Chapter 142 Stone Statue

The muffled sound echoing through the mountains sounded like rolling thunder, or like a huge boulder collapsing from a cliff. It rumbled and echoed for a good half minute. Becky, who was in the middle of a sentence, stopped abruptly. After the sound subsided, she blinked and clicked her tongue in amazement: "Could there have been a landslide on the mountain road?"

Hao Ren's face immediately turned bitter: "Damn, can't be that unlucky, right?"

"Let's hurry on, don't waste time," Nangong Wuyue walked ahead, then quickly returned. "Uh, Becky, you lead the way, I don't know the path..."

Without further ado, the group buried their heads and continued on, beginning to move as fast as possible along the rugged mountain path.

This road was built under the direction of the Holletta royal family hundreds of years ago. Now it has fallen into disrepair, and normally only bold mercenaries or adventurers with urgent business would take this shortcut. The ancient road wound along the mountains, and in some wider areas there were smooth stone slabs, while in narrow, steep places there were only steep slopes formed by layers of stone steps. Some places didn't even have stone steps, but were simply original rocky slopes, with only crude iron chains added as guardrails along the edges. Even the particularly resilient horses unique to this world had difficulty traveling on this road, so after crossing the initial, relatively easy flat mountain area, the group's speed slowed down considerably.

Soon after, the team arrived at a famous dangerous section of the ancient road. This section was carved directly into the steep cliff side. One side was a solid, imposing rock wall, and the other was a bottomless cliff with cold mountain winds whistling past. Only a few iron chains suspended outside the road served as protection along the narrow mountain path that could only accommodate one or two people. These iron chains were fixed to a few rusty iron stakes, which were hammered diagonally into the outside of the narrow path. If you slipped, you could easily fall through the gap between the chains and the ground. It could be said that this "guardrail" was more psychological comfort than actual protection, so Hao Ren walked carefully, and even Lily followed closely behind him, nervously grabbing his clothes: the girl was in human form. If she transformed into a werewolf, she would definitely have her tail between her legs right now.

"Falling down would definitely hurt," Lily said, sticking out her tongue as a gust of mountain wind blew by.

Hao Ren rolled his eyes. Lily could only say that thanks to her sturdy body. If an ordinary person fell, could it be described as simply "hurting to death"?

Vivian was the most calm and collected person present, after all she could fly...

Before stepping onto this dangerous road, Becky had everyone drive the horses ahead of the group. Letting these old horses lead the way was a common mercenary practice in this world: the horses knew how to proceed on dangerous roads on their own and didn't need to be led, and letting them go ahead could also prevent the horses from getting startled and pushing the people in front off the cliff in case of an accident.

"I seem to smell..." Vivian was walking in front of Hao Ren, and when she reached the middle of this dangerous road, she suddenly frowned and turned around. "There seems to be a smell of blood ahead, very fresh."

"Blood?" Hao Ren was startled. He hoped that visitor from another world hadn't met with misfortune. "Let's go quickly!"

The group finally passed the narrow mountain road without any mishaps. After going around a few huge rocks, the road ahead opened up a bit, and the smell of blood that Vivian mentioned became stronger, even to the point that Hao Ren could vaguely distinguish it.

A commotion came from ahead, mixed with human roars, the clash of swords, and the rumbling sound of something exploding. It seemed that a battle was taking place ahead.

Becky had already drawn her enchanted longsword: "Can you guys fight?"

Vivian's eyes were already glowing red, and Lily's ears and tail had already popped out. They weren't worried about transforming in this world, so they transformed without hesitation when they encountered a situation. Becky was relieved when she saw their forms: "Ha, so you're a werewolf and a bloodkin. Then at least you can protect yourselves. Let's carefully sneak over there."

The sound of battle grew closer, and the roars were mixed with the painful cries of some people being injured. After rounding the last bend, Hao Ren finally saw what was happening ahead: a group of people were fighting... some kind of stone monsters.

Those people should also be mercenaries, wearing a variety of equipment, with mismatched weapons and armor, typical of a mercenary "motley crew." There were about a dozen of them, and fighting them were strange "creatures" that Hao Ren could never have imagined. They were a group of... strange things that looked like stone statues. They were four or five meters tall, with a gray-brown rocky texture. They roughly had the appearance of limbs and a head, and were covered in moss and broken vines, like monsters from a bizarre fantasy story.

The battle seemed to have been going on for a long time. More than a dozen mercenaries were all injured, and some of them had even lost their ability to fight. They were covered in blood and could only barely stand on the edge of the battlefield with their weapons, while desperately dodging the aftershocks of the battle. The remaining mercenaries were not in much better shape. The stone giants seemed to have overwhelming combat power. Although they moved a bit slowly, their thick bodies of rock made them nearly invulnerable. Most of the mercenaries' swords and blades only produced a series of sparks when they struck the monsters. Magic attacks only blasted off some rock fragments. Conversely, a single hit from a stone monster on a mortal mercenary would result in a bloody mess.

The monsters' fighting style was also very simple and crude: charging and stomping. Their slowness of movement was not a problem. A giant creature four or five meters tall, even if it ran slowly, was not something that a small human could easily outrun. So the mercenaries could only wait for the monsters to approach and then rely on their agility to dodge: this must have been recently acquired experience.

There were only three stone monsters, but they had put a dozen mercenaries in a precarious situation.

On the other side of the mountain road, Hao Ren saw a large pile of broken rocks, which seemed to be the only stone monster that the mercenaries had killed. He didn't know how they managed to do it.

It was the first time Hao Ren had seen such a bizarre battle scene, and he couldn't help but be stunned for a moment. Izhaks was already shouting and rushing forward: "Hurry up and help!"

There was no choice but to take action. Vivian spread her wings and soared into the air, quickly summoning two large swarms of lightning-charged bats, and began to brew her powerful lightning strike. Lily summoned her ice and fire blades, raised her head to the sun (there was no moon at this time), let out a long wolf howl, and charged towards the cliff with her head down after being dazed by the sunlight--Hao Ren quickly grabbed her and adjusted her direction. Only then did the silly girl charge towards the stone monsters.

Nangong Wuyue quickly found a safe place to hide and cautiously reduced her aggro: she was just a healer. If she were facing ordinary creatures, her siren powers might be useful, but those stone monsters didn't seem to have any water in their bodies, and they didn't seem to be intelligent units that could be hypnotized with her songs...

Hao Ren gave the daughter pot to Nangong Wuyue to hold, and charged up with his shield.

Although he didn't like this inexplicable battle, he was a man, and he couldn't just stand by and watch.

"Boom!" Vivian's lightning strike was finally ready. Two cone-shaped bolts of lightning formed by swarms of bats crashed into the stone monster closest to her like two high-explosive warheads, immediately causing smoke to fill the air, and stones to fly everywhere. The huge explosion echoed through the mountains for a long time.

Lily waved her blades and rushed into the explosion range excitedly. She wanted to steal the kill: "Watch me!"

But the next second she rushed out: "You坑货bats! Stone doesn't conduct electricity!" (Note: 坑货 is a slang term for a bad teammate)

The mountain wind blew, and the smoke cleared. As expected, the stone monster hit by Vivian's lightning strike was still standing there. Although the power of the explosion was indeed strong, the monster's body had been shaved off a layer of stone, and half of its head had been blown to pieces, and its whole body was covered with scorch marks and cracks, it was still standing, and it had already begun to chase after Lily, who had rashly rushed up.

It seemed that for a stone monster, this kind of injury was not a big deal at all.

Vivian's lightning strike had two stages of damage: the first was the explosion caused by the high temperature generated by the two electric cones colliding together, and the second was the strong electric shock itself. The latter was a natural disaster-level killer for ordinary creatures, with voltage as powerful as lightning in nature. However, the vampire girl seemed to lack experience in dealing with this kind of strange monster: their resistance was too high, and they didn't seem to be afraid of explosions...

The advantage of the sneak attack had been lost, and what remained was a head-on battle.