Chapter 522 - Playing in the mud

The Ochiarans looked strange, like three meters tall, dried up humans with dark blue skin. They wore primitive clothing made of woven plant fibers decorated with sheets of elastic tree bark, and wielded all sorts of primitive-looking weapons of sticks and stones.

They appeared around the group one by one, they did not walk, only teleporting from one point to another.

Disturbingly, some of them were smaller with a slightly bigger head. ‘The children’, as Ihuarah had called them.

Without hesitation, Pareth was first to engage, wielding a spear, he stabbed at the large head of one of the short Ochiarans, but it teleported away. Pareth’s spear of light extended, and it pierced the torso of another Ochiaran standing further away, who was late to react to the surprise attack. Pareth pulled on his spear, bringing the blue creature close, and, covering his fist with raw mana, punched its disturbing face, bursting the Ochiaran’s skull open like an overripe fruit.

The creature fell, limp, its body turning into a pile of sloshing wet mud.

Woah even the clothes are actually made of dirt.

‘You have defeated [Damned Ochiaran - lv. 212]’

‘Do not be fooled, they are not people,’ Ihuarah had warned the group before entering the jungle.

Ochiarans were a type of ghost creature, but they lived in huts, and mimicked a primitive tribal society, going as far as making grotesque facsimile bodies out of dirt. All to gain a psychological advantage over their main prey: anyone with a soul.

As living souls without a body, Ochiarans were thus undead creatures, which meant that they would hesitate to attack Sofia, due to [Runeforged Overlord]’s effects, but also that Pareth’s attacks dealt quadrupled damage to them.

Sofia was of half a mind to try the old version of [Lead the dead] imbued in her mithrium ring, but the range was much shorter than the actually skill, and it would hardly work on the real threats over level 250, so she had just lent it to Cinthia as a means to defend herself if needed.

The skull choir’s destroyer form could not really harm the ghosts, so their purpose was to clear out the jungle plants and bushes near the obelisk as the group fought, to give them a clear view of the battlefield. Bookie summoned the giant Pearled snake, and the rest of the group stood near the obelisk as Pareth, the snake, the fairy and hundred of Sunless drones culled the hordes of Ochiarans teleporting in, the graveyard skeletons grabbing the creatures’ ankles and preventing them from teleporting away.

The Ochiarans mainly attacked by way of spiritual bursts, invisible to the naked eye in the physical plane, but Ihuarah expertly blocked them all with his flying shields of woven mana. He could expertly and effortlessly predict the Ochiarans’ attack patterns, a testament to how long he had spent fighting them while Sofia had been taking a year off to be a teacher.

After a few minutes of continued assault, and hundreds of Ochiarans dead, the surroundings of the Obelisk was entirely covered in wet mud, and the attack suddenly stopped.

Thanks to Ihuarah’s briefing, everyone knew what was coming, but he reminded them of it either way.

“The chief is on his way, hold fast, only stop when we have the soul stone,” he announced, getting his shields back into position around the group.

The mud piles left on the jungle ground started gathering together as if attracted by an invisible force, and in just a few seconds, took the form of a giant Ochiaran, its head hidden in the canopy of leaves above. Its body squished together to walk through the trees and come to the group.

Sofia recalled her skeletons, putting them all, even Pareth, in her bone storage. She also dismissed the choir. The reason was simple, they were useless against the chief, whose attacks could dislodge the soul. It was a painful but temporary setback for a regular person, but more akin to a forceful unsummoning for a skeleton or Everelle’s Sunless. Still, she kept the graveyard skeletons around, having one of them come grab her ankles to send her halfway into the spiritual plane.

Ihuarah stepped up to the fight, covering his body in mana, he grew in size until he was almost as tall as the Ochiaran chief, and his mana took the appearance of a ghostly bear overlapping over his black body.

The Ochiaran charged and Ihuarah met him with his bear claws. Gripping each other, the two giants started to brawl.

Everelle summoned her triplet Sunless witches, and they started bombarding the Ochiaran chief with elemental attacks along with Cinthia, who threw handfuls of ghostly mana coins at the creature every time she found an opening.

Meanwhile, Sofia’s vision was in the spiritual plane. She watched the Ochiaran’s bulging, mushroom-like soul, it had links that extended far in multiple directions, and controlled the mud puppet against Ihuarah while it also prepared soul attacks.

Come and try.

When the creature launched its first attack, targeting the Sunless witches, Sofia reacted instantly. The graveyard skeleton let her go, and she jumped in front of the Sunless, negating the attack with [Heat Death] before it could reach her, another graveyard skeleton grabbing her ankle right away.

Easy.

It’s taking serious damage already.

Sofia blocked a few more attacks aimed at Everelle and Cinthia and herself, and the blue-skinned mud giant finally tumbled. Ihuarah pounced, and, while it maintained the creature on the ground, channeled a strange skill. Mana tendrils grabbed onto the Ochiaran’s soul, pumping it full of mana until it burst.

With her vision of the spiritual realm, Sofia saw one of the links connected with the Ochiaran chief’s soul break to absorb the shock. Its body returned to mud, before it reformed on another side of the obelisk. Ihuarah once again charged at the giant, holding it back with his bear form, and the same fight played out a second time in an almost identical manner.

Finally, when all the soul links connected to the Ochiaran chief were down, Sofia was able to see a bright dot of light forming inside of his spirit-body. She brought the fairy out of the bone storage.

Get it.

The fairy disappeared for a second, her departure causing a loud bang, and she came back with mud-stained bones, presenting Sofia with an off-white stone the size of a fist.

‘You have defeated [Turgescent Soul Ochiaran - lv. 293]’

The giant of mud crumbled one last time, the remnants of his body splattering on the jungle ground.

Cinthia wiped the sweat off of her brows, “Finally over!”

She’s almost out of mana. But she went up a level, also. Nice.

“A brilliant execution,” Ihuarah exclaimed as he shrunk back to his regular size and started walking back up to the obelisk. “These used to be a mighty struggle to fend off alone, I am glad to have you ladies come along this time. Now we only need insert the soul-stone into Sorrow’s first obelisk.”

Quickly finding a hole near the obelisk’s base, Sofia inserted the Ochiaran’s soul stone.

Reminds me of the second trial with the orb floor. 

The soul stone rolled into the black pillar, which started to shake. It produced an ear-piercing cry as it lifted itself from the ground, and shot up through the jungle’s canopy, leaving a hole in its wake which allowed sunlight to flood in.

Ihuarah stood in the light and held up the open locket, a beam of light descended from above, it struck the locket before being reflected toward another direction. The shriek of the obelisk in the sky instantly stopped the moment Ihuarah closed the locket and the beam of light disappeared.

“That is one done, three more to go,” Ihuarah announced as he tied the locket around his neck.

“We follow the light?” Everelle asked.

“Indeed.”

“How cliché. This is really just like a secret quest. Exciting!” she enthusiastically continued, before she dismissed her Sunless witches homunculi with a pat on the head each, “Good job girls, I’ll call you back for the next one.” 

“Are there stronger Ochiarans?” Sofia asked, curious since she felt that she could easily handle multiple of these Turgescent soul ones by herself if needed.

“Some should be up to level 380, or around there, probably none at 400,” Ihuarah answered, himself uncertain, “They are best avoided, but should we encounter one, it might actually be safer for three of us to flee and for you or I to handle it alone,” he finally concluded.

“That is not the answer I expected,” Sofia said.

“Ahahah. But it is undoubtedly the best course of action. These higher Ochiarans should be able to use our souls as a means to attack. While it is hard to forcibly have one’s soul self-harm even under direct mind control, using someone’s soul to harm their allies is not. These ladies would be particularly vulnerable, as they lack proper soul protection skills as of yet.”

Everelle shook her head and started walking in the direction the light beam had shown. “Seriously Iwa you need to stop calling me a lady, it just feels weird. Especially when I look like this…” She sighed as she walked away.

Ihuarah was lost for words, and Pareth appeared near him, his skeletal hand giving the shade a pat on the shoulder.