(Heartfelt thanks to 'Icebound Thunder Dragon', 'Zi Xiang Ye', 'Kaede no Chōrei', 'Pokémon', 'Shao Feng Ye', 'Qing Yuan Liu Li', 'Youcai Luobo', and 'Yume no Shouyou' for their rewards!)
Meanwhile, while Shokuhou Misaki's group heading for the Ai Lu Empire and Kotori's group heading for the Baruba Empire each dealt with the Beast Kings leading the Magical Beast Legion, the girls heading for the Phil Empire—Hinagiku, Mikoto, Ikaros, Yekusaya, and Yuzuru—ran into an enormous problem.
If the Sparlier World were laid out as a map, then with the Giant Beast Forest at its center, the Ai Lu Empire lay to the southwest, the Baruba Empire to the north, and the Phil Empire to the southeast. The Three Great Empires surrounded the Giant Beast Forest in a triangular formation.
Since the southeast had always been a relatively warm region and received more rainfall than the other two empires, the environment of the Phil Empire, located in the southeast, was not as harsh as that of the Baruba Empire. It was even better than the Ai Lu Empire's.
A day after the girls split into three groups at Supply Town and set off for the empires where the Beast Kings they needed to deal with were located—on the same day that Kotori and the other spirit girls dealt with Xie Ming, who had attacked the Baruba Empire—Hinagiku, Mikoto, Ikaros, Yekusaya, and Yuzuru, who had entered the Phil Empire, still had not reached the Phil Empire's Royal City!
The reason was simple enough.
They could not fly!
That was right!
They could not fly!
Ever since entering the Phil Empire's borders, Hinagiku, Mikoto, Ikaros, Yekusaya, Yuzuru, and the others had discovered that whenever they tried to fly into the sky, an incredibly heavy pressure descended from above, forcing anyone more than five meters