Off to his right, Peace saw a monstrous slithering beast of titanic proportions. It was the Rank 4 Titanboa.
Peace banked to his right and bounded toward his hopeful serpentine hero.
'Even these guys wouldn't rush into a battle with this thing…'
Peace couldn't tell too much about his pursuers other than the fact that they were strong and equipped to deal with the Corrupted Lands. But, no matter how prepared one was, they didn't rashly face a Rank 4 monster…
'Right?'
Let alone the beast was corrupted and, even if reasonless, was physically stronger than a regular Titanboa. Plus, the poison mist it spewed when imbued with corruption was a one-shot K.O. unless a potion was quickly administered.
Peace got closer and closer to the monster while his pursuers got closer and closer to him.
'The hell!'
Peace felt a tug on his leg, then looked down to see a thin wire.
A man yelled:
"Gotcha!"
The wire grew taut, trapping Peace in place. Then, a force pulled on the wire and viciously ripped Peace from the comfort of the trees.
As Peace fell, he opened his mouth and let out a series of high-pitched howls before he slammed into the ground.
[You're health has dropped below 50%]
Peace spun around and spotted a man covered in leather armor, his face and body obscured by a black bodysuit.
The man named Deacon screeched from somewhere in the distance.
"Saxon, retreat!"
"Damnit!"
The man before Peace mystically called back the wire and jumped into the trees, narrowly avoiding a harrowing black mist… Peace's protector, or maybe killer, had arrived.
The gigantic corrupted snake had used its ability and spewed a toxic, corrupted mist along the forest floor, which completely engulfed Peace.
[You have been poisoned]
Thankfully, Peace seemed to be immune to the corruption, but the poison was a different matter.
"We can't let it die!"
Peace didn't know the exact method, but the cohort had instantly used different wind essences and/or items to redirect the mist surrounding him long enough for him to escape the shroud while ingesting minimal particles.
Once he did, the group all stood at the edge of the smog and looked at the little gremlin. Peace, in turn, paused for a moment to look back.
Through the black haze, he saw their veiled figures, and they saw him.
It was hard for him to make out the difference between them due to his color blindness, but he could at least take in their armor and body's general shape. He made a mental note, then turned to run as the titanic snake crashed into the tank of the group.
Peace ran, his bones creaking with each step, the sounds of the fight behind him growing louder, louder, then… it vanished. He'd escaped the reach of the Australite's passive.
Peace never knew how much he took regular hearing for granted until now…
'I hated that.'
While he had escaped his current pursuers, there was no time for a respite. While the poison wouldn't kill him, its effect was yet to wear off, making him sluggish and sapping his energy.
[You're health has dropped below 25%]
Usually, the Corrupted Lands were teeming with all sorts of high-ranked beasts; the fact that it wasn't was enough to say there wasn't just one group around. It was fair to assume there were currently more people hunting for him than corrupted beasts in his general vicinity.
While Peace cursed his luck, he was also astonished that he hadn't run into any other groups.
As Peace ran, he saw the occasional dead monster, but he knew stopping now would lead to his original pursuers catching up.
Wanting to leave as few tracks as possible, Peace eventually scaled a tree and returned to tree hopping. However, he could tell his stamina was reaching its limit. He wasn't a human, and it didn't seem he was capable of sweating — it was already surprising how far he'd run without stopping while also poisoned.
Feeling his body aching and muscles screaming for a break, Peace climbed higher up a large tree into the thick of it, covering himself with the myriad of black leaves.
[You're health has dropped below 15%]
[You're body has resisted the poisoned]
When he finally found a good perch and stopped, he could truly feel the racing of his heart. Well, hearts. It seemed he had more than one.
A couple of minutes later, he heard the sound of a battle below him but didn't dare to check it out… Then about thirty minutes had passed when he heard sounds start coming from above him…
The group from before was definitely passing below. The Australite was quite a rare essence.
Peace held his breath and didn't dare make a single movement.
All of a sudden…
A war erupted in the sky.
Screams split the air. Shouts overlapped, frantic and commanding. The metallic clash of weapons rang out, followed by the wet snap of something breaking.
Then came a roar. Low at first, but it quickly turned into a trembling growl that rose and rose until it drowned everything else.
Peace couldn't make out much, but he heard the thunderous sound of trees crashing to the forest floor alongside a sweltering heat that rose and threatened to melt his leathery skin and burn his felt alongside the tree he was hidden on.
To the terrified Peace, it felt as if a god were shaking the heavens.
The chaos raged for what felt like hours, but he knew it couldn't have been more than a few minutes.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it all stopped.
It wasn't a gradual decline… the noise just vanished, and his hearing returned to normal.
The strong wind crashed against the brittle leaves, snapping them one by one. Twigs occasionally fell too, colliding with the soft ground. A couple of liquid drops of corruption fell now and then.
Peace didn't dare to investigate until nearly an hour had passed, and his stomach was starting to groan in pain.
When the stomach pains became unbearable, Peace slowly descended the tree. Once he broke the plane, he saw the devastating aftermath of the sounds he had heard before.
Trees had toppled here and there; deep scars marred the ones left standing. The one he'd been hiding on had a deep gash that bit to its core.
Then, there was the blood…
Blood, or what Peace could only assume it to be, was splattered everywhere as if it were a decoration.
The dead bodies also didn't do much to make the sight any more pleasant… Six humanoid bodies littered the ground, all now tainted by corruption.
It didn't seem they consumed a corrupted essence, so they hadn't entirely transformed, but they did touch the corruption either in life or death, which altered them into ghastly abominations…
But despite their disfiguration, he could recognize the armor of one of the corpses. He believed it to be the Mel girl. The other five corpses were probably from the first group he'd heard fighting after he took refuge in the tree.
Peace landed on the ground and lurched over the fallen bodies, stepping on different exposed organs and detached ligaments. He approached the biggest anomaly of the scene… The corpse of a Rank 3 beast, Sun Drinker.
'Those madmen…'
No wonder six people had died… they'd fought a Rank 3 beast.
There was still something entirely strange about the scene…
'An essence?!'
The Sun Drinker had dropped an essence that hadn't been picked up by those who killed it.
Speaking of that, there was no logical reason to leave perfectly good equipment lying around. Most of the armor was busted, but the weapons were in good condition, yet they'd been left behind.
Peace even spotted the Mythic item: Shadow Dancer.
Peace cursed not being able to wield items in his body, especially so when a weapon of the second-highest tier was in front of him, lying there for the taking.
'But, a Mythic item…'
It was no understatement to say the people who died here were the best of the best… of the countless characters he and his sister made over the last five years; they'd only gotten their hands on Mythic items in less than twenty of their thousands of playthroughs.
Peace's view drifted back to the corrupted essence floating above the corpse of the Sun Drinker.
Why did it look… tasty?
Peace climbed on the overgrown wyrm's corpse and trudged to the essence.