1378 Chapter 1378 Watching from On High --- Lily --- Lily found herself flying low over the ocean, glaring at the depth that hid their secrets from her. You see, Lily had found a problem. As the net shrunk, so too did an invisible roof that she hadn't run into before. Now that they were approaching the final part of the round, the ceiling had been lowering. Not particularly quickly, and it likely wouldn't lower all the way down to the water... but her ideas of floating high above everyone and avoiding conflict wasn't going to work. Actually, the fact the net was still moving was a touch odd. Thyme had said that it wouldn't shrink during the last thirty minutes... but the area still available to her was getting quite small. Lily was no longer certain Thyme's words held true. Perhaps something went wrong with the net's enchantments, or Thyme had misspoke. That or she was just really bad at judging distance. *Is it safe to stay up here? The glare from the sun means that I can't really see what's underneath me... but staying up above the water seems like a great way to stay safe. It's not like they can see much from below either. Though I suspect the black blob that I'd look like from down there would still be fairly obvious if they look up. Nobody looks up though. At least, that's what ninja movies have taught me. It seems to hold true to real life. We don't really look down either but the ground tends to be in our line of sight and we're pretty sensitive to movement. And snakes. I feel like I remember a documentary talking about how we evolved specifically to spot snakes moving because those little shits have been hounding us since we were still monkeys. Hmm... I wonder if that applies to the races here? I'm not sure how deadly the snakes are... actually, how did they all come about? Are they all humans changed by mana? That seems... very humanosentric but at the same time they're all clearly humanoid? Unless the fact that Kat is a humanoid demon means that we only see that side of things? Perhaps there are quadruped demons that go to quadruped based worlds? Updated from novelb(i)n.c(o)m Probably shouldn't be getting distracted... but it's preventing me from doing something stupid like looking for someone to steal treasures off and get caught... plus it's at least somewhat relevant. I wonder if the fact dwarves live underground makes them more or less inclined to look up? On the one hand, they can see most of the tunnels just be looking ahead. Even with their reduced height it's not like the ceiling is that far away so perhaps they're more inclined to look forward... except. Except plenty of faults you need to watch are on the ceiling of mine tunnels AND all the other races are taller than them, so they need to look up just to chat with people. Hmm... when I put it that way maybe I should be concerned?
Lily could see Marigold relaxing on some sea anemones just outside of the bubbling area. She seemed unconcerned with just about everything going on right now. Only the fact she clearly had one eye open and was watching March and Blue let Lily know that she wasn't completely casual about it all... but Lily didn't know if that meant she was safe to approach either. Especially not surrounded by anemones as she was. Sure on the surface it seemed like Marigold was just enjoying her masochistic tendencies... but those things were usually poisonous. They use NEURAL TOXIN for crying out loud. Normally not something a human would worry about... but there was two issues with that. The first, is that Lily wasn't human anymore, and she was in her Memphis form for the moment. If she didn't want to risk a transformation, which she really didn't... then that meant her much smaller body would be contending against the poison they had. Yet that still wasn't the bigger issue. No, the bigger problem was that this was a fantasy world. There was no telling just how powerful the toxin was in truth with mana added to the mix. Only someone crazy like Marigold would relax on them like this.
*Is she treating it so casually because it's not a lot of poison? Because she's made herself immune to most poison? I can see Marigold drinking a bunch of poison just because she can and this IS a magic world. Would that give her immunity? Hard to say but she really doesn't seem concerned. I guess nerve damage isn't something she has to worry about. I mean, it normally wouldn't be something I'd have to worry about either but I don't want to take any chances. Whatever, let's just see what Romilda is up to...* Romilda was being much more normal about things. She seemed to be glaring at the steam for some reason Lily couldn't quite work out for a few seconds, then it hit her. It was steam. It was water that had gotten hot enough to vaporise while deep under the ocean and Romilda was running around with a bunch of metal on her. This was not a good arena for her. If she was using the metal to move around and it got to hot she risked some serious burns. *So Romilda might be the first person worth talking to... except that I don't think I can count on her IN a fight, and maybe not even TO fight. Which is another issue entirely. Urgh. I want to stay sneaking around but Blue has so many treasures that something needs to be done... except she's a water mage that probably has March watching her back. Do I have to just sneak around and hope I have enough treasures for second place? There certainly seems to be plenty to go around...* If you think you've read this chapter... it might be because you have. I am very sorry about that but chapter 1371 was skipped and you'll need to go read that. I'm VERY sorry this happened but nobody pinged me on discord so I only just caught it.