Chương 467: B7—Chapter 47: The Leaf Olympics

The forest we flew over stretched on and on, a never-ending blanket of green. It was enormous, with tall trees and dense canopies that swallowed the light and hid everything below. The branches' tops moved in slow waves beneath us, looking like a green sea. Occasionally, I heard growls, roars, and distant thuds that sounded like fighting, but no matter how much I squinted, I couldn't see anything between the leaves. Out of curiosity, I asked the wind about dungeons, and it gave me a surprising number of pings.

During a five-hour flight, the wind pointed out eight dungeons in various directions. For a moment, I considered telling Mahya about them, maybe even suggesting we swing by and look from above. The idea lasted about three seconds. I remembered the dungeons in Tatob, their size and complexity, and felt absolutely no desire to get stuck inside dungeons for the foreseeable future. The memory of that giant, scary tree with the eyes didn't help. Just thinking about it made my shoulders tense.

I was pretty sure the gnomes didn't clear any of the dungeons in this forest, which meant every single one of them was at full power, in a mana fifty-one world. That combination alone should have come with a warning label. Yeah, better to skip them. There was no reason to engage in suicidal curiosity. Five hours into the flight, the forest below suddenly rippled as if something huge moved under the leaves.

A heartbeat later, a swarm of big blue and black birds shot upward, bursting through the canopy in a storm of feathers and screeches. Before I had time to react, bright arcs of lightning crackled across the sky and slammed into us. Mahya cursed and fired her rifle in quick bursts, but the birds were too fast. They darted in and out as if they were made of wind. Al sent a volley of fireballs into the mess. A few connected, lighting feathers and sending two birds spiraling down.

Ice shards followed, slicing through the air and clipping another one. The birds answered with more lightning. Bolts whipped through the air and hit both Mahya and Al. Their bodies shuddered violently, clothes smoking at the edges.

"Take cover!" I yelled. They ducked into the basket without arguing. More lightning slammed into the rim and rattled the whole thing like someone was shaking it. I shot upward and out, into the open air. Three bolts hit me at once. The world turned into full-body tickle hell. My whole torso buzzed. My legs twitched like I was being poked by a thousand tiny fingers, and my teeth tingled so hard I almost bit my tongue.

"Stop that!" I yelled, even though they obviously weren't going to listen. I fired back with regular lightning. The birds didn't care. Red lightning. Nothing. The combined blue lightning hit them dead center, and they didn't even flinch. They just shrieked louder and dove at me with beaks and claws glowing with their own electricity. Fine. I wasn't done yet. A vortex burst out of my hand and spun three birds off to the side like they'd been hit by a truck.

I zoomed after the closest one, grabbed it mid-turn, twisted hard, and snapped its neck. I stored the body before it started falling. Another three dove at my back. I spun, firing vortexes from both hands. The force sent them scattering into the trees. One recovered almost instantly and slashed across my arm with its talons. Blood sprayed. I healed it on instinct and sprinted—well, flew—after it, grabbing its tail feathers before it escaped. One more twist, one more neck.

The whole fight turned into a cat-and-mouse chase. They were fast, pivoting in ways that made no aerodynamic sense. I tried to corner them, but every time I closed the distance, they zig-zagged or dove straight down just to climb back up behind me. A group of five tried to swarm me from above. I lifted both hands and blasted a huge vortex that threw them in every direction like leaves in a tornado. Two of them recovered and lunged at my face. I dodged one, caught the second by the throat, and ended it.

More lightning. More tickling. My whole body buzzed to the point where I couldn't stop laughing and yelling at the same time.

"Enough! Enough already!" A bird scratched my shoulder; another pecked at my ribs. I healed as I moved, darting from one target to the next, throwing them away with wind, catching them when I could, breaking neck after neck until the air finally went quiet. When the last one fell still in my hands, I dropped back down into the basket. My legs wobbled under me, and I landed hard, breathing like I had run a marathon uphill while someone poked me relentlessly with ten million feathers.

"I hate birds," I growled, slumping against the side, still twitching from the leftover lightning tickles. Rue licked my face. It took me a couple of minutes to stop jerking from the aftershocks. Lightning always tickled, but I had never been hit with that much of it at once. My whole body felt like it wanted to vibrate straight out of my skin. Finally, when the twitching eased, I looked at Mahya and Al.

"You okay?"

"We're fine," Mahya said.

"We drank potions," Al added. To be sure, I grabbed the rim of the basket and hauled myself upright. My legs still felt unstable, but they held. Diagnose showed lingering damage from the lightning, but it was already melting away under the potions' influence. Just in case, I cast Healing Touch on each of them, followed by Fortify Life Force. Once that was done, I dropped back down and let my head fall against the basket's inner wall.

I breathed deeply, trying to ride out the adrenaline crash while the forest wind cooled the last stubborn tingles crawling under my skin. We continued flying for the rest of the day and throughout the night. This world's days and nights were longer than what we were used to. Between our flight to the city, the language learning, the mana-lobber confiscation, and the flight back out, I estimated the daytime hours were something like fifteen, maybe seventeen.

The night was long too, around fifteen hours, but it wasn't that dark. Three moons hung in the sky and flooded everything in a pale glow, bright enough to make the night look like twilight in other worlds. Thankfully, we weren't attacked again. At some point, Mahya leaned over the rim and squinted.

"Something is flying out there," she said. I followed her gaze. Something big moved in the distance, a dark shape framed by the moons' light. Even with my higher Perception, I couldn't quite make it out. It definitely had wings, but the silhouette wasn't birdlike. More like a four-legged animal with wings attached somewhere along the back. Adding the distance made it huge. That was the only thing I could say. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

We watched it glide under the moons for another minute before it turned and disappeared behind a wall of clouds. Either way, I held my fingers crossed that it wouldn't get curious about us, the same way we were curious about it. In the early hours of the morning, we finally saw the end of the forest. A big green blob sat on the horizon, which threw me off, since the Map showed the forest ending in a massive lake. For a moment, I wondered if the Map glitched or if I was still half-asleep.

It took us another two hours to reach it, and only then did I understand the color. Enormous green leaves floated on the lake's surface and covered most of it. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Each one was the size of a football stadium, maybe bigger, forming a shifting patchwork of green islands that stretched across the water. Watching them closely, it became clear they weren't growing from stems connected to the bottom. They drifted freely, sliding across the lake with the wind.

Occasionally, two leaf islands bumped together with a soft, muted thud that carried all the way up to us. The sight was so strange and unexpected that I leaned forward over the rim, trying to take in every detail. Al jumped out and landed on his sword.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Inspecting the leaves. I have yet to see anything of the sort." Just in case, I flew after him as backup. A second later, Rue joined us in the air, gliding along at my side as we headed toward the leaves.

"Hey!" Mahya called from above.

"It's not fair."

"Store the balloon and join us," I called back to her. She muttered something, probably rude, but the rustling sounds above told me she was doing exactly that. We landed on one leaf, and up close, the scale was ridiculous. The thing was enormous, bigger than a stadium. Some of the ones farther out were easily two or three times that size. The surface dipped under our combined weight, but not dangerously. More like we stepped onto a giant waterbed made of plant matter.

Al crouched near the edge, drew his sword, sliced off a small piece, and stuck it in his mouth. The leaf had a problem with that. The entire surface lurched. Hard. The leaf buckled under us like a riding bull trying to launch us into orbit.

"Seriously?" I shouted as the ground dropped away under my feet. Mahya landed beside us just in time for the leaf to punch upward again. She shot into the air, spun, and landed in a crouch. Al compensated with his jump skill, bouncing lightly each time the leaf tried to send him flying. Rue and I cheated with flight. Every time the leaf bucked, we connected to the wind and hovered back down.

"Why did you eat the scenery?" I yelled at Al.

"I wished to know if it was usable in potions!" he shouted back, bouncing again as the leaf shot upward like it wanted us to meet the moons. We sprinted toward the next leaf as ours twisted under us. A particularly violent jerk almost launched Rue straight into the water, but I grabbed him by the scruff with one hand and tossed him toward the next leaf. He landed, skidded, recovered, and barked like this was the best day of his life. We jumped after him. The second leaf barely needed a moment.

The instant all four of us were on it, the whole thing began bucking like a bull that didn't like the new riders. Apparently, the leaves communicated or something, because this one already knew we were a problem. Mahya laughed as she bounded over a rise in the leaf's surface that tried to toss her sideways. Al, for some reason, looked thrilled. Rue ran in circles, sliding all over the place, tail wagging wildly. I tried to run normally, but it failed instantly. The leaf shot upward.

I shot upward with it, hung in the air for a second, then dropped. I used a quick burst of flight to avoid bouncing off the edge and landing in the lake. A third leaf waited ahead, bumping gently against ours. We scrambled onto it and slid across its smooth green surface. It bucked immediately. Of course.

"Why are they offended?" Mahya shouted between laughs.

"Al ate one!" I yelled.

"I simply tasted it!" The leaf tossed him twenty meters straight up. He landed perfectly on the next leaf, because of course the athletic bastard did. The run turned into a marathon of chaos. Leaf to leaf. Bounce to bounce. Every time we thought we found a stable footing, the leaves dropped out beneath us. Half the time, we were airborne. The other half, we sprinted across green plates that tried to throw us into the water. Sometimes they succeeded.

The first time it happened, a leaf lurched sideways so fast it launched all four of us into the lake. I pushed with mana, and the lake spat us out in a fountain that sent us sailing back onto a nearby leaf. Rue shook himself so hard the leaf wobbled. Then we kept running. We laughed, shouted warnings, and yelled complaints that blew away instantly on the wind. The entire thing was ridiculous and exhilarating, like some deranged obstacle course built by a nature goddess with a sense of humor.

By the time over three hours had passed, we were soaked, bruised, buzzing with energy, and grinning like idiots. The far shore finally appeared, a strip of solid ground beyond the last cluster of leaf islands. We sprinted across the last leaf, which bucked so violently it nearly flipped, and jumped as a group onto solid earth. I landed on my knees, panting, soaked, and laughing so hard my whole body hurt.

"That," I said, dropping onto my back in the dirt and staring up at the sky, "was insane." Rue flopped next to me and agreed with a happy groan. Behind us, a few of the leaves shuddered one last time as if expressing their opinion of us, then settled back into their lazy drifting. After we caught our breath, we headed to the river connecting to the lake and rode the jet skis up to the waterfalls.

Those were three tall waterfalls, each higher than a hundred meters, falling from cliffs into a broader and deeper river below. The spray rose in wide curtains, drifting on the wind and soaking us before we even reached the lip. The roar of the falling water vibrated in my chest. The river below flowed from east to west, becoming wider as it passed under the waterfalls, adding their water to its own.

The land beneath the cliffs was much lower, as if we stood on a raised step, looking down a level to a completely different world. The shores near the river were lush and green, thick with reeds and clusters of low bushes fed by the constant supply of water. But the further the land stretched away from the river, the faster the color bled out. Greens shifted into dusty browns and then into wide, sun-baked stretches of pale yellow.

The earth cracked, with stunted shrubs clinging to whatever moisture they could steal. The contrast was striking. A narrow band of life wrapped around a river that carved through an otherwise thirsty landscape. Beyond that green border, heat shimmered in the air, warping the horizon. The ground was scattered with stone outcroppings, dry ridges, and patches of thorny plants that looked like they'd survived by pure spite.

Standing on the lip of the cliff felt like standing on the edge of the world, looking down at a wild, harsh land that depended entirely on the river to survive. The current tugged at my legs, trying to push me off the cliff, and the ground trembled from the force of the falling water. The roar filled the air and settled in my bones, a constant reminder of how high we were and of the power thundering below us. We stood there with the mist cooling our faces and looked down.

I told them about my waterfall jump in Shimoor, and Mahya got a devilish glint in her eyes.

"Let's jump down." She wagged a finger at me in warning.

"No cheating with flight." I looked down. It was high, but my body had become much stronger as my Constitution rose. The impact wouldn't break me the way it would have in the past. After a moment of consideration, I nodded. Al also agreed. Rue looked down, looked at Mahya, looked down again, and huffed.

"Rue not like stupid game." He flicked his tail at Mahya, a gesture that reminded me of her flicking her hand at us whenever she didn't agree with something or thought it was stupid, and then he simply flew down. I shrugged and jumped after him, spreading my hands sideways to feel the wind and shouting in elation as the world rushed past. The plunge lasted much longer than I expected, long enough for my stomach to flip twice. The spray grew colder the closer I got.

I hit the water with a boom that echoed in my ears. The impact sent bubbles exploding around me. Everything went green and wild and muffled for a heartbeat before I kicked up and broke the surface. Cool water streamed down my face as I swam to the shore and joined Rue. Mahya and Al joined me a moment later.

"The river's width and depth are sufficient for the boat," Al said, water dripping from his hair and shoulders. Mahya channeled mana into the Map, making it visible.

"Up or downstream? There are cities both ways."

"Doesn't really matter," I said. Al hummed and nodded. Mahya looked at the Map a minute longer.

"Upstream. It has two Gates in that direction." That issue closed, she took out the boat, and we sailed upstream, hoping to meet "nice genomey," as Rue put it.