Chapter 255: Turning Enemies Against Each Other

"Just how long are you gonna keep chasing me?" Magna looked down helplessly as he hovered in the sky.

Below him, the Bleeding Desolation stood motionless with its head raised toward him, still refusing to turn its attention elsewhere.

It had been almost a day since the creature started chasing him.

During that time, Magna had tried everything. Running faster, jumping away, and finally taking to the sky with his wings. Yet even when he managed to lose it, the monster found him again after a while, as if he had a GPS tracker on him.

Returning to the camp under these conditions was absolutely out of the question. If he went back like this, it would follow him all the way there.

What he couldn’t understand was why it had done nothing so far but chase him. It hadn’t attacked even once. He wasn’t sure whether it had no way to attack or simply had no intention of hurting him.

Either way, just getting close to it was harmful enough. Magna couldn’t exactly stop and try to settle things with a little hug, so he had no choice but to keep escaping.

"Also, where am I, actually?"

With the monster waiting below, he took a moment to look around.

He had been so busy trying to lose it that he seemed to have crossed into an entirely different region.

The black ash covering the Bleeding Desolation’s territory was gone. An endless swamp now stretched beneath him instead.

The change in terrain was enough to convince him that he had entered another Desolation’s territory.

Unfortunately, the swamp hadn’t stopped his pursuer. The heat spreading from the Bleeding Desolation dried the mud before it even stepped on it, leaving firm ground for it to walk across without sinking.

Watching it stand there gave Magna another idea, though.

If this was another boss’s territory, its owner had to be somewhere nearby. Perhaps he could get the two Desolations to fight, then escape while they were busy with each other.

He began searching as he flew deeper into the swamp, the Bleeding Desolation following him on the ground.

The farther he went, the more the air changed. The unbearable heat and dryness gradually gave way to heavy humidity, though it was far from refreshing. It made his whole body feel stiff and uncomfortable.

He seemed to be getting closer to the center of the new Desolation’s aura.

His clothes hadn’t been designed for these conditions. Despite the protection they offered, he felt this aura’s effects more strongly than the Bleeding Desolation’s heat and corrosion.

The mask was still helping, so he kept it on. However, a thin, slimy layer of mud slowly formed over its surface. He had to keep wiping it away before it covered the mask completely and made it difficult to breathe.

As he searched, Magna tried to understand what kind of creature he might be approaching.

The Devoring Desolation had made itself a body from stone. The Bleeding Desolation had used water and fire to imitate blood.

Judging by the mud spreading across this territory, its owner had probably used soil and mud to imitate flesh to create a body for itself.

With that in mind, he expected to see a huge mud monster or something resembling a mountain of earth. Though what he finally spotted was different enough to make him surprised.

’Well... is that a human?’

He hovered in place, slowly beating his wings as he narrowed his eyes at a figure standing alone on the muddy ground.

Like the Bleeding Desolation, it had a human shape, but the resemblance was much closer.

Its head, arms, and legs seemed to be made of flesh covered in skin. It even had muscles and breasts, with everything in place to resemble a woman’s body.

From where Magna was watching, it looked like a woman standing naked in the middle of the swamp.

That flesh-like appearance was only a copy, though. Its body was made of clay shaped to imitate a living body, just as the Bleeding Desolation’s blood was an imitation.

While Magna studied it, the creature suddenly turned its head in his direction.

Only then did he get a clear view of its face.

There were no eyes, no mouth, no features at all. Just a smooth surface of flesh-like clay.

For a moment, he thought it had noticed him. Then he realized its head was angled toward the Bleeding Desolation below.

The reason was very clear when he looked down.

Around the Bleeding Desolation, the muddy ground rapidly dried and hardened under the heat of its aura. Almost immediately, it softened back into mud as the other Desolation’s aura pushed against it.

The two Desolations’ auras were already clashing, even though neither creature had made a move.

It was quite an interesting sight. Cracks appeared across the hardening surface, only to disappear as it softened again. The ground kept changing between mud and solid earth in a rapid, seemingly endless cycle.

As he watched, Magna noticed something even stranger where the two auras met. The ground wasn’t returning to quite the same state each time.

A section of mud grew darker with each cycle, developing a shine as its shape changed. It seemed to be gradually turning into an entirely new material.

The process looked almost like alchemy.

Magna focused on that section. By now, it resembled a black, translucent substance with a glassy surface, though its structure also reminded him of porcelain.

’Can that material be something special?’

As the thought crossed his mind, a faint golden glow began to radiate from the material, catching his eye.

It was dim enough that he might have missed it if he hadn’t been looking closely. Now that he had noticed it, though, he could see mana accumulating in the newly formed substance.

The two auras weren’t just changing the ground. They were creating a mana-rich resource, something like Grak Stell.

While Magna was busy wondering what properties it might have, the two Desolations had turned their attention fully toward each other.

Neither had eyes, but their fixed attention was clear enough from the way they stood facing one another. Magna didn’t need anyone to tell him that this wasn’t a friendly meeting.

Two territory bosses meeting like this could only mean a fight over territory was about to begin.

More importantly, the Bleeding Desolation had finally stopped focusing on him.

Magna took the opportunity to rise higher into the sky, putting more distance between them before he accidentally drew its aggro again.

He should have been free to leave now, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to fly away.

He wanted to see what a fight between two Desolations would look like.

There was also the strange material forming beneath them, which had already caught his interest.

If it turned out to be something strong and useful like Grak Stell, he could collect some once he had the chance.

After all the trouble of being chased here, getting a new material to upgrade his clothes would at least make the trip worthwhile.

As he waited there with those greedy thoughts, the two Desolations finally began to move, just as he had hoped.

’I wish I had some popcorn.’ He watched with growing excitement.