"Lisa, do you think you can keep going?" Lohan asked worriedly.
If he weren’t so slow, he would have liked to get off her back and not let her carry him, considering that he was adding an even greater burden to an already injured and weakened body.
Lisa, panting, continued running through the pain she felt and replied in a firm voice. "We can’t retreat... According to the information I received, the resources that the Hogue Group brought to the Open World are vast. Since they are willing to spend a lot of money on a medium-sized city, it is very possible that they will be able to found the first guild in Elysium today or tomorrow... and that is something we cannot allow under any circumstances, Halon."
Lohan listened to this explanation and became thoughtful.
Apparently, the reward for founding the first guild must be very valuable, since Lisa is willing to take such a big risk to achieve it... the problem is that if they get into a critical situation, not only would they lose this race, but they would also have a chance of losing their High Rarity characters...
’To what extent is this reward more valuable than a Legendary and Mythical character?’ he wondered.
Sure, he also wanted the reward, and he was reaping many benefits from this dungeon raid without losing much, but Lisa was different. She was dealing with the pain of being injured while fighting the most powerful monsters we had encountered so far...
Her willpower was both admirable and foolish at the same time.
Looking inside himself, Lohan felt the Basic Life Seed and the Elite Beetle’s Mana Stone they had killed, while completely ignoring the digestion of the Mana Stone and focusing on the Life Seed, which at this point was almost completely digested.
He had no idea what he would receive upon completely digesting it, if he would receive anything beyond the large amount of Biomass available in it, but at the point they were reaching, any help would be very welcome, so he asked Lisa to attack it again, keeping the [Hemolymphatic Tissue Lv 11] active, and fully utilizing the new digestion speed of 832 Bio/h that level 11 of this evolution brought, to finish this as quickly as possible.
-- BBBZZZZZZ
Suddenly, the sound of beetles flapping their wings arose again.
Lohan went into combat mode, hugging the fox’s body completely and preparing to activate the [Obsidian Exoskeleton Lv 4] at any moment, while Lisa, exhausted, let out a sigh and ignored the pain in her leg, trying to speed up her movement to avoid this group of beetles.
Unfortunately, although the interior of the tree was very large, it was not large enough for them to easily escape from the beetles.
Within a few minutes of playing hide-and-seek with them, a beetle picked up a peculiar odor in one direction and realized that that part of the tree was very strange.
With his poor eyesight, he couldn’t see anything wrong there, since Lohan had camouflaged them both with the tree’s surroundings, but the smell they gave off was getting stronger and stronger, attracting even more attention from the insect.
Using the mental network that the queen had formed for them, within seconds the sound of more wings flapping arose, indicating that other beetles were also arriving.
This made the two realize that there was no longer any reason to hide, so, taking advantage of the beetle’s poor vision, he shot a line of web at the insect flying in front of them, looking confused at where they should be, and using that as support, Lohan sent a smaller Slime at the unsuspecting insect.
The smaller Slime was also camouflaged with the environment, causing the beetle that tried to break free from the magic web not to notice the small gelatinous sphere approaching.
Without giving the monster time to react, a translucent ice spike formed during flight and was quickly fired, aimed at the beetle’s neck joint to try to sever its head.
Unfortunately, the beetle’s frantic flight to break free from Lohan’s magical web caused the shot to miss its specific target, but luckily for the pair, the ice spike still pierced the beetle’s wing, passing through it with ease and leaving a hollow hole there.
-- SCREEEE!
The beetle screamed in pain or anger as it flapped its wings even more desperately, finally managing to break free from Lohan’s web, but now struggling with the imbalance of flying with a hollow wing.
Having to focus on maintaining stable flight, the beetle didn’t notice until it was too late that Lohan’s little Clone had reached it and stuck to the creature’s lower chest.
Without waiting for anything, Lohan made the clone begin digestion, which, thanks to Lisa’s help, already had [Hemolymphatic Tissue Lv 11] active at full power, corroding the beetle to the naked eye while expelling poison into the insect’s organism.
This double process of corrosion and direct poisoning caused the beetle to fall from the sky in a few seconds, hitting the ground while writhing in a last desperate struggle.
Unfortunately, this beetle was just a common Level 10 monster, so there was no Mana Stone for Lohan to steal.
Soon after recovering the clone inside himself, Lohan didn’t even need to warn Lisa to run, as she had already dashed forward, trying not to be seen by the beetles flying towards them.
As the inside of the tree was dark, Lohan was using [Pigmentation Mimicry] and [Threshold Mimicry] to the fullest to go unnoticed by the insects.
Fortunately, the strong smell of the beetle they had killed was more noticeable than the strange smell emitted by the "nothing" below the beetles, allowing the pair to flee the scene of the crime.
"Huff... Huff... Huff..." Despite not participating directly in the battle, Lisa was even more breathless than before, showing that the injuries were really wearing the fox down more than they appeared.
"Lisa, you definitely need to rest... in your condition, let alone dealing with a group with the Dungeon Boss Queen, if we encounter a group with an Elite Beetle, I don’t even know if you’ll be able to resist!" Lohan said in a firm tone.
Hearing his tone of voice, Lisa felt uncomfortable, unaccustomed to anyone speaking to her like that other than her mother, but she felt that not only was he saying this with good intentions for her, making it clear that he was concerned for her safety, but that he was actually right...
"Okay... let’s try to get out of the tree and rest for a few hours, maybe even go back to Thalendor and try to find some healing potions to treat my injuries..." She said in a lower tone of voice. "But we must return to finish this dungeon today, it cannot be postponed until tomorrow under any circumstances, okay?!"
Lohan agreed with that. "Yes, as long as we can deal with your injury, I have no problem dominating this dungeon today, I’m just concerned about your current situation."
With the agreement signed, Lisa began to move more carefully and slowly, returning the way they had come while delicately avoiding the beetle patrols that constantly flew overhead.