Falling towards the ground at a terrifying speed, Scaly found herself wondering if this was really the best way to escape from the pursuing nightmare hawks closing the distance behind her, a thought that only grew louder as she found herself breaking through the crocked branches of some of the tallest eri dread woods, causing a reaction from the inactive trees, who wasted no time reaching out towards her with their branches.
Something Scaly herself didn’t care too much about given how weak these trees were, as she crashed straight through their outstretched branches without any difficulties. The only problem being that, while the branches themselves didn’t pose much of a danger to her...
Crack~ Crack~ Crack~
Colliding with them did inevitably end up slowing her down. Giving the nightmare hawks chasing her from behind the chance to catch up with her.
Squawwk-!
And that they did, as the first nightmare hawk to reach her soon reached down towards her with its sharp talons about to pierce through her back-
Swish-!
Only being forced back by a quick water blade that ended up missing its target. Making it clear that these nightmare hawks had learnt about the danger she possessed after what had ended up happening to the first nightmare hawk.
Worse yet, the reaction speed shown by this nightmare hawk made it clear to Scaly that the speed of these dreamscape monsters surpassed that of her own.
Or in simpler words, it wouldn’t exactly be easy to hit any of the nightmare hawks with her water magic now that they had already become cautious of it.
Lightning magic and wind magic was an option, but she personally doubted either of the two would be capable of dealing with a nightmare hawk given her limited exploration of the two branches of magic.
The only real plan she could come up with in her current situation was to stop herself just before slamming into the ground before dashing forward through the thick forest made up of eri dread wood. Hoping to take advantage of the dense forest to lose the nightmare hawks chasing after her, something that would have been simple enough to accomplish under normal circumstances, but...
Whoosh~ Crack!
The damnable trees seemed to be holding a grudge against her, as they continued relentlessly attacking her with their branches no matter what she did. Making it relatively simple for the nightmare hawks hovering above to find her location and dive back down towards her.
The only positive to her current situation being the fact that the nightmare hawks were far too large to properly chase her through the eri dread wood forest. Making escape rather simple as the annoying trees didn’t exactly discriminate between her and the nightmare hawks, being more than happy to attack them as well.
Still, it wasn’t a solution to the problem, as she just found herself moving around avoiding the nightmare hawks from above.
Her original plan of escaping changing over time to one of endurance. Knowing she was unable to outrun them. Planning to continue moving around until they lost their patience- or that was what she had intended to do before she remembered the adventurer outpost that wasn’t too far away from her current location.
With luck on her side, she might be able to draw the nightmare hawks close enough to the adventurer outpost that would end up alerting the adventurers inside. Having them deal with these annoying flying chickens constantly trying to tap her to death with their sharp talons.
Decision made, Scaly wasted no time and turned in the direction of the adventurer outpost. Hoping to also use the opportunity to potentially gauge the strength of the adventurers that would emerge with the appearance of the nightmare hawks in the process.
...
At the same time Scaly began making her way in the direction of the adventurer outpost that looked like a towering fortress from the outside, the dream gate connecting the outpost to the material plane flickered for a moment before an older man dressed in a fine blue robe emerged with an old wooden staff in hand. "I didn’t think I would be making my way to the dreamscape today..." Muttering somewhat offhandedly to himself as his gaze shifted towards the staff member in charge of managing the dream gate on this side.
"Huh? Someone came through?" Unsurprisingly, this staff member didn’t pay too much attention to the person that had emerged, as quite a lot of people had been moving between the outpost and the material plane over the past few days due to the large number of dreamscape monsters that had bene brought back by the large group of adventurers that had gone to bloody battlefield that had been created following the two demigods of the dreamscape moving their battle off the floating continent into the sky of the dreamscape.
Although the outpost could handle most of the dismantling on its own, some special and unique dreamscape monsters required the assistance of experts not present within the outpost, thus leading to them being transported out of the outpost ahead of schedule to get handled before they began to rot.
"Ah! T-t-t-t-the branch guild master!?"
However, the relaxed attitude disappeared almost immediately upon seeing the person who had passed through the dream gate. Instantly recognizing the other party as the branch guild master- or in other words, his boss. Dropping his lazy behavior in an instant before rushing forward to welcome the other party.
Of course, there was no way the branch guild master missed any of this, but it honestly wasn’t anything he cared about. After all, the job of the staff member in charge of the dream gate was just to note down whenever someone passed through it. Protection of the dream gate within the dreamscape was the outpost itself, while in the martial plane, he was the one in charge of guarding the dream gate.
So, after getting a brief overview of the current situation of the outpost and the night cloud that had just descended, the branch guild leader didn’t linger around and set out from the small building that the dream gate was located inside of.
In the first place, his goal for entering the dreamscape didn’t have anything to do with keeping an eye on the guild staff, he wasn’t that free. Instead, his goal was the barrier that guarded the city, as an inspection that had finished a few days after the battle between the two demigods of the dreamscape moved away had noted that some of the magic runes had been damaged by the aftershocks of that battle.
Expensive as those few magic runes would be to fix even with someone as skilled as himself around, it was far better than having to rebuild the outpost in the future.
Although he himself had never experienced something like that, he had a friend, who, like him, guarded a dream gate under the guild and ended up witnessing the outpost on the other side get wiped out by a passing demigod of the dreamscape.
Even twenty years after the incident, his friend was still in the process of rebuilding. The sheer scale and resources required in the construction of a dreamscape outpost was enough to even make the guild feel a sting.
Maybe because of the tremendous resources invested, every single outpost constructed by the guild inside the dreamscape had someone who had managed to reached level 150, also known as SS Rank within the guild, oversee it.
"I really hope it’s only a few external magical symbols that were damaged. If an internal one ended up being damaged... The cost of materials alone would increase a hundredfold..." Whispering this to himself as he silently braced for a potentially worst-case scenario after reaching one of the towering gates leading out of the outpost, the branch guild master stepped outside and slowly began using a simple levitation spell to float towards the location where the damage was located near the gate itself.
"Ah! There it is!" Soon enough spotting the damaged magical runes flickering sporadically on the towering walls. "One... Two... Five... Seventy-two damaged external magical runes. No damage to internal magical symbols!" Celebrating a short time later after going through the damage and seeing no damage to the internal magical symbols.
Even though the overall number of damaged magical symbols was larger than reported, that was expected, as long as no internal runes had been damaged, everything was fine.
Squawwk-!
"Huh?" Silently celebrating in his head, the branch guild master had momentarily not focused on his surroundings, being caught off guard by the sudden squawking sound-
Bang!
But more so than the squawking sound, he felt something flying past him, just barely avoiding the barrier that protected him before slamming directly into the center of the already damaged external runes, causing a brief chain reaction that allowed the energy of the attack to pass through the external magic symbols into the internal magical symbols. Destroying at least a dozen internal magic symbols that had only been exposed because he had weakened the barrier significantly in the area to do a thorough investigation of the damage that had been done.
From having originally been happy with the little damage that the barrier had suffered, the branch guild master fell straight into the pits of hell, as he could already see the terrifying price he would have to pay to get the special materials required to repair those internal magic symbols.
"WHO DARES!?"
Understandably, his anger exploded as he swept around. Staring directly towards the dead chicken in the sky who had squawked arrogantly towards him just a second earlier before some kind of attack had landed right next to him.