Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem-Chapter 477: Ninth Floor

Alzara finished grabbing the final heart before retreating back to the pile by Zach and Nora with the Child hot on her heels.

Without Yanael or Mandra, fighting the Child would be difficult. Their only option was to flee to the ninth floor.

They were lucky the Child of the Hydra was still scared of Yanael. That momentary hesitation gave them enough room to teleport away to the next floor of the Labyrinth.

The Child of the Hydra was frustrated and took out his frustration on his surroundings, turning a large part of the forest into a smoldering wasteland.

Zach, Nora, and Alzara breathed out in relief as they safely arrived at the ninth floor before the Child could reach them. Zach had put up enough barriers to hold the Child off just in case, but it would have hurt if the Child had broken through even one of them.

"Well, we found who we were looking for, at least," Zach said with a light smile. Nora was not a big fan of his joke.

There was no doubting what would have happened if the Child had been faster or if they hadn’t already been ready to move on to the next floor. The Child of the Hydra hadn’t oozed murderous intent because he was a kind soul, after all.

They would have died. Zach joked about it.

But Nora couldn’t blame him. How many times hadn’t Zach already been close to death? He had even technically been pronounced dead once. He could joke about it if he wanted.

Fortunately, he didn’t do more than that. He noticed Nora’s aversion to such jokes. Besides, they weren’t safe yet.

With the Child’s strength, gathering a hundred hearts from those big monsters wouldn’t take that long. They had to get moving. So, Zach and Alzara looked at Nora.

She sighed.

"I’m telling you this in advance, but I only know that this floor is hearts as well. Any floors below this are beyond my knowledge."

"That’s fine." Zach nodded and glanced around. The monsters should start swarming them soon. The big and wide but surprisingly short trees packed tightly around them made it difficult to see far, but Zach still felt like he should have seen something.

At the sound of a creaking branch, the three quickly turned to the side to see what they were dealing with this time. They didn’t see anything.

Zach narrowed his eyes and his gaze slowly rose.

"Guys…" He said ominously. They followed his gaze.

The branches on the trees were moving.

The wind wasn’t blowing.

The monsters this time around were the trees around them. As soon as they realized that, they could feel it. The tree monsters were pretty strong.

But more than that…

"Do trees even have hearts?" Zach couldn’t help but ask as he clenched his fists and prepared for battle. It looked like he wouldn’t be able to sit this one out without putting unnecessary pressure on Alzara and Nora, who both wielded daggers—less than optimal weapons to cut down trees.

His fists weren’t much better, but he could handle the branches that were slowly coming down on them.

Noticing they had been discovered, the tree monsters suddenly increased the speed of their swings.

Like multi-tailed whips, the branches smacked down with swooshing sounds that sent chills down Zach’s spine. It sounded like it would hurt to be hit by one of those. Thank goodness, they were all good at dodging.

Zach sharpened his gaze and focused on one tree monster as he activated his Eyes of Truth. He wanted to see if he could detect any weakness or maybe even the location of their hearts.

He could.

"It’s not their hearts!" He shouted to the other two who had already started fighting the trees, chopping their branches, and dancing between them.

"It’s the heartwood!" The center of the trunk, the hard and dense structure going from its base to the top.

They had to gather, if the trend was the same, one hundred of those. Zach sighed. It was an annoyingly troublesome task. But he didn’t let that affect him as he focused on the task at hand.

Given enough time, all three of them could handle a tree monster on their own. But it was inefficient.

Zach and Nora grouped up with Alzara. The two humans grabbed or cut off the branches of one tree monster while Alzara went to town on its body, cutting it up and carving it to pieces. Once it could no longer move and the heartwood was as good as separated from the rest of its body, they moved on to the next.

Zach could imagine the pain of this floor’s Trial if he hadn’t been involved. All the other floors so far were basically monster hunts in a forest. The Labyrinth entrants would have to search the floor for the monsters they needed to kill.

After gathering the hundred hearts on the previous floor, they would arrive at this forest and slowly start looking for the next type of monster if they didn’t already know what was waiting for them.

They would go around the trees, getting closer and closer to them. Maybe, once they didn’t find anything or any monsters, they would sit down and lean against a tree while taking a break.

That was when the tree monsters would strike and wrap up their victim in a tight, wooden embrace.

But now, since Zach was involved, the tree monsters couldn’t control themselves. They came looking for him instead, and they didn’t have the patience to use their deceptive appearances to lull Zach into a false sense of safety.

They wanted his blood, and they did not want to wait. It was the same as with every other monster.

This content is taken from fгeewebnovёl.com.

It was a relief. Zach did not want to spend days looking for monsters with such good camouflage that they were indistinguishable from ordinary trees unless he used his Eyes of Truth when the Child of the Hydra was chasing them. Your journey continues at novelbuddy

It still took them over a day to finish gathering the pieces of heartwood, though.