F-ranker Sword Saint: My Soulbound Sword is Secretly SSS-tier!-Chapter 330: Too Alive
"Ahh...that was a great meal. You’re a good cook, Elara." Daru complimented with a genuine smile and a satisfied sigh. "Stop saying shameless things, though."
Elara preened at the praise, ignoring the second part.
"Why, thank you. Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies, you see..." she responded, but then her smile subtly diminished, and she murmured something under her breath that Daru didn’t hear.
"Where did you get that convenient Mess Kit, though? I’d like to have one for myself, as I’d probably stay in the Myriad Sword Realm more than I would in Neo-Earth in the future..." Daru asked, to which the princess reacted with raised brows and puzzlement.
"Ones of a quality like this princess’s is probably a luxury plebeians can’t afford in the sense that it’s more sensible to invest their money in a more standard one, but it should be no problem to request this from your guild, no? What is the purpose of signing with Iron Lotus? If I were you, I’d milk them of every single benefit I could get away with. In the end, I’ll be fighting for them, anyway..."
He fell into deep thought.
Right...
He wasn’t a random guy with no background now, so it would be best if he learned how to use it to his advantage.
Hailey told him to feel at home in Iron Lotus anyway...
"I see, I’ll ask them for one, then."
But then, Elara sighed.
"You can, but we must first live. This...implacable place is simply too alive, and from what I’ve observed, the things here would steal others’ vitality to make themselves more vigorous. It’s as if they’ve gone mad with all this life energy..."
The mood turned from casual to a bit heavy.
Daru didn’t have the skills to translate his thoughts into accurate words, and he truly appreciated that his comrade half-enlightened him about this.
He had already noticed that something was wrong. That this place had, to a degree, gone mad.
But hearing Elara’s opinion allowed him to pinpoint what was unsettling and incorrect.
It was the life energy.
It didn’t feel corrupted or anything...just too thick that he sometimes felt it was overwhelming.
’Why?’ he mused.
"The outside has gone silent," Elara remarked with narrowed eyes and a slightly tilted head, as if she were trying hard to listen.
Indeed.
For some reason, there were no more chirps, clangs, and screeches.
"Maybe the savages are done with their riot?" she added with raised brows.
Daru was snapped out of his thoughts, tuning in to listen, too. He concluded the same.
In the next moment, he decisively exited the hollow.
"Hey, where are you going?" asked Elara.
"I’m just going to observe things for a bit," he responded, jumping to a low branch and walking at its edge.
The leaves provided him a bit of canopy, and he was at a high-enough vantage point to clearly see what was going on.
This was his original plan. It was just that he got a bit traumatized by trees, so he couldn’t trust them for a while.
Now, however, Daru had a clearer picture of everything. Not as clear as he’d hoped, but just enough to give them a chance to further increase their survival chances.
He tried looking through the gaps in the leaves while listening.
Nothing.
The only thing he heard was subtle clangs from behind him. Elara had exited the hollow and followed.
Daru instructed her to keep watch and back him up if needed...or don’t if the situation was impossible, then climbed down the fir to look around.
The princess seemed surprised, but she nodded.
Fortunately, no help was needed, as nothing went wrong. Their immediate surroundings were quite peaceful, except for the rather eerie fact that there were dozens of rodents hiding in the hollows.
If they somehow decided that the two of them weren’t to be feared...
Daru exhaled, banishing the unnecessary thoughts from his mind.
He returned to the young fir and called Elara down. She didn’t hesitate and jumped down.
"So?"
"The avians are back to their nests, but we must be mindful that they can appear anytime. Don’t worry, I have a useful item for later." Daru said.
Elara naturally got curious as to what this item was, but she was someone who knew when to control her curiosity.
"Alright, then we’re going?"
"Yeah...as carefully as we can, but if the situation turns into something we can’t handle, then we’re sprinting across to the other side."
Soon after, the human duo carefully advanced south, putting their knowledge to the test.
They checked every tree as they slowly made their way to the other side of the small forest.
Having just died from a predatory tree, Elara was quite nervous, though their previous learnings proved quite effective.
They easily avoided the traps, the predatory trees, and the runebarks.
...Until they couldn’t.
There was one that was already uprooting itself by the time they noticed it, seemingly possessing superior senses compared to the other ones.
Daru soon understood upon seeing the green aura burning on the back of its head and a few select joints.
The Verdant Runebark.
"Damn it!" he couldn’t help but curse, greatly surprising Elara and causing her heart to sink. "It’s that elite I told you about!"
She was gifted in the brains department, and she immediately knew there were only a few options available to them at that moment.
"Can we fight it?" she asked.
"We can, but that thing’s absurdly tough. We’re deep in the forest, and the battle might attract other Runebarks or those odd flower spawns. It would be better to avoid it for now."
Daru was not about to wait for the Verdant Runebark to finish uprooting itself, immediately grabbing Elara’s wrist to pull her and flee.
Perhaps they could break away from its line of sight and return to their hollow before the elite could latch onto them...
In any case, they couldn’t fight the Verdant Runebark in this dangerous location, at the very least.
But then, he felt resistance.
"What are you doing? Quick, we must run!" Daru insisted, but Elara grinned.
"Let’s not. Trust this princess and let’s rush to the other side."
