Three hundred meters left.
Reaching this point already met the minimum requirements of their assault mission.
But Li Ban wanted to push further.
The closer they got to the rift, the stronger the monsters became—but it also meant a higher success rate for their operation!
"Priest Hao Yang, I want to push another hundred meters."
Priest Hao Yang glanced at him and answered without hesitation, "All right."
Their shared goal drove them to the exact same choice.
They quickly made their decision, with a massive horde of monsters still chasing close behind.
Priest Hao Yang jolted, blasting a ring of airflow from his body that shoved the monsters that had closed within three meters of them over ten meters back.
He shifted positions twice but only advanced thirty meters before a monster the size of a small mountain appeared, completely blocking their line of sight.
Chao Lu suddenly appeared. "My turn to help," she said in an entirely flat voice.
With that, she launched herself forward and forcefully expanded her body.
Her body was naturally highly elastic and corrosive. Stretched to her absolute limit, she became three meters tall and three meters wide.
While this size was not considered massive in the center of the Sea of Monsters, it made her far more conspicuous than before.
Chao Lu's sudden change caused a commotion among the surrounding monsters. Locking onto the massive beast blocking Li Ban's path, she threw herself directly at its vitals.
Because she had not locked her prey inside her jelly-like body, Li Ban and the others could clearly hear the sharp sizzle of corrosion.
The ten-meter-tall monster thrashed its body, grabbing at Chao Lu clinging to the center of its chest.
Its razor-sharp claws tore Chao Lu's body into several pieces.
Yet her soft, elastic body squirmed. The fresh wounds stuck back together, healing in what seemed like an instant.
Failing to strike her down, the monster grew furious. It extended both enormous palms, its sharp claws flashing with cold light, ready to tear apart the nuisance on its body regardless of the consequences.
At that moment, Chao Lu suddenly shrank into a ball, dodging the monster's claws.
Instead, the sharp claws tore the monster's own chest into a mangled mess of flesh.
Acting like a spring, Chao Lu's compressed body immediately ricocheted onto an adjacent monster. At the same time, she latched onto the joints connecting its torso and limbs and began to corrode them.
But the corrosion had barely begun when the first monster grabbed at her again. Chao Lu ricocheted once more, flying onto a monster even further away.
By dragging the two monsters along with her movements, she cleared a path for Li Ban and Hao Yang.
Seeing the sliver of a gap behind the massive monster, Li Ban immediately grabbed Hao Yang and teleported through.
This teleportation covered a full forty meters, putting them just a few steps away from their goal of reaching "within two hundred meters."
Li Ban decided this was enough.
"Right here!"
He immediately took off his backpack and rapidly began assembling the simple teleportation portal the Director had given him.
At the same time, Octopus squeezed out from the horde of monsters. He instantly spread dozens of tentacles, enveloping Li Ban and Hao Yang inside just like before.
Hao Yang immediately used World Without Me, causing their presence to disappear.
Li Ban devoted his entire focus to assembling the hybrid construct of machinery and spiritual arts, paying no mind to anything else.
Hao Yang panted heavily, striving to recover a little of his energy while maintaining this simple spell.
In all their previous maneuvers, they had never completely drained their energy, instead resting in advance just to buy enough time to deploy the teleportation portal now.
As long as the teleportation portal appeared and the Priests and combat personnel came through, they would be able to rest until the next crisis hit.
However, barely three minutes had passed when Hao Yang suddenly heard a startled cry from Octopus, and then they were sent rolling.
The components in Li Ban's hands nearly flew out.
He raised his hand to grab all the components, then resumed assembling as if nothing had happened, not daring to delay for a half-second.
'The closer to the rift, the stronger the monsters get,' Hao Yang thought. 'The effect of World Without Me could originally last for twenty minutes, but now it can only hold for three.'
Struggling to stabilize both the spell and the internal space enveloped by Octopus's tentacles, he calculated rapidly.
'Before entering the Sea of Monsters, Li Ban practiced assembling the spatial portal. It takes at least four minutes and fifteen seconds. That means Octopus must hold out for over a minute more.'
Just then, Octopus, who was protecting them, let out another scream. A gap appeared in the enclosed space.
A chunk of Octopus's body had been torn away.
Although he couldn't feel pain, the fear of death and the powerful monsters made him shriek on instinct.
Looking at that gap, Hao Yang made a decision.
He increased the transfer of his spiritual rhinoceros, allowing the effect of World Without Me on Li Ban to be maintained for a little longer.
Then, Priest Hao Yang dove straight out through the gap in Octopus's body.
As soon as he emerged, he saw three monsters attacking Octopus simultaneously.
He immediately released another compressed air shockwave, knocking the nearby monsters back several meters.
'The shockwave's effect has also weakened by sixty percent,' Hao Yang thought, frowning. Through a mind art, he transmitted a message to Octopus: "Keep protecting Priest Ban."
He then raised his trident, charged forward rapidly, and fiercely impaled the largest monster, forcefully driving it back toward the outside of the Sea of Monsters.
The other monsters immediately gave chase from the sides and rear.
After pushing outward for a few meters, Priest Hao Yang released another shockwave, buying himself a little more time.
The monsters once again attempted to encircle him.
Only this time, a few monsters did not join the siege.
They glanced left and right in confusion, remaining where they were.
Glancing back amid the chaos and seeing this, Priest Hao Yang nodded inwardly. 'Just as the Director said, the monsters at the center of the Sea of Monsters won't easily leave their territories. This is also to prevent them from being lured away, exposing the spatial rift at the deepest point.'
So as long as he ran outward, the inner-circle monsters would not follow.
The only ones that would chase him were the relatively weaker monsters from the outer rings.
Hao Yang naturally couldn't resist too many monsters alone, but as long as he reached the outer rings, there would be much more room to maneuver. He could even find a place to stay and use World Without Me to restore his energy.
They weren't short on spiritual rhinoceros right now anyway.
And his recent actions could continue to buy Li Ban time.
'I just don't know how much time I can buy him this time. Even if I go back now, it's probably been more than two minutes. I won't be able to continue stalling for Li Ban.'
Hao Yang thought about it and simply stopped, using World Without Me to rest.
'Going back now won't be of any use. For now, recover my energy and trust him.'
If Li Ban failed to deploy the Spatial Teleportation Portal, he would have to go back and take over the mission, which required him to recover a certain amount of strength.
If Li Ban successfully deployed the portal, a large number of Priests would come through it, and they wouldn't need a Hao Yang who had lost most of his combat ability.
He half-closed his eyes. Although he felt anxious, he still suppressed his churning emotions and began striving to recover his energy.
On the other side, Li Ban, who was still hiding inside Octopus's tentacles, was about to finish the assembly.
But Octopus shuddered once more.
The monsters whose attention had been drawn away by Priest Hao Yang just now rediscovered Li Ban's presence. No longer caring about Octopus's identity as a "fellow monster," they attacked directly, wanting to destroy Octopus along with the living human inside.
At this time, Chao Lu, who had finally shaken off her enemies and gone into hiding, lunged out again.
She ricocheted directly onto the monster closest to Octopus.
This monster resembled a giant insect, with a row of eyes beneath each of its two large pincers.
What Chao Lu attacked was one of those rows of eyes.
Her highly corrosive body immediately ruined the eyes under one pincer.
But just as Chao Lu was about to ricochet toward the other pincer, a hand suddenly reached out from the side and pressed against her transparent body.
.
Chao Lu immediately felt her body stiffen.
She turned from soft jelly into solid ice.
She was completely unable to perform any more ricochet transfers.
Struggling, she slowly turned her head, which wasn't completely frozen, to look behind her. Her blank eyes widened.
Here in the center of the Sea of Monsters, which was filled with enormous and deformed monsters, she actually saw a person.
It wasn't Priest Li Ban, nor was it Priest Hao Yang, but a person she had never seen before.
Yet, although she felt she had truly never seen him before, she also felt he looked familiar in every way.
Looking at his eyes, she felt as if she were looking at Priest Zi Shen; looking at his lower face, she felt she saw traces of Priest Hunyou; but looking at his build, no matter how she looked at it, he resembled Priest Chu Zhan.
Frozen by this sudden arrival, Chao Lu's mind was filled with shock. She had no way to help Li Ban and Octopus distract the enemies anymore.
As a result, the other monsters on the other side also noticed the anomaly inside Octopus's tentacles and continuously attacked him.
Fortunately, these monsters basically relied on physical attacks. Although Octopus was beaten until his tentacles snapped one after another, he didn't immediately stop his protection over Li Ban.
The person who subdued Chao Lu in one move didn't attack right away. Instead, he looked at her and tilted his head, his eyes showing a hint of confusion.
"Which Priest are you?" Seeing that the other party hadn't attacked immediately, a glimmer of hope rose in Chao Lu's heart.
Perhaps this was a Priest who had gotten lost in the Sea of Monsters and had luckily not turned into a monster yet.
But in the next second, Chao Lu's originally blank face became even more rigid, because the unfamiliar Priest before her suddenly split open.
He split apart very thoroughly.
His entire body blossomed from his lower abdomen like a chrysanthemum.
Skin, limbs, muscles, organs, and bones—all became part of the petals.
Only in the very center, right where the stamen should be, appeared a single blood-red eye.
That blood-red eye twisted and elongated, snapping right up to Chao Lu's neck to stare at a small piece of exposed convex glass.
That was exactly where Chao Lu's brain was located.
Chao Lu's frozen, jelly-like body began to tremble uncontrollably.
Just as the split-open Priest monster was about to do something, a violent fluctuation of spiritual rhinoceros rippled outward from nearby.
The red eye, which was about to press against the glass casing of Chao Lu's brain, suddenly changed direction. It looked toward the battered Octopus, and the silver gate that had appeared inside at some unknown point.
"Hum—"
With a hum, a white vortex suddenly appeared in the center of the two-meter-tall, one-meter-wide silver gate.
It looked as if a spinning cloud was rapidly forming.