Before Arthur climbed up the ledge, he happened to glance down. The sea of flowers had already swamped the platform he was standing on earlier. He was on a time crunch and no time to waste. He needed to get this over with as soon as possible if he did not want to end up drowning in the sea of flowers.
This meant that Arthur had no time for taunt or any of those song and dance with the flower monsters. As their attention was pulled towards Arthur, he blasted one of them directly with a shot of vocal materialization.
The poor creature did not even see it coming. Before it knew what was happening, it was picked off by a wall of force and sent flying backwards. The creature was unfortunate enough to stand with its back facing the drop.
It did not have time to grab hold of anything before it was sent careening off the platform and down into the sea of flowers.
The limbs flailed as it tumbled through the wind, knocking into the peach blossoms that filled up the sky. It struggled for survival but it was to no avail. It dropped into the sea without causing a ripple, joining its brethren from before, becoming part of the sea's nutrients.
One down, one more to go.
Arthur turned to face the other remaining flower monster. Arthur assumed the monster would be fazed somewhat seeing his brethren being so brutally murdered but that did not even seem to register in the creature's mind... In fact, Arthur doubted they even had one.
The flower monsters seemed to be made up of the pure primitive instinct of aggression and nothing else. They did not appear to even possess any semblance of intelligence.
The monster charged blindly forward at Arthur, the wooden club in its hand waving. There was such simplicity to its attack that Arthur did not face any trouble evading it.
The club swung for Arthur's head and the young man saw it coming from miles away. All he needed to do was duck and that was what he did.
Since Arthur's face was facing downwards, he could not have blasted the monster with vocal materialization the conventional way. He channeled the [Voice Throwing] technique and created the source of the voice right underneath the monster.
He unleashed the power and the creature flew right into the air like he was shot upwards by a catapult. In a morbid type of way, it was quite humorous watching the creature flailing helplessly around in the air.
Seconds later, it had unfortunate reunion with the ground. The hard wooden branch provided no cushion for its landing.
It shattered into the pieces and something black leaked out from its broken husk. Arthur went to get a closer look and the liquid belied the creature's real identity. It was ink.
The liquid that was as black as onyx, leaked through the wooden bark, corroding everything that it touched.
After making sure there was no other monsters just hiding around the corner. Arthur went to inspect the poor bird that was trapped inside the tree hole.
Earlier, Arthur thought the bird was just stuck but when he got a closer look, he realized the bird was actually imprisoned. There were branches that grew over the front of the hole, forming a natural row of prison bars, trapping the bird inside it.
Even though Arthur was standing close to the bird's prison, the young man was unable to tell the species of bird that it was. There was something different about this creature compared to the rest of the stuff he had seen so far.
It was hard to describe but the bird seemed to have a deeper line around its frame. If all the things in this world had the appearance of being colored once, then the bird looked like it had been colored twice. There was an intensity about it that could not be missed.
This confused Arthur because he had not come across something like this before. However, this also tipped Arthur off about the importance of the bird. It would not have this type of appearance if it was just something ordinary. Perhaps it would be able to help Arthur escape this painted world.
Furthermore, Arthur saw no harm in aiding the bird's release. Even if it might not be Arthur's escape ticket, it could be a valuable ally.
On the bird's part, when it saw Arthur get closer, it cried desperately for help. Arthur pitied the thing, having its seemingly large body holed up in a space that small.
He went to help it. The wooden branches that barred the space off were sturdier than he imagined. He knew the tree bark was tough from his experiment earlier but he did not expect the smaller branches to be equally sturdy. Looks like the entire tree, be it the large trunk or the smallest branch shared the same quality.
Even though he knew it probably would not have worked, Arthur took out the dagger and tried to saw the branches off. As he expected, it barely left a notch on the wood. There was no way it would have worked.
After Arthur had given up on that and put the dagger away, the other option was to use the vocal materialization to blast the wooden branches right off.
Since the Voice Magic was able to harm the flower monster, perhaps that could be the tree's weakness as well? Only magic could harm magic type of situation?
However, in the end, Arthur decided against it. The bird was too close to the bars for him to attempt something like that. It would have been too dangerous. Arthur might accidentally end up hurting the poor creature. That was not his intention, he was going to save the bird not to harm it.
Arthur stood around the area, with the bird chirping and the field of flowers still climbing, wondering what he should do...
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