Chapter 98: A "Reasonable" Guess

That was precisely why Yu Yan no longer felt the same unease she had the last time she found herself trapped in the "Desert Oasis" dungeon. Here she was, inside an S-rank dungeon where even earth-rank monsters ran rampant, and she had gained at least some measure of confidence.

Still, it was only her own guess. The truth remained to be verified.

Yu Yan did not blink as she fixed her gaze on the stand of towering trees a little farther ahead, where nothing had yet stirred.

This entire Firefly Soul-Devouring Sea should have been made up of such trees, each dozens of meters tall. Yet the monsters within were astonishingly varied, far beyond the few simple species described in the dungeon briefing. What was more, her perceptive sense, already at the peak of the fourth tier, had caught movement from far off.

The ground, too, was trembling faintly. Conservatively speaking, it was likely a monster herd numbering well over a hundred.

If there were fewer than a hundred, then the only explanation was that this wave consisted of especially massive, cumbersome creatures.

They had been drawn here by the dense, bloody scent rising from the cluster of iron hedgehog beasts below. Judging from that, iron hedgehog beast flesh was probably already part of their usual diet. Perhaps the iron hedgehog beasts were even their primary source of food. If so, these newcomers were surely higher-tiered on average than the iron hedgehog herd.

A flicker of hesitation crossed Yu Yan's face. Then her thoughts shifted.

The spiritual force enveloping her and Lou Yuhui changed in subtle, ingenious ways.

Before long, the distinctive grain of tree branches surfaced across Yu Yan's and Lou Yuhui's legs and arms, while their hands took on the fresh green of tender leaves. Lou Yuhui looked at her in astonishment, but Yu Yan offered no explanation.

If she were alone, taking a little risk would not matter.

As long as the herd that arrived did not include more than three monsters above the seventh tier, she was confident she could withdraw unscathed.

At the very least, she could preserve her own life.

But things were different with Lou Yuhui beside her. He had absorbed and refined the flesh of the Quru, and had now become a fifth-tier wind-type ability user. In real combat, he was not even one-tenth her equal, and his ability to survive was even less comparable.

Besides, there was a whole major tier between the fifth and the seventh. One was of the mystical rank; the other of the earthly rank.

A seventh-tier monster would toy with a fifth-tier enhancer as though he were nothing. If she were not careful, Lou Yuhui might end up dead before she could even react. And with a seventh-tier monster watching, even her own safety could not be guaranteed with absolute certainty, let alone any confidence that she could protect him as well.

After weighing it all, if the approaching herd contained a seventh-tier monster, Yu Yan would still rather keep low with Lou Yuhui and wait for the herd to move on before finding another place to continue luring prey.

Fortunately, the worst did not come to pass.

What arrived was a herd of... creatures Yu Yan could not identify. But in her spiritual sense, the strongest among them was probably only at the peak of the fifth tier, not yet at the sixth. The rest ranged from the third to the fifth tier, with the overwhelming majority at the third.

They were dozens of creatures that looked like horses, yet were not horses, with two shell-like wing covers the size of woks rising from their backs.

The shell wings shone with an oily brilliance, gleaming with the unique luster of metal.

At a glance, it was clear this monster was built for speed and defense alike, so Yu Yan gave it a vivid name: sky horse.

The herd of sky horses had no idea that two "fishermen" were standing in the trees above. Seeing the iron hedgehog beasts strewn across the ground below, they found themselves face to face with a feast delivered right to their doorsteps, something they did not even need to hunt for themselves.

The leader, a fifth-tier peak monster, lifted its head warily and scanned the surroundings. Something felt off.

But the lure of good food was right before its eyes, while it could not sense even the faintest trace of an enemy. Its subordinates, meanwhile, were a pack of idiots with simple minds.

Once the scent of iron hedgehog blood hit them, they had already gone mad.

Long before the leader could react, they had swarmed forward and begun tearing into the feast spread out on the ground.

These fools had no idea how to spell the word respect when it came to their boss. If it waited much longer, the tastiest parts would all be ruined by them. So it cast that brief feeling of wrongness aside and hurriedly joined the feeding frenzy.

Yu Yan let out a breath of relief.

Only a fifth-tier peak monster. That was manageable.

With a slight movement of thought, the branch-and-leaf patterns and colors on her and Lou Yuhui's bodies receded like a tide. This transformation skill was wonderfully strange. If she only wanted to conceal her and her companion's aura in a rough way, it did not require much spiritual force at all.

Especially since Yu Yan possessed the heaven-defying Biochemical skill, allowing her to replenish the spiritual force and spiritual energy she consumed without end.

Like now, merely masking the basic presence of herself and Lou Yuhui, her rate of recovery could actually keep pace with the dual consumption of spiritual energy and spiritual force. In theory, she could keep this up indefinitely.

There was no need to worry about the transformation collapsing from lack of power.

But once she activated deeper functions, such as transforming herself into an object of her choosing, the spiritual force and spiritual energy required would be more than ten times that of maintaining the basic effect.

And that was only when used on herself.

If she tried to apply it to anyone other than herself, such as Lou Yuhui, the spiritual force and spiritual energy consumed would be truly enormous.

Yu Yan did not fully understand the principles behind it.

She could only roughly guess that, through the daily cleansing and refinement of the spiritual energy within her by the spatial illusion lotus, her body had already been reshaped into a special constitution ideally suited to transforming into all things in the world. Ordinary enhancers did not possess such a constitution, so naturally the difficulty of altering their properties would be more than a notch higher.

Just now, in that brief span of time, transforming Lou Yuhui into a branch of a towering tree had drained nearly half the spiritual energy in her body.

The spiritual force consumption had not been small either.

Fortunately, she had only brought Lou Yuhui out with her.

Otherwise, if the seven of them had all come along with her, plus herself, and she had wanted to transform everyone into target objects upon meeting danger, the spiritual force and spiritual energy really would not have been enough.

Yu Yan wiped the cold sweat from her brow. It seemed that, aside from using this deeper transformation ability on herself, she should use it sparingly at best.

"You go down and try it first," Yu Yan said, giving Lou Yuhui a look. "The strongest one in this herd is only at the peak of the fifth tier."

"For you, that shouldn't be life-threatening."

Of course, with her watching, it definitely would not be life-threatening.

As for getting hurt, that was probably unavoidable.

Yu Yan had no interest in playing full-time caretaker to Lou Yuhui, and it would not do his growth any good. Only by facing danger head-on, by constantly standing at the edge of injury, bleeding, and even death, could Lou Yuhui adapt as quickly as possible to his brand-new body.

Only then could he awaken all of its potential.

Temperament forged in blood and fire was the correct way to survive in dungeon worlds.

Poor Lou Yuhui had no idea of Yu Yan's sinister intentions.

He only thought that with Yu Yan watching over him, this bunch of "easy picks," whose strongest member was merely at the peak of the fifth tier, were nothing more than practice targets for his skills.

Of course, "easy picks" was not being judged against his own strength.

No matter how inflated Lou Yuhui might feel, just one day ago he had not been able to beat even a herd of iron hedgehog beasts whose strongest members were only first- or second-tier.

How could he possibly think, now, that he could defeat a monster herd led by a fifth-tier peak dungeon beast?

Even if Yu Yan told him he was already a fifth-tier wind-type ability user, without having verified it himself, Lou Yuhui still had no real sense of it. Besides, even if he really was a fifth-tier wind-type ability user, the enemy leader was at the peak of the fifth tier, higher than him in rank alone.

And that was not counting the huge group of underlings behind it.

Would those underlings just stand by and watch their boss fight him, a two-legged beast, one-on-one?

Only if all of them had been kicked in the head by a donkey.

So when Lou Yuhui called them easy picks, he was naturally speaking relative to Yu Yan...