Chapter 25: The Black Statue

“It’s that ape. It’s very powerful and agile. With my sister and my magic level, we can’t even fight it.”

Shirley noticed the giant white ape. It had the strongest magic wave among the monsters.

“I think the two behind are swordsmen. Can’t they handle this ape?”

Wendy glanced behind and said in a low voice, “The two of them can’t catch up with the ape at all. The ape even chased after them and hit them with rocks.”

Shirley laughed. “It seems that the giant ape is really agile. Let me see if I can restrict its movements.”

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“Do both of you know water spells? A basic one is enough.”

One could learn all kinds of magic in this world, but their magic level would be very low.

Judy shot a look at the sky. “It happens to be cloudy now. It should be pretty easy to summon some rain. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to freeze the ape. As long as I can control it for a while, I can release other spells to control it for a long time.”

“The freezing spell is the fastest, but you need a water spell to work together. Otherwise, it’ll take a long while to activate.”

If Shirley had awakened an ice spell, the magic she learned would have been different.

“I haven’t learned an ice spell, so I’ll leave it to you to freeze the ape. Wendy and I will summon the rain, but the rain that we can summon probably won’t be too heavy.”

Shirley nodded and responded, “It doesn’t matter as long as you can make the ape’s body wet. This way, you can cast the freezing spell successfully before the ape can react.”

Judy looked at the distance and asked, “Is the distance enough for you to cast the spell?”

“Don’t worry, it’s definitely enough.”

With that, Judy and Wendy began to cast the spell.

Dennis smiled and said, “Since you can deal with the giant ape, we’ll handle the other monsters.”

After Judy cast the spell, a drizzle appeared in front of the valley. In order to successfully freeze the giant ape, Shirley deliberately waited for a while until the giant ape was wet before she cast the spell.

During the process, the tip of her magic staff lit up with a silvery-white light. The staff then pointed at the ape.

The ape was targeted, and it began to freeze. Its body was covered in ice within two seconds.

Shirley immediately rushed forward and cast another spell. The wood spell resulted in entanglement.

The freezing spell could only control the ape for a few seconds, but the entanglement was different. It would take the ape some time to break free from the vines.

Judy and Wendy had already started casting their attack spells while Shirley cast the entanglement spell.

However, their spells did not work well on the ape. Instead, they aroused its ferocity.

Shirley’s huge fireball shot out following their spells. With a loud explosion, the giant ape fell to the ground.

The fireball could destroy a corpse earlier, yet it did not have the same effect on the giant ape now. The ape’s defense was still much higher than that of a human.

Shirley turned to the three people, who were shocked, and made a victory gesture. “The giant ape is settled. We can go and soak in the spiritual spring now.”

All of them looked delighted, but no one noticed that there was a hint of grimness in Roy’s eyes.

Shirley pulled Pan Liang up from the ground and carried him on her back. Then, she followed the rest into the valley.

The two swordsmen led the way. Their journey was smooth without the giant ape’s obstruction.

When they reached the valley, they saw a small pond of a few square meters. It was more than enough for them to soak in.

The four mercenaries summoned their familiars one after another. None of their familiars were humanoid.

Humanoid familiars usually only appeared above A-rank. The rest were usually in beast form.

Even if there were occasionally humanoid familiars below A-rank, they had extremely poor talent.

Shirley placed Pan Liang beside the spiritual spring. She was hesitating if she should wake him up and soak in the spring with him.

Since the others had summoned their familiars, she did not have any scruples anymore.

“Pan Liang, quickly get up. Come and soak in the spring with me. We can level up.”

Pan Liang slapped her hand away and turned his body to face the spring. After that, he remained motionless.

“Hmph, you don’t even want this kind of opportunity to level up without having to work hard. You’re really pissing me off.”

Roy snorted and thought to himself. ‘This is expected of a useless familiar. I haven’t heard of anyone who can summon a talented humanoid familiar.’

He ignored the others and directly jumped into the spring with his wolf-like familiar.

Seeing Roy jump into the spring, Wendy shouted, “Ah, Brother Roy, wait for me.” With that, she jumped in as well.”

Without further ado, the rest of them jumped into the spring to absorb the energy in the spring.

Of course, they were incomparable to Shirley. Among them, Shirley absorbed the energy from the spiritual spring at the fastest speed.

Roy glanced at Shirley and secretly cursed, “Sure enough, she has the highest talent. She absorbed the energy so quickly. It seems that I can’t hide anymore. If this continues, I won’t be able to compete with her.”

He took out a black statue from his arms and poured some magic power into it. A dark light enveloped him, and consequently, the speed of his energy absorption instantly increased.

At this time, his energy absorption was even faster than Shirley’s.

Upon noticing that, other mercenaries opened their eyes to see what was going on.

They saw the black statue in Roy’s hands. They did not know what this statue was, but Dennis did.

Dennis thundered, “Roy, you actually have something to do with a cult.”

Roy said with a laugh, “Dennis, don’t be so agitated. I just got this statue by chance. It has nothing to do with a cult.”

With that, Dennis had no reason to get mad. Even so, he was no fool. He knew very well what this statue represented.

Despite not knowing what this statue represented, Shirley knew what a cult was.

Judy and Wendy looked at Roy differently.

“Roy, tell me honestly whether you have anything to do with a cult.”

In the face of Judy’s question, Roy sneered and said, “You said that I’m related to the cult, but do you have any evidence? If you’re making this claim solely based on this statue, you’ve gone a bit too far.”

At the sight of Roy’s disappointed expression, Dennis said, “Roy, we’ve been teammates for so long. We won’t do anything to you. Put away the statue, and we’ll part ways in the future.”