Chapter 2494: The Dangerous Garden
“Lorna, don’t let them escape. We haven’t asked about their origins yet,” I transmitted to Lorna.
“Yes, Parul Sister, they won’t get away,” Lorna floated up, preparing to pursue the fleeing individuals.
“One more thing, what you just used, that was necromancy, wasn’t it? Learned from The Nine Books of Nagash. But I remember I told you not to randomly learn knowledge from that book.” I said again.
“Ah! That, yes, I…” Lorna became flustered, stammering and speaking incoherently, seemingly still unsure how to explain herself to me.
“I won’t pursue it for now. Once we catch these people causing trouble in the manor, you can explain it to me properly afterward,” I said.
“Yes.” Lorna finally breathed a sigh of relief, floating towards the courtyard while thinking about how to explain the matter to Parul Sister. She had impulsively revealed her hole card just now.
At this time, in the courtyard, the group of people were running around in a panic, completely lacking any order in their retreat. However, separating and running like this undoubtedly increased their chances of escape. Even if the enemy pursued, they wouldn’t be wiped out all at once.
The Half-blood Elf Girl fled frantically through the grass. The humiliation of being scared to wet herself made her feel incredibly wronged, but she didn’t dare to be distracked to wipe her thighs. The thought of the terrifying ghost possibly chasing them filled her with apprehension.
Fortunately, her Half-blood Elf heritage granted her an agile and nimble physique. Even though her legs felt weak from fear, she was still the fastest runner, and she was intimately familiar with the courtyard’s layout. She was confident that she was the fastest runner among all her companions, without exception. Although she felt sorry for them, as long as she escaped faster than her other companions, she wouldn’t be caught even if the enemy was chasing her from behind.
But after the Half-blood Elf Girl leaped over a hedge, she suddenly became confused. This hedge felt like she had already jumped over it once. Given her speed, it should only take one or two minutes to escape the courtyard, but it had long since passed that time. She looked up at the distant fence, which was the boundary of the manor. It still looked quite far away, and it seemed she hadn’t gotten any closer to the edge of the manor since a while ago.
“This is impossible! There’s definitely something wrong!” The Half-blood Elf Girl jumped over several more hedges and thorny bushes, then confirmed that her distance to the boundary had not shortened at all. She knew something was amiss.
The Half-blood Elf Girl directly jumped onto a tree to survey the boundary. It was less than a kilometer away. Although the garden in between was overgrown with weeds and densely packed with thorns due to years of neglect, a road was still clearly visible. She was also very familiar with this road. The Half-blood Elf Girl stared intently at the boundary, and then her figure suddenly disappeared. The next moment, she lightly stepped on top of a hedge, leaped up, and rushed further away.
She stared at the boundary fence to prevent her sense of distance from being distorted. She only ran on the grass without touching the ground to avoid being misled by the overgrown grass and shrubbery, which had grown into a veritable maze. She was using an Assassin’s footwork, a high-speed movement technique learned from the Church. Her speed was so fast it was almost like Teleportation, and it was silent and could automatically avoid traps and mechanisms. It was a subordinate skill to the Slaughtering Steps.
However, after rushing out a dozen steps, she suddenly reappeared atop a patch of hedge again. The Half-blood Elf Girl’s face turned ashen. She clearly remembered stepping on this hedge just moments ago. Looking at the boundary fence in the distance, there was still no sign of her getting any closer. She looked back towards the Main House, which was surprisingly only about a hundred meters away. This meant all her attempts to escape were in vain; her relative position had not changed at all.
At this moment, one of her girl companions ran past below her in a panic. She shouted loudly, “Stop! You can’t escape running like this!”
But her companion was clearly too scared to heed her calls and continued to run forward. The Half-blood Elf Girl lost her patience and swung her long whip. The long whip wrapped around the girl’s waist, but she, as if entangled by an enemy, frantically drew her Dagger and hacked wildly at the long whip, shouting, “Don’t! Help me!”
The Half-blood Elf Girl’s long whip was made from Monster skin, and a normal dagger couldn’t cut it. Instead, it was pulled towards her. The Half-blood Elf Girl raised her whip and struck her struggling companion fiercely, “Stop screaming and look closely, it’s me!”
“Ah!” The girl cried out in pain. This whip snap seemed to awaken her. She looked at the Half-blood Elf Girl and urgently shouted, “Little Sun! Hurry and run! This garden has come alive, it’s full of traps! Sharon was just swallowed by thorns!”
“Huh? We clearly entered when… No! This is a trap!” The Half-blood Elf Girl immediately understood. They had fallen into a trap. Although she couldn’t feel any Magic Power in the garden, her keen senses still allowed her to perceive the plants slowly moving. Vines crawled up the tree trunks like snakes, preparing to attack them!
“Damn it!” The Half-blood Elf Girl dragged her companion and disappeared instantly. The next moment, several vines pierced the tree trunk where she had just stood. A moment later, and she would have been bound to the tree by the vines.
“Wait! Where are you taking me? This isn’t the direction to escape!” The girl, tied and pulled by the Half-blood Elf Girl’s long whip, cried out as she saw herself getting further and further from the fence.
“Shut up! Going that way is useless. This garden is full of Ghostly Walls; no matter how we go, we can’t get out. Let’s go gather our companions first!” the Half-blood Elf Girl said.
Finding her companions wasn’t difficult. The courtyard itself wasn’t that large, and moreover, the commotion they made while fleeing in panic was too great. Some were still fighting against the plants that had inexplicably come alive.
In the end, the Half-blood Elf Girl found all the companions she could still see. Several companions were woken up by her whip, while some were surrounded by plants and needed her rescue. Fortunately, she had the Blood Elf bloodline, which made her naturally affinity with fire elements, and she had learned some fire magic. This was also why she used a branding iron that could automatically turn red as her Weapon. And plants feared fire. By igniting a little flame, she could enough to drive back some vines and branches, rescuing her companions from the plants’ encirclement.
However, after gathering, they counted their numbers and found there were only eight of them left. The rest had disappeared without a trace at some point.
“Um, Kev was escaping with me. She was hugged by a tree and then swallowed by it.”
“Lucian fell into a suddenly appearing pit. I couldn’t pull her out.”
“Fletia was dragged into the grass by vines just now. By the time I chased in, she was gone.”
