Before Magician could even finish his sentence, he saw a double-edged sword protruding from his chest.
The blood spraying from his chest splattered onto Lan Qingyou’s face, shoulders, and arms.
Everything happened too fast and too suddenly for anyone to have expected it.
Magician struggled to turn his head. What he saw was the Hierophant holding the blade, a savage grin plastered across his face.
The Hierophant’s eyes were blood-red, and his grin was so twisted it looked terrifying.
“You...”
“Magician!”
“Hierophant?”
The sudden change shocked everyone nearby. Their expressions shifted instantly, and they rushed toward the two, unsure of what had happened.
Lan Qingyou, who had been talking to Magician just moments before, shared their shock.
However, what she saw was fundamentally different from the others.
Through Lan Qingyou’s eyes, a negative status effect called ‘Madness’ had appeared over the Hierophant.
This was likely the reason for his sudden, violent outburst.
“Gear swap! Mental-type! Sun, use a Binding Rune! Target: Hierophant!”
The moment she saw him, Lan Qingyou shouted at the approaching Sun.
Although she wasn't the leader of Tarot Villa or the captain of this expedition, she had been appointed as the core of the group’s combat strength due to her Magic Eye, which allowed her to identify things at any time.
Her words carried authority.
Her shout brought everyone who had started running to a halt.
It also made them realize that this was an attack from a monster.
They immediately followed the pre-arranged plan and began swapping their equipment as fast as they could.
Sun, or Ingrid, threw a Binding Rune at the Hierophant under Lan Qingyou’s command before she began her own gear swap.
“Mine! This ship is mine!! None of you can take it away!!!”
The bound Hierophant roared.
The double-edged sword in his hand had originally been intended to boost his own strength, but now it had become the weapon used to impale his teammate.
Lan Qingyou didn't even wipe the blood from her face. She stepped forward and pulled Magician off the blade. While feeding him a potion, she pulled out two more and splashed them over the wounds on his chest and back.
Her movements were so rough that the heavily injured Magician groaned in pain.
However, he wasn't in the mood to complain.
Wounds could heal quickly, but the blood he had lost was another matter.
“I’ve finished treating you. Bear with it and swap your gear.”
Having dealt with Magician, Lan Qingyou mounted her Magic Broom and soared into the sky.
In truth, this ‘soaring’ only took her to a height of about two hundred meters.
Any higher and she would hit something like an invisible wall, making further flight impossible.
This felt like the ‘regional barriers’ the Fool had mentioned, something Lan Qingyou had never encountered before.
This was likely the dungeon’s ‘height limit.’
Otherwise, if she were allowed to fly freely, clearing the dungeon would be trivial.
Blocked by the boundary, Lan Qingyou stopped and began to observe her surroundings.
Flying at two hundred meters meant there wasn't much cloud cover to block her view, but it was still difficult for an ordinary person to see clearly from that height.
Even the fifty-meter-long World Tree Boat looked like a tiny speck.
But for Lan Qingyou and her Magic Eye, this was nothing.
The Magic Eye provided much more than just an identification skill for the witch.
Even if it wasn't explicitly stated in the identification results, an increase in general perception was only natural.
However, Lan Qingyou saw nothing after scanning the entire area.
“How is it?”
When Lan Qingyou landed back on the deck, the group gathered around her.
“I didn't see anything. I suspect it’s either inside the ship or in the sea ahead.”
Lan Qingyou tilted her chin slightly toward the water directly in front of the bow.
“What now?”
Wheel of Fortune asked, her brow furrowed.
“Sun and Li Huai, stay here to look after Magician and keep the Hierophant bound. Gu Xiaobei and Wheel of Fortune, come with me to check the cabin. Use the wind to send a message if anything happens.”
“Also, Gu Xiaobei, leave half of your potions with Sun and Li Huai.”
Lan Qingyou gave her instructions after a moment of thought.
Sun was needed to keep the Hierophant bound, and Li Huai was proficient with the wind element, making him perfect for temporary communication.
That left only Gu Xiaobei and Wheel of Fortune to accompany her.
She would have preferred to go alone.
But she knew the others wouldn't agree to that.
With Lan Qingyou taking charge, the slightly panicked group stabilized. Gu Xiaobei immediately handed over half of her healing potions, mana potions, and attribute potions before following Lan Qingyou and Wheel of Fortune into the cabin.
Before leaving, Lan Qingyou left thirty golems behind to protect the two on deck.
After all, with the wounded and the madman, having only two people on the deck felt a bit insufficient.
The interior of the World Tree Boat wasn't pitch black like the area outside the copper doors.
The moment the three of them entered, the magic lanterns hanging in the cabin lit up like motion-sensor lights, illuminating the entire space.
This gave Gu Xiaobei a start.
“Light is good, but why does this feel even creepier than that dark platform cabin from before?”
Clutching her spatula, Gu Xiaobei muttered as she ducked her head and walked cautiously behind the pink infantry.
“It’s probably just your nerves, especially after what happened with the Hierophant,”
Wheel of Fortune comforted her from behind.
Sometimes, Gu Xiaobei’s reactions were extremes.
When fighting monsters, she was bold enough to crack anyone’s skull open to ‘wake them up.’
But when faced with something unseen or intangible, she reverted to being a delicate, timid girl.
Was this how girls were supposed to be?
The twenty-year-old witch, who had spent several years in a hospital bed and was hardly a ‘normal’ girl herself, glanced at Gu Xiaobei and wondered.
She probably couldn't pull off such a transition even if she tried.
Her own personality was too stubborn; she preferred being direct.
The three moved quickly.
Under Lan Qingyou’s direction, the pink infantry searched the rooms one by one, but they found nothing.
“There’s nothing here. Boss Lan, do you think the monster might be in the sea?”
After searching two floors of cabins, Gu Xiaobei’s courage had gradually returned to its usual level.
“If it’s not inside the ship, then it’s most likely in the sea,”
Lan Qingyou replied calmly. She then gestured for the pink infantry to push open the door to the final room: the captain’s quarters.
Rate on N.U.
