CHAPTER 357: CHAPTER 357: TRACY...

"Yes and no..." Layla replied.

"...." Muku quietly waited for her to respond.

"I’m confident that with enough time. I can take it on my own. However, I don’t think I can keep it from running away until then. So I need your help in keeping it from escaping. Don’t get involved in the battle apart from that" Layla explained.

"Oh. Okay. I promise not to get involved even if you’re about to get killed" Muku replied with a smile.

"That’s not what I meant. If it’s an emergency then of course you can get involved" Layla replied with an eye roll.

"Oh okay. I guess that makes sense. Feel free to start whenever you want a and I’ll create the barrier... Oh and how big do you want it?" Muku spoke.

"Three kilometres should be enough... And we can start now." Layla replied.

"Okay. Not sure what I think about eliminating a dinosaur but okay" Muku replied as he got ready to create the barrier.

Layla silently rolled her eyes again. What kind of comment was that?!. So what if the creature looked like a dinosaur? They weren’t in the pre-apocalypse world where such things mattered. In the current world, even a freaking unicorn was on the chopping block if found.

Layla would have gone crazy if she knew that Muku actually killed a dragon before. Yet there he was calling her out for targeting a random dinosaur-like creature.

Anyway, Muku didn’t delay any longer as a sky-high silver metal wall, more than a hundred metres tall with a telekinetic sealing at the top appeared.

Muku disappeared from Layla’s side and appeared on a silver platform on top of the arena he created and began observing what was going on down below.

Layla looked at him for a bit and did her best to suppress the urge to curse.

The bastard was clearly taking her fight as a form of entertainment. Just when she thought he couldn’t do anything worse.

Raya appeared beside him and the two took out some materials from who knows where and seemingly began betting.

She immediately stopped looking at the duo lest she explode from anger and frustration. And even if she didn’t explode, her battle effectiveness would be impacted significantly.

She couldn’t afford to look at the duo anymore anyway. This was because the fifty-metre-tall triceratops had noticed what was going on around it. And now it had noticed her too since Muku had taken back his shielding barrier.

The creature was also stronger than her being a legit PR5 when she was still a bit off from that.

"Human... Is this your doing?"

"?!" Layla was surprised by how it spoke.

Sure she knew that some R4s and even R3s could speak. But those were so rare that she had only come across maybe five in all these years.

Actually, there was a chance that more than that were among the ones she met. After all, beasts tended not to bother themselves with speaking to humans. This was because they viewed humans as inferior beings just like humans viewed animals as inferior.

With that said, Layla didn’t say anything back. Just because she was surprised didn’t mean she would speak to the beast.

All she wanted was to fight the beast, kill it and move on. She barely liked speaking to people so speaking to beasts wasn’t on her to-do list.

"No... This is beyond even my strength... By a lot too. So it’s definitely not you. There must be another force at play here..." The Triceratops which couldn’t see Muku and Raya because Muku made it so spoke as it looked around.

Muku and Raya commended its intelligence. And even Layla couldn’t help but be impressed.

After all, it wasn’t every day one met beasts who thought first before attacking.

And this one didn’t just think, it thought meticulously. Even though it couldn’t sense or see anything. It was sure of its words. The barrier was all the proof it needed.

"Are you going to fight or not?" Layla couldn’t take it anymore so she asked.

Since she was the one who sought the beast out and it was sentient enough, she couldn’t bring herself to sneak-attack it.

"Why should I fight you? You haven’t done anything to me, and I haven’t done anything to you. So why should we have to fight?" The Triceratops replied.

"But didn’t you invade our world so that you could fight and kill us?" Layla was unwilling to speak but couldn’t help but reply.

She wanted to know where the triceratops was going with its argument.

"Correction. The higher-ups and those willing to participate invaded your world. I was forced to come here. And since I came, I haven’t done anything to anyone. I strictly live off plants. Just like I did back home. I’m sure you can sense that there’s no killing intent coming off me. Not even the faintest hint of it" The triceratops continued.

"Well, this is war. Your personal views don’t matter. You’re a soldier, and a soldier must fight whether they want to or not. If you were so hellbent on not fighting you should have refused to come with all your might..." Layla rebutted.

"You’re right. But can an ant refuse the will of a human here? Especially if the ant’s sick partner was held hostage?" The triceratops continued calmly in its feminine voice.

".... Shouldn’t you be more than willing to fight then? I mean, isn’t your partner enough reason for you to fight? Besides, why would a Monarch need a hostage to get you here? You’re just a weak PR4 beast..." Layla didn’t back down.

She felt that since she was already involved, she might as well go all the way.

Muku and Raya weren’t expecting the plot twist, but they were enjoying the show. They were now munching on some leftover meat Emily prepared as they watched...

"Well, you’re right. I am weak. But the power inside me isn’t. Believe it or not, the world in which I get killed will lose half of the living beings living on it no matter the rank or strength. They will die at random so no one is safe until it’s over..." The Triceratops casually dropped a bomb which made a chill go down not only Layla’s but Muku’s and Raya’s spines.

They were strong enough to know that she wasn’t lying. Whether she was being truthful or not it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she completely believed what she was saying...

"Impossible! Nothing like that exists!" Layla exclaimed in denial.

"Well, they thought so too until they killed my mother and half of them along with half of the Beast World’s population died with her. And that was around a century ago if we use your human way of calculating time. But hey, you can take a chance and try it if you want..." The Triceratops spoke with utmost confidence.

"Okay, let’s say I believe you for a second. Why aren’t you in battle killing for your lover then? Aren’t you afraid they’ll kill him?" Layla asked.

"I really might have been doing just that if I didn’t find out that he plotted with them to get me out of the world since they were all scared that I might get killed somewhere in the dangerous Beast World. Which threatened their lives..." The Triceratops spoke calmly as if it wasn’t the one who got betrayed.

"Why not imprison you to keep you alive instead of all this?" Layla asked.

"The ability follows causal laws they can’t tamper with. For that reason, they can’t do anything since if I kill myself as a result of their actions then it’s considered killing me..." The Triceratops generously replied.

"What if you die on your own?" Layla asked something that Muku and Raya also wanted to know.

If that also killed others, then they would have to make a plan to send her back to the Beast World. They couldn’t keep such an unreasonable time bomb around after all.

"That’s fine actually. Just like my grandmother and her mother before her, if we die alone then it’s okay" The triceratops replied.

"I don’t know if I believe you. This just sounds like an elaborate scheme for you to escape a situation you can’t escape otherwise..." Layla replied as a chilly air began gathering around her.

The triceratops wasn’t moved...

"I Tracy, swear to the heavens above that my life and mana that nothing I said here today was a lie. If it was, may the heavens strike me down where I stand" The triceratops named Tracy made an official swear to the heavens which would kill her if she was lying.

Something Muku and the others already knew about.

However, other than acknowledging the swear with a few rumbles. Nothing else happened. Which meant...

"You’re speaking the truth..." Layla spoke in a low but extremely shocked voice.

What kind of development was this?! She just wanted to have a simple hunt yet now she almost became the reason half of the life on the Blue Planet got wiped out!...