My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 64

Chapter : 127

Not with speed, but with inexorable, crushing force. Its massive forelimbs swept forward, aiming to pulverize them.

"Scatter!" Lloyd yelled, diving sideways, rolling desperately behind the trunk of a rotten, moss-covered cypress. Fang, agile and attuned, dodged in the opposite direction, a streak of dark grey against the gloom.

The monster’s blow impacted where they had been standing. The ground erupted. The cypress tree Lloyd hid behind splintered, then shattered under the force, throwing him clear, his ears ringing, his body aching from the shockwave. Dirt and rotten wood rained down.

He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering, breath ragged. Fang was already moving, darting in, trying to distract it, launching weaker lightning bolts that sparked harmlessly against its armored hide.

This was insane. Utterly, hopelessly insane. They couldn't hurt it. They couldn't even slow it down. Every instinct screamed for survival.

Run!

"Fang! To me! Retreat!" Lloyd shouted, his voice hoarse. There was no shame in retreat when facing annihilation. Only fools died for pride against impossible odds.

Fang, sensing the shift in his master’s intent, disengaged with a final, frustrated snap of lightning-wreathed jaws, and bolted towards Lloyd. The monster, momentarily confused by their evasive maneuvers, turned its grotesque head, multifaceted eyes scanning, locking onto their fleeing forms. It shrieked again, a sound of pure, predatory hunger, and began to move after them, its heavy limbs shaking the very ground with each step, surprisingly fast for its bulk.

They ran. Blindly, desperately, crashing through the tangled undergrowth, splashing through murky water, the monster’s ground-shaking pursuit thundering behind them, getting closer. The Sunken Fen Mire was a death trap, offering no real cover, no escape.

Ahead, through a break in the gnarled trees, Lloyd saw it – a wall of deeper darkness, an impenetrable tangle of ancient, twisted trees wreathed in perpetual shadow, the air around it pulsing with an even more profound sense of wrongness. Galla Forest.

The cursed heart of the region. A place where legends said the trees themselves were sentient and malevolent, where illusions led travelers to their doom, where ancient evils slumbered. A place no sane adventurer entered willingly.

But behind them, the monster was gaining. Its horrifying shriek echoed, closer now.

A terrible choice formed in Lloyd’s mind, born of sheer, animal desperation. The Mire was a killing field. The open grasslands beyond offered no escape from the monster’s relentless pursuit. Galla Forest… Galla Forest was a gamble. A terrifying, potentially suicidal gamble. But it was their only chance. Its cursed reputation, its inherent dangers, might – just might – be enough to deter or slow down this abomination from the Mire. Or, it might simply be a different, slower way to die.

"Fang!" Lloyd gasped, pointing towards the oppressive darkness. "In there! Now!"

With a final, desperate burst of speed, Lloyd and Fang plunged headlong into the oppressive, shadow-choked embrace of Galla Forest, leaving the shrieking horror of the Mire behind, only to find themselves caught between the immediate threat of pursuit and the ancient, insidious, unknown perils that lurked within the cursed woods. They were trapped, with survival as their only, rapidly diminishing, hope.

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The oppressive darkness of Galla Forest swallowed them whole. Twisted, ancient trees clawed at a sky barely visible through their suffocating canopy, plunging the undergrowth into a perpetual, malevolent twilight. The air, thick and cloying, reeked of ancient rot, damp earth, and an indefinable wrongness that raised the hairs on Lloyd’s arms and hackles on Fang’s spine. Every rustle of unseen things in the leaf litter, every sharp snap of a twig underfoot, echoed with monstrous amplification in the eerie, watchful silence.

Lloyd’s mind shrieked, a frantic, silent scream. "What IS that thing? Where did it even come from?" He could feel the primal terror coiling in his gut, a cold, greasy serpent. His carefully constructed composure, the cynical armor of an eighty-year-old soul, was cracking under the sheer, monstrous impossibility of the creature emerging from the Sunken Fen Mire. "The Guild said 'moderate risk'! Moderate! Is this their idea of a slightly aggressive badger? They'll be getting a strongly worded letter! Assuming I survive to write it! Which, at this precise moment, seems statistically improbable!"

Behind them, the Mire creature’s mind-scraping shriek ripped through the trees again – closer now. The ground trembled with its relentless, approaching footfalls, each impact a sickening thud that resonated deep in Lloyd’s bones. They were running on pure, unadulterated terror, adrenaline a fire in their veins, crashing through thorny tangles, stumbling over grasping roots. Fang, a dark grey blur beside him, occasionally let out a low, anxious whine, his suppressed lightning aura flickering erratically.

Chapter : 128

"Fang, what do we DO?" Lloyd gasped, his voice barely a whisper. The wolf just whined again, pressing closer, a silent testament to shared dread. "Right. Stupid question. We run. We run like our fancy noble trousers are on fire and the only water source is guarded by… by that!"

Ken! The name was a desperate flare in the darkness of Lloyd’s skull, a prayer to the stoic, terrifyingly efficient god of bodyguarding. His bodyguard’s impassive face, the promise of Redborn’s fiery, overwhelming intervention, flashed before his eyes. This abomination… it was beyond anything he could handle, beyond anything Fang, even with the Thousand Chirp Strike, could significantly damage. Survival. That was the only imperative. The fifty silver, the Guild contract – meaningless dust in the face of this grotesque, overwhelming power.

He almost stumbled, his resolve faltering, ready to mentally reach out, to send that desperate, world-shattering summons for aid. Ken would come. Ken would handle this. He'd probably just raise an eyebrow at the creature, utter a dry comment about pest control, and then Redborn would reduce it to a smoking crater. Yes, Ken was the answer. Sanity demanded it. Survival insisted upon it.

Then, as if conjured by his desperation, the translucent blue screen of the System flared into existence, stark and demanding against the suffocating gloom. It wasn't Ken's reassuring presence, but a different, altogether more bizarre lifeline.

[New Urgent Task Assigned!]

[Task: Retrieve the Bloom of Shadows – Flower of Dark Vein]

Lloyd’s mind, already reeling from the pursuit, struggled to process the words. A flower? Seriously? The universe has a sick sense of humor. "A flower?" he hissed under his breath, nearly tripping over a gnarled root. "The System wants me to go flower-picking while that thing is trying to turn us into an appetizer?"

[Objective: Locate and procure one (1) intact bloom of the Flower of Dark Vein (Lilium Umbralis Nox). This rare botanical specimen is known to emit potent negative spiritual energies that are food to creatures of corrupted nature or those drawn from abyssal mires.]

The monster’s shriek, closer now, a deafening, mind-flaying screech, punctuated the System’s explanation. It was practically on top of them. Lloyd could smell its charnel-house breath, a wave of putrescence that made him gag.

[Effect Upon Retrieval: Possession of the bloom will create an aura highly repellent to the pursuing Mire Entity, forcing its retreat from the immediate vicinity.]

A way out? Not just brute force, but a specific counter? A magical 'off' switch? "Repellent aura?" Lloyd muttered, hope, fragile and desperate, flickering within him. "Okay, that's… less insane. Marginally."

[Reward: 40 System Coins (SC)]

Forty! The number seared itself into Lloyd’s brain like a brand. His current SC balance, after the morning's conversion, stood at a frustrating sixty-three. Forty more… that would push him to one hundred and three. The awakening! My mother’s bloodline! Finally! The thought was a jolt, a desperate spark against the overwhelming terror. The potential power-up, the unique synergies the System had hinted at… it could be a game-changer in his quest for strength, for survival.

[Critical Stipulation: Should the User summon external aid (e.g., Retainer Ken Park) prior to task completion, the task will be automatically voided, and no reward will be issued.]

The System’s cold logic was a hammer blow. "No Ken, no reward," Lloyd breathed, disbelief warring with fury. "You cosmic sadist! You set this up, didn't you? Lure me out here with a 'moderate risk' bunny hunt, then spring this… this THING on me, and then dangle the solution tied to a no-help clause?" Safety, Ken’s almost certain victory… or this insane gamble. The power-up, the future of his abilities, hung in the balance, weighed against immediate, horrifying annihilation. "It's extortion! Magical, interdimensional extortion!"

The Mire creature crashed through a copse of young trees just behind them, its guttural chittering a sickening counterpoint to its furious shrieks. Branches snapped like matchsticks. The ground shook. There was no time. The silent debate raging in Lloyd’s head was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

"Damn it all!" Lloyd snarled, a wild, desperate resolve hardening his features. The stubborn Ferrum core, forged anew by an eighty-year-old survivor’s pragmatism, ignited. He wouldn’t call Ken. Not yet. The lure of those forty coins, the promise of the bloodline awakening, was too potent, too vital to his long-term plans, to ignore. "Fine! You win, System! Flower-picking it is! But if this 'Dark Vein' thing turns out to be a daisy, I'm filing a formal complaint!"

"Fang!" he yelled over the din of pursuit, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and manic determination. "A flower! Dark Vein! The System says it repels the beast! We have to find it! New plan: Operation Petal Power!"