Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 693

Chapter 693: Chapter 693 - Taming the Fifth Year - Optional Paths - 2

The group leader emerged first onto the leaves.

It was an immediate relief.

The air was fresher here, untainted by the musty smell of old silk and spider territory. Visibility much better with actual sight lines extending beyond arm’s reach. And they could move more freely without worrying about turning down the wrong tunnel, about getting lost deeper in a maze with no exit.

But he stopped, surprised by what he saw rather than the expected normal canopy.

The leaves were enormous and carpeted the ceiling almost perfectly.

"Now we just need to find Patinder," the leader said, scanning the area for any sign of movement or disturbance that might indicate another team’s passage.

The canopy of these trees was like giant palm trees, but their leaves were enormous and flat, like some aquatic plants expanded to impossible scale. They created something like a flat green floor remarkably regular in surface, with few gaps between one leaf and another that missed little sunlight.

Natural platforms...

It was almost like walking on a spongy green floor that shouldn’t exist at this height.

"This is... strange," one of his companions commented, stepping cautiously onto the nearest leaf, testing its weight-bearing capacity before committing fully.

"But better than those damn tunnels," the leader responded, venturing farther out with growing confidence.

"Much better," another commented enthusiastically, jumping from leaf to leaf with the agility his feline beast provided.

The air above the leaves was filled with black clouds that flickered with intermittent light.

Fireflies.

Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, floating orderly in the same spot almost covering the sky. Their lights created a hypnotic spectacle of brilliant greens and yellows that pulsed in the air like fallen stars that had somehow reversed gravity, beauty that seemed out of place in what now seemed wrongly named spider territory.

"They’re beautiful," someone murmured, momentarily distracted from their mission by the unexpected display.

"They’re just small iron rank insects," the leader dismissed the observation, focusing on the navigation of the place rather than its aesthetics. "Ignore them and let’s continue."

They began moving faster, jumping from leaf to leaf with growing confidence in the strange surface.

One of them stopped to look down, wanting to see if he could detect anything in the tunnels below, if Ren’s group was visible through gaps in the silk. Bracing his hand on a leaf to stabilize himself while leaning forward for a better view.

The attack came from below the leaf.

Dozens of long legs like spears pierced the leaf in a perfect spiral pattern, seeking whatever had been "resting" on the surface and triggered the response.

The student screamed, jerking back just in time to avoid the spear-legs piercing through him. The "lances" retracted as quickly as they’d appeared, and the leaf closed the holes made in it as if it had shape memory, the full leaf was made of small triangular sections and those where the legs had penetrated were sticking back together seamlessly.

"What was that?" he gasped, staring at the leaf with renewed horror, heart pounding so hard it hurt.

As if in response to his question, something moved visibly just below the surface.

A segmented body, long and sinuous, with countless articulated legs that ended in sharpened points designed for piercing rather than walking.

And there were more under the leaves.

Many more beneath each platform they’d thought was safe ground.

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