legs that allowed it to violently shoot upwards out of its hole to catch monsters and people with its pincers that were thicker than my own torso.

But with Nahida's roots entangling it and Keqing's lightning stunning and frying it's nerves. It couldn't escape the fate of being drowned by Furina's spiritual water and I gave a small smile hearing Furina cheering at getting a peak soldier-tier ambush monster.

I was so happy that I weakened my venus spell so I could properly congratulate Furina as I laid a free hand on her shoulder and the blue-haired woman looked up to me with a smug smile aimed at me that turned pale with terror. But knowing my trap worked I spun on my heel and as my eyes caught the green blur flying at me at high speeds naught even a couple meters away from me.

My Venus projection spell exploded into life with the monster smashing into the beach ball-sized planetoid that was previously only the size of a grape and with it hitting the spell I saw that the monster was a mantis of some kind.

With a mental flex the Venus projection slammed the mantis onto the ground with a violent crunching noise and then further crunching noises rang out as the highly abrasive planetoid ground down past the armor and thick muscle of the mantis that made a shrieking noise before it abruptly died as I made my venus projection explode.

"A leaping centipede and a variant of a stalker mantis. Let's-" Keqing started behind Nahida poked my leg and said seriously.

"Master there is weird energy coming from the centipede's hole."

I raised an eyebrow and then shared Nahida's words with Keqing blinking but Darkness called out excitedly. "So your little summon can pick out pocket realms? As the leaping mantis is showing growth signs indicative of it being a newborn monster from a pocket realm!"

I shrugged as Nahida was a higher tier 'monster' so I didn't know all her abilities honestly as not even she knew besides the obvious plant conjuration and manipulation.

Either way I walked over with Nahida using her roots to throw the trap door off and low and behold down at the bottom of the dark hole where the centipede was living was a finger-sized glowing ring that obviously led to the tiny, minature world that was clearly close to popping under this worlds much stronger spatial laws.

"Keqing, are we going to check this minature world out?" I asked as its portal was tiny which meant that the world inside was obviously falling apart and about to disintegrate.

So using a portal enhancer might not be even worth it. But instead, Keqing gave a rare smile as she said softly. "Yes, if you can you should always check tiny realms as you can never guess the resources within them. That's advice my master has always told me."

I took a breath while Nahida was using her roots to dredge up the corpse of the mantis along with the centipede while I was thankful we were only running into the more solitary and less intelligent insect monsters and not packs of monsters like the wolves that pretty commonly called this forest home.

Keqing took out one of her portal enhancers which looked like a darkly glowing crystal that she fed to the portal to strengthen it with the crystal's-dense spatial energy. But while she did that I felt Furina sidle up next to me with her remaining silent for a moment before she spoke quietly. "I don't like these tiny realms."

'What am I supposed to do about that?' I thought with some exasperation and I asked quietly as Keqing had Lalatina help her check to see how stable the growing portal was becoming as already the portal had grown from finger-sized to a size I could probably put my fist into with it still growing.

"Any reason why?"

There were a couple of minutes of silence until with a deep exhale Furina stated coldly. "The whole reason my family collapsed back in France was my Father, Mother, and members of the family's elite guard were slaughtered when they were harvesting a large-scale, tiny realm and the core of the realm was a Half-step emperor-tier monster that woke up."