Hera and Alex bolted through the streets of Saltandeer City. It wasn't a big place, but the paths were complicated. In an attempt to avoid disturbing the environment, the guild tried to build around the trees and leave enough space for them to grow. As a result, the streets were a city planner's nightmare. Filled with unnecessary twists and turns that looped around the vegetation before getting anywhere. People were already getting ready for the rampage, but even so, there were enough plaques and signals with directions to the different dungeons or to the other room that it was almost impossible to get lost.

"Hera! Here," Alex pointed to a street with an exit signal written 'Waperath Jungle.'

"Let's go. When we get out of the city, I can call Nimbus," Hera nodded.

"Can it hold both of us?" Alex looked over both of their armors.

"Maybe, but I have an idea," Hera noticed a store that was still open and with no line inside. She went in and, in less than three minutes, came out with a rope in hand.

"Oh, please tell me you are not thinking about being a kite," Alex was already running towards the city's exit.

"More like a sled, and I think it will work. Nimbus can't have more than 120 kilos on its back, but I've seen him drag things heavier.

"How much heavier?"

"I have no idea. It was like a small pig that I killed."

"Oh, great," Alex rolled her eyes.

It didn't take long for them to reach outside the city, and Hera blew on the whistle, calling the cloud griffon to her side, "C'mon, hop in."

"What? Aren't you riding it?"

"Can you glide through the floor?"

"No…"

"So go, you guide him, and I go behind. Here tie the rope around your waist."

"But I don't know how to ride a horse, much less a griffon."

"You don't have to know. Just guide him. Nimbus will take care of the rest."

"Can't you have Daskka cast that spell on me?"

"Alex, we really don't have time for this, and Daskka can't keep the spell for two hours. It's a five minutes tops thing. My shoes can stay up for the entire time and don't even think about asking me to take them off. You already tried borrowing my shoes and that went really bad. C'mon, hop up and go."

With a groan, Alex tied the rope around her waist and jumped on top of Nimbus. Hera did the same with her end of the rope and activated her boots. At the same time, she sent Daskka to stay on Nimbus' head. That way, if anything went wrong, the snake would tell her. She also added a dancing light to say always a few meters ahead of her mount to allow them to see where they were going. There weren't any lamp posts or light sources in the room, and there was no moon in the sky tonight.

"OK, OK, how do I do this? There is no saddle. Should I just hit it? Or do I have to say gooooooo….." as Alex said go, Nimbus started running, making her scream with the initial burst of speed.

Hera's plan worked somewhat. She knew that Nimbus wasn't moving at his full speed, and she was struggling to stay on her feet, but at least they were moving fast. When a large tree came in the way, Hera almost had to do some Rollerblade tricks to jump over and skip those roots. Alex yelled a bit in the beginning, but as time went by, she started to calm down. Riding Nimbus was much different than riding a bike or even a horse. She was essentially on top of a cloud which meant that with each step the griffon took, Alex felt like she was going to fall down, but that never happened. Even when it seemed like she was about to pass through the construct, the cloud would bounce back up.

While being flung around, Hera started to look at the area around her. This room didn't seem all that special. Sure, there were some large trees with pretty leaves, but it wasn't anything she couldn't find back on Earth. Her opinion changed somewhat when, after Nimbus made a turn to the left, her mouth became closely familiar with the vegetation of the area as branches slammed on her head.

"Argh," Hera started spitting out, trying to get rid of the leaves that ended up in her mouth.

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I just got part of the name of the room. The trees are salty."

"Salty?"

"Yeah, it's like I just licked a salt rock."

"Oh... That's the salt part, right? What is going to be the deer thing then?" Alex asked.

Almost on cue, they started hearing some noises around them. The sound of something running along with them, followed by branches being broken.

"Please tell me we are not about to meet Rudolph, the nightmare deer," Hera gasped while looking towards the noise.

"I already made things go south. Can you not make it worse?" Alex rolled her eyes but quickly realized that it was a mistake. Adding that to the motion Nimbus was doing made her feel dizzy, "I really don't like riding this thing."

"I promise you won't have to do that again," Hera jumped over another root and caught a glimpse of four legs moving around behind a tree, "Alex, Daskka, keep a lookout for incoming monsters. I think they are getting close."

"And how close are we to the doorway?" Alex asked.

"At this speed? Maybe 30 minutes?"

"Having a mount is great!"

"Tell me about it!" Hera laughed. It might take them two hours to even get to the doorway on foot, but when riding something that could reach 30 km/h, that time was reduced to a quarter of their expectations. If it wasn't because Nimbus was carrying both of them, that time could become even smaller.

Suddenly, a cry broke through the night. It was almost like the moo of a cow, but little by little, it became more human until it turned into what sounded like someone being tortured.

"Let me guess. Rudolph, the nightmare deer?" Alex asked.

"Probably. I hate when I'm right," Hera activated her pulse and felt five monsters behind the trees. Three seemed female deers while two were stags taking up the front of the formation. With another cry, the one in the front broke out and jumped from the trees towards the cloud griffon, "Incoming!"

As she yelled, Hera threw a poison needle at the monster. Alex pulled her dagger from the wooden scabbard and cut off both of the stag's horns, making it cry in pain. Daskka was about to jump towards the creature, but one look from Hera made her stop. If the snake left the griffon, she would've ended up falling behind, and they would have to go back to get her, or Hera would have to force her back to the necklace somehow. Instead, Daskka shot out some poison needles herself.

The first of the attackers tried to get closer, but Hera threw a chakram at it, pulling the thread to wrap it around the monster's throat. Her weapon made two loops around its neck before the blade sunk deep into its skin. With a final yank, Hera pulled back her chakram, opening a gash large enough to make the monster bleed out. The rest of its pack jumped out of the trees, enraged by the death of one of their own. The deer screamed, now loud enough to make Hera and Alex feel the pain of the attack inside their minds. It seemed like it wasn't something to do with sound waves but a psychic attack.

Luckily, Nimbus wasn't affected by things like that, but the body slam that one of the monsters aimed at it dealt some damage. Hera tried to pull the monster's focus to herself. Launching spell after spell at the creatures and creating stone walls when they got too close. When they got in range of the light, Hera could finally see what the deer looked like. They were black with white stripes and had beady purple eyes, with some hair on their back flowing as if they were made out of fire.

Whatever these monsters were, they were sturdier than what Hera expected. This was supposed to be the 9th layer, but even some monsters they fought in the 10th would die quicker. Maybe it was just their specialty or the fact that they were in the middle of something akin to a car chase, but it was hard to tell. Before finishing off them, Hera used her [Observe] just to confirm what they were.

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Salted Deer - Level 27 (Endurance Affinity)

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Salted Stag - Level 28 (Endurance Affinity)

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"Oh, that explains it," Hera nodded just before the monsters were killed by Alex and Daskka.

"What is it?"

"Those have endurance affinity. It's rare to find monsters with attribute-based affinity, but something like that would obviously be more sturdy."

They couldn't stop now to gather the monster's materials, so they kept going. For the next 20 minutes, they ran through the woods, occasionally fighting off some deer, but they never came in large numbers, only one or two at a time. Unfortunately, their luck ran out, and a herd of 12 deers appeared running after them. Hera and Alex kept attacking the creatures trying to stop them from advancing and getting too close to Nimbus. Their spells flew through the air, but as Hera saw one of the stags getting closer to her with the horns taking the lead in the charge, she quickly activated her stone elemental armor to make sure the beast couldn't harm her. That worked to a point, but the impact as the horns rammed against her back sent her flying off to the side, slamming against one of the nearby trees and falling to the ground. Because of the rope, Alex was yanked back. She tried to hold on to Nimbus, but doing so made the mount stop. One of the stags bolted to Nimbus, head butting it and destroying the mount. Seeing that, Hera quickly cut off the rope and attacked the closest monster, her handaxe slamming against the skull of one of the deer. It got stuck for a moment, but the stag was coming at her, and the movement was enough to help her free her weapon.

Looking around, Hera could see 8 deer still nearby. Now, with a proper moment to stop, she noticed that they had sharp shark-like teeth and their hooves had three points instead of two. Daskka slithered on the ground, evading the stampede that was now turning to face the humans. Suddenly, she jumped up towards the face of a stag already turning itself into mist and wrapping her body around the monster's head. The creature started to flail, panicked with the situation. Just like Daskka wanted, the beast's horns started to hit the other deer, scratching and stabbing its friends. Being back on her feet, Hera changed her elemental armor to poison and started attacking the monsters while gliding around. It wasn't hard to stay away from any danger while fighting the deer. They were quadrupeds that didn't share the same kind of free movement that a wolf or a cat would have. Not to say that they couldn't move quickly, but their stiff spine gave Hera a small opening to stay in their blind spots. Since she was the first one to stop, most of the monsters were aiming at her, and in the middle of that frenzy, she used the attacks of the monsters to her advantage. She would only be in range for a deer to kick her when another one was behind her, allowing Hera to evade the attack and let the creatures hit each other.

Alex wasn't that far behind, but instead of using a monster to hit another, she fought them one on one, making sure to kill them before moving to the next. She jumped on one of the creature's back, and as it started to trash around, she pulled her daggers on its neck and cut it open.

"This is a much better ride," Alex said as the first of her victims fell to the ground.

"Hey, don't complain!" Hera yelled. Despite the danger of the situation, she wasn't afraid. Even if these monsters were higher level than her, they were having trouble moving around, and her fighting styles were helping her to confuse the creatures.

"Sorry, but I really prefer to feel something solid when I'm riding something," Alex dodge one of the stags, cutting open its stomach in the process. Wounded, the creature couldn't respond fast enough to avoid the blow directed just at the base of its skull.

"There is a dirty joke there, but I can't think of it right now," Hera was still dodging around, now using her slow spell on the monsters and seeing the notifications of her [Ailment Mastery] triggering. Her poison was spreading, and it was affecting the deer, "Alex, don't get close to me. Daskka, where are you?"

In response, Daskka used her tail blade to finish the stag she was suffocating and jumped to the next one. Evading the beast's attacks as they tried to stop her, she mixed dodges with turning into smoke to not be hit. In that form, she would only be damaged by magic. She was going in and out of her mist form in such a natural way that it was almost like she had practiced for years. With quick movements, Daskka arrived at Hera's side, leaving more of the monsters poisoned with her own poison as she passed by. That didn't override what Hera did. In fact, the poisons amplified each other, making each of them at least 20% stronger. It was just something hard to happen because when a creature was poisoned, only parts of it that weren't poisoned could be affected by more poison. Hera wouldn't keep using poison needles at a target already poisoned for that exact reason. The explorer wasn't just messing around either. While she made the monsters attack each other, she also made sure to keep swinging, and three of them were already dead on the ground. The remaining three deer were killed in less than a minute, but before they had a chance to stop and breathe, Hera and Alex had to start running again.

Hera deactivated her boots. Gliding around wasn't exactly something she could do when bolting through the forest. They ran for another half an hour without stopping. Monsters appeared, trying to stop them, but the trio quickly killed them before the creatures could become a problem. They reached the doorway one hour after they had talked with Avery in the previous room and saw a clerk looking around with a worried expression. He noticed the two getting closer and called to them.

"Are you the people who Avery talked about?"

"Yeah," Hera said while trying to catch her breath,

"Great. Then go. I'm already in trouble for waiting this long. Hurry up."

"OK, thanks for waiting for us," Alex smiled as they got close to the doorway.

"You got lucky. I'm a sucker for a good love story. I hope you and your girl can make things up," the clerk replied to Alex.

"Her girl, not mine."

"Oh, right. Either way, let's go."

"You're coming too?"

"Yeah. I have to hold the fort on the other side. Dealing with explorers who want to move around is more dangerous than these monsters," the clerk sighed before they all touched the large doorway with the symbol of a castle surrounded by vines on top.

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Would you like to be transported to

Waperath Jungle 10th Layer

[Yes] [No]

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