Chapter 188 The Adventure in the Gray Mist
However, Ji Ma’s own power was not great. Although she reacted in time, she was still caught by the hard branches in midair and was pulled down.
Ji Ma looked calm: “What a hassle.”
As soon as her voice fell, the “dead man’s hand” tree that was holding her calf transformed into a poorly made puppet.
Ji Ma appeared nearly thirty meters high, stretching her wings and hovering in the heavy air, taking a few breaths.
The “dead man’s hand” tree crushed the small puppet tightly in its palm. There were many dead trees nearby, evil forces corrupting the land; they looked strange and deformed, resembling hands, tentacles, and so on.
It seemed that this dream journey wouldn’t be easy.
Ji Ma glanced at her personal system; there was only thirty percent of her remaining magic power, as the puppet replica consumed too much.
Next, to continue gathering intelligence, she could only flap her wings vigorously in the gray mist, laboriously counting the dream balloons—something that was nearly impossible to accomplish.
Ji Ma had a new plan.
Just find a random dream balloon, distort the dream, interrogate memories, and obtain the location of the beastmen who were most likely to know relevant information. Then she could enter reality, become invisible, sneak into the target location, and enter the dream…
The more Ji Ma thought about it, the more it resembled a plot from a cheap romance story? An overconfident sexy girl sneaking into a group of strong beastmen.
Currently, she wasn’t in good shape. If she really got caught, the beastmen wouldn’t be polite—after all, from the beastmen’s aesthetic perspective, Ji Ma was quite attractive to them.
“The two armies will probably clash in two or three days, so time is precious before then.”
All she wanted was to kill all the beastmen quickly so that the Demon King’s special materials could be “neutralized.”
If the two sides had a standoff for three or four years, and the demon side got wind of it and intervened to seize the Demon King’s special materials, who knew how much trouble that would lead to?
It was hard to say if it was influenced by the memories of Demon King Ji Ma—he was previously a famous commander, known for directing a mobile force made up of demon knights.
Ji Ma tended to prefer swift resolution; she planned to take a moderate risk.
Having finished her thoughts, Ji Ma flapped her wings and flew towards the beastmen army concealed in the gray mist.
The gray mist was heavy, as if some annoying guy had filled her wings with lead balls. Each time she lifted her wings required all her strength, and her magic power consumption increased by three to four times; she could feel her magic power constantly draining.
“Twenty-five percent?”
This number changed to twenty-four percent after a second.
The beastmen loved to camp in the forest; the forest naturally concealed their tracks.
Below were patches of hazy trees stretching into the distance, and the blurry dream balloons glittered amid the trees. The dream balloons, like clownfish hiding in toxic anemones, required getting past the anemones to catch the fish.
“What a hassle.”
Ji Ma planned to give it a try. She focused on a cluster of dream balloons that appeared indistinct due to the gray mist. Like an eagle, she folded her wings, gripped her axe-spear in both hands, and dove down, passing through the layer of branches.
The branches sensed that there was “fish” coming and immediately began to move, reaching and whipping towards Ji Ma.
But Ji Ma was faster, colliding with a dream balloon. However, the familiar sensation of integration did not emerge; the gray mist wrapped the dream balloons in a barrier.
This little delay led to a branch as thick as her arm sweeping fiercely towards Ji Ma.
Ji Ma didn’t hesitate at all. Grasping the axe-spear, she twisted her waist and struck backward, the sharp blade easily severing the branch, which then veered past her and fell to the ground.
The “branch axe-spear” emitted a sense of disappointment because, this time, it hadn’t tasted blood.
More branches surged toward Ji Ma, whipping at her, and she tore through the resilient membrane of the dream balloon, slipping inside. This time, it also cost her quite a bit of magic power.
She fell into a grayish dream, indicating that the dream’s owner wasn’t dreaming.
Ji Ma stole a glance at the system text: “Remaining magic power: twenty percent, no, nineteen.”
She snapped her fingers, trying to distort the dream of this beastman. Her strength, however, felt like trying to crush a stone with bare hands. Distorting dreams in the past was no harder than molding clay.
Now, Ji Ma had to use more magic power to shape this dream.
“Really.”
Ji Ma tensed her muscles and applied more effort.
As she recalled the dream, the surrounding scene changed.
Before her was a grotesque mixture of green and brown; the trees had mutated due to corrosion, sprouting sharp thorns, tree holes resembling skulls, and branches either bore alarming green thorny leaves or were bare and covered in thorns.
This forest seemed as if it had erupted with a mudslide, a continuous stream of beastmen flowing out, forming a brownish-yellow torrent.
Ji Ma was fortunate to spot a large horned beast; it was tall enough to provide a view of the scale and composition of the beast herd.
Most of the herd consisted of inferior horned beasts, dressed in clothing made from the old farmer Barto. Among the inferior horned beasts, the tall minotaurs stood like stones in the flowing tide.
“Boom~~.”
The ground suddenly trembled.
Ji Ma quickly looked around.
Could this dream be a trap?
After a moment, she realized that it was merely the dream itself shaking.
Ji Ma turned around and saw the source of the tremor. Even with her extensive combat experience, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of panic.
Like walking arrow towers, four one-eyed giants, each around ten meters tall, were slowly stepping out of the forest, shaking the branches around them with every step.
The tree canopy only reached their thick-furred chests, and they wore rough armor made from crushed knight’s armor, with a clock from a lake goddess’s church hanging around their necks.
Ji Ma flew up to the one-eyed giant, gesturing to compare sizes.
The one-eyed giant ignored her. Their massive eye was nearly the height of Ji Ma herself, with sturdy bull-like horns flanking their heads, and powerful arms connected to their broad shoulders; their muscles could hardly be described as robust, as standing atop them felt like navigating a rugged mountain path.
Ji Ma took a deep breath and regained her composure.
Fortunately, there were only four one-eyed giants. As the strongest beasts among the beastmen, they should be the trump card of the beastmen army.
Ji Ma recalled the memory of Demon King Ji Ma, searching for information about one-eyed giants.
These intimidating giants could hurl boulders as large as a house over four hundred meters away, and they were often quite accurate. Many believed that their giant eyes effectively locked onto enemies destined to become pulp.
The terrifying part was that they did not need to carry massive stones, as they had inherent powers that allowed them to transform the soil beneath their feet into a large boulder. This granted them unparalleled mobility on the battlefield.
No commander wished to encounter such a mobile artillery piece on the battlefield; they were extremely hard to deal with. Unlike fixed catapults, one-eyed giants would dodge.
To eliminate them would require an army of fearless warriors, risking giant stones falling from above. Those fortunate enough to survive and reach the one-eyed giants would often find them much taller and stronger than they imagined.
When the one-eyed giants finished throwing their boulders and rushed toward the front lines with the last massive stone on their shoulders, no infantry line could withstand it.
Thus, in the Kingdom of Barto, knights regarded solo kills of one-eyed giants as nearly equal to slaying dragons—a high honor worth celebrating for generations.
In those widely told knight legends, nearly every story involves the death of a one-eyed giant.
Ji Ma remembered that Duke Kason was also the supreme leader of this knight alliance and had an honorary nickname of “Giant Slayer.”
“Very important intelligence… but…” Ji Ma didn’t see the Mother of All Beasts; perhaps she was a logistics type, focusing on giving birth in the rear, “But there seem to be too many inferior horned beasts or too few one-eyed giants?”
Four one-eyed giants were enough to account for this rare beastman calamity, but Demon King Ji Ma’s experience told her that the number of one-eyed giants seemed a bit low compared to the total strength of this army.
“Continue probing?” Ji Ma asked herself.
The beast stream below continued unabated; she couldn’t discern if it was reality or a mistake in her memory.
Many beastmen had no clear concept of the army’s size, and memories weren’t particularly reliable either.
Thus, often multiple dreams needed to be entered for cross-validation to obtain reliable information.
The key intelligence she had gathered this time was too limited; she had no idea about their numbers and did not know where the source of the gray mist was, only obtaining uncertain intelligence regarding the number of one-eyed giants.
Ji Ma glanced at the system text: “Magic power at ten percent.”
Still within an acceptable range.
Ji Ma took out a bottle of deep blue potion and drank it all at once. As soon as she finished, she felt a surge of power rush to her mind, a slight dizziness swirling around her brain.
This was a magic potion for emergency use, capable of temporarily squeezing potential to increase magic power, and it couldn’t be overused.
Remaining magic power at seventeen percent.
Ji Ma flapped her wings with force and soared into the sky, tearing through the tough membrane and entering the gray-white dream.
As soon as she appeared, two large trees nearby swung their branches and whipped at her. Their reaction was much quicker than when she first arrived, as if they were specifically lying in wait for her.
In the midst of the chaotic battle, Ji Ma was struck on the backside by a branch as thin as a pinky.
She was furious: “Do you think my combat ability is only five?”
Without hesitation, she zigzagged left and right, gliding through the air to the back of the tree, and swung her axe at the roots. The branch axe-spear, thirsty for blood, sucked up the tree sap.
The once ferocious tree began to move more slowly.
“What an opportunity.”
Ji Ma stole a glance at the dream balloon right in front of her, pushed off with her feet against the branches, and flew into the air, but it was away from the dream balloon.
She reached toward George’s dream seed in the distance; a force pulled her away at high speed from the murderous trees and the gray mist.
“Ah, what a hassle,” Ji Ma murmured as she looked at the receding gray mist.
Originally, according to plan, seventeen percent of magic power should have been enough. But since she discovered that these once dull trees could ambush her, the magic power expenditure exceeded her plans, so Ji Ma chose to retreat directly.
In just a few breaths, George’s pale dream came close; from the outside, it was clear this guy was once again having a dream about finding his mother.
Ji Ma hesitated on the outside. Thinking about the vital military information, she knew that once she reported it to George, he would surely ask her to report directly to Duke Kason through the dream.
But her head felt a bit dizzy, and after two skirmishes, she just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep comfortably, knowing she could always go back in the morning.
She rolled her golden eyes, unsheathed the whip, and gave herself a few lashes, then entered George’s dream, exposing a fatigued appearance: “George, it’s bad, the enemy is on guard against dreams, I’ve had two fights left, not much magic power left.”
“Ah, it’s okay, I can still hold on to report the news.”
“Alright, I’ll take a break then. Hmm, when replenishing magic power, can you take care of me; I’m so exhausted.”
Ji Ma lay down directly, “Alright, it’s settled.”
