Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 204 - 59 Mud Monster_1

Chapter 204: Chapter 59 Mud Monster_1

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"What is that, exactly?" Lina hobbled over to Vivian, holding up Vivian’s feet. She passed her right hand, shrouded in white light, over Vivian’s wound while anxiously looking at the rock surface nearby that had returned to its original state. She clearly remembered before being shooed off, the hard rock surface seemed to have gone somewhat soft.

"I’ve never seen anything like it," Elrad, having been told of the events by the surviving Night Owl and Illusion Fox, said with a look of shock: "I’ve never heard of such a creature."

Though Lina was busy treating Vivian, Vivian appeared indifferent. After hearing Elrad’s reply, she stared at him with oddly for a few seconds before quietly turning her gaze away.

"This is a Mud Monster," Pannis stated seriously as he stood at the edge of the moss-covered rock surface. "One of the most terrifying killers in the wild, and the huge enemy of all professionals besides Demigod."

"This thing is the legendary Mud Monster?" Lina exclaimed in surprise: "The mysterious creature where most of the details aren’t available in the Magical Beast Handbook?"

"Exactly," Pannis picked up a wooden stick and prodded at the rock surface. The rocky surface, responsible for stealing a life earlier, had now returned to its plain, unexceptional state, with nothing amiss detectable.

"What on earth is going on?" Catherine also came over, leaving space for the mercenaries to console the disabled ground squirrel and mourn the dead Shadow Wolf: "What are their characteristics? Why did they suddenly become like this?"

"Mud Monsters are horrifying magical beasts, we were actually lucky that we encountered a small Mud Monster. If it was a large Mud Monster, likely none of us could have escaped," Pannis sighed and said, "Mud Monsters are like a blob of mud, with no fixed form. They often dwell on rock surfaces, first eroding the rock. After eroding the rock to form a deep pit, they fill it with their amorphous bodies, then rapidly harden and color the upper surface to blend in with the environment. From the outside, it just looks like a rock with a little bit of moss."

"They use this disguise to wait for prey to approach, then?" Catherine stomped on the Mud Monster heavily with her corrosion-resistant metallic shin guard, finding the sensation identical to stepping on a rock: "Then they secrete corrosive fluid to attack when prey approaches? I feel like it is not that simple."

"It’s not that simple indeed," Pannis replied, "Firstly, what they secrete is not corrosive fluid, but highly corrosive gas tightly bounded to their surface. Once they decide to attack their prey, they emit this gas from the surface, which both corrodes the flesh and has an anesthetic effect, so many people don’t even know how they died. This gas, with a height of only a few millimeters, envelops the surface of the Mud Monster and never easily disperses. It can quickly corrode most objects, the time of corrosion varies. Secondly, they don’t randomly attack prey, a single prey cannot satisfy their nutritional needs, so they generally only emit gas to attack when a large number of creatures pass above them."

"Treacherous magical beast," Lina, after bandaging Vivian’s fully recovered foot and getting her to switch a new pair of shoes from her backpack, interjected: "I felt their surface softened just now."

"Right," Pannis nodded, "After launching an attack, as soon as the prey falls, the place where it fell would quickly soften, swallowing the prey into its body to slowly erode and digest it, absorbing the corpse fluid formed after erosion as nourishment. This magical beast’s mimicry ability is truly too strong. It’s impossible to discover it before it attacks, and even after it launches its attack, the attacked person has difficulty noticing. Luckily, they are relatively rare, otherwise, heavy casualties would occur."

"How did you notice it?" Lina asked curiously, "If you hadn’t yelled out, I fear only Big Sis and Dora, who could hold out with their metallic armor, would have survived."

"Height," Pannis responded, "My senses are a little sharper than normal people. After walking a few steps, I felt that my height had lowered by about one millimeter, so I felt something was off, looked at the sole of my shoe, and then quickly realized what was happening."

"Ha, ha, one millimeter," Lina rolled her eyes and let out a dry laughter, but she quickly put away her smile, looking regretfully at the mercenaries holding a farewell ceremony not far away: "It’s a pity, we were still a step too late."

"It would have been better if I could notice it earlier," Catherine sighed and shook her head, "It was really due to our lack of experience. It seems that we have become too complacent recently, we are not experienced enough yet. You mentioned earlier, Pannis, that if we encountered a large Mud Monster, none of us could escape, but why is that the case? After we get out of its attack range, could it still catch up with us?"

"Hmm, it’s unlikely to chase us." Pannis said with a bitter smile, "Let’s put it this way, the largest Mud Monster recorded in legend covers an area about a radius of two hundred meters, they often wait until their prey has passed the halfway mark before they start hunting. Apart from mages who can use the Water Levitation Spell to float a few centimeters above the ground, how many people could cover a distance of two hundred meters without touching the ground in a few seconds?"

"I see." Catherine stared at the magical beast acting like a rock under her feet, "Is there a way to kill them?"

"Long periods of roasting or intense flames can weaken them." Pannis said, "But to kill them, you need to burn all parts of their body. As long as a tiny piece survives, they can regenerate. The regeneration does cause significant damage to their awareness and abilities, though. However, I highly advise against it. The roasting or burning process releases strong corrosive gases, unless you can control the flame from a distance of several tens of meters over a long period of time, forget about it."

"Vivian, can you do it?" After getting a positive answer from Vivian, Catherine said to Pannis through gritted teeth, "Never underestimate a woman’s thirst for revenge. We will make it pay."

Pannis shrugged with a wry smile, walked slowly to the mercenaries bidding farewell to the Shadow Wolf, and waved the three girls over, "You can come over here. This is a safe distance."

"Prepare to die, you damned thing." Catherine and Lina supported Vivian, who spoke with a chilling voice, "Pannis, help me mark the Mud Monster’s exact range."

Pannis casually tossed a few pebbles on the rocky ground, "The range is roughly this, and the very center should be the Mud Monster. However, it doesn’t matter if the range does not cover it completely. Mud Monsters don’t have mimicry capabilities in their interior and cannot change their protective colors at will. They’re easy to recognize, just burn anything green within the pit."

"Very well." Vivian snorted coldly, her left hand clutching a crystal, and her right hand fingers rapidly flicking. Numerous orange-red bottles flew and danced in the sky like a puppet show. Each bottle was poured out one after another onto the rocky surface, the liquid with strong fire-attribute energy was directly splashed onto the ground forming a perfect Hexagram. The range covered by the Hexagram was far larger than the area marked by Pannis. Empty bottles flew back automatically, the whole scene was quite bizarre.

"Is this...Puppeteer Magic?" Pannis exclaimed in surprise, "You can even do this ancient magic?"

The Puppeteer Magic is a kind of magic that has been passed down for a very long time, yet it’s not very profound. This magic was originally used by folk artists to control marionettes for theatrical performances. After a while, a certain research mage became interested in this magic and conducted a deep study, transforming the initial marionette controlling technique into a version of Puppeteer Magic. While originally only used to control marionettes for performative purposes, it developed into a magic that manipulates various objects through multiple mana threads. Of course, the real utility of this magic is the ability to directly operate combat magic puppets or even some types of corpses for battle.

Unfortunately, while the idea seems great, the reality was disheartening. The number of mana threads needed to manipulate a magic puppet or a corpse greatly exceeds those used in puppet shows and theatre performances. It’s not something an average mage can handle. And this imposes quite heavy requirements on mental strength and mana reserves. You could say that if a mage could properly control a combat magic puppet, the same amount of mental force and mana could be used to destroy ten such magic puppets. Hence this magic was deemed one of the most useless, with only a handful of experimenter fanatics continuing to apply the magic to speed-up their experimentation. But when the Mage’s Hand technique was developed, even these fanatics ceased using the original Puppeteer Magic, this archaic magic was completely abandoned.

This is why Pannis was so taken aback when he saw Vivian using Puppeteer Magic. Vivian was also taken aback, clearly forgetting Pannis would recognize this technique, she could only offer Pannis a placating smile and continuously drew patterns in the air while murmuring some spells.

"What is she doing?" Dora, having finished bidding farewell to their lost comrade, finally noticed the adventurers’ activities.

"Taking revenge." Vivian finished her last spell and snapped her fingers, causing a large amount of mana to burst out and flood towards the array. Even from tens of meters away, everyone could feel the heat emitted by the array.

The heat was intense, from a distance even the air seemed to warp, yet no flames appeared, even the withered leaves falling onto the rocky earth showed no signs of burning. They just turned dry and black, eventually turning into ash, it was as if the concept of burning did not exist in that area.

"Thank you." Dora bowed solemnly to Vivian, then turned to Catherine, "Sister, come here, we need to discuss something."