CHAPTER 517: EXPEDITION TO THE LAND OF THE DEAD [IV]

Raguna was surprised by how Elaina easily deals with the worms that plague the World Tree. They have fought the monsters before and they knew how difficult to beat one up considering that they have to constantly fend them off. The most potent way to deal with them is to attack them with Windblade magic and mince them up but they cost a lot of mana, causing most of the fairies to interchange roles just to have the one who attacked first to rest and recover their mana before they can return to the role and do it again.

But Elaina is just doing it all alone, without magic, and still decimating everything without trouble. She was not showing any struggle with them whatsoever.

"H-how are you doing all of this?! Aren’t you a farmer?"

"Farm work requires hard work. Swinging a hoe requires proper posture and a balanced stance to ensure your body won’t feel sore afterwards. I just applied most of the principles I learned during farming into my fighting style and that’s how it is coming to be right now."

Raguna was flabbergasted. He had never heard of farming being a good training method for swordsmen. She must be joking around, right?

After the fourth worm was killed, the remaining worms started to rush towards their location, possibly due to the blood that has been spilled for quite some time on the soil after the first three worms were killed, killing the other one triggered their instinct to kill and devour.

"Oh crap, the remaining worms are now attacking simultaneously, Farmer!" Raguna warned.

"About time, honestly. I thought they would be a bit of trouble to deal with, but they aren’t that much troublesome to deal with. Time to get rid of them once and for all."

"Aren’t you getting reckless?!"

But Elaina did not really see the problem there and looked at the surroundings and sure enough, not too far from them, the worms are now scrambling towards their direction with their ravenous maw currently on full display while also showing their awkward way of walking.

"Here they come!" Raguna tightly grips his hands to Elaina’s shirt.

"Good! Let’s go!"

As the worms approached, Elaina started running in their direction as well. Halfway through their clash, Elaina leaps into the air and aims the point of her sword downwards as she falls and stabbing the worm straight into its "head", twisting the blade before cutting the worm vertically by dragging it inside the worm as she runs through its body. Upon reaching the end of the first worm, she jumped again and landed on the nearest ground where the second worm was standing and proceeded to cut the worm’s body into pieces in quick succession that even Raguna couldn’t see how she quickly did all of that.

Since the worms are less intelligent than expected, even when their comrades have been decimated and sliced to pieces, the last of the worms did not think twice to attack Elaina, only for her to directly put her sword to the mouth of the worm and slice upwards, cutting the worm in half.

As a result, the process ended quickly before the enemies could ever do something big and deal much more damage than necessary.

"Are there more of these worms in the nearby vicinity so far?"

Raguna quickly scanned the surroundings and shook his head. "Looks like we are in the clear. The path to the World Tree is now clear with those worms gone and dead. Those worms will take some time before they return again with a new batch.

"That’s fine. Now lead the way as to where the entrance to this place was located."

Elaina wanted to grab a few samples of the worms to ask for their identification to the Adventurer’s guild and perhaps put them in the bestiary for future purposes, but Elaina decided to just leave them and go. She had a feeling that she would be seeing more of those worms in the future, and she is not yet done dealing with them.

...

...

...

Around five minutes’ worth of walking, a big hole in the ground that seems to descend through underground appears before the two. Elaina is now sure of this and that this is the location that she was hoping to find and get the clues as to where the source of the problem was located.

Just as when she was going near the entrance, an indescribable smell entered her nose, and she almost puked out of disgust by it. Raguna was reminded of something,g and he immediately cast some sort of magic which slowly entered Elaina’s nos,e and soon, the smell that Elaina was smelling disappeared.

"I almost forgot that you needed that spell to get rid of the smell entirely. The rot smells so bad, it stinks a lot and it feels like it will stick on your skin if you stay for too long, thankfully, it wasn’t the main case as they don’t really stick, its just that the smell is just too overwhelming," Raguna explained.

"Does the smell have any indication of where it gets to smell really bad, the more the rot progresses?" Elaina asked.

"No idea, though I think there is no correlation of the smell becoming stronger the more the rot progresses. It seems the rot’s smell does not intensify the more the rot progresses through the tree’s body.

Before they can even enter, Elaina can hear a scream of a man, echoing inside the cave. It was so loud that Elaina could even hear it from the outside. It reverberates for a bit before stopping, seemingly like an earthquake or something similar. Only someone who holds tremendous power is capable of doing that.

"Ignore his screams for now. You can check him later if you want to, but I won’t be able to accompany you further, as it will just make me sick just by getting too close there," Raguna reminded Elaina.

"Alright, now, let’s get inside."

Elaina followed Raguna inside the cave, and inside are the countless dead bodies of the worms that Elaina had defeated not too long ago. Most of them are mutilated beyond comprehension; they looked like they had entered a blender machine and got shredded by the blender, causing them to look like that.

There are a lot of fairies currently working and hauling the dead bodies to one pile, where next to it is a big pit with a very hot flame burning inside.

"For some reason, though, they don’t rot, and they just remain like that, which is why the only way for us to fully get rid of them is to burn them to the fullest and make sure that they are all turned to ashes," Raguna explained.

As they get closed, the pixies who are currently hauling the bodies screamed the moment they saw Elaina coming inside.

"Aaaahhh! A human! A human has discovered our humble place!"

Everyone started scrambling to hide and flee from Elaina, which she understood since Raguna also have a similar reaction before he got used to her. This time, however, instead of Elaina calming down the pack of fairies, Raguna himself decided to do it on her stead.

"Everyone, don’t worry! It is me, Raguna and I have returned carrying someone who can potentially help deal with the rot of the World Tree! There is no need to hide!"

When they heard Raguna’s voice, every fairy peek out of their hiding spot, and sure enough, everyone sees Raguna sitting on Elaina’s shoulder, waving at them.

"Raguna? Is that really you? Have you returned?" one of the elderly pixies came out from his hiding spot and approached cautiously.

"Elder! Yes, I have returned. Although I am not sure if she can potentially help out on the World Tree’s predicament, I have seen firsthand her ability to fight off the worms plaguing the World Tree. And despite that, she is a regular farmer who happens to know many things about plants!"

The fairies began murmuring to each other before they came out of their hiding spot one by one.

"You gave us the scare, Raguna! What the heck have you been doing for you tor return so late?"

"What happened to your leg, Raguna? You seemed hurt."

There are many questions that Raguna was being bombarded with, but Raguna immediately shrugged them off.

"Wait, first off. I apologize for being so late. I almost died not too long ago due to an accident, and I almost got squished to death. If not for the farmer finding me and rescuing me from the predicament I was in, I wouldn’t have survived that and could have died in the process. That’s also when I learned that she is possibly the best candidate for us to ask about how to cure the World Tree’s rot, as she is looking for a way to restore the land’s prosperity," Raguna explained to ensure that no other pixies would make a big deal on his injury and blame it to Elaina who had nothing to do with his injuries.

The Elder who spoke first cried when he heard all of this.

"Thank you, Raguna. I know you have made a lot of sacrifices, and I am happy that you managed to do so and bring help despite how uncertain our chances of curing the world tree are."

Then he turned to look at Elaina and bowed his head.

"I also sincerely apologized for our behavior earlier as well, esteemed human. Welcome to the sanctuary of the World Tree. I hope you can help us on this problem and save the World Tree from dying."