The journey through the tunnels continued as expected. Aside from the gray worms that occasionally attacked them, they advanced steadily and in relative safety.
The most exhausting part was using his transmutation to stitch the layers of rock together and prevent a possible collapse.
The entire region was damp, so Giovanni was genuinely worried about water seeping in and weakening the structure of the passage.
At the same time, his seismic sense guided them along the path of least resistance.
That way, the pair could avoid caverns and remain hidden from the monsters outside.
But their options were running out.
In every direction he explored, the vast mass of earth came to an end. Soon, they would be forced to face the danger outside.
There was always the option of repeating their earlier trick and creating a mobile hiding place beneath the ground to move forward stealthily, but Giovanni hesitated to put the idea into practice.
After all, the possibility of creatures with powers equal to his own inhabiting the area was still on the table. That would also mean facing a threat classified as a [Devil].
Even in the best-case scenario, his opponent would still have a three-core advantage.
That guaranteed that in a contest over control of the earth, Giovanni was doomed to lose through sheer attrition.
If they were discovered while buried, the hiding place would turn into a death trap in an instant.
As he lost himself in thought, magical sparks lit up the tunnel just behind him, drawing his attention. Shelly had summoned some kind of… armor.
It was organic and transparent. A bizarre bridal gown covered her like a second, gelatinous skin.
The most striking part was the veil draped over her face, tinted red across its translucent surface.
"W-What the hell is this?!"
She shouted, thrashing in disgust at the strange, suffocating texture.
"Pfft… did you get a dress from a worm?"
Confusion was written all over Giovanni's face.
The world really did go full circle.
He could finally understand how Michel had felt that day.
Shivering with discomfort, Shelly chose to return the memory to her Soul Sea.
After a few moments, trembling with rage, she regained the bare minimum of composure.
"You didn't see anything. Move already…"
Giovanni averted his gaze and focused on his work.
He really had no idea how to deal with angry women…
After another half hour of travel, the dreaded moment arrived.
"Why did you stop?"
Her voice was low, but anxious.
"There's no path ahead. We'll have to expose ourselves."
Of course, it wouldn't be a blind dash. Giovanni had already explored the area ahead with his seismic sense and located another large terrain formation they could use as cover.
The problem was what lived in between.
The area was open, inhabited by monstrous amphibious beings slithering among the rocky mounds. High above, jellyfish patrolled silently in formation.
There were roughly twenty nightmare creatures in total.
"How fast are you?" Giovanni asked.
Shelly snorted, finding the comment ironic.
"Fast enough. What, are we just going to run straight out there?"
Giovanni pondered in silence. He was calculating their odds, and they didn't look good. He knew far too little about Shelly's abilities to imagine realistic scenarios.
There was only one certainty. Even if they managed to cross the infested field, Giovanni doubted he could hold back a horde chasing them, not to mention the worms.
He needed to reduce the threats quickly. If they took too long, more creatures would be drawn in.
"No. We're going to launch an attack. We have the element of surprise, so this is our best chance to incapacitate and eliminate as many threats as possible. There are twenty in total, for now. No stopping to collect soul shards. We kill and keep running."
Upon hearing the total number of monsters, Shelly put her hands on her head.
"Are you crazy?!"
Giovanni turned and began transmuting the ground, creating a rough diorama of the outside terrain. He used small stones to mark the positions of the aberrations. He was just as nervous as she was… if not more. Unfortunately, if he showed it, there was a good chance she would refuse the plan.
"Not yet. At the moment, five of them are within my effective range."
He pointed to the stones scattered across the surface, marking their positions.
"They're about as big as those worms, so I can immobilize them for a few seconds. Five, I'd say. Can you finish all of them in that time window?"
Shelly took a deep breath, realizing they were really going to do this. Unfortunately, she couldn't offer a better suggestion.
After a few moments of reflection, she answered firmly.
"Keep them still and within my reach. I'll do my part."
Giovanni smiled, satisfied by her confidence. Both of them focused on the diorama, discussing that reckless plan.
***
Diluted bluish light fell over the devastated field.
The beautiful colors of corals and flowers had been replaced by brown, gray, and dark blue.
Mud, clay, and rock were the only things composing every centimeter of the peaks, ravines, depressions, and mounds.
Earth-toned lizards with reinforced scales resembling topaz rested camouflaged among the terrain.
Their bodies were fat and heavy; their mouths, true presses. Anything caught between those jaws would be crushed.
Farther ahead, broad frogs dragged themselves through fissures. Eyes infested the roofs of their mouths and grew along the skin of their backs.
A mucous substance oozed from their bodies, fouling everything they passed.
Each creature wandered with the same purpose: to find prey while roaming the great barrier.
Their eyes burned with the dark madness of corruption, fulfilling their given mission, however distorted, years later.
Five of those beings simultaneously noticed the ground beneath them collapsing into mud.
The sludge climbed their bodies and hardened into solid stone, freezing them in place within moments.
At the same time, a small section of a nearby mound opened up. From it, two figures shot out in perfect sync.
The creatures felt their killing instincts ignite, but it was already too late. Shelly moved like a blur in reality.
It wasn't a physical feat. Her silhouette became a fast-forwarded video.
She charged from the right, brutally decapitating the first lizard, splitting the second's skull in two, and ripping the third's head off in a single motion.
Dark blood coated Shelly. Bone and flesh were pulverized, the black blade acting as a final sentence.
Three seconds.
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
She didn't hear the whisper in her ear.
Giovanni sprinted at full speed toward the next mound, over two hundred meters away.
Raising his palm and closing his fingers as if crushing something, the peak where a frog rested cracked. The rock melted into mud, dragging the nightmare creature to the ground.
The aberration was about to break free when Shelly tore across the desolate land with a thunderous impact.
[Overclock] allowed the girl to accelerate the speed of any object or person to dangerous levels. The only problem was that it affected only the body, not the mind.
When she used the aspect on herself, she became virtually incapable of processing her surroundings.
That was why she had to plan her actions.
A single miscalculation would result in a miss or a pathetic collision.
She executed a violent thrust, smashing the frog's corpse against the wall.
The eyes on the beast's back burst like bubbles, and mucus and entrails flew in all directions.
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
Four seconds.
A few meters ahead, a second frog was about to ambush Giovanni.
Hidden inside a fissure in the ground, the creature was enveloped by earth and pulled to the surface, left exposed.
Giovanni ran straight past it, focused solely on moving forward.
Shelly couldn't turn or climb while accelerating, requiring targets to be aligned in a straight line.
That was why it was so important for Giovanni to immobilize the opponents and ensure they were positioned somewhere accessible for the girl, accelerating at full potential.
The amphibian ripped from the underground was impaled by Shelly's blade, completely mangled by the impact.
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
Five seconds.
The number of threats was reduced from twenty to fifteen in seconds. The element of surprise had been used successfully, but now the true bloodbath began.
Shelly caught up to Giovanni in an instant, just in time to see him execute the next part of the plan.
Several lizards resting in a cave hidden between two rock walls were alerted. Noticing the commotion on the surface, the monsters rose, hissing and charging chaotically toward the exit.
The walls caved in, sealing the entrance and causing widespread panic among the aberrations.
Four enemies were immediately isolated from the fight.
"Three coming from the left!"
Above them, two lizards leapt like cannonballs, aiming to crush the humans, while a frog opened its mouth and released a shrill screech that threatened to rupture their eardrums.
Giovanni clenched his jaw, enduring the pain.
Extending his will toward the earthen mound, he transmuted the ground around the frog into mud. The liquid climbed its body and filled its mouth, silencing it briefly.
In that opening, Shelly firmly gripped a rocky dagger formed through transmutation and hurled it with full force at the amphibian above.
The weapon accelerated violently, influenced by her aspect, and pierced the nightmare creature like a bullet. Its body rolled backward, vanishing from sight.
[You have slain a Dormant Monster…]
There was no time to celebrate.
The pair propelled themselves out of the impact zone, narrowly avoiding having their bones ground to dust as the lizards struck where they had been.
Unfortunately, both monsters sank at once into pools of mud that turned to rock before they could escape.
'Damn it!'
As he sealed the monsters in place, something moved in the sky.
Giovanni had underestimated the speed of the jellyfish.
Unlike when they floated calmly, their tentacles now descended like rain. Even the slightest touch could be fatal.
Seeing that the boy wouldn't dodge in time, Shelly accelerated and slammed into Giovanni.
They avoided death by mere centimeters.
Rolling across the ground, Giovanni and Shelly regained their footing and continued their frantic sprint.
Several lizards began climbing narrow paths toward the humans' position, only to see the ground become slick and treacherous.
Slipping and colliding with one another, their advance was successfully halted. Finally, the path was clear!
"We're almost there! Faster!"
More and more jellyfish hovered overhead, trying to kill them amid that infestation of tentacles.
Giovanni shielded them with stone walls while Shelly dodged effortlessly.
The plan had worked!
His seismic sense reached the rocky wall of the mound ahead, just as he was about to open the entrance to the tunnel, but something stopped him at the last second.
Crack!
The ground beneath his feet threatened to give way.
Feeling something attempting to control the earth below him, he used his own aspect to nullify the influence, buying precious seconds to escape the surprise attack.
His attention swept the surroundings, searching for the aggressor. It was almost imperceptible, but camouflaged among the rocks and dust… something was emitting unique vibrations.
Detaching itself from the wall, a vaguely humanoid figure began to emerge, making the environment tremble.
The battlefield was engulfed in a massive cloud of dust, compromising visibility.
He had scanned the area before leaving the tunnels, but only managed to notice it after the attack.
'Did I fail to notice it?!'
Giovanni had become quite skilled over these months.
Throughout all his days at the academy, he had never encountered an entity capable of deceiving his seismic sense, not even the teachers.
But that creature was different.
Standing two meters tall, its body was robust and possessed four asymmetrical arms; it had no recognizable facial features.
Composed of pure mud, the mass forming it constantly flowed and shifted, imitating human movements in a distorted manner.
The aberration's head was directly connected to its torso, with no visible neck, and possessed only a single hole that emitted a pulsating yellow light, like a heart.
Unlike the other irrational creatures, it seemed intelligent, malicious.
At the same time, the lizards left behind found alternate routes and finally emerged, surrounding the youths on the battlefield.
"Shelly… kill those lizards. I'll hold this thing off."
"Am on it!"
The girl shouted angrily, charging toward the amphibians rushing in a pack to devour her.
At the same time, Giovanni and the Golem locked eyes for a brief second… before everything exploded into chaos.
There was no time to conserve energy. If they lingered any longer, both of them would die.
Because of that, Giovanni made his decision at that moment.
He would use everything he had.
The ground ruptured, transforming into two violent waves of earth, carrying massive chunks of rock in their wake. They grew, gaining speed and power.
Until they collided with full force, making the very earth scream.