Chapter 163 - Altar, Beelzebub’s Crawlers.

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The link is also in the synopsis.

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Meeting the Forbidden Forest wolves was an unexpected yet inviting experience. He didn't think that he would chance upon an extremely rare species, and now that Quinn knew about their existence, he had made a note about observing them — he wasn't a big fan of magizoology and "alive" creatures, but with a species so rare, Quinn wasn't going to let his likes and dislikes color his judgment.

"The wolves pointed towards East," he recalled and used a point me charm (east-direction version) to set himself a direction to trek in.

Quinn sighed as he jogged East; the scenery had returned to the continuous gray dullness with the wolves gone. The bleakness was starting to get on his nerves because of the sheer monotony. He concentrated on the ground, running, jumping, sliding over overgrow vines, exposed roots, and fallen tree trunks. Quinn's feet moved according to his will, and the rhythm and sound of his steps against fallen, dry leaves dulled the boredom.

But it seemed he was bored for nothing. He skipped over an old, fallen trunk log, and as his feet off the ground, his vision caught something.

Rustle, rustle; he looked at the ground ahead of him and the small spread of dry leaves parted, and from within, came launching out a bottle guard-sized leech with a hole full of pointy for a mouth; its gross and slimy wiggled in waves as it flew towards him.

Quinn's expression immediately turned into one of disgust and irritation. He should have known better to jinx the peace, and now he had to face these.

He took in a deep breath and exhaled a white mist straight onto the leech, freezing it inside a thin sheet of ice. The momentum of leech carried it over, and Quinn caught the ice-covered worm in his hand before mercilessly turning it into a meat patty by crushing its entire body inside the ice.

His feet finally touched the ground, and at that very moment, a gust of wind pushed every leaf up and away, revealing an infestation of big leeches lying on the ground.

'Bloody knew it!' he thought. "Blood-sucking bugbears."

As the name suggested, the leeches sucked blood, and Quinn hated them with a passion. He had been bitten by them once; it was during his surveillance over the forest trolls that one bit Quinn's arm, and within five seconds, Quinn felt like he had lost most of the blood in his arm. The leeches could suck in blood like a thirsty person in desert water. That day itself, Quinn had found that the leeches worked with teamwork.

The moment Quinn's other foot planted itself on the ground, the still leeches came to life, and at once, every one of them jumped up from the floor towards Quinn. In retaliation and defense, Quinn pulled up the same shield he had used against the acromantulas. The slugs met the protection and immediately burned up.

But the semi-circular shield wasn't enough as some leeches started within the boundary of the dome.

"F**k!" cursed Quinn as two leeches bit through his Noir-gear onto his feet.

He felt them sucking his blood, and unlike last time where he had tried to pull them just to fail and had to blast them off his body, this time he went another one. Freshly drawn blood maintained a magical connection to the owner for a brief spell of time, and right now, Quinn could feel his inside the leeches' body. He grinned cruelly, and immediately, his blood inside the leeches' bodies bubbled and burned through their flesh like a corrosive acid.

Simultaneously, both of the now-dead leeches fell down onto the ground. Quinn then pulled down his shield and then blasted every bugbeard he laid on his eyes.

"Any more?" he asked to one in particular.

Quinn looked around and looked vigilant as an infestation of blood-sucking bugbears meant there was a good source of blood for them, and any source of blood inside the Forbidden Forest had a high chance of being dangerous to him.

He silently jogged ahead, keeping a careful eye on his surroundings. He had dashed around twenty meters when he had to come to a skidding stop.

"Haha," chuckled Quinn with a genuine smile on his face, "I forget that he was supposed to be here."

In front of Quinn laid a Cereberus: a hound, a monstrous hound that took so much space that it put elephants, Argog, and even the forest trolls to shame when it came to size. It had three heads. Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in his direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs.

"Fluffy, that's the name, right."

Fluffy, the Cereberus got up on its feet that sported sharp and long claws on its paws. The six eyes remained fixed on Quinn as multiple guttural growls harmonized together.

"Hoho, you look much more intimidating awake, bruv," smiled Quinn.

Fluffy's three heads barked and pounded its front paws on the dirt. The ground shook, and the barks filled the space between the trees.

If it was someone else of this size, Quinn would have been worried, but this was someone who Quinn knew how to handle.

Quinn built up magic into his throat before he started to whistle with a fun smile on his face. If Fleur Delacour put a dragon to sleep, then Quinn could put a Cereberus weak to music down to sleep with a whistle infused with thick bewitchment sleep spell laced into the sound.

Fluffy looked confused, and all three heads shook left-to-right, flapping their six ears. Fluffy stepped one step ahead, and in response, Quinn moved one step back and to the right.

He continued to whistle for half a minute before Fluffy went down to his feet, another ten seconds before he retreated into a dog sleeping posture, and by the end of the minute, Fluffy was sleeping soundly.

"This might be the easiest thing I've done in these woods," whispered Quinn. He didn't need to continue to whistle because of the infused, bewitching sleep magic.

Quinn walked ahead and squatted near Fluffy's paw, and stared at the black claws in interest. He shot cleaning spells on one nail before touching it.

"Hmm, I wonder how tough this nail is," pondered Quinn before shrugging and raising his arm to drop a chop charged with slicing spell on it, putting a deep gash on it.

"Okay, this is tough enough," nodded Quinn before once again raising his hand, and this time when he dropped a chop, the tip of the claw was cleanly chopped off, "well, it will get tougher when I'm done with it. Some alchemy will do the trick."

Quinn bagged the hardened keratin into his pockets before moving further East but not before rubbing Fluffy's head.

"Sleep well, buddy. You'll be up in no time."

. . .

'ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ N(ov)elBin',

"The wolves messed with me, didn't they," spat Quinn, "it's been a half-hour; where the hell is the vault?! Those mutts lied to me."

He stood deep in the Forbidden Forest with his hands on his waist, looking around. He was so deep in that if Quinn couldn't recall his every step, he might not have been able to get out of the dense and spanning woods.

Quinn looked up and sighed because he couldn't see what time it was. He took out the pocket watch he used with Noir — one of his designs, a minimalist construct that didn't have any fancy functions and only a printed dial with two clock-arms covering a solid and accurate mechanism.

"It's getting late. I should —"

Quinn stared straight ahead at the ground, but he was focusing on his peripheral vision.

"Not going to lie, but I feel embarrassed," said Quinn, slowly turning to his left to see what he had caught. "How did I miss that? I've been standing here for a solid half-minute."

Quinn walked forward and stopped after ten steps. He tilted his head and stared in all directions to his front.

"A masterful work," he commented, "fascinating illusion work given the amount of light in here. Ah, now I see, it's targetting my magic and not sight."

Quinn clicked his tongue and scrunched his face. He didn't like that his magic was manipulated to influence his sense. Of the many magics he knew, Quinn considered his illusion magic to be one of the better ones. Now seeing that he was fooled wasn't an irritating feeling.

"Is this how people feel when they are humbled?" he pondered aloud while raising his hands. "Not a feeling I like, absolutely not a feeling I enjoy."

He stabbed his hand forward, and it disappeared till his elbow joint.

"Definitely an illusion," he sighed, "wait. . . what am I doing playing with it?!"

Quinn gathered his magic and proceeded to get free from the illusion. Almost instantly, the illusion fell down for Quinn, and the sight inside made him take a sharp breath.

The illusion was cast in a dome shape, and inside was another clearing.

A golden ray of light fell down from a hole in the canopy. A ray from heaven dropping down to the desolate lands, illuminating it with hope. On the ground, where the sunlight stuck, stood a square altar, bathing in the spotlight from mother itself.

Even just this made Quinn think it was a beautiful sight, but the altar in golden sunlight wasn't the only thing hidden under the illusion.

Around the raised altar, outside of the sunlight, in the darkness of the dim woods, were signs of strong and vital life. One of the most charming plants that Quinn had seen graced the land around the altar with its stunning beauty.

They didn't have the gift of light bestowed upon them from the sun above, so mother nature decided to give them their own light. White flowers bloomed on the plants, and those flowers with white petals glowed with soothing light, softly showing that not everything in the Forbidden Forest was a shade of grey.

Quinn canceled the transfiguration on his eyes as he stepped inside to see the scene like he was meant to see to it.

"Outside is white and gold," he repeated.

White was from the flowers, while the gold represented the golden light irradiating the altar.

A perfect contrast of two opposites.

"I'm moved."

Quinn carefully walked forward, avoiding stepping on the glowing plants, and made his way towards the altar. He stopped near the base of the stairs that led up to the altar to check if there was something that would discomfort him. . . but the area was clean. In the hidden clearing, there was nothing other than him, the altar, and the plants.

"Good to know."

Quinn stepped on one of the four staircases — one on each side of the square altar and started climbing. There weren't many steps in the stairs, but the height of each step was tall enough that he couldn't see the top of the altar till he had climbed halfway.

"Is that a hole?" noticed Quinn and hurried up the steps to reach the top, where he saw a hole in the floor. From its looks, the hole was part of the original design as it was perfectly round, and the tiling on the floor complimented the gaping gap smack dab in the middle.

"What's with vaults and tunnels," said Quinn squatting down, "Sin vault had one down to the antechamber, Aquatic vault going down to the front cave, and now this one." He stared inside, and with the light from above, he could see the base, and it wasn't that deep.

He stuck his hand inside and touched the walls of the tunnel going inside.

"Hmm, there are no engravings," observed Quinn, "that doesn't eliminate the presence of some magic." He sent a beat of magic through his hand into the walls, but nothing popped up on his radar.

"Good enough," saying that, Quinn snapped an end of Carpe Retractum's cord of light onto the floor, and with the other end clutched in his hand, Quinn rappelling down into the tunnel.

He wanted to start on a positive note, so — "Whoopee~!"

Squelch — The lower end of the tunnel was wet sloppy ground, and Quinn's boots dug a couple of inches into the dirt.

"Eww," groaned Quinn, "This wasn't the start I was looking for. . . ugh." He looked around and saw the entire floor was loose mud. Not a single spot of solid ground to be seen.

Quinn took a step forward, but the wet mud turned into a transfigured square of solid limestone just before his foot hit the ground, and with every step he took forward, Quinn transfigured some earth into limestone for him to walk on.

"Word smart, people, work smart," said Quinn chuckling at the end.

He lit up orbs of light for illumination, and finally, he could see inside the vault: it was a long curving corridor of which Quinn couldn't see the end. Looking above, Quinn could see roots peeking out from the top. Quinn continued to walk forward, and soon he reached the end.

"Oh, it opened up." The narrow corridor opened up to a large room — if it could be called that. The corridor's end was on a wall, but that opening was nowhere near the floor nor the ceiling of the gigantic room. The corridor end was right in the middle of the wall.

"Now, how do I get down there?" wondered Quinn aloud and peeked out. On the other end of the room, he could see a passage on the opposite wall, right beside the floor.

"Well, let's use my favorite way," he grinned and stepped a couple steps back before sprinting forward and jumping from the edge and out of the corridor. "I. Love. This!"

He joined his feet and spread his hands wide like certain hooded individuals who followed a certain secret creed that liked to jump from high spaces into carts of hay and never ever caught anyone's attention while doing it.

Of course, Quinn didn't have those skills and lacked the haystack to land in, but instead, he had magic in his corner, so when he reached the ground, he shot out Arresto Momentum to cut all his momentum and landed with utmost grace.

'',

"And. . . that's how you do it."

Not wanting to waste any more time, Quinn jogged across the room towards the passageway in the wall. And he had just reached mid-way through the room when the ground beneath his feet broke apart and from within came out a vine that wrapped around his foot.

Quinn stopped in his spot, faced his palm toward the vine creeping up his leg, and immediately the vine incinerated into ashes.

"What the hell was that? It came out —"

For the second time in the same hour, Quinn couldn't complete his sentence as the ground beneath him started to break. The same vine that had clutched his feet began to come out the breaks.

Ten. . . thirty. . . fifty. . . soon there were around a hundred breaks in the ground, and from every single one of them, dark moss green colored whips of vines with thorns all over their curvature appeared and rose above, increasing in length every second.

Quinn didn't have any words to describe his situation. He wasn't even thinking of commenting on anything. He immediately started to back up as the tips of vines turned towards him. The turning point of chaos was sudden as abruptly, hundreds of vines zapped towards him, all homing towards one target — Quinn.

Body magic coursed through his body faster than ever as he pulled all his facilities to ninety percent with endurance (the only stat he could augment) being augmented beyond his body's natural capabilities.

'Throw zig-zags in there, zig-zags, zig-zags,' repeated Quinn reminding himself not to run in a straight line. A wise decision as vines behind him stabbed places where he had been just a moment ago.

'Beelzebub's Crawlers,' he knew the identity of the vines from taking one glance at them. Beelzebub's Crawlers were like Devil's Snare, but much worse. They attempted to constrict or strangle anything in their surrounding environment, but unlike the Devil's Snare, they didn't wait for their prey to near them; instead, they actively sought out any game that came remotely near them. Over that, they had thorns that would inject venom into their prey's body before pulling them into their ground, where the bodies would decompose, turning into nutrients for the plant.

Quinn hurriedly looked up at the passageway in the middle of the wall that connected this room to the altar's entrance with a curved corridor.

Now a problem presented itself to him in the face of danger; unlike when he jumped down from there, he couldn't go up at the same speed.

Quinn raised his hands, and suddenly, planks of earth protruded out of the great wall like a staircase along a diagonal of the surface. As Quinn jumped on the first one, it turned into limestone for durability, and with that, he started to scale the wall by climbing stairs that he created for himself.

"Oh no, you don't!" he yelled at a rough dozen vines that came stabbing towards him. His magic thrummed, and a strong cutting curse lopped a considerable chunk of the vines before they could even touch him.

But it wasn't enough; he continued to dodge, cut, and climb, but by the time he was three-quarters way up, the vines had become too much for Quinn to lop off in bunches.

"Okay, I will try that," he decided and stopped on a step. Magic ran unrestricted in his body as gusts of winds started to circle around his body, rings of strong visible hurricane-like winds began manifesting and flowing around his body.

Beelzebub's Crawlers' primitive mind didn't seem to sense any danger. They sensing their prey stop in one place saw an opportunity, and all at once, the hundreds of vines jumped at Quinn.

「Viking's Axe」

Quinn opened his eyes, and with a flex of his muscles, the violent winds, which had almost formed a dome around him, were unleashed in the form of razor-sharp wind cutters on the vines. If one could describe a plant massacre, then this was it. Shreds and scraps of vines fell down onto the ground. The venom inside the vines leaked onto the earth, and the soil sizzled from the sheer corrosiveness.

With the vines seriously damaged, Quinn didn't waste a beat and continued to climb; soon, he was inside the curved corridor.

'Don't stop; you know what's about to happen,' popped in Quinn's mind, and as if his thoughts were heard, the earth behind him started to shake akin to a light earthquake.

"Come," he voiced and stopped at the end of the corridor, standing just below the altar tunnel. "I will show you who's the boss here."

The best way to combat plants was to target them with one thing that was so harmful to them that forests worldwide fell prey to it.

"I didn't use it above because of the risk, but I don't have a problem here," spat Quinn and raised his right towards the corridor.

The shaking on the ground stopped and a silence set inside the cave.

'Here they come.' Quinn could feel it.

Like a wave of water being released into a narrow place, vines over vines of Beelzebub's Crawlers rushed into the corridor towards Quinn, filling it completely.

"Flame on," grinned Quinn.

It was abrupt. Eruptions of fire sparked across the corridor; instantly, the corridor covered with vines was now filled with yellowish-red flames, with the Beelzebub's Crawlers burning within the angry fire.

Quinn squeezed his fist, and the screams of fire became stronger as flames became stronger. He was planning to turn every vine that came after him into dust. When he stopped, the earthen walls and ground were scorched into complete blackness, and if there was light inside the tunnel, he would see the black ashes of the previously vibrant vines filled with vitality.

Deciding that it was enough for today, Quinn climbed out of the tunnel and laid on the altar beside the hole with his arm covering his eyes.

He let out a long groan and whined before he cried out,

"I don't want to go through that every time I go inside!"

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Quinn West - MC - "Oh, screw this, I'm out."

Fluffy - Cerberus - Woke up thinking which idiot cut his nails and what level of stupidity was it to just cut one.

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The link is in the synopsis!