Ram closed his eyes again, forcing himself to focus. "There had to be a reason. Was it tied to the goddess herself? Maybe Ignara needed a specific condition or a trigger to fully awaken and descend."
"Or perhaps it had something to do with the void space itself, or the state of the world outside."
"Well anyway now that the stone statue and the Half Drows are completely destroyed, there's no way they are going to summon Ignara again," Ram sighed as he pushed himself to his feet, glancing around the clearing.
However, this incident also showed him how powerful the Sylvan Soul Seed is and also increased his urgency towards opening his territory.
Ram couldn't help but think of Korrin. He had placed a lot of trust in Korrin's abilities, but it had already been three hours since Korrin entered the trial.
There was no way for Ram to check on him, no method to spy on what was happening inside the trial itself.
He looked down at his watch, feeling the minutes tick by. All he could do now was wait—and hope that Korrin and the others succeeded.
With everyone around having rested enough to recover their spiritual power, Ram decided to approach Mai.
He found her leaning against a charred tree trunk, deep in thought. Her usual sharp expression had softened slightly, but she still carried the air that, she is always calculating the next step.
"Hey," Ram started, breaking her focus. "What do you want to do next? Just wait for the orders from the Bio-Mechanical Soldiers?"
Mai turned to him, her eyes narrowing in frustration. "What else can we do other than wait? There aren't many Half Drows left after their sacrifice."
"And," she added, her tone dropping slightly, "we can't go against those soldiers while we're bound by the contract marks and the parasites."
She sighed, clearly annoyed but resigned to the situation. "I don't want to risk turning our contract marks into curse marks."
"You know what happens if they do—we'll start losing our lifespan. Slowly at first, but you cannot stop it unless the curse is removed."
"Yeah," Ram agreed, although he wasn't bothered by any of those, he still listened to her, with his current strength there was no way he could save everyone.
"Well, for now, I guess we just wait and see what the Bio-Mechanical soldiers have planned."
------
While Ram and others still waiting for further instructions, the situation on Korrin's side became very critical with every wave they faced.
Korrin wiped the sweat from his brow, his body tense with fatigue, they had already faced three waves of the Mutant Hemophagic Murlocs, each more brutal than the last.
Korrin quickly tied the two mushrooms together, securing them to the shaft of a sturdy arrow.
The battlefield was still swarming with Murlocs, and the blast had to do maximum damage. His eyes locked onto a dense cluster of Murlocs in the distance.
Three 'Rare' quality Murlocs stood in the center, surrounded by hundreds of ordinary and some 'Elite' ones. They were his target.
Without a word, Korrin nocked the arrow, drew his bowstring back, and aimed carefully. The arrow, mixed among the rain of ordinary projectiles his archers were unleashing, wouldn't raise suspicion.
He released the string, watching the arrow sail through the air, unnoticed among the chaos.
It flew true, embedding itself into the eye of an ordinary Murloc standing beside the 'Rare' ones.
The creature let out a short, sharp scream, but the sound was lost in the din of battle.
For a moment, nothing happened—then came the boom.
The explosion rocked the battlefield, a blinding flash of light followed by an earth-shaking roar.
The Blast Mushrooms detonated with terrifying force, the shockwave ripping through the groups of Murlocs.
Hundreds of nearby bodies were thrown into the air, torn apart by the sheer force of the blast.
The three 'Rare' quality Murlocs, caught at the epicenter, were obliterated, their huge bodies disintegrating in a shower of blood and bone.
Korrin shielded his eyes from the blast, his heart pounding in his chest as the shockwave reached their defensive lines.
When the dust settled, he could see the devastation.
The area where the explosion had gone off was now a massive crater, and the Murloc horde in that section had been utterly wiped out.
Corpses with broken limbs littered the ground, the predatory vines already creeping forward to devour the remains, feeding off the carnage.
A slow grin spread across Korrin's face. The Blast Mushrooms had worked better than he had hoped.
That single strike had taken out nearly four to five hundred Murlocs, causing severe injuries to thousands of nearby Murlocs, all thanks to the improved blast radius of Blast Mushrooms and the large number of Murlocs being grouped together.
The vines didn't miss this chance, they quickly capitalized on the opportunity, spreading further to fortify their position as they consumed more corpses.