The lava lake began to erupt as a whole as lava streams surged high up into the air, followed by the mighty aura released by something extremely powerful and violent.
At first, they only felt uncomfortable. But as the roaring continued, they quickly noticed the pressure getting worse.
As the weakest apprentice among all, Alan couldn’t take it anymore; he collapsed on the back of Alby while coughing up blood.
The howling was getting louder and deadlier.
The energy ripples carried by the rage spread to the burning land around the lake and created craters and fissures under their feet.
Next, they saw a monster’s head emerging from the abyss.
The Lord of Tentacles, which already retreated to its pit, appeared again, albeit much angrier this time. Its pale skin glowed with an ominous red color while its blood veins bulged and released white vapor.
The monster’s head also began to grow bigger like a balloon. Soon, it reached its limit as if it was going to explode.
Anyone with eyes could see that the Lord of Tentacles was furious. But why?
They looked at each other and finally fixed their attention on the small bag carried by Sinehowze.
Sinehowze thought that it wouldn’t hurt to show the monster egg to people, but when she saw them giving her strange and unfriendly looks, she quickly stuffed the bag into a butterfly-shaped necklace, which was her space storage.
“A space storage?” The others were surprised once again. As commonly believed, even wizards would find such items to be valuable, and they just found one on a gourmet apprentice!
Sinehowze dragged Carveline’s arm. “Run! It’s going nuts!”
Without hesitating, they both dashed away. In the next second, the others also followed behind them since they were beginning to sense true wizard-level pressure coming from the glowing form of the Lord of Tentacles, which only meant trouble.
Roaar!
When the monster saw the small creatures trying to leave the lake area, it howled again.
Everyone stopped in their tracks upon hearing the thunderous noise. They did not choose to stop—they couldn’t.
The energy released by the monster had frozen up the environment. People felt as if they were trying to walk in a neck-deep swamp. It was already hard enough to stay afloat. Several apprentices who failed to do so fell into the lava and joined the previous victims.
Yethew growled at Sinehowze. “This is all because you stole its egg! Return it at once or we’re all going to die because of you!”
Sinehowze didn’t seem convinced. “Why’s that? Can you prove to us the egg is the reason? Besides, it’s just another sacrificial material for the garden. The egg’s gonna get fried anyway, might as well let me take it!”
“Anyone would get angry when his child gets stolen. Not only did you trick us into your plan, but you also put everyone in a dangerous position,” Chocolate said. She already resented Carveline because of the conflict earlier, so she had no problem putting all the blames on Carveline and Sinehowze.
“Whatever! I’m not giving it back. If you have a problem, fight me and see who’s boss!”
“I don’t care who’s boss but we’re all gonna kick it at this rate!” Yethew bellowed and pointed to the Lord of Tentacles, which was now twice its original size. “We can’t move an inch. That thing’s going to get us sooner or later.”
“Oh chill. There’s a magic array under the lake that prevents the Lord of Tentacles from going too far from its home. We can run, slowly.”
As if to prove her words, a series of strange runes emerged from the lava and imprisoned the Lord of Tentacles within.
“See that?” Sinehowze pointed her thumb behind her. “Nothing to worry—”
The Lord of Tentacles roared again while slamming its thick tentacles at the barrier created by the magic array. Each time, the tentacles would get pushed back or cut off by the protective energy. However, it seemed the monster no longer cared about losing arms or pain. It kept attacking the barrier while fixing its deathly gaze at Sinehowze.
Its skin was growing redder. Its body, larger, along with its strength.
With a loud “crack”, they saw a small fracture on one of the shining runes of the magic array, followed by more cracks as the Lord of Tentacles struggled harder and harder.
They didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the Lord of Tentacles left its prison and reached them!
“What about now? Do you really wish to die with us?” Yethew screamed.
Sinehowze finally began to waver. As far as she could see, they were very likely to perish in the next moment. But as a dedicated cook, she still couldn’t understand why the monster grew so angry just because of a freaking egg!
“Can we really soothe that thing if I return the egg?” Carveline asked.
No one spoke because they weren’t sure anymore.
“It’s possible. But if you don’t, we’re dead for sure,” Chocolate commented.
...
At the same time, on the top floor of the machine tower, Lawson suddenly felt something and frowned while watching the screen.
“The magic array holding down the Lord of Tentacles has been broken.”
The others had their attention on Angor. They failed to understand what Lawson meant in time.
Lawson changed the display and showed what was going on at the lava lake. When people looked at the enlarged, reddened body of the Lord of Tentacles, they all remained silent in great shock.
“It... went berserk? But why now?” No one apart from Muse and Lawson knew what just happened inside the garden.
Muse squinted his eyes. “So they really stole the monster’s egg... Lord of Tentacles won’t act like this just because of some biting insects.”
“Well, it’s growing strong by abnormal means. Once its rage settles down, it will get weaker than before,” Lawson said with a sigh. “And if our main material cannot offer its full strength, we’ll need to add more fuel to the garden.”
Lawson meant to say that the death toll, which should be somewhere around 90% of the participants, would rise.
“Heh. I wonder if it will end up with all of them dead.” Again, Muse didn’t conceal his bad joke.
“We should either kill the Lord of Tentacles now and inject its energy into the garden or do something to calm it,” said Lawson. “We can’t afford to kill all apprentices; it will bring us more trouble than what we can deal with. Fine. I’ll try to do something.”
With that, Lawson stood up and prepared to leave.
“Hey, wait. Look there.” Muse stopped him and tapped at the screen that showed Angor’s position again. The boy was heading straight to the lava zone with a long trail of demon fishes on his heels.
...
While trying to get past the fishes that blocked his way, Angor’s body suffered some injuries. He then managed to seize a chance and began to fly down.
To make sure he didn’t run into unexpected trouble, he chose to follow the exact path through which he came.
Normally, predators would give up on their prey after a long chase in order not to waste stamina. However, it was obvious that the hunting fishes weren’t ordinary animals. It seemed they were determined to taste Angor’s flesh no matter what.
Angor also realized it and tried to think of another way of escaping rather than waiting for the fishes to go away.
He knew where he was going. As he remembered, the lava zone didn’t have many roaming fishes, which meant it was a perfect spot to hide.
But first, he needed to do something about his wounds. Otherwise, his blood would keep attracting more hungry monsters.
To achieve this, he had to occasionally return to his body, cast Heal, and eject his soul again. His wounds were slowly closing up, but the intervals also slowed him down quite a bit. In fact, it prevented him from shaking off the pursuers.
It was only until he almost reached the lava zone that he fully healed up his body.
While at it, he discovered a small chunk of fish meat clung to his hood. It seemed this bloody piece that probably came from a bomb fish earlier was the culprit that gave his position away to the sharks, thus breaking his Infinite Reticence effect.
He didn’t check the condition of his physical body when flying around as a soul, which ultimately caused the series of events.
He sighed in distress as he just learned another flaw in his skills.
Since he had no time to wash his robe, he simply tossed it inside his bracelet.
He already saw thick smoke in front of him as well as the glowing land beneath. As planned, he would get back inside his body under the cover provided by the environment.
After doing so and losing the effect of the sequence of gravity, he began to free-fall quickly. First, he immediately used Cleanse to remove the remaining smell on him. After that, he prepared to activate Infinite Reticence before the fishes could see him.
But an ear-piercing bellow caused him to stop his action.
He felt dazed for a moment. When he recovered and checked what was below, he saw a large, red “octopus” unleashing its deadly tentacles to a group of people.
Of course, they were the survivors from earlier. The egg thief Sinehowze, Carveline. Even Alan was among them.