Chapter 265: Invitation

"No wonder you got captured by the Botanical Garden's creatures right from the start. What rotten luck."

"Rotten luck? No, no, no — plenty lucky. Being dragged into the Plague Grounds that day was the greatest stroke of luck in my whole life."

Rod glanced at this canine-girl.

A faint smile hid a trace of fanaticism.

"You're really sick in the head, Sharon."

The effects of 【Greater Invisibility】 were still ongoing.

The two of them followed the five students of Bahadur sneaking along ahead.

They watched them use a spell to burn through a section of the thorny vines serving as a fence, then duck down and slip into a small courtyard planted full of disgusting Blood Marrow Trees.

At the same time.

【Gift of the Trees】 sent a prompt:

【A Blood Marrow Tree is sending you a mating invitation. Accept?】

Sick.

No.

As Rod drew closer to the Botanical Garden, he clearly felt the plants beginning to stir in varying degrees.

One slightly older Blood Marrow Tree even split open a vertical maw full of sharp teeth on its trunk, scaring the three girls in the student group ahead deathly pale.

Fortunately.

The Botanical Garden's creatures were busy with the fighting on the front lines, so a few people sneaking in hadn't been noticed for the moment.

Clearly, they had also cast 【Greater Invisibility】 on themselves, but the effect didn't look as good as Sharon's 【Veil of Concealment】.

In fact, 【Greater Invisibility】 wasn't a particularly hard spell to learn, and for mages it wasn't that hard to deal with — a single detection spell could reveal it.

It was just that it was so simple and easy to learn that it caused a great deal of chaos among ordinary people.

At the time, it caused a certain spell-misuse mess.

In serious cases, it could even cause magical disasters.

So nations including Etherlon all controlled, to a certain extent, the spread of simple, easy-to-learn invisibility spells.

But 【Veil of Concealment】 was different.

Rod was no longer a spell novice.

This was an eighth-tier spell — not something you picked up just anywhere.

"Honestly, Sharon, your spellcraft before was decent enough, but not to the point of being this comfortable with it after such a short time. Did you—"

Have some kind of encounter?

Rod didn't ask it aloud. He suddenly realized that although encounters weren't common in this world, this kind of sudden surge in strength looked more like sacrificing something to an unknown creature.

"You mean a sacrifice?"

Sharon said it for him.

The canine-girl looked like she was on a picnic, pulling a small fan from her spell pouch and gently fanning herself.

Suddenly she felt her shoes were in the way, but she didn't want to touch the blood and bones on the ground.

So she had Rod hold her and pulled off a tricky shoe-change without touching the ground.

"It's not as sinister as you think… no harm telling you. You mentioned before what the plague mage Amel did to me — yes, you guessed right. That guy suddenly appeared and tried to put a memory core in my brain."

A memory core?

Rod's expression shifted slightly.

Over a month ago, they had gone to wipe out the rat-folk, and in the rat-folk's underground city they ran into someone who claimed to be Amel's disciple.

That person had Amel's memory core in his brain. Rod made a snap decision and killed him on the spot to avoid facing Amel again.

"So, now?"

Sharon saw him on high alert and burst out laughing despite herself:

"What are you thinking? Of course I'm still Sharon! When Amel sensed the 【Wen Yi Ke Yin】 inside me, he ran like he'd seen a ghost — didn't even bother to retrieve the memory core's contents. I spent time deconstructing its structure and successfully obtained most of Amel's knowledge and memories."

"So his memories didn't affect you at all?"

Saying so.

The two of them kept 【Veil of Concealment】 running and followed the path the Bahadur students had burned open, officially entering the Plague Botanical Garden.

Almost at the same time, the surrounding Blood Marrow Trees extended tentacle-like vines, trying to touch Rod.

He swatted them away one by one.

Sharon, meanwhile, took out a 【Shatter Disc】, set it on the ground, then cast a spell to conceal it.

"Of course — do you feel I've changed compared to before?"

"Obviously. It's exactly because the change is so big that I'm asking you."

Sharon rolled her eyes, not intending to answer that question.

Watching the Blood Marrow Trees desperately trying to get close to Rod.

She turned and said: "Sure enough, the Botanical Garden's affinity for you is high. I just don't get it — why would creatures from across the universe be so affectionate toward you?"

"Maybe it's because I've spent so long with Vivian. Their tree-spirits' affinity with trees rubbed off on me."

Rod shrugged and tossed out a not-very-plausible excuse.

But the other side didn't drop the topic.

"Impossible. Even if a tree-spirit came here in person, they'd still get attacked by these things… Do you have some treasure or special constitution? Otherwise why do I keep wanting to lick you?"

"The dog genes in your bloodline must be acting up."

Rod laughed.

Then he pointed ahead.

"Look, they've stopped."

Through the thick spore-poison fog of the garden, one could see the Bahadur student group had stopped by a pond.

The pond was filled with yellow-green sewage water, and at its edge grew a few withered, mutated Blood Marrow Trees, their bases sprouting fleshy tumors like octopus tentacles, swaying lazily toward the sky.

Now look at the center of the pond.

There was a botanical garden gardener, dozing off while sitting in the pond water.

The gardener was nearly three meters tall, with massive tumors crazily covering its torso, piled up like lumps of fat, drooping down absurdly.

Just from its appearance, one could tell it was not to be trifled with.

Sharon had applied the 【See Through Invisibility】 buff to both of them, allowing them to see the five students ahead carefully approaching the pond.

It looked like they were trying to take the pond water inside.

"Watch me."

Sharon raised her right hand, and waves of oppressive pressure surged on her palm.

Rod saw clearly at this moment.

What the dog-girl used was not Spiritual Power or Magic Power, but Aether.

As for the difference between Aether and Magic Power converted from Spiritual Power, Rod really didn't know — the elven teacher's course hadn't yet covered energies from other planes.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

"Of course, to draw the attention of that fat gardener in the pond, so the botanical garden's focus is on those five little things."

She picked up another 【Shatter Disc】, squatted on the ground, and repeated the operation.

The girl's pants were clearly a bit too small; from Rod's angle, he could see a plump, round peach butt.

Didn't expect Sharon's upper half to be quite slim, but her backside was rather plump.

"Destroying the botanical garden requires setting up some rituals, and Amel's 【Shatter Disc】 spell is very convenient. But before that, I need someone to draw attention so I have time to set things up."

"Hmm? Running into these five academy students was an accident. If we hadn't run into them, how were you planning to feed it? Sharon, you didn't call me here just for this, did you?"

She stuck out her tongue cutely.

Silently confirming the guess.

Rod raised an eyebrow.

Alright, alright, you want to toy with me, huh.

Just you wait.

But now wasn't the time for pettiness — the bigger picture came first.

"Don't use that spell of yours. The two on the other side are Rank 7, they might sense it."

"Then what do we do?"

Rod reached out and pressed his hand on a Blood Marrow Tree beside him.

It was cool, but the temperature rose rapidly, then it trembled slightly.

"."

Why does this tree act like Vivian when she's aroused — high temperature and trembling?

He shook his head and stopped overthinking.

Using 【Tree's Blessing】, he conveyed a message:

"Ask the brothers by the pond to help wave their tentacles a bit and sweep those five things down."

(End of chapter)