Sam stayed over four hours inside the forest. It is such a large patch and when he made it out, it is already deep into the afternoon. In a few hours the sun would set and he can looked at the mountain directly from this point.
He kept track of Gran who is actually quite skilled in sneaking around the forest. Even though, Sam left all these extra undead creatures, he was unable to feel that he is going to win. It is as if he was given the lead intentionally and he couldn't shake that feeling off at all.
After a few dozen meters of the forest, Sam saw the next obstacle. It is a large valley. It is so wide and deep that he is sure that he wouldn't be able to leap to the other side in a single jump and even his tricks might not be able to cross it.
In fact, even the spatial blink wouldn't be possible. It is almost two to three hundred meters wide. It is as if planet was seperated into two.
As for diving into the valley and crossing it before climbing from otherside. Sam is even more reluctant as the valley is too deep that he couldn't see any trace of the end.
And he could hear the loud roars of the beasts.
But when he turned around, he could see Gran nearing him.
After some thought, he took a deep breath and jumped into the valley.
After a few seconds of Sam dropping down, Gran arrived and she had a smirk on her face.
She stood at the edge of the valley and started swallowing various pills that are mostly used for energy recovery. But instead of recovering her energy, he is channeling all the energy that came out of the pill and compressed it.
Her plan is to use all this excess energy and use a spatial blink to cross the valley in a single step.
There is a reason why Sam jumped into the valley. Even if he can use the spatial blink by borrowing extra energy, his body wouldn't be able to sustain it. But she doesn't have any problem with that. Because even though she suppressed her cultivation, her body has already experienced changed and evolved according to her original cultivation level.
She could easily bear all the energy.
There is no true fairness after all. As she channeled the energy and took more and more pills, suddenly she sensed something from the valley.
She looked down and noticed a large tree branch extending to the other side of the valley. The tree branch is so wide and large that it is extending for three hundred meters directly. This is something unbelievable for Gran.
The more shocking thing is Sam sitting on the branch.
When Sam leapt into the valley, he came across this large branch that is growing on the side of the cliff. He caught a hold of it and tested it for its strength for a few minutes and decided to take his approach. He is also taking a lot of potions and pills, but instead of compressing it, he directly channeled the energy to the tree branch and let it grow wildly.
Gran really wanted to punch Sam in the face. This is already god knows what element he showed to her this day.
She thought she was being unfair to him with this spatial blink technique. But she didn't feel like that anymore.
She stopped channeling the energy and used the spatial blink and landed on middle of that large branch as she ran on it following Sam.
Sam tried to create some obstacles to her on the branch, but she dodged them easily.
After some time he gave up and focused on leaving the place.
And he did exactly that. He managed to cross the valley and he threw a large container of bio fuel and set the tree branch on fire as he ran away swiftly.
This tree branch trick gave him time to recover his energy and heal some wounds and he managed to run with a new found vigor.
Gran who is now running on a burning branch tried to cross it and when she noticed that it is burning too vigorously, she couldn't help but put her own energy conservation aside and use blink once again as she crossed the valley.
As she followed Sam, he shifted from shadow elemental fusion to water elemental fusion as he jumped into a calm stream and swiftly appeard on the otherside.
For some reason, there are no golems or meteor strikes in the area and there is a plain field that is leading directly to the foot of the mountain.
Sam turned around to look for Gran who is catching upto him swiftly.
But as he moved forward, he saw that there are some new meteors that are falling down. These didn't look that different from the normal meteors. Rather they are quite similar to golems and others. But the only difference is that they are extremely orderly.
All this while, when the meteors are crashing down, they also crashed each other because of the trajectories. But the current meteors are completely orderly as if they already have a flight path designed.
Sam halted in his tracks and looked at the meteors that fell on the open plain field. He was surprised by what he saw next. Some weird creatures started popping up from within the meteor strikes.
They looked like humanoid creatures with the skull that shaped like a giant praying mantis.
They have pale skin with different hues.
They have no lips and only circular holes for mouths and a large white tongue came out of it and shot itself into the ground as they sucked energy out of it and an energy barrier is being formed around them.
When Sam looked at them, he felt the same vibe as he did when he faced the sea folks. But these creatures looked completely different.
He trusted his instinct and took out the executioner sword as he moved forward. From his energy vision he could sense that they are not exactly strong. They are barely in intial stage of Initiation of Astral Plane.
He could take all of them on.
As he moved forward, the nearest creature stopped its actions and ran towards Sam while screaming in anger.
Sam dodged its attack and slashed his sword at it. The sword barely left a slash on the side of its abdomen, but the poisonous corrosion immediately started spreading all over it.
This is clearly something similar to seafolk.
Sam landed another slash and moved forward. These creatures occupied the whole field and there is no other way. At least, they are weak and there are no meteor strikes that he has to worry about. So, he slashed his way through the crowd.
By now, Gran already caught up and started attacking these creatures, she seemed to be extremely familiar with this as she used throwing knives to deal with each of these things instantly.
Both of them are almost back on an even playing field with Sam only having a lead of few dozen meters.
The battle went on and on and these creatures kept on coming forward.
After two hours, both of them finally managed to move to the other side after killing all the creatures and by now both of them are back tos square one with no lead whatsoever as they panted and moved towards the foot of the mountain.
Sam couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. As Gran is familiar with these creatures, she managed to kill them in one shot without any waste of time, but he needed some time to get used to it and he was unable to keep the lead he created with so much struggle.
Currently, they are standing at the foot of the mountain as the sun slowly began to set while they took medicines to recover their energies.
It is almost as if they are starting a different race altogether.
After a few minutes of recovery, Gran started channeling her energy. Sam sensed the energy and felt extremely familiar with it.
He couldn't help but smile.
Because, she is using a merge of spatial energy and shadow energy. But the feeling he is getting from it is a bit different.
He couldn't put a finger on where. So, he used energy vision to take a look as she channeled her energy and prepared to move.
After looking at her closely, he finally found a bit of difference.
It is the method they tried to merge their energies.
Sam channeled both elemental energies together to merge and create fusion. To be precise he is using two partial fusions at the same time at a perfect balance and ration.
But Gran took a completely different approach. When he saw this, he felt like he was an idiot to not to have tried that method before as it is more straightforward.
