Outside the , Arven and the others were waiting patiently. While quite a bit of time had passed inside, outside, only around an hour had passed. Even then, knowing the effects of the feature, one hour outside meant around two to four days inside.
The time rate was not the same for all , so they couldn’t really calculate with much accuracy.
Flor asked, curious. “How much longer do you think we will need to wait?”
As if her words were coated in some kind of magic, they felt the portal rumbling lightly just as she asked. Then, from it, 24 appeared, all of them in terribly sorry states.
Arven frowned deeply and looked at the group in front of them. “You are the Obsidian Vanguard group. What happened? Where are the six missing people of your group?”
While he spoke, an aura of life descended as healing energies coiled around the group. After all, their bodies were covered in blood, some of them missing limbs as well.
The person who spoke was Shalora. Her voice was somewhat hoarse, her
reserves being only at 30%. “This is terrifying.” The lamia rested on the ground without any sense of decorum, her body aching everywhere. “Those who are missing are dead.”
“What?” Arven was truly surprised this time. After all, among those missing was their leader, Darian. “How did this happen? Explain everything slowly.”
Shalora nodded, and while being tended by healers and the city’s Life Tree, she opened her mouth to explain everything.
“...After the first group chose to enter the first portal, the second followed suit. However, our leader was too arrogant. He pushed us to take the next challenge, and we managed to pass it easily. The puppets were Level 120, and while they were numerous, they were far from unbeatable. So, we chose to continue, trying our luck. The third level was where things changed quite a bit. The puppets went from Level 120 to Level 140.”
Flor was surprised, and she asked. “Aren’t there eight statues? If what you say is the truth, and each level increases by 20 levels, by the time you face the eighth statue, you would be fighting Level 240 puppets!”
Shalora shook her head with a wry smile. “We don’t know, Lady Flor. Either way, once we entered the zone after defeating the silver-blue puppets, we were on some sort of silver river. The water inside was odd, but what was terrifying was that walking on it would sometimes cause our bodies to shift inexplicably.”
Arven frowned. “Explain.”
Shalora frowned, unsure how to voice it out without sounding crazy, when an envoy that was part of the group spoke up with a conflicted look. “Lord Arven, we think that we were being shifted through different… outcomes for our actions.”
Arven and the others didn’t dismiss his way of explaining straight away. Everyone had been aware of the strangeness of the World Tree’s energies. All of her new abilities and skills had been nothing but logic-defying, and while some were still deluding themselves about their true effects, most high-level people had begun to accept that the Heavenly Willow had somehow managed to tap into powers related to
