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ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 315 Part 1

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 315: A Very Lively Bee Part 1

When you start thinking about it, all of the areas here in ShanFro can be best described in idioms. And each type of the area or part of its name indicates the kind of monsters that may inhabit the area. Take the very first area, a forest. You may encounter there mainly animals and small monsters, such as goblins, snakes and bunnies. The same principle applies for every other area, indicating that every area on the map should posses at least some amount of unique enemies to it.

「Clouds flowing upstream…… Yeah, it is truly unseen for the clouds to behave like that, so I guess that the name of this place is no lie, after all.」

The clouds in this place are located so low in altitude that it is simply unheard of. They hover just at the ground level, forming something of a thick blanket of sorts, almost reaching out to the waist of my Sanraku avatar. The stream of clouds here is seemingly endless and it gives the impression as if the players are standing atop of the clouds high in the sky. It is a dream that every person on Earth must have had at least once in their life.

The endless stream of clouds going as far as the horizon goes and as far as the eye can reach…… it is clearly a magnificent sight, one that would serve as a great wallpaper. Especially that there are still rocks and trees sticking out of the ground here and there. Talk about a mysterious sight.

「At the very least I do not need to worry about losing my footing here and falling all the way towards the ground…… right?」

This place gives off a feeling as if the lower portion of your field of view was blocked here, and it would surely be annoying and bothersome if there were enemies here that could take advantage of that characteristic and launch a surprise attacks on the players in here.

And don’t get me wrong but…… Are they really supposed to be in here? The Dominion Hornets, I mean. And according to the stories I have heard from Tias-sensei, it seems that Dominion Hornets are the monsters that travel and live in groups, so its ecology and lifestyle certainly is unique. But does that mean I’ll have to worry about other monsters in here as well?

「Emul, you know what to do.」

「Roger that! Mumumumu…… “Active Sonar”!」

Here is the thing about Disposable Magic Scrolls. If your class is a Mage, or you meet the requirements, you can memorize the spell and learn it after using the scroll once. And this is exactly what we did with Emul. The magic I once happened to use, he now memorized it. As such, we can proceed forward here without fear, for thanks to the enhancements to Emul’s magic we have made him into a great danger detector. Like that, nothing that is hiding in the carpet of clouds is going to have a jump start at us.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

「What is it, Emul? Is there an enemy nearby?」

「There is one, but it seems to be afraid of you, Sanrako-san! It’s running away instead of trying to engage!」

「Well, it’s hardly surprising, since no one wants to get slaughtered mercilessly by those whose level is way higher than your own……」

「But, does that not mean that the Dominion Hornet is likely to get away from you as well? And if that happens, then what are we going to do?」

「Then we are going to give chase, of course. We came here for that particular enemy, and I am not simply going to let it get away from me. Even if it tries to hide in the trees, we are going cut them all down if we must. Whatever it takes to get what we want.」

「T-That’s evil! That’s pure evil, I tell you! Are you a demon, Sanrako-san!? A demon in human clothing? You must be!」

And this is all without talking about my equipment popping off constantly, leaving me in nothing but my undies most of the time. Being in such a state, how was I even going to traverse through this area? Swim through the sea of clouds? Or no, maybe swimming here would be the better alternative? As for the monsters in this area, there seemed to be a whole lot of fish-like creatures here that were swimming through the clouds, but they never dared to approach us, instead opting to run away and keep a safe distance. This made our search here a little bit easier, for we only had to look for a giant hornets that were our original target in here.

「Uuugh…… I don’t want my lower body to get wet because of all of those clouds in here……」

「Well, as for me, there is no worry to get wet, so no worries here! Just do as you think it is best!」

「…………」

After a brief moment of silence, I crouched down, submerging my body entirely in the sea of clouds, and I started to walk forward just like that, for about thirty meters or so before eventually standing right back up.

If there was someone to witness the two of us right about now, they would have seen a sight most bizarre: a woman and a bunny emerging from the sea of clouds like from the lake or sea, woman wet from head to toe and the bunny with its fur so thoroughly drenched that it looked more like a mouse than a bunny.

「…… I mean, I knew you would do it. I SO knew that you were going to do it, Sanrako-san!」

「Well, won’t you look at that? I guess that our bond of friendship is so strong that we can pretty much predict our behavior at this point.」

And even though I pretty much expected it to happen, I could hardly even see anything while submerged in the sea of floating clouds. Thinking about it, the maximum visibility inside of this fluffy thicket must be even less than one meter ahead of you. I mean, I was not able to see my own fingertips once I extended my hand forward, so that was the proof enough for me here…… Normally it would have been quite a problem, but since I had a navigator here on my head, it was actually no problem at all.

「…….!!! Sanrako-san! We may be in trouble! I sense a lot of enemies flying around us all of a sudden!」

「Alright! Good job there, here they come!」

Before actually coming here we have conducted some tests to see exactly just how the “Active Sonar” tends to work, and the conclusion we have arrived at was that upon activation it was omitting the first ten meter radius around the caster and detecting any life forms beyond that point. And since the overall range of the “Active Sonar” is about thirty meters, I would say that the distance between us and the enemy mob is about twenty meters. I would say that such distance gives us a hefty amount of time to prepare.