Chapter: 660

A little lizard head popped out of the sand with a red fruit on its mouth - right near Jay's foot.

“Fuck!” he flinched, only missing it slightly.

He quickly pulled his foot up right before the lizard started waving its head around, trying to attach the fruit to his body.

One red fruit would not do too much to slow him down, but ten? One hundred? If they were stuck to his body, he would progressively get slower, allowing more fruit to stick to him, and soon enough it would be a death sentence. A painfully slow one.

Remembering the lizards eating their own kind to consume the fruit, Jay's blood started pumping and his adrenaline started coursing through his veins; his heart beat accelerating and seeming to make time slow as his thoughts became clearer, almost calm, as his current objectives to survive were simple.

Dodge the red fruit, don't slow down.

All his other thoughts were pushed to the back of his mind.

Jay checked the bottom the the mushroom tendrils, pushing them aside like curtains before dashing through. Thankfully the skeletons carved a straight path through the mushroom field.

The beast had finally killed the skeletons and was already running towards where Jay entered the desert.


The vine beast reached the edge of the desert as it followed its lunch.

Jay made it to the middle of the desert right as the beast entered. He had to do something to slow the beast down, but the damn lizards were almost right underneath him, each having a fruit in their mouths ready to stick to Jay’s flesh.

He had to either keep moving or die.

A few of the underground lizards haphazardly poked their heads up right below a mushroom fruit, and became victims themselves, releasing little cooing noises as they were slowly pulled into the air, becoming food for the mushrooms, which disappeared shortly after.

When a mushroom disappeared it made some extra space and even allowed the beast to run faster.

The mushrooms at the centre of the desert were larger, taller, and one was right in the middle of Jay’s path, so the skeletons mostly trimmed every single one underneath.

Jay quickly took shelter under it, and thinking fast, he summoned a bone pile around the trunk of the mushroom and stood on top of it, using the trunk for his own support.

With the bones below him, the lizards wouldn’t be able to reach him now.

Next, he tossed the spears in the sand and summoned the skeletons again.

He cast the summoning spell four times before the first skeleton was even summoned, and a large volume of the glowing necrotic mana surrounded a portion of the bone pile, which began to assemble four skeletons at the same time as many bones floated around and were distriubted to where they were needed.

Looking back, the vine bear was already making its way through the mushrooms, navigating them with deadly precision.

Contrary to Jay’s expectations, the beast easily dodge through the mushrooms as its body was now, somehow, more long and slender.

The vines which had been coiled around its body were now piled up on its back and even seemed to squeeze its ribs, making its body even more slender, allowing it to weave between the dangerous mushrooms as nimbly as Jay did.

Seeing more of its body now, Jay was surprised at how slender it truly was; its bones were protruding from its flesh, and its flesh was loosely clinging to its bones.

Essentially, it looked like it was starving.