After dark, the sentry tower suddenly changed.
Sela At first I thought it was the rustling of the wind through the reeds.
But after a while, Charms, the defense set up by Lin Ze, suddenly began to warn the two of them.
"Did you hear that?" Lin Ze leaned against the window, holding the wand in his hand.
"I'm not deaf." Sela squatted in the corner opposite him, with his scimitar resting across his knees.
"There's something under this tower."
"And there's more than one."
Lin Ze used Lumos to sweep around the outside of the tower.
On the ground of the tower base, densely packed small gray-white things were crawling over from the direction of the swamp. They were about as big as a human head, round and covered with wet mucus.
They climbed to the base of the tower and stopped, forming a circle and clinging to the stone wall.
"What are these?" Sela went to the window and took a look, his brows immediately wrinkled.
These things look like toads, but they are much larger than toads. The mucus makes Lin Ze feel physically uncomfortable.
"Reducto"
Lin Ze cast a spell, and the monsters crawling in front were blown into pieces.
The viscous liquid splashed on the stone wall, and those who remained saw their companions being blown into pieces, and gradually became violent.
After a moment's pause, the monsters made strange "gurgling" sounds and began to surge upward crazily against the stone wall.
Lin Ze put the wand on the windowsill and moved his wrist.
"You stay here, don't go down."
"Are you alone?"
"If I can't handle these things, you will only cause trouble if you go down."
Saira opened his mouth, but did not refute in the end. He just held the scimitar tightly, with the tip facing upward, and leaned it against the inside of the window frame.
Lin Ze held the window edge with one hand and flipped out.
Saira was startled and rushed to the window to look down.
Lin Ze did not land directly. He clicked his right foot on the crack in the outer wall of the tower. He used the force to move his body laterally and slid down two feet against the stone wall. He grabbed the iron frame of the narrow window on the second floor with his left hand and hung his whole body in mid-air.
The monster below has climbed to the height of the second floor, and the dense gray-white slime is dragging shiny traces on the stone wall.
Lin Ze loosened his left hand and the person fell down.
When he fell to the height of the window sill on the first floor, his toes were a little bit on the window sill, and he bounced out and landed on the open space outside the tower door. The soles of his boots crushed several monsters that were rising up.
With a "puff" sound, the mucus splashed all over his trouser legs.
"How disgusting."
Lin Ze pointed the wand towards the ground.
"Frost Charm"
A patch of white frost spread from the tip of his staff, sticking to the ground and spreading in all directions.
The patch of grass that the monsters had crawled over instantly froze into ice. The monsters that were rising up slipped under their feet and rolled down the slope in patches.
The muddy ground at the bottom of the slope was covered with a thin layer of water, and the entire shallow water in the Lin Ze and Glacier Charm areas was frozen.
The monsters were like dumplings, their round bodies spinning on the ice and rolling into a pile.
"Cuckoo--"
The monsters crowded together and screamed noisily. Some tried to use the suckers on their abdomens to stabilize their bodies, but the ice was too slippery and they fell back as soon as they got up.
Lin Ze didn't give them a chance to regroup.
"Confringo"
A spell was struck in the center of the ice, and the ice cracked from the middle, with the cracks spreading outward in a radial pattern.
The monsters were so shocked that they bounced up, collided with each other in mid-air, and then fell back to the ice, breaking into pieces.
The mucus splashed all over the floor, and the fishy smell made Lin Ze frown.
Saira on the tower looked down, the scimitar in her hand slowly dropped, her mouth was slightly open, and she couldn't say a word.
She had seen wizards cast spells. When she was a child, the wizard who threw a wine glass froze the wine table into ice cubes. At this time, the magic released by Lin Ze was even worse than that, directly freezing the walls of the entire outpost into ice lumps.
Saira leaned against the window frame and let out a long breath.
As Lin Ze's spell expired, the ice on the stone wall began to melt, and water seeped up from the cracks, turning the broken monster remains white.
Lin Ze swept around with the wand again to make sure nothing slipped through the net, and then walked towards the tower door.
Just as he reached the door, he stopped.
Down the slope towards the swamp, the water is surging.
The waterfowl that were originally scattered on various small islands in the swamp flew up in large groups, and flew towards the east in a dense black mass.
Lin Ze squinted his eyes for a while.
There is a huge shadow under the water, bigger than the back of a giant turtle, moving this way against the bottom of the swamp.
Where the shadow passed by, reeds fell down in patches, and turbid mud stirred up in the water.
It did not come towards the sentry tower, but slid sideways from a position about a hundred steps down the slope, heading towards the north bank.
Lin Ze stood at the door of the tower and did not move.
When the shadow completely disappeared into the fog to the north, he turned around and entered the tower.
When he went upstairs, Saira was standing at the top of the stairs waiting for him.
"What are those things down there?"
"I don't know, some kind of swamp creature must have been attracted by something."
"What attracted you?"
Lin Ze did not answer the question and asked her instead, "Did you see that big thing just now?"
Saira nodded, his expression not very good.
"That thing is bigger than the turtle we came here. It walked in the water without even making waves on the water. This is contrary to common sense."
"I'm afraid there's something bigger underneath this swamp."
Saira was silent for a while, then walked to the window and took a look outside.
The night wind blew in from the direction of the swamp, bringing with it an indelible muddy smell and a hint of sweetness.
The sweetness is very similar to that of water lotus during the day, but it is much lighter, so light that you can't even notice it if you don't smell it carefully.
"Did you smell it?" Lin Ze asked.
"I smell it. It smells like lotus flowers during the day."
Lin Ze walked to the window and looked down the slope.
The moonlight peeked out from behind the clouds and shone on the swamp water, with silvery white light jumping between the ripples.
Those water lotuses actually appeared not far from the sentry tower, probably in the shallow water about twenty steps down the slope.
He didn't notice this detail during the day.
Now those water lotuses glowed with a dark red light under the moonlight, and their stems and leaves were twisting against the water, as if something was pushing them underwater.
"Those water lilies are always moving."
Saira walked over and followed his line of sight.
"Could those toad-like things be related to these water lotuses?"
"It's possible." Lin Ze nodded.
"Come here and take a look at this."
Saira I don't know when I walked to the magic circle again, squatted down and pointed at the ground.
Lin Ze walked over and saw the blank space in the center of the circle. The gray-white powder was slowly expanding outwards, and the powder particles jumped out one by one as if they were being pushed up by something from below.
The arcs of the circle are also moving, and the fractures are being connected little by little. Although the connection is very slow, the direction is clear - those arcs are expanding outward.
"It seems... getting bigger?" Saira said.
"Hmm."
Lin Ze took out a piece of parchment paper and a quill pen from Undetectable Extension Box, and quickly drew out the pattern of the magic circle.
Saira stood nearby and watched him trace those winding arcs.
"You want to write it down?"
"Yeah, I know a guy, maybe he knows what it is."
"A wizard like you?"
"Yes, but he is not older than me."