Chapter 431: Center

After walking through the Soul-Onyx-Jungle for days, everything looked the same to Shane.

The only sign that allowed him to think that he had finally reached the right area was the gigantic stone that protruded out of the ground.

It almost seemed like the stone was releasing an eerie aura, but Shane was not afraid of it.

He simply looked at the stone for a moment before he told Umbra, Cosmo, and Viridy to enter his soul world once again.

They had been next to him for the last few days, but Shane wanted to climb up the stone in order to make himself familiar with the surroundings.

Using his high physical strength, and a few tricks such as his spatial affinity, he climbed the stone in no time.

Shane was not sure how high he was, but if he were to estimate it, the height of the gigantic stones should be around 100 meters.

This may be astonishing under normal circumstances, but Shane didn't pay any attention to it.

Looking around, he tried to figure out clues that would help him to find the hidden valley as quickly as possible.

However, this was easier said than done!

Unfortunately, the hidden valley was as the name already indicated- hidden.

This was obvious and something Shane had expected, so he compared the map he had received from the system with what he could perceive at the altitude of 100 meters.

He could oversee every single tree in his surroundings, except one enormous tree that was at least double the height of the stone he was standing on.

Other than that, there was a large elevation with a waterfall to his right and a place that was devoid of trees far ahead to his left.

'The tree free zone should have formed due to the merging of a few dimensions. Maybe the same applied to the large tree or the high elevation too? The tree looks way too unique and different from the trees one can normally see inside the Soul-Onyx-Jungle.'

While the tree was already unique, Shane was unsure about the elevation. It was not uncommon to find an elevation around the Soul-Onyx-Jungle dimension.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel that the elevation was out of place as if it didn't belong there.

Owing to his perception and his mind that seemed to play tricks on him, Shane simply decided to take the area he had entered as the intersection of a total of four Primordial dimensions that had merged.

Even if it was wrong, there was no harm in going ahead with the theory because it was simply not important for his current thoughts.

Once he knew the truth he could correct himself, but Shane felt as if this wouldn't happen.

Marking several things on the map he had received, he made up his mind.

Thus, he connected the four places that attracted his attention on the map.

Forming a square of sorts that connected the places, Shane observed it intently. He couldn't do a lot right off the bat, but it was a good reference point to start looking for the hidden valley.

It was likely for the place he was looking for to be nearby one of the four unique places he had seen, or even in the center of it.

However, the latter would be too obvious, and Shane didn't expect the first task of his mission to be that easy!

That would be simply illogical.

Furthermore, Shane assumed that finding the valley would become the most difficult, to begin with.

After he had taken a good look and imprinted the special features of the surroundings into his mind, Shane climbed down the gigantic stone.

While doing so, he called Vidirdy outside the soul world.

It held tightly onto his shoulders while wondering what Shane wanted from it right now.

"Please use your affinities and natural senses to perceive your surroundings. Tell or transmit me once you find something odd!"

There was a reason Viridiy was called a forest spirit, and the prefix lesser didn't matter for this.

Viridy was the perfect soulbond to perceive his surroundings because it was difficult to carefully scan through the entire jungle while being on the ground.

At the same time, the thick layers of tall trees and smaller plants right below them made it extremely difficult to make sense of the surroundings from an elevated perspective.

The thickets, bushes, branches, and trees of all sizes would normally make it difficult to walk through the jungle, but Shane made use of the wood and nature affinity to open a path for him to walk through.

This allowed him to practice his affinities, getting to know them, while finding a way through the darkness.

Even though it was currently night time and dark within the Soul-Onyx-Jungle dimension, Shane was completely unbothered.

He was wearing the Mask of the Cursed Susurro after all!

It might have lost the skills related to his taming ability but it still could perform its basic function and that was everything he needed right now.

As such, he could still see through the darkness, while slowly walking through the jungle.

Owing to his mana fluctuations which Shane didn't conceal, not a single beast had dared to attack him, and most would flee the moment they sensed his presence.

This was their instinctive behavior and extremely relieving to note because he had no intention to waste his time by fighting weak beasts that disrupted his train of thoughts.

Nevertheless, Shane didn't dare to be too arrogant and he was alert, never being fully focused on his surroundings without one of his soulbonds replacing him in monitoring the vicinity.

Several hours passed and Viridy had transmitted its emotions, thoughts, and certain visualizations to Shane, every single time it sensed something odd.

The lesser forest spirit's sense of something 'odd' was weird, but Shane accepted every piece of information without any complaints.

It could be that Viridy perceived something that was truly odd from things he instinctively frowned upon.

Thus, every piece of information was digested and sorted in his mind.

This included the information about the dung of Overlord beasts, indicating that several Overlord beasts inhabited the area he had entered.

What astonished Shane was that they didn't attack him despite him entering their territory.

Despite being weaker, territorial beasts would protect their territory and attack even if they knew that they were relatively weaker.

However, that was not always the case, and the Overlord beasts might be very intelligent or even subordinates of stronger beasts.

With this thought, Shane decided to consider the worst-case scenario to be highly probable in order to be fully prepared to encounter another King whose strength might as well be at par with the three headed blazing lion's.

Choosing the worst-case scenario was the best Shane could do in order to be prepared as that wouldn't let him lower his guards and keep him on his toes

This mindset was simple, yet it caused Shane to overthink many simple decisions he had to make on his missions.

While sorting the information provided by Viridiy, Shane continued to walk slowly towards the center of the square he had drawn earlier.

In the end, this was the spot he wanted to look at first because it was the most likely place for something to be hidden, which made it unlikely for something to be here.

Yet, at the same time, by using reverse psychology, he realized that there might as well be something interesting for Shane, exactly because the place was too obvious to hide something!

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