Sam just waited as he watched the battles, the six leaders split up from the common rafts and jumped to the newly thrown rafts as they rode on them further into the lake. They started attacking the slimes that are on their way as they made their way.
Due to the constant battle, the blinding light has reduced to a mere faint glow and they can see the things on the lake.
There is a region of the lake on which there are a lot of flowers all bloomed and ready to be plucked.
In the middle of all these flowers, there is a large lotus as big as a large bucket glowing with red and golden patterns all over.
Around it, there are many small flowers that could grow in the lava along with some vines that could be seen here and there.
Sam stood at the edge of the lake as he looked at the scene and the team leaders slowly reached the region where the vegetation is growing.
The remaining pre-transcendent stage cultivators of every team are in charge of collecting the Lava slime bodies and the other flowers that are in different areas of the lake.
They are all snatching the resources and it didn't take long before some fights broke out between different teams. They are not the main members though, it is the extra members they hired at the lake.
Sam watched all of this casually. Except for the Pre-transcendent stage cultivators, there are barely any Nascent stage cultivators on the lake.
The few Nascent stage cultivators that are here are the extra members recruited. As for the Nascent stage members who originally belongs to the team didn't come near the lake. They are afraid that they would be killed here and since all of them are from prominent families, they love their lives too much to take any risk.
And Lava slime is also a tricky beast to handle though. Their powers are not strong, their attacks can almost be considered weak among the Pre-transcendent stage beasts.
Their attacks are at the Nascent stage only and as for the defense that is the trickiest one, particularly in this Lava.
They can blend in and the attack that landed on any part of the body other than the mouth and the core are useless as they wouldn't even hurt the beast.
If they can land some clean hits, even a Late-stage Nascent can kill an Initial stage Pre-transcendent stage beast. If they cannot, even Pre-transcendent stage cultivators cannot kill a Nascent stage beast.
At this moment, Sam is watching the effects of this. The Lava slimes are all attacking, but they are not looking to directly hurt them. They are just trying to make sure that they don't have anywhere to dodge and lose balance so that they would fall in the Lava.
Once they are inside, it is their territory. They will get some good nutrition.
Many Pre-transcendent stage cultivators are falling and they are trying their best of emerging back on the rafts.
Some who managed to do that lost their legs or hands in the process. It would be hard for them to recover too and that is if they have any chance of recovering.
Since they became burdens and there is not much comradery, they are being thrown back into the lake as bait so that the rest of them could have some time.
In the whole harvesting team, only a few people have safety and they are the archers that are on the bank of the lake.
Since the people on the lake are distracting the beasts, the archers are trying their luck to hurt the beasts. And kill them by shooting their cores down.
But it is not that easy. They could at most create some breathing space for their companions on the lake.
As things are like this, the six-team leaders are close to reaching the region of the lake with the most vegetation.
But just when they were about to do it, their rafts suddenly got stuck in the place, the Lava around the rafts seemed to have a jelly-like substance as it enveloped the rafts and fixed them in the place.
The six leaders are trying their best to move, but they couldn't. At this moment, two mouths appeared before them.
They are the two Lava slime leaders and they are the two of the four that Sam is wary about. But when they appeared though, he was shocked and so did everyone else.
The aura of this beast is at the very peak of the Pre-transcendent stage and is close to breaking through the transcendent stage. But that is not the most shocking though. The two mouths are actually connected to a single body and there are two cores floating extremely near to each other.
The two Lava slimes have a single body and their power is not as simple as two powers added together.
The team leaders felt extremely strange. The mouths started throwing lava at them at an incredible rate and they have no place to dodge. When they tried to throw another raft to the side and land on it, as soon as the raft appeared the Lava Slime already used its body to grab a hold of it.
They are in quite some trouble. They are close to the cores, but they couldn't hit. The body of this creature is so thick and dense than a normal Lava slime and it is more transparent too. That is why they could see see cores hovering around the body as they kept on missing their target.
Seeing this, Sam smiled and turn around to face the two of his fellow players.
"Want to do it now or want to do it after I got the lotus?"
"You are speaking as if you can get the lotus." The fire element player scoffed.
"You are Agun right?"
"Yes."
"If you are so confident, then let us wait until I come back from the lake, if I don't come back, your mission will be easy and if I do come back with the lotus, you can fight me and take it and if I came back with anything, I will lose the game anyway.
Don't you think so?"
"Don't let him. I think it is better to hold him up here." Akhil said from the side.
"Why?" Agun asked with a frown.
"He is a tricky guy."
"If you cannot give a proper reason, then don't bother saying anything," Agun said to Akhil and then turned to Sam before saying. "I am okay with it."
Then Sam once again turned around to look at the lake with a smile.
"Are you not going in?"
"It is not time yet."
As the six leaders fought with the weird slime and finally gained some foothold and tried to beat it, one of them suddenly felt like a raft being dragged down and fell into the lava.
"Ahhhh… AHHHHH." He started screaming as he tried to get back, but before all the leaders' eyes, they could see some sort of vine coiling his legs and pulling him back into the lava, and soon there is no movement left.
The six leaders felt chilled and they noticed that some other vines are coming and they took another raft to fall back.
Only after coming back did they heave a sigh of relief as the range of vine is not too large.
Sam who is on the bank used his energy vision to see what is going on he could identify the four presences he felt the other day are all out in the open.
The six leaders stood on the safety and started fighting from a long-range. For some reason, even Lava slime with two cores is also not coming too far away from the Lotus. So they are trying their luck from the long-range. But to their dismay, they could do minimum damage.
Watching this Sam smiled and took out a breathing device and wore it. It is not a device that could cover his eyes, only the mouthpiece is there.
His body started circulating energy as he glowed with gold light. He swiftly entered the full light elemental fusion. As he entered that state, he slowly walked back a few meters, before dashing forward, and just when he was on the edge of the lake his whole body transformed into a beam of light as he kicked off the edge and launched himself.
When he reached a certain distance from the jump, he turned himself into a light beam as he shot himself to the place where the large Lava slime is present and just before the beast could react and attack the beam of light, Sam halted in mid-air and floated for a fraction of second and landed on the harbinger he took out.
The Slime and the wine were caught off guard and so were the leaders at the present. Sam didn't stop though, he took an energy cell of the water element and threw it straight into Large Lava slime. The energy fluctuations distracted the Lava slime and it didn't focus on Sam and he used his window to zoom past the beast and arrived right above the lotus.
But the vines didn't leave him though, they started launching towards him and all he can do is try to dodge them on the hoverboard. He didn't go for the lotus immediately because he knew that it wouldn't end well the vine is still here.
As he was playing like this, the energy cell in the Lava slime exploded causing it the necessary damage.
Even though it only attacked the slime body and the cores are moved as far as the slime could, the main damage happened to the mouths of the body through which the slime wanted to extract the energy cell outside.
The explosion of water element energy deep within the only tangible part of its body made it go on a mini rampage and blast the Lava everywhere and this affected the vines that are extremely close to it.
Sam didn't know where the vines are from, but he didn't care. He used this opportunity to take out a smoke grenade full of hydra poison vapors and blasted it on the vines near him.
At this moment, unless he decided to use a large energy cell blast he has no hope of ending these creatures as they are deep within the lake. The lava is a great obstruction. But he didn't need to kill them, that is why as he used the poison bomb on the remaining meager amount of vines, he dove deep and tried to pluck the lotus.
But it is quite tough and didn't come easily.
He used his eye technique to see if there is any obstruction and when found the stem of the lotus connected to the root, he gritted his teeth and transformed the light fusion to the fire fusion, and dove into the lake before he started breaking the thick stem. After some futile attempts and the increasing pressure of Lava, he placed his arm on the stem and disintegrated it bit by bit and he pulled the lotus to the divine dimension as he emerged to the surface.
But he didn't have time to be delighted as he was surrounded by the angry vines and all coming for him. They didn't even care about the damage the rampaging Lava slime is doing to them, they just wanted to deal with him to get the lotus back.