My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 65

Chapter : 129

He veered sharply, plunging deeper into the tangled, treacherous heart of Galla, away from the perceived edge of the Sunken Fen. If they were going to do this, they needed to use Galla's infamous reputation to their advantage. The monster roared its fury at their change in direction, the sound of splintering ancient trees marking its undeterred, terrifyingly fast chase.

"Okay, okay, think!" Lloyd panted, dodging a low-hanging, thorny vine that snagged his tunic. "If this flower repels it, it implies the flower is in Galla. The System wouldn't send me on a wild goose chase into Narnia for it, right? Right?!" He glanced at Fang, whose ears were flat against his skull, every muscle coiled for speed. "You smell anything floral, buddy? Anything that screams 'abyss-monster repellent'?" Fang just let out a desperate yelp, accelerating. "Didn't think so."

"Wires, Fang! We need to buy time! Distraction! Annoyance! Anything!" Lloyd gasped, drawing on his Void power, the thrum of Steel and Fire a familiar, desperate ally. He couldn't afford massive cables; the creature had shrugged those off with contemptuous ease. But a web, a dense tangle of burning tripwires… something to make it stumble, to break its rhythm.

As they hurtled through the gloom, branches whipping at their faces, unseen roots trying to trip them, Lloyd flung his will behind him. Dozens, then hundreds of whisper-thin steel threads, glowing with internal heat, erupted from the air, weaving an intricate, almost invisible net through the trees in their wake. "Tighter!" he mentally commanded the threads. "Hotter! Make it regret every step!" He imagined the creature blundering into the searing web, roaring in frustration, momentarily entangled. A small, vicious part of him hoped it was allergic to superheated steel. "That's for the 'moderate risk' assessment, you oversized, multi-limbed freak!"

The forest grew darker, the ancient trees more gnarled and menacing, their branches like skeletal arms reaching down, seeming to twist and writhe in the periphery of his vision. Phosphorescent fungi pulsed with a sickly, unnatural light from rotting logs and damp earth, casting grotesque, dancing shadows. The silence, when the monster’s pursuit was momentarily muffled by distance or Lloyd’s desperate traps, was worse – a heavy, watchful stillness that felt alive, ancient, and profoundly hostile. Galla Forest was not a neutral ground; it felt like an entity in itself, observing their desperate flight with cold, alien amusement. "Friendly place," Lloyd muttered, his breath catching in his throat. "Great for picnics. If your idea of a picnic involves being eaten by the scenery."

A chilling shriek, punctuated by a furious bellow and the sickening crunch of multiple trees giving way simultaneously, told him the wires had connected. They’d annoyed it. They’d bought seconds. But it wasn’t enough. The sound was too close, the fury too palpable.

He risked a fleeting glance over his shoulder, a cold dread coiling in his stomach. A monstrous silhouette, wreathed in smoking, broken strands of his steel web, was still barrelling towards them, its multifaceted red eyes blazing with undiminished rage. It was tearing through his defenses as if they were cobwebs, scorched chitin flaking off but its momentum barely impeded.

Not strong enough! The desperate cry echoed in his mind, a bitter pill. His F-rank Void power, versatile as it was, couldn't contend with this level of raw, corrupted power. "Okay, new plan! Less annoying it, more… tactical relocation! Preferably to somewhere it isn't!"

A spray of viscous black liquid erupted from the monster, arcing through the air with terrifying speed. "Fang, left! DODGE!" Lloyd screamed, shoving the wolf hard with his shoulder. They both tumbled sideways, crashing through a thorny bush, the thorns ripping at Lloyd’s clothes and skin as the corrosive ichor splattered against a massive, ancient oak just feet away. The bark sizzled, smoked, and dissolved with horrifying speed, revealing the bleached, dead wood beneath. A patch of moss instantly withered and turned black.

Lloyd stared, his heart leaping into his throat. "Ranged attacks too?! Acid spit? What IS this thing?! Did the Guild subcontract its risk assessment to a particularly optimistic squirrel?!" He scrambled to his feet, thorns tearing at him, the acrid smell of the dissolving tree burning his nostrils. "Okay, new, new plan! Avoid the… the death spit! And keep running!"

Chapter : 130

Their lungs burned, legs screaming in protest, every muscle fiber protesting the abuse. But the image of those forty coins, the tantalizing promise of the bloodline awakening, the sheer, stubborn refusal to die in this cursed, stinking forest, fueled Lloyd’s desperate endurance. The terrain grew rockier, the trees even older, their twisted forms exuding an almost palpable aura of menace. The air grew colder, carrying a faint, metallic tang, overlaid with the scent of damp earth and something else… a subtle, dark floral note, almost cloying, cutting through the stench of rot.

Wait. Lloyd skidded to a halt, Fang nearly colliding with him. "That smell… Fang, do you smell that?" He sniffed the air, his senses straining. It was faint, almost lost beneath the forest's miasma, but it was there. Dark, sweet, heavy. Like night-blooming jasmine mixed with damp earth and something… else. Something cold.

The flower? A jolt of desperate hope, sharp as a blade, shot through Lloyd. The System hadn't offered a map, just an objective. Could it be near? "System, you useless pile of code, give me a hint! A blinking arrow! Something!" Only silence answered from the interface. "Right. Helpful as ever."

He pushed through a final, dense curtain of thorny vines, wincing as they scraped his face, Fang a low, guttural growl at his heels, and stumbled into a small, unnaturally clear, circular glade.

A dim, purple-grey twilight, utterly alien to the oppressive gloom of the surrounding forest, filtered down from a small, jagged break in the canopy far above. The ground was a soft, sound-dampening carpet of black moss that seemed to drink the light and muffle their ragged breathing. And there, in the very heart of the glade, pulsing with a cold, dark luminescence that sent shivers down Lloyd's spine, was a single, breathtakingly beautiful, utterly alien flower.

Midnight velvet petals, the size of his head, were traced with intricate, silver-grey veins that shimmered like captured starlight or delicate strands of moonlight woven into the fabric of night. It grew from a twisted mass of dark, vein-like roots that snaked across the mossy floor, resembling grasping, skeletal fingers. The Flower of Dark Vein. It pulsed with a silent, cold power, the source of that strange, alluring, yet unsettling scent. "That's… is that it?" Lloyd breathed, hope and dread warring within him. "Dark Vein? Gods, I hope so. It's… beautiful. And terrifying. Perfect." It looked like something that could indeed repel a creature from the abyss. It also looked like something that might try to eat your soul if you got too close.

But they weren't alone.

Near the edge of the glade, their faces tight with strain and wary apprehension, their postures radiating a mixture of exhaustion and fierce determination, stood five figures. Three men in dark, practical leather armor, swords drawn, scanning the forest perimeter with the alert, professional competence of seasoned veterans. Two women, equally well-equipped, one with a healer’s satchel slung across her chest, her hand resting on a long, silver-chased dagger, the other nocking a specialized, wicked-looking arrow to her bow, her eyes narrowed, tracking something unseen in the deeper shadows.

And at their center, her crimson-violet hair a stark, almost defiant slash of color against the eerie twilight of the glade, her fine riding leathers smudged with dirt and torn in several places, her usually haughty expression tight with strain and a fierce, focused intensity, her amethyst eyes wide and watchful, fixed not on Lloyd, but on the terrifying, crashing sounds rapidly approaching from the path he and Fang had just blazed, stood Lady Faria Kruts.

She was here. They were all here. Staring at the same legendary, deadly flower. And the Mire monster, its mind-flaying shrieks now deafeningly close, promising imminent, brutal destruction, was about to join the party.

Oh, for the love of… Lloyd’s mind, already overloaded with terror, desperation, and System-induced avarice, threatened to short-circuit completely. Faria Kruts?! Here?! In the middle of Galla-freaking-Forest, staring at a soul-eating nightmare-flower, with a transdimensional horror about to turn us all into paste?! Of all the cursed, rotten luck in all the blasted realms! What is she even DOING here? Did she take a wrong turn at 'Sensible Decisions' and end up in 'Certain Death Valley'?" His internal monologue had reached peak sarcasm, a sure sign of impending mental collapse. Great. Just great. Now we have an audience for our impending doom. And a very judgmental, very beautifully dressed audience at that. This "moderate risk" fifty-silver ecological survey had officially gone off the rails, into a ravine, been set on fire, and was currently being devoured by a transdimensional horror while a Marquess’s daughter with ridiculously distracting hair watched. Perfect. Just bloody perfect.

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