Sam observed as the clone formed behind his shadow undead.
He slowly descended with the help of wind element as he looked at this and right when he was about to drop, he activated wind elemental fusion and let his wings out before canceling the fusion form.
He didn’t understand what exactly this skill is, but one thing he knew is that this woman is using the vegetation to create clones of herself and all the vegetation seemed to obey her commands.
Her consciousness is completely interlinked to the forest.
This is a terrifying ability to take in the current setting and to his dismay the other party is way too stronger than him.
If they at least of equal strength, Sam would have just dared to defend and investigate a bit more because for that he needs to be in contact with the ground and in turn forest.
But right now, that is nothing short of suicidal.
Luckily, Sam doesn’t have to kill her right now. He has an option of just blocking her until the time set is over. He just hoped that it is not too long as he hovered in the air.
The woman meanwhile looked at Sam flying in the air and was stunned.
“You are a clever little ferret aren’t you? But still I need to kill you. Let’s see how long you can keep this up.”
As she muttered, a large tree started growing in a spot not too far away from Sam.
As he noticed far away from him a lot of vegetation had died away. He doesn’t even need his energy vision to know that its vitality of it is being used to grow this tree.
This kind of reminded him of one of Noah’s abilities.
He is a bit delighted now.
Because the tree that grew is almost matching his current altitude and because of barrier restriction, he cannot move that much away from his current spot.
But the trees cannot be grown in more numbers. Because even if the forest is vast it is still finite and if this woman grew more trees like this to fight with him, then her greatest weapon in the competition, being able to spy and notice every single one within the territory easily, will be gone.
There is no way she would do that just to gain one meager kill point that comes from killing Sam.
But he still has to be cautious.
As he looked at the large tree, he noticed that it started growing some cylindrical barrels that looked like cannons and soon, the large cannon started shooting fruits into the air.
The fruits exploded as soon as they reached a certain distance and Sam noticed that it is some kind of corrosive poison.
He smiled as he looked at it.
Any poison is inferior to him. In fact, this poison is kind of beneficial to him.
Not only did he actively absorb it, but he also activated partial fire elemental fusion.
Golden flames surrounded him and with every flap of his wings, the flames raged. The tree caught on fire pretty quickly and the woman started healing the tree with the vitality from the forest.
Meanwhile, the cannon started shooting other kids of fruits too. Apart from the poison, there are some kind of weird wood puppets that are formed from vines and leaves that looked like bees.
They came out of the fruits and they attacked Sam from all sides.
Sam moved in the sky fluidly as he attacked these bees with his fireballs.
Not only did he attack them, he set them on fire and then threw them into the forest.
Different parts of the forest started burning with golden flames.
The woman or her clone that Sam is looking at frowned as she saw this.
Even though she is a Divine Plane cultivator, flame attacks on the forest are not something she could stop.
After all, she is using the forest as her tool, only if it is reinforced by her Divine energy could the flames be completely ineffective and even she doesn’t have that much Divine energy.
As she was thinking of ways to deal with Sam, he suddenly took out his bow and arrow, he flew away from the tree and aimed at a certain point before shooting it.
The arrow lodged into a person who is in the middle of a fight and exploded with the golden flames.
He killed a target.
When the woman noticed this, she is infuriated.
She is stronger than Sam by a far margin and not only was she unable to kill Sam right now, he is even killing his own targets leisurely.
She wanted to deal with him at all costs, but as Sam saw that there are changes happening in the tree, he shifted the partial fusion from the flame to light and disappeared from there, he reappeared on a different spot far away where his new target is actually located.
He once again used his bow and arrow to shoot his target from the sky.
The woman was dumbfounded. If she used some of her hidden cards, she could handle Sam, but the problem is the cost-to-benefit ratio didn’t seem that effective.
She immediately retreated and didn’t bother following Sam. She gave up on him and rested to recover her energy.
Meanwhile, Sam didn’t come back down for a while. Instead, he tried to scout for the players and gave the information to them.
This time it is the information about the woman.
The players became alert and made preparations immediately.
The time slowly passed and Sam didn’t face many problems. When that woman that previously targeted him became his target, he directly ignored the challenge.
He might be able to burn the whole forest down to force her out. But while he is burning the forest, sooner or later she will notice and start fighting him back.
Things wouldn’t be as simple anymore if that really happened.
He just waited his time out and gave up on the target. Even if he lost a point it is not that much of a big deal.
Time passed slowly and Sam didn’t get back down on the ground for the rest of the competition. Even if he became an open target in the sky, it is still better than walking around in a trap. The whole forest is a trap right now and he is not used to having his surroundings so out of control.
So, he just decided to fly everywhere until the competition came to an end.
And after a few hours, the competition indeed came to an end. The ten people who are left in the forest are revealed.
The first three spots are occupied by three Divine Plane cultivators and one of them is the woman, Sam encountered. The remaining seven are the players.
Sam didn’t even bother with what rank he had. He just landed on the ground and looked around trying to figure a way out. But before he could do that, he already felt some spatial energy enveloping him.
He immediately thought of using his own spatial energy, but it didn’t work. He even thought of using the Dimensional drifter, but he couldn’t access it.
Soon, he along with the remaining people within the forest disappeared and they were transferred to a stage.
Sam looked around and saw an image he just recently become familiar with. The faction masters of the Seven Star faction are all staring at him.
The rest of the faction members are emanating killing intent directed at Sam and the other players.
The three Divine Plane cultivators looked at this reaction and frowned.
It is pretty normal to get these looks after one of the competitions. But it wouldn’t be from all the seven factions because at least one of the factions would be a big winner with more than one person in the top ten.
That kind of offsets some of the major losses that they might have suffered. But to think all seven factions are pissed, they couldn’t wrap their head around it.
And then they understood another thing, their respective faction members are not there and all seven players are completely unknown parties to them.
Sam and the players felt the auras of all these people locked onto them.
They are in very deep danger. Sam’s thoughts ran wildly. No matter how much he tried he couldn’t access his own dimensional drifter. He could only pick up some weapons. He couldn’t bring out the beasts either.
He looked at the rest of the players. All of them exchanged a glance.
“Who are you guys? From the looks of it, you all definitely know each other. Where did you come from? Who asked you to interfere in our competition.”
Sam didn’t answer. He just stayed silent and looked around. He is trying to get as much information about the surroundings as possible.
At that moment, a voice sounded in all of the players’ minds.
“Now the next phase of the final task. Since you all successfully made it out of the forest, now try to make it out of the current situation and reach the place that is imprinted in your minds.”
Sam and the other players got a location in their heads. They could sense in which direction they have to move, even though they didn’t know this place.
