Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 1069 - 184: The Cliff

Chapter 1069: Chapter 184: The Cliff

"Thank you." Below the cliff, Pannis, bringing up the rear of the team, happily patted the huge head of the forest rhinoceros as each member of the team began to climb upwards along the ropes. He stuffed a handful of fruits into the mouths of each forest rhinoceros, saying, "I didn’t expect you to still remember me after all these years. Thank you for your hard work this time. I’ll seek your help again if necessary."

The largest forest rhinoceros snorted heavily and nudged Pannis’s shoulder with its head, a familiar gesture.

"Alright, alright, I’m going," said Pannis as he was jostled about by the forest rhinoceroses, "I hope we have the chance to meet again."

However, the four forest rhinoceroses refused to make way, encircling Pannis like four walls, their eight eyes fixed firmly on the small storage bag at his waist, determined not to let him leave.

"Fine, I understand," Pannis sighed resignedly. He rummaged in his small storage bag for a while and handed over a large handful of the remaining fruits to each forest rhinoceros: "Is this enough? I’ve given you everything now."

Unfortunately, the clever forest rhinoceroses didn’t believe Pannis’s lie at all. They continued to surround him, refusing to budge, and the leader even tried to rip open Pannis’s small bag with its mouth. With their keen sense of smell, they could detect the aroma of the fruit through the bag. This was their favorite fruit, and although they could only occasionally find some that had fallen to the ground due to their inability to raise their heads high, this time they finally had the chance to eat their fill and were not about to let Pannis go easily.

"Hey, hey, what are you doing? This is robbery," Pannis chided in a low voice, careful not to be heard by the climbing team above: "This kind of behavior is wrong. If you were in the world of intelligent beings, you would be judged."

Of course, the forest rhinoceroses didn’t care about his scolding and persisted in rooting out the little bit of fruit Pannis had secretly kept.

"I’m warning you, I’m going to get angry if you keep this up. I said don’t pull on it, hey, I mean you. Alright, alright, I give up." The overwhelmed Pannis finally had to admit defeat and handed over the last bits of fruit to the greedy giant beasts, but while pulling out the last plump red berry, he suddenly had a cunning thought and popped it into his mouth with lightning speed.

"Roar." The leading forest rhinoceros paused, let out a roar of anger, and violently shook its head. In comparison, the much smaller Pannis was sent flying by its sharp horn, soaring more than thirty meters high before smacking into the cliffside.

"Damned bastard, that hurts." Pannis grabbed the climbing rope to stop his fall mid-cliff, rubbing his sore nose and shaking his fist in anger back at the forest rhinoceroses. The forest rhinoceroses disdainfully snorted white air from their nostrils, turned their backs in unison, presenting their rears towards Pannis, their short tails flicking as if to show their contempt.

"Quick, quick, climb up faster." Pannis turned around and put on a serious and anxious expression, calling from the bottom, "Those forest rhinoceroses are right beneath us, and they’re naturally adept at using earth element magic. If they start using magic on the cliffside, it won’t collapse, but we might lose our grip and fall, so everyone needs to climb faster."

The cliff wasn’t very high, estimated to be no more than three hundred meters. There were several dark cave mouths scattered on the bare cliff face, which seemed to be naturally occurring. However, Pannis’s placement of ropes was clever, avoiding any cave entrances, which would have made climbing more difficult. There was no vegetation on the cliff, only bare exposed rocks. The only thing worth noting was the sticky feeling underfoot, as if the rock surfaces had been coated with a layer of glue. This sticky sensation was faint, though, and didn’t affect the climbing.

Flare, the first to start climbing, had reached the top of the cliff, but Her Majesty didn’t look back to help others, which would have been the most foolish choice. Once she found a firm footing, her first action was to remove her hunting bow and begin to keep watch. While remaining vigilant, she placed the Mithril discs etched with various protective and stealth arrays in their designated spots.

Surprisingly, the second to reach the top wasn’t the mist-form Doris who floated up, but rather Alcmene, the Lizardman huntress priestess. Upon reaching the cliff edge, without even a glance, she threw three Throwing Spears. The spears disappeared into the forest, eliciting three cries of pain, and silence followed. The lurking magical beasts had hardly peeked their heads out before they were killed by the spears. The spears landed in a fan formation in three directions on the ground, radiating a formidable Demigod presence that deterred even Legendary Rank and some weaker Demigod Rank magical beasts. After all, with abundant food in the Forest of Death, there was no need for predators to confront such powerful adversaries head-on.

"Huff, huff," the girls managed to climb up the cliff, with ropes in hand, a laborious feat. Vivian was the first among them to reach the top and, with a heavy slap on the ground, activated the arrays set by Flare before collapsing, too exhausted to even move her fingers. The others weren’t faring much better, and even Catherine, who had the best physical condition due to frequently carrying Vivian during their run and wearing a full suit of armor, was the most tired of them all. After she got up and saw that the others had already constructed a temporary safe space, she uncharacteristically disregarded her image and sat down on the ground to catch her breath.

"We should be safe now," Freya leaned against a tree by the cliff like a small mountain. In reality, she had already returned to a more normal size compared to when they first met, and her weight had dropped below one hundred kilograms. Nevertheless, even at this weight, running had been a much heavier burden on her than the others, leaving her with only enough energy to catch her breath and say in fits and starts, "This is just terrible. What rotten luck, to actually run into the young of a forest rhinoceros."

"Are we really safe now?" Lina, soaked to the bone as if she had just been fished out of the water, couldn’t be bothered to move even a finger as she lay spread-eagled on the ground, weakly asking, "I remember someone mentioning that we had to get through the territories of six magical beasts. Let me think, jungle crocodiles, brown pythons, arrow mice, forest rhinoceroses, and if we count the territory of the frenzied wild boars where our camp was located, that’s just five magical beasts so far. Are we on the territory of the sixth beast now? Oh, blessings of Denia, do we have to keep running?"

"No, we’ve already arrived," Flare was the most relaxed of all. Such speeds were commonplace for Her Majesty, who had now handed over watch duties to the Light and Dark Twins and scorpion-tailed lion Dillie. She had constructed a fire pit on the rocky ground by the cliff edge, into which she sprinkled powders and herbs that repelled insects, allowing a slightly irritating fragrance to diffuse through the temporary camp. Hearing Lina’s question, the queen shook her head and said, "By climbing this cliff, it signifies that we have entered the territory of the Jumping Bear. Pannis’s plan has worked perfectly."

"But there are only five territories of magical beasts," Lina, despite being completely exhausted, couldn’t quell her curiosity and pressed on, "I shouldn’t have counted wrong."

"You missed out this cliff," Pannis, appearing from who knows where atop the cliff, casually produced some red berries like magic, popped one into his mouth, and said unclearly, "This cliff is actually the territory of the sixth kind of magical beast."

"What are you eating now?" Catherine asked with a wry smile, "You don’t even forget to pick things to eat when we’re running for our lives?"

"Broken Core Fruit, a specialty of the Forest of Death, very tasty," Pannis offered Catherine a fruit, "It’s the forest rhinoceros’s favorite fruit. They usually live only in the woods where this fruit is found. I picked these along the way. Do you want to try one?"

"Hmm, it is indeed very sweet," Catherine, who loved desserts and fruit, naturally wouldn’t refuse. She gave Pannis a white-eyed look but still took and tasted the fruit, nodding with satisfaction before continuing to ask, "You said there are magical beasts on the cliff? But we didn’t see anything just now."

"Because he intentionally avoided the times when the magical beasts would appear," Flare had finished starting the fire by now and fortified the edges of the fire pit as she explained on his behalf, "Those beasts would only leave their dens after one o’clock. They really dislike the sun. Before one o’clock, the sun will just be right to shine on the cliff, so they lock themselves in their caves. After one o’clock, when the sun can no longer directly hit the cliff, they come out to be active."

"One o’clock, hasn’t that time already passed?" Catherine checked her timepiece, then looked up at the position of the sun, feeling an odd sensation, "The sun seems to have just shifted to a position where it can no longer shine directly on the cliff."

"Yes, so those magical beasts should already be out," Flare nodded, "But there’s no need to worry. They mostly only move around on the cliffs and won’t climb up here, so we are quite safe right now."

"What kind of magical beasts are they exactly?" Lina asked curiously, "Why not just name them?"

"Go take a look and you’ll understand," Pannis said nonchalantly, spreading his hands, "Just peek over the edge of the cliff and you can see them."

"Ava, come with me to take a look," the priestess girl, though thoroughly exhausted, was still driven by curiosity to struggle to her feet and walk toward the cliff edge with Ava’s support. One had to admit, the Triclops’s physical constitution was far stronger than that of Fourth Epoch’s wise creatures; even without Aggression enhancing their bodies, petite Ava showed no signs of fatigue at the moment, breathing as calmly as ever.

The girl helped Lina to the edge of the cliff. Out of curiosity, she peered down and within a second pulled her head back, saying with a wry smile, "I see, no wonder none of you wanted to talk about these magical beasts."