Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 1057 - 172: Land Jellyfish

Chapter 1057: Chapter 172: Land Jellyfish

"What on earth is that thing?" Lina, seeing Pannis’s flurry of actions, asked in puzzlement, "Is it also a kind of magical beast? Why does it look so bizarre."

"You can talk, but don’t stop moving, make haste," Pannis did not answer but urged instead, "There are still two tough challenges ahead. Once we get through, there will be plenty of time to rest. If we don’t make it, I reckon there won’t be any rest until tomorrow morning. So, for the sake of sleep, let’s put in the effort."

"Don’t listen to him making it sound so dangerous. In fact, if we can’t get through, he definitely has a plan in place. After more than a hundred years, my foolish little brother has never changed in that regard. Sometimes I really want to crack open his head and see just what’s inside," said Doris in her human form, who possessed an exceptionally long pair of legs. It stands to reason that someone from the Sea Race might feel uncomfortable moving on land. However, she showed no such signs of discomfort. Her lithe body moved as if weightless, lightly touching the ground and gliding a great distance with ease, looking effortlessly graceful. Only those who knew her understood that she was adjusting her body to the verge between mist and solidity. Her body wasn’t just seemingly weightless, it was indeed almost without weight, like a cloud floating in the air, so her movements weren’t affected at all. She even had spare energy to approach Lina and tease her with a light chuckle, "Actually, you have encountered similar creatures more than once. It’s just that nobody thinks in that direction."

"We’ve encountered them? Impossible," Catherine found that Vivian’s breathing was getting heavier with the prolonged high-speed running. To prevent her from exhausting her strength and being unable to deal with any unexpected situations that might arise later, she simply carried the young Mage on her back. Thus, Vivian was relieved of her burden, taking the curled-up little Fox into her arms, petting it to soothe the creature while asking, "Such a bizarre beast. If we had seen it, it would be hard to forget."

"I assure you, you have seen them," said Doris, blinking mysteriously and speaking in a low voice, "You do know about jellyfish, don’t you?"

"Of course, we’ve seen... They are jellyfish?" Vivian almost dropped the notebook she was holding above Catherine’s head and stammered, "They do look a bit similar in appearance, but there are also obvious differences. Are they really jellyfish?"

"You could say they are relatives of jellyfish. Some people call them land jellyfish," Doris nodded, confidently asserting, "The life on land has caused them significant changes: their umbrella caps have elongated, their tentacles have shortened, the cap encloses the tentacles within the body, and the outer skin of the cap has become tough. Even a professional with Legendary Rank strength would struggle to tear them apart."

"They usually nest in trees, using the suction cups of their tentacles to climb up, and once they’re up there, they rarely move," Pannis said. The journey was always dull, especially now, with the awareness of potential environmental dangers delegated to professionals like Pannis and Flare, and being inside the exclusive territory of some creatures, large dangerous magical beasts were not likely to be a threat. As a result, everyone was quite relaxed. Dwarf Conaida, though the armor on his body clanged with every step, couldn’t help but speak in a rough voice, "It’s only during hunting that they drop down from the trees suddenly, like what just happened."

"Just now it was hunting? I thought it just failed to cling to the tree and fell down," Catherine said with a wry smile, "They’re so small, would they consider creatures our size as prey?"

"They’re not small at all; if these land jellyfish stretch out their outer skin, they can completely envelop you," Doris scoffed and said, "If you were alone, encountering one of these land jellyfish could be very troublesome. Even a Demigod might be eaten by it. Surprised? These creatures are not as silly as they appear. They have another name; adventurers who often venture into the Forest of Death call them Suffocation Beasts."

"It seems they pounce directly onto their prey’s head and wrap around it," Catherine recalled the trajectory of the land jellyfish that attacked Ava, musing aloud, "In that case, the prey would be unable to breathe and would suffocate. But prey would fight back, right? Even if they are very tough, it would take at least two or three minutes to suffocate a creature of Legendary Rank or a magical beast. In such a long time, the one with its head wrapped could surely find a way to tear it open."

"So it’s not as simple as them just wrapping around the prey’s head, that’s also why we had such a big reaction just now." Conaida, who always wore a smile, suddenly couldn’t muster it, his face twisted in complexity, and strangely, the expressions of the other demigods were quite similar to his. With a rough and breathless voice, Conaida said, "You guys smelled that stench just now, right? That’s their most terrifying weapon. Whenever they pounce on their prey, the space inside the umbrella cover begins secreting an extremely pungent smell. The odor you just smelled was after it had been diluted by the air countless times, the pure, original scent inside the umbrella cover is beyond your wildest imagination, it can rightly be called the world’s foulest odor. What do you think they use to suffocate people? They use this stench. As long as the solitary hunted hasn’t mentally prepared in advance, holding their breath before being pounced upon, once they inhale the first whiff of that stench, they might as well be declared dead, because just one breath of that indescribably foul odor is enough to knock a powerful magical beast unconscious; even if they don’t faint, they won’t be able to control the urge to vomit. And once they start vomiting, they inevitably inhale more stench, and in the end, they will either suffocate from their own vomit or die from the revolting stench."

"This, this, these two manners of death, neither is acceptable." Lina’s mouth twitched uncontrollably, as a girl who had loved beauty from a young age, the priestess who had reclaimed her true nature was actually very concerned about her appearance, and dying from a strong stench was something not even her worst nightmares had envisioned. Gritting her teeth, the girl asked, "Is there really no way to deal with this?"

"Of course there is. If you have teammates nearby, as long as they help you tear off the Suffocation Beast on your head in time, the tragedy won’t happen," Conaida replied in a muffled voice, "At least it won’t be life-threatening, like now, even if that little deity girl was covered just now, we could still easily save her."

"Isn’t that a good thing then?" Noticing that Conaida still looked like he was about to cry, Catherine asked puzzledly, "With that, aside from the temporary pain, there aren’t any major consequences, so why do you still feel so awful? Even if you’ve been attacked by them before, you shouldn’t react like this."

"Because death isn’t the most terrible thing, not dying is where the nightmare begins." Conaida suddenly let out a shout and kicked as he ran, striking a small tree on the side of the road. With the formidable strength of a demigod shield bearer, he kicked the tree trunk more than a meter thick, snapping it with an effortless kick. After swaying violently for a few times, it toppled with a crash, and countless unidentified creatures emerged from the originally inhabited treetop, shrieking in panic and scurrying away to other nearby trees. Ignoring the disapproving gaze from Flare, the Dwarf shield bearer roared, "Exactly, the real horror has just begun."

"He encountered a Suffocation Beast the first time he came to the Forest of Death decades ago," Flare remarked with a light hum, seemingly in revenge for the innocent tree, revealing the past the Dwarf did not wish to mention, "When he was attacked, since he was on high alert, he wasn’t directly hit by the Suffocation Beast; it smashed to the ground just like what you guys saw a moment ago. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a teammate with quick enough reactions, like Kyle, in their team, and Conaida, just like you, had never seen such a strange magical beast, so he picked it up curiously to take a closer look."

"Hahaha, so that’s what happened." Doris laughed so hard she couldn’t even maintain her semi-misty state,got carried away in the air, and swiftly resettled on the ground, still unable to suppress the smile on her face, she explained to the girls, "Land jellyfish are actually similar to jellyfish; the majority of a jellyfish’s body is water, while most of a land jellyfish’s body is gas. Aside from their tough skin, they have three layers of thin, membrane-like skin inside, and between these skins is the very stench they secrete. If they’re attacked, they will expel all their gas from the bottom in one go, using the recoil from the gas to shoot up into the sky and return to the trees. Hahaha, he actually held the land jellyfish up to his face, I can already imagine what happened."

"Just like what you’re thinking," Flare said, still managing an elegant smile even as she ran, though now that elegant smile had a hint of malice, covering her mouth as she spoke, "The Suffocation Beast’s stink wasn’t wasted at all; it sprayed all over him. So, his first adventure in the Forest of Death ended like that, and it’s said that when he returned to Kulan, he hid in the deep mountains for over two hundred days and didn’t dare meet anyone until the stench that adhered to him gradually dissipated after two hundred days. That incident was the biggest embarrassment of his life and it became a source of amusing gossip in the Elven Royal Court."

"Hey, Your Majesty, don’t casually uncover someone else’s inner pain," Conaida, though exposed by Flare in retaliation, had regained his composure and was in good spirits, not angry at all as he said, "That agony, I feel like I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life, waking up every day to my own stench. You can never imagine it."

"Why are you so loud?" Mage Antuin’s cool voice came from Vivian’s waist. Looking closely, one could see a small mirror hanging at Vivian’s waist, now glowing faintly as Antuin’s figure came into view within it, "Have you guys gotten into a fight over there? Did Kyle’s plan fail?"