Isaac didn’t even have time to react before Catherine pushed him down. His back hit the ground, and he blinked up at her in shock.
"Hey, sto—hmph!"
His protest was cut short when she leaned in and kissed him.
He tried to say they shouldn’t do something like this outside, but she didn’t seem bothered at all.
When she finally pulled back, she licked her lips with a seductive smile.
"Don’t you know you shouldn’t make others worry about you? You died without even warning me. I’m punishing you for it," she said.
Isaac looked around the place filled with people moving around. "At least let’s go inside. We’re out in the open."
"It’s fine. My skill will make sure no one notices." She spoke as if she were discussing something normal.
Isaac didn’t know whether to sigh or laugh. It really felt like a switch inside her had flipped the moment she learned there was no danger in being intimate with him.
But to his surprise, she suddenly stepped back and brushed off her clothes instead of climbing on top of him again.
He blinked, confused.
She noticed his reaction.
"Why do you look disappointed? I only stopped because you asked me to," she said with a sly smile.
The corner of Isaac’s mouth twitched. He pushed himself up and dusted off his sleeves.
"We should talk to the Sword Empress too," he said. "I need to apologize for what I did. She probably blamed—"
"It’s fine. We can talk to Master later. First, we need to handle the Sinkhole Worms," Catherine said calmly.
"Do we really need to worry about them? I already sent a clone," Isaac said.
"Sinkhole Worms have a very large detection range. Even if you use Verdant Baitseeds, they’ll run away if they sense strong mana," She said and paused before adding, "And this will be your first time seeing Red Rain."
"So we’re going now?" Isaac asked.
"Yes. I’ll also teach you how to use clones properly," she added with a wink.
Isaac shook his head slightly but followed her. They headed back inside to pick up protective gear from the Sanctum of Masters’ storage.
The wilderness was dangerous. The air itself carried traces of corrupted particles, and prolonged exposure could be fatal. Even Isaac, with all his strength, wasn’t completely safe without gear. Catherine, despite being a Champion, wasn’t immune either.
When they entered the gear room, Catherine didn’t hesitate. She began changing in the same room as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Isaac looked away immediately, but his eyes kept trying to drift back every time she moved. She bent slightly as she slipped into the protective undersuit. The perfect arch made Isaac stare at her without blinking. He only looked away when he saw her smiling slyly at his reaction.
Once they were both geared up, they left the city.
Isaac grabbed Catherine’s hand and teleported. His range was quite high thanks to his bottomless mana.
However, Isaac noticed that after a certain point of distance, the mana cost spiked without a meaningful gain in distance.
This meant he had to chain multiple jumps to reach their destination.
After several teleportations, they reached in a desolate region.
Blackened trees twisted into unnatural shapes. The ground was cracked, as if something had drained the life out of it. The air felt still and heavy.
"Most of the monsters here already fled. They can sense the red rain coming," Catherine said as they walked through the ruined forest. "Some of them will run away, some will come searching for it."
"Won’t the Sinkhole Worms run away before being corrupted by the red rain? They are supposed to be sensitive towards danger."
"Sinkhole Worms live underground. So they won’t be able to detect rain’s arrival on time. For some reason, red rain cannot be detected by any means. The only way to know it is coming are the clouds. Even the monsters who escaped this region did so after seeing the dark clouds gather above," she explained.
A few minutes later, he spotted four familiar figures ahead.
His clone stood with Overlord Aurora, Princess Althea, and Charlotta. Under normal circumstances, they would have brought a larger escort. But with the rain approaching in less than an hour, fewer people meant fewer risks.
If anything went wrong, they needed to escape fast, without dragging along weaker members.
Isaac’s clone opened a spatial ring and took out over sixty Verdant Baitseeds.
These seeds came from a relic: the Grove Replicator, an artifact owned by Fortified City 22. It could create up to ten copies of any seed, but each copy dropped in quality by ten percent. And the copied seeds couldn’t be copied again.
Isaac originally had six authentic Verdant Baitseeds. Using the relic, he produced sixty copies.
Normally, these would be considered too low-quality to attract Sinkhole Worms. But thanks to Isaac’s skills, even the worst copies performed on par with seeds other cities used as their best.
Of course, Overlord Aurora had no idea he originally had six. She assumed he only copied them two or three times to keep their quality high.
The clone held the seeds.
Overlord Aurora frowned. "Can you really grow anything in the wilderness? Your farms are built on carefully chosen land. This place is completely dead. Nothing grows here."
Isaac stepped forward. "Just watch."
He took out the Terraheart Plow from his spatial ring.
He drove the plow into the ground and pulled.
The earth reacted instantly.
A wave of healthy soil spread outward. The corruption shrank, almost as if it were evaporating. Rotten patches returned to normal. The sickly gray sand turned brown. And then, to everyone’s shock, fresh green grass sprouted.
In the middle of the wilderness, a patch of living earth appeared.
"What...?" Overlord Aurora’s voice wavered.
Althea and Charlotta stood frozen.
"This..." Althea stepped forward slowly. "You can reverse the corruption of the red rain on land?"
She crouched and touched the grass with both hands. Her eyes closed for a moment. She inhaled deeply.
"This is real. It’s not an illusion. It’s not temporary either. You purified the land completely," she whispered.
Isaac nodded, though unsure why everyone was reacting so dramatically. "Is it that big of a deal?"
Althea turned to him with a complicated expression.
"Only Gods’ domains or the expansion of a Fortified City can push back corruption. Nothing else, not even the strongest skills can do this," she said quietly.
She stared at the plow in his hands. "What type of item is that?"
"A bonded one," Isaac replied, emphasizing ’bonded’ to make her understand she couldn’t use it even she had it. "As for why it works... I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine."
Althea exhaled slowly. "Then it must be blessed by a God. That’s the only explanation."
Avery, the water elemental spirit, had said the same thing.
When Isaac first used the plow, she rushed over claiming the land had turned into a holy ground.
The memory made him pause.
He looked at the lush patch now covering the once-dead area. It wasn’t only cleansed. It felt... alive.