Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 139: Lying her way out.

“I will need to explain in detail...” the Snake muttered in a low voice. Ozul had earlier said that he did not have enough time, so she worried that if she began to explain everything in detail, he would get angry at her.

“Go on,” said Ozul. He did not mind a long explanation as long as she did not spout nonsense.

“The fog that is spread in kilometers radiusss of this place is actually generated by this garden. It is all actually done naturally. Every hundred years, this process ssstarts all over again just in preparation for the Lotusss to bloom,” the Snake explained. However, she would sometimes extend the words with ‘S’ sound.

“First of all, the garden chooses a suitable place to settle down. In those hundred years, all it does is to find a proper place to ssstart the process. After it has found a place, it would start to ssslowly corrupt the trees and plants in the surroundings.”

“Corrupted? Like those poisonous plants and the surrounding strange trees?” Ozul questioned in the middle.

“Yesss~ The garden ssstarts out as this area, only filled with vines. Its aura corruptsss the flora all around it, and turns it all into a kind of factory that works to ssserve only one purpose – to help the Elemental Lotus bloom,”

At this point, the White Snake did not hold back anything and talked like she was conversing with a dear friend and not with someone who could kill her anytime.

.....

“Firssst of all, the fog surrounds a vast area around the garden, and getting into it is the first ssstep of this giant trap. As you may already know, once the creaturesss are trapped in the fog, they either get fortunate or they disappear! Those vines are like the limbsss of this garden.”

“And those Plant Beasts in there?” Ozul asked.

“That right there is the most crucial step. Those creaturesss are used to suck out the Mana of all the living things which fall into the trap. Those plants are the greatest mysteriesss of all. No one understands how they are able to extract all essence of Mana from the living creatures.” The Snake said the last part with a complaining tone.

“All in all, the Mana is then used to water the Elemental Lotusss so that it can grow. You know, they call the garden as ‘The Tarantulas’ since you know-”

“Yes. Because of how it lays out the cobweb and then slowly eats the prey...” Ozul completed her words since it did not really need much explanation.

“Okay, now that this part is done, what are the Elemental Seeds used for?” Ozul asked. This was the real question. He wanted to know how useful they were for him.

Yes, he already considered the Seeds to be his. Now that he had been too deeply involved in this mess, why wouldn’t he take advantage of it? Moreover, as far as he could see, there was no one else here to claim the Seeds anyway.

He did not count the White Snake as someone who held the rights over the Seeds only because she came in here first. Not to mention, she was living only at his mercy right now.

“That... I don’t know,” she replied before backing away in fear. Closing her eyes as she wrapped her tail around herself, expecting a harsh reply.

Such a thing would obviously seem like a lie to anyone who heard it. So she expected another blade to be lunged at her tail, but contrary to her expectations, there was nothing.

She slowly opened her eyes to look at Ozul, who stared back at her apathetically.

“Okay...” Ozul said as the Snake had mind gears working in different directions.

‘Did he believe me just like that?! Although it is really true that I don’t know those Seeds’ use, shouldn’t he doubt me!?’ The Snake thought. Even she herself would have started torturing the person in question when they replied as such after revealing so much.

The Snake had thoughts that if it would have been better if she had just lied from the start or not.

Unknown to her, Ozul easily believed her because he did not need to judge her words. He just knew it! How could he not when the feelings project things that people sometimes don’t even know about themselves?

“If that’s so, why are you here? If you don’t know what is the use for the Seeds, why did you guys come here to get them?” Raven questioned. She had already recovered her breath and was now standing together with Ozul with Blaze just behind them.

Although Raven trusted Ozul’s judgment, she was still skeptical of the giant White Snake before her.

“I don’t know. But he knew everything, he didn’t tell me,” the Snake replied while giving a look at the Black Snake cut in two pieces in the distance.

“How did you learn about the Elemental Seeds?” Ozul asked. This was an important question for him. He wanted to know how some Beasts knew of knowledge that even a Mage at Clive’s level and his position wasn’t to get a hold of?

Since when did Magical Beasts start sharing information between themselves? Because the knowledge about something that blooms only once a hundred years was not something that they could learn just about anywhere.

“He... he had learned human language way before me. I think it was about some tens of yearsss ago when I first advanced and was able to speak your tongue as well. Around that time, he had found some old bag of travelers that had most likely been dead by sssome accident in the forest.” The Snake started to tell the story with melancholy.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she could not fake the emotions of sadness in front of Ozul. Although what she had said was true, she wasn’t sad at all over her partner’s death. Instead, there was only the fear of her life in her mind.

“That bag contained detailed notes about the Elemental Lotus. That’s also how we got to know of all of this. But at that time, we just thought it to be another one of the humans’ fantasies. Only when we saw everything happening here just like the detailsss in the notes did we realized that they had stumbled upon sssome treasure.” She continued explaining.

Ozul looked down on the ground in contemplation. If he did not know for sure that she wasn’t lying, he would have thought that this whole story wasn’t true.

He wondered what kind of person would be so knowledgable, yet so weak as to get killed in this part of the forest, which contained Rank-7 Beasts as the strongest. But he did not ponder much about it since he did not have enough information.

There could be many reasons behind this, and assuming things would only limit his thinking about this matter as a whole.

“After realizing that we could have a treasure for ourselves, we came here to wait for the Lotusss to bloom and then get it to advance to the next Rank. Oh! Before you ask, we thought that simply devouring would work...” the Snake explained herself before Raven could even question about it.

It seemed that the Snake had said everything because she stood in there silently, looking at Ozul with pleading eyes.

“Where is the Lotus?” Ozul asked one final question.

“Oh! That! Right there in the middle of those engravings on the ground. Once it is time, the Lotus would bloom right at that place.” She replied hurriedly while pointing her tail at the ground right in the middle of this room.

“I’ve told you everything that I know now. Please let me go!” The Snake added. It looked like she was in a hurry to get out of here.

Ozul looked at her with cold eyes before the blades suddenly moved. In others’ eyes, the blades which hovered near the Snake’s head just flashed in their place. But in the next second, the Snake’s head fell on the ground. Her eyes remained open as if she was still in a hurry to leave from here and hadn’t realized her death!

“The only way out is death... Maybe if you hadn’t lied, I would’ve spared you?” Ozul muttered the last part to himself.

In the Snake’s long story, she had told everything truthfully without any deceit. However, the last question, she lied! Ozul did not understand why she had suddenly changed her mind, but he did not care either way.

For him, it did not matter if she was dead or alive anyway.

Just that he wasn’t aware that only because he had so casually believed in her previous statement, the Snake thought that she could get away with it and still be able to reap the Elemental Seeds for herself later!

Even though Ozul was unaware of where the Lotus would bloom, he knew that it wasn’t in the place where the Snake had told him because he sensed nothing unusual there. Below that ground, there was just dirt.

On the other hand, he did not even need to focus to know that there was a secret room in the back of the boulder that had been destroyed by the Snakes pair earlier.

Ozul turned to walk in that direction before he suddenly stopped and looked behind him.

“You guys can stay here, or follow me,” Ozul said this to Raven and Blaze, but the whole convoy standing behind the duo thought that this was addressed to everyone present here.