CHAPTER 84: OBLIVION ROOT HOLLOW

Hiding clues of farming regions was a fun activity to Max and he would do it even if he wasn’t going to write it in the novel.

That was how he remembered this place even though it wasn’t canon material.

Looking at the familiar section, Max smiled and clenched his fist. Muscles bulged under his skin as he punched at the rocks with his bare fists.

The rocks shattered upon the impact, revealing something dark underneath. It was so dark as if it absorbing everything that touched it, including light.

Max didn’t stop at that and punched a few more times until there was a dark space the size of a door.

It looked physical at first glance, as if it was a dark Rock. But upon close inspection, one would find it very similar to the Boundary except for being much softer.

Dusting off his hands, Max smiled and said, "And this is our farming area for atleast a few days."

"Any instructions?" Charlotte asked.

Like every other hidden region, this one had to be very dangerous, but not just because of monsters but also other factors like geography and atmosphere.

"I’ll give you a little introduction on it," Max smiled and turned around. Placing his hand on his gray leather armour, he began his explanation.

"It’s a Oblivion Root Hollow, a hidden dungeon inside the Labyrinth filled with Corrupted overgrown sector under the Third Floor stuck in a spatial rift. Weird explanation, I know but it is what it is."

He cleared his throat and continued.

"Inside there is a Main Boss which is on later side of Middle-Stage Second Order. As for what it is, it’s a Giant Tree that got corrupted right after it gained sentinencs. Sad thing, but it is what it is."

He pointed at his back and added.

"It can’t move from it’s place but it has other means through which it defeats it’s opponent. One is a dark mist which basically has debuff effects on us, mainly vision and sound problems."

"Basically messing with our five sense?" Stelle asked.

"Yes, but don’t worry about it. I have a solution for it," Max showed his hand to them and added. "The mist uses the surrounding mana that flows through our body to sense false information to our brain, so we just need to make sure it doesn’t happen."

"That works?" Charlotte was surprised.

"Majority of the illusion related skills works like this," Max nodded. "It’s just sometimes the other party is too strong and have way better mana control so even if you know about it, you can’t do anything to escape it, like with the Forlorn Mimic. It’s control was too strong for us to handle it."

"So this mist isn’t that strong?"

"Yup, we can handle it as long as we’re careful." Max nodded. "Next thing this mist does is speed up the spawning time and this is the most troublesome and also the most helpful for me personally."

"Wait! Speeding up spawning time? Really?" Charlotte exclaimed.

"Yup. As you know, the natural respawn depends on the Labyrinth and most of the monsters get resetted when the portal opens, showing a completion of one cycle. That’s when the Labyrinth turns the floor into it’s starting form."

Max crossed his arm over his chest and said.

"However that damned tree can speed up the spawning time, bringing the dead monsters back to life to fight against the invaders once again. It’s honestly annoying because of the mist is dense, it can even resurrect them on the spot."

Stelle caught on his words quickly and smiled, "And that’s a good thing for you as you can farm EXP like crazy. We can do it too. This is just too fantastic."

"Yeah, about that, I’m not sure entirely if this will work," Max said. "Since it is the tree that technically respawns those monsters, they don’t have a monster core within them. Only Labyrinth can grant monster cores."

"That makes sense, but it means hunting them down would be pointless after some time," Charlotte frowned after analysing the situation. "Even you have limitations so you can’t just kill them continuously to farm EXP."

"Yup and I’m not even sure I’ll get any EXP upon killing them so it is a risky move," Max said. "That’s why we will try to force our way in as much as we can and hopefully kill that damned tree because I’m sure we’ll get some good things from it."

He paused for a second before shrugging, "And if our growth becomes stagnant them we’ll leave it quickly to go to other regions. The boss isn’t worth of all that trouble."

"That sounds good," Charlotte nodded in agreement. "Anything else."

"A little. It’s about the atmosphere inside. It’s basically a Corrupted grove turned into a dungeon so expect undead, corrupted monsters and plant related entities. The skills will also be similar. Oh yeah, we may encounter some familiar monsters as undead too."

The siblings nodded in understanding.

"Hmm, I don’t think there is anything else I need to explain now. We can deal with other things on the spot, like dealing with that poisonous breath that guy releases and the dark sap too. We’ll deal with it as we proceed."

Max thought for a second and when he found nothing much of importance, smiled and raised his hand.

"Then, shall we burn some trees?"

He received no response, making his lips twitched as he asked, "Why didn’t you guys respond?"

"Oh! I forgot!"

"Just wanted to see you make a joke of yourself."

"One day, I will put that foul of yours to some good use." Max scoffed, making glare at him with light blush playing on her ears.

Then, they approached the dark entrance and entered it.

The moment they stepped inside the dungeon, the atmosphere shifted. The air turned heavy and damp. Foul smell of rotting trees made their nose twitch.

They had their weapons drawn, ready to intercept any monsters laying in ambush. But they were fortunate enough to not meet anything.

Max slightly rubbed his nose and asked, "Do you guys have any masks?"

Stelle looked at Charlotte who was responsible for handling these matters and found her shaking her head.

"Whatever! Be careful!"

Max said while looking around their new location.

They were standing in a strange corridor made with crisscross of rotting wooden roots which even had some gaps filled with dark thick liquid.

For illumation, there were fungi and withered wood that glowed after coming in contact with the dark mist that flowed all around them.

As it was still the entrance, the dark mist was so thin they could barely perceive it so the effects were non existent.

"Let’s move forward!"

Charlotte quickly cast spell on them, making their resistance against illusion increase slightly.

They continued to walk in the strange corridor, wondering about the first monsters they would meet.

But their wishes didn’t come true as even after walking for fifteen minutes, they were still in the same corridor with no monsters.

"We are trapped?" Charlotte was the first one to notice the anomaly. "We are probably moving in round and round."

But that should be impossible as it would require a high level of illusion and space manipulation too which the tree didn’t have for sure.

Max also frowned, wondering if he had added anything like this, but was soon slapped by the reality...again.

’It wasn’t canon meaning the world filled the holes which probably added this since I never wrote anything about the entrance. Damnation!’

It wasn’t like anything would have changed even if he knew about this but it still left a sour taste in his mouth.

On the other hand, Charlotte was analysing the surroundings. She had the best mana control and also very high perception so she had the best chances of catching the anomaly.

She touched the withered wood illumating the corridor, closing her eyes as she tried to sense anything amiss in her surroundings.

Max was doing the same but with his own way.

Only Stelle was looking around in boredom, as she wasn’t like the two of them.

When she saw them finding nothing, she rolled her eyes and raised her hammer as it grew in size.

Then, with a powerful swoop, she brought it down, smashing through the rootings below them, as a dark mist was released from it.

The mist rose but was soon vanished from existence by a golden light from Charlotte’s staff.

"Good job!" Max praised her with a wide smile. "That was a good decision not gonna lie. That bastard was just moving the roots slightly to confuse us. We actually never left the entrance at all."

"Yeah, I didn’t think you can find the weakness so early," Charlotte was also impressed.

Stelle blinked and smiled sheepishly, "Hehe, I actually didn’t know about it. I was just getting annoyed so needed to smash something."

The corridor turned silent as the two of her companions have her strange looks.

"Char, remind me to never compliment her ever again."

"Please, I was going to ask you the same."

"Heyy!!!"