novelraw Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Picked Up a Bargain Teammate?
The light inside the cave was dim, with only a few fluorescent plants scattered across the rock walls giving off a faint blue glow. A damp, earthy smell permeated the surroundings.
Water droplets fell from the hanging stalactites, producing “dong dong” echoes in the silent cave.
Before stepping into the dark passage, Lina stopped and took out that copper deer coin once more.
The previously vague premonition of danger still lingered in her heart; she needed clearer information.
The success rate of resolving the crisis!
The coin spun in the air, and a glimmer flashed through her pale golden eyes.
The coin fell back into her palm—heads up!
The danger existed, but it was still within a controllable range. The advantage was hers.
The corners of Lina’s mouth lifted in an almost imperceptible arc.
Back then, she had pinned those ancient gods down in the Abyss and beaten them so badly they had not dared let out a single whimper. Could a mere trial cave for beginner witches really stump her?
Annie stayed close behind Lina, her little hand clutching the hem of her robe uneasily, her large gray eyes scanning the surroundings warily, both afraid and curious.
“Follow my steps closely. Don’t make a single mistake,” Lina said in a low voice, holding Annie’s hand.
After walking for some distance, a fork in the road blocked their path.
“Divination, path.” She recited silently in her heart, and a wisp of light flashed through her pale golden eyes.
In her “vision,” two blurry flowing lines stretched out from in front of her all the way into the two paths. One gave off an extremely faint green aura, while the other vaguely revealed flickering red ripples.
“This way.” Lina chose the green path without the slightest hesitation and led Annie into the darkness by the hand.
After only a few steps, that faint green aura suddenly weakened, then abruptly disappeared in front of an utterly unremarkable patch of ground, turning red.
“Stop.” Lina held Annie back, picked up a small stone from the ground, and casually tossed it over.
“Ka-cha”!
The ground suddenly collapsed, revealing a trap pit filled with sharp stone spikes.
“Ah!” Annie’s eyes widened, her little face turning pale.
If she had stepped on that...
Lina shrugged and said bluntly, “Such an old trick. A trap like this, one even beasts might not necessarily fall for—if some witch actually dropped into it, then she really ought to go back to the beginner magic academy and repeat a few years of basic common sense.”
She raised a hand and snapped her fingers. A fireball the size of a fist shot out with a “whoosh,” striking a weak point in the cave ceiling with perfect accuracy.
“Boom!”
The trap mechanism was destroyed instantly, and in the blink of an eye, the falling rubble from above buried the densely packed stone spikes below.
“Th-the books said that when encountering a pitfall trap, you should use Floating Spell or look for the source of the mechanism...” Annie muttered. The way her teammate in front of her had dealt with it made her brain feel a little frozen.
“If something can be solved in one go, why waste the effort doing it in two?” Lina walked forward, lifted one foot and stamped on the ground a few times. After confirming that the ground was solid and there was no danger, she extended a hand to Annie. “Come on, let’s keep going forward.”
As they continued deeper, the passage widened.
Just as they rounded a bend, a sudden disturbance came from ahead. Lina pressed her index finger to her lips and made a silencing gesture to Annie.
Two boar-like monsters clad in stone armor were rooting through the mud. Their powerful muscles bulged high, and their gleaming white tusks stood out especially sharply in the darkness.
Not far away, a giant spider lurking in the shadows at the top of the cave waited silently on its web for fresh prey to take the bait.
“I-it’s Stone-Armored Boars and a Cave Lurker! The books said we should deal with the lurker from long range first, then concentrate our fire...” Annie nervously prepared to cast her Ice Crystal Spell.
“Don’t rush.” Lina interrupted her, the corners of her mouth curving into a faint smile.
She activated divination once more. A faint halo appeared around each magical beast’s body, barely visible yet still there. Lina knew that the extent of those halos marked the monsters’ aggro range.
She took a deep breath, jumped out from hiding, and shouted in the direction of the Stone-Armored Boars, “Hey! You little bastards! Look here!”
At the same time, a Fireball Spell flew out crookedly, deliberately missing its mark. It happened to graze past a Stone-Armored Boar’s backside, burning away the already sparse bristles on its tail completely clean.
“Hmph?!”
The two Stone-Armored Boars charged over with red eyes! Almost at the exact same instant, Lina yanked Annie sharply to the side and ducked behind a huge rock.
The “missed” fireball still had not lost its momentum, and it slammed right into the Cave Lurker that had leapt out of the shadows, ready to spit venom!
“Poof!” The fireball exploded on the lurker’s body. Although it did not cause much damage, it made the spider the first thing to enter the Stone-Armored Boars’ attack range.
The enraged Stone-Armored Boars charged at the Cave Lurker without a care, while the giant spider immediately reacted as well, hissing as it flung out webs in retaliation! Two groups of magical creatures that originally would not have interfered with each other at all somehow ended up brawling for no reason just like that! The cave trembled faintly from the impacts, and dust sifted down from the walls, making Annie’s heart pound in alarm.
Lina leisurely hugged her black breadstick and watched the show from behind the rock. “Mm, the Stone-Armored Boars have high physical defense, but low magic resistance; the lurker has high magic resistance, and its venom is annoying... let them play with each other.”
Annie’s little mouth formed an O, her head full of question marks: These really were all textbook basics, but... how could they be used like this too?
Lina continued watching for a while longer. Only after both groups of magical beasts had injured each other so badly that they were on their last breaths and collapsed onto the ground did she bring Annie over to them.
“Annie, did you bring a small knife?” Lina turned her head and asked.
“I did... here.”
Lina unceremoniously took the small knife Annie handed over, then delivered several precise finishing strikes to the monsters’ vital points, completely ending their suffering.
“Big Sister Lina, you’re...” Annie watched Lina skillfully begin stripping off the hardest pieces of hide armor from the Stone-Armored Boars, then carefully collecting the Cave Lurker’s intact venom glands and several of its legs, her face full of confusion.
Wasn’t the assessment only asking for Moonlight Moss?
“With a bit of processing, Stone-Armored Boar hide can make pretty decent bracers or boot soles. The Cave Lurker’s venom glands and leg blades are good materials for alchemy and enchanting. The quality’s a bit poor, but spider legs are still meat. Mm... the Cave Lurker’s silk can also be used to make stockings, though it’s a little sticky... but some people are into that.”
Without even lifting her head, Lina briskly packed up the spoils and stuffed them into the old cloth bag she carried with her. “The Association never said the things in the secret realm couldn’t be taken. Waste is shameful, got it? After we get out, we’ll split all the materials gathered here fifty-fifty.”
Watching Lina’s scrape-the-ground-clean behavior, Annie’s eyebrows twitched uncontrollably.
She opened her mouth, but in the end, she still swallowed back words like “This doesn’t conform to professional ethics.”
After finishing up the spoils, the two continued onward.
They had not gone far when a patch of dark green swamp, giving off a pungent fishy stench, blocked their path.
Bubbles kept rising to the surface of the swamp with gurgling sounds from time to time, and a dense poisonous miasma filled the air, making one dizzy and lightheaded.
Clearly, passing straight through it would be extremely dangerous.
At the edge of the poisonous swamp, several clumps of silver-leaved grass giving off a fresh fragrance and a few pale purple flowers were growing tenaciously.
“It’s Silverstar Grass and Purple Fern Flowers!” Annie recognized the two plants at once. “We can use these to prepare an antidote potion on the spot, then drink it and pass through the poisonous swamp!”
“Not so fast.” Lina raised a hand to stop Annie. After thinking for a moment, she asked with a serious expression, “Annie, can you describe your Ice Crystal Spell?”
“Mm... my Ice Crystal Spell can freeze the water element in the air and throw out some small chunks of ice... it can also lower the temperature within a certain area.” Annie lowered her head and said softly, “At the academy, every summer everyone had me make ice in the classroom... this might be the only use my ability has... ugh...”
“How large is this cooling range of yours? How far can you lower the temperature?” Lina pressed on.
“Probably just enough to lower it below freezing... as for the range, about the size of two or three small ponds.”
Lina’s eyes lit up. “A pond the size of this swamp?”
“That should be fine...”
Lina nodded in satisfaction. She quickly stepped forward and carefully pulled up all the Silverstar Grass and Purple Fern Flowers within sight, roots and all, not leaving behind a single stalk, then stuffed them into that old cloth bag that seemed like a bottomless pit as well.
“Alright, materials collection complete. We’ll divide everything once we get out!” Lina patted the bag in satisfaction.
Annie blinked. “Big Sister Lina, aren’t we going to make an antidote? Without a potion, how are we supposed to get across? Don’t tell me you want to...”
Lina revealed a slight smile. “That’s right. Use your Ice Crystal Spell to freeze this swamp solid.”
“Ah? Is that really possible?” Annie was still a little hesitant. She could not help asking again in a small voice, “Big Sister Lina... does this... does this count as... cheating?”
Lina stopped walking and turned back to glance at Annie. “This is a practical exam. What we’re facing right now is the kind of danger we might actually encounter in the future. No matter what the process is, as long as we achieve the goal, that’s success. If you run into a hopeless situation later on, are you going to flip through a book first to see whether it follows the rules?”
Annie was left speechless by the question.
“Hurry up,” Lina urged. “Freeze the swamp, then we’ll dash across in one go.”
Annie was half-convinced and half-doubtful, but she still focused her mind and used her Ice Crystal Spell with all her strength.
A cold mist surged from her palm and swiftly spread across the surface of the dark green swamp.
After a string of continuous “ka-cha” sounds, a thick shell of ice spread at a speed visible to the naked eye, and in the blink of an eye it covered the entire swamp.
It actually froze so smoothly?
Lina’s eyes widened slightly. This little girl’s magic power was somewhat outrageous... could it be that she was actually a genius?
But that fluctuation of magic just now... as expected, this so-called ‘Ice Crystal Spell’ was not a proper spell at all, only a simple release of elemental magic power.
This little girl had not yet mastered a single real magic skill... hmm, if she built a good relationship with her later, maybe she could find a way to help her “research” a few spells.
“Go!” Lina barked lowly and stepped onto the ice first.
Annie quickly followed. The ice let out a series of “ga zhi” creaks beneath their feet, but there was not the slightest sign of cracking.
The two of them ran swiftly across that poisonous swamp area without incident. When they looked back, the ice layer had already begun to melt slowly.
Lina, meanwhile, weighed the cloth bag that had grown fuller yet again, her mood bright.
There was still no sign of Moonlight Moss, but the extra money from this exam trip was already quite considerable.
As for this little mouse, she had really made a killing this time!
After leaving that temporarily frozen poisonous swamp behind, the passage became increasingly deep and winding.
After they had advanced for some distance, Lina suddenly stopped in her tracks.
A faint smell of blood lingered in the air ahead, and the ground was scattered with dark red bloodstains that had already dried, along with some fallen green scales.
The cave walls were covered in savage claw marks, each one dozens of centimeters deep, making one’s heart tremble to look at them.
Annie swallowed nervously and instinctively moved closer to Lina, her voice trembling. “B-Big Sister Lina, it looks like a really fierce battle happened here... what kind of thing was it...”
Lina said nothing. Her gaze suddenly sharpened, and much of her earlier ease and casualness disappeared.
She lightened her steps, signaling Annie to stay quiet, while once again silently activating her divination spell to sense the aura ahead.
There was danger, and... it was intense.
After turning another corner, the scene before them nearly made Annie cry out.
In a relatively open area ahead in the passage stood a giant black wolf over three meters long.
Its entire body was covered in black fur, its muscles bulging. Even while crouched low, it radiated a suffocating pressure.
With its head lowered, it was tearing apart the corpse of a magical beast that looked like a giant lizard. The “ka-cha” sound of crunching bones was especially harsh in the silent cave.
“A M-Magic Shadow Wolf!” Annie’s pupils contracted in fear. “Th-this is a D-rank magical beast! How could it appear in an E-rank assessment secret realm?! Big Sister Lina... let’s use the Guardian Magic Stone to teleport out! Let’s give up on the exam!”
In a panic, she reached for Lina’s hand, preparing to activate the magic stone together.
This had already completely exceeded the scope of the exam!
Lina narrowed her eyes slightly and carefully examined the Magic Shadow Wolf, then clicked her tongue with some disdain. “Tch, the fur color isn’t very pure, and there’s an old injury on the left front paw. But it looks like a magic core has already started forming on top of its head...”
She turned her head and looked at Annie, who was so frightened she was on the verge of tears, and a faint smile appeared on her face.
“Annie,” Lina said softly, “before this, did you think my methods of drawing monsters over and taking detours were a bit... mm, not very honorable? Maybe even a little dirty?”
Annie froze, instinctively nodded, then hurriedly shook her head.
The smile on Lina’s face deepened. She drew out the black breadstick she had tucked into the cloth bag, spun it twice in her hand, and slowly pointed it at the giant wolf that was still enjoying its meal.
“Then now, I’ll show you exactly how a true witch fights head-on in a desperate situation using the most basic things!”