Chapter 3161: The Giant Empty Turtle Shell

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Realm Of True Evil

Assuming the perspective of one of my clone heads, I watched as it carefully surveyed the area around the supposed cave it had discovered. From its position, the opening looked enormous, and dangerous. Especially the lava churning at the edges of its mouth. Before I could investigate further, another clone head reported in.

It had reached the edge of the forest and found a cliff overlooking the ocean of lava. After flying downward along the cliffside, it discovered another gigantic cave whose mouth stretched for several hundred miles and rose several miles into the air.

For a moment, I wondered if both clone heads had actually found the same cave from different positions.

Given the absurd scale of the environment, that was entirely possible. One clone could have been near the center of the entrance while the other was closer to one of its ends, making the same structure appear to be two separate caves.

I immediately had Hive Spirit compare their positions and construct a map using everything my drones had explored so far. I also had her incorporate the memories I had obtained from the Cloud Prowler, whose memories covered far more of the surrounding region than my clone heads had managed to explore.

It didn’t take long for the simulated map to take shape.

I had been right.

Both clone heads had reached the same cave entrance.

The opening was simply so enormous that neither had realized they were looking at different sections of the same structure.

But the map revealed something else.

There were two such openings.

I stared at the simulated terrain as Hive Spirit reconstructed the surrounding area, and gradually, the strange landscape began to make sense.

The forest wasn’t growing on an island.

It was growing on the back of a gigantic turtle shell.

An empty turtle shell.

The shell was so enormous that an entire forest had established itself across its back, complete with its own ecosystem, while the whole structure drifted across the ocean of molten lava.

That finally explained the strange movement I had noticed earlier. The forest itself wasn’t moving. The shell beneath it was drifting along the lava.

And the two enormous cave entrances weren’t caves either.

They were openings at opposite ends of the shell.

I couldn’t help but look through the Cloud Prowler’s memories again.

This creature had lived here its entire life, yet somehow, despite possessing Ruler-class strength, it had never figured this out.

The Cloud Prowler had spent its entire existence hunting whatever wandered into its territory, eating, sleeping, and repeating the process. It possessed powerful spatial abilities, extraordinary stealth, and the ability to travel through clouds, yet it had apparently never dared leave the shell or investigate what lay beyond it.

I couldn’t help but mentally curse its stupidity.

Aside from the True Evil themselves, there was little this creature should have needed to fear. A Ruler-class predator capable of attacking from several miles away, teleporting through space, and concealing itself inside clouds had more than enough tools to explore safely.

Instead, it had chosen the simplest possible life.

Stick with the shell, feed on the trees in the forest. Hunt whatever came close. Eat, sleep, and repeat.

I put the Cloud Prowler out of my mind and returned my attention to the shell.

The more I considered it, the stranger the place became. An empty turtle shell large enough to support an entire forest was drifting through an ocean of lava, while the ecosystem growing across it had evolved into something capable of trapping and hunting creatures that entered its territory.

And according to the Cloud Prowler’s memories, this was nothing unusual.

It had always been this way.

The Cloud Prowler had no memory of the shell ever belonging to a living turtle. It didn’t know what had happened to its former owner, why the shell could float across molten lava, or what the forest growing upon it truly was.

As far as it knew, the shell had simply always existed.

Which left me staring at the enormous structure with one increasingly uncomfortable question.

Was this shell the remains of a giant turtle?

If so, what had killed it?

Where the heck had I teleported myself?

Were all my divinations wrong?

This was supposed to be the most auspicious coordinate in the Realm of True Evil for me to teleport to, yet I seemed to have ended up in one of the most deserted and remote locations on the planet.

I was safe, all right.

I had even managed to catch a Ruler-class Cloud Prowler.

But what about the True Evil corpse?

That was the whole reason I had taken time out of my already meager schedule and rushed to this realm. Yet I hadn’t even sensed a single one of them so far.

I decided to leave this turtle-shell island and venture deeper into the Realm of True Evil.

But first, I needed to uncover the secret of this forest and exterminate all the hidden dangers. That way, I could collect the entire shell as loot once I figured out how to get the empty turtle shell into my Dimensional Storage Card.

The turtle shell alone was worth a fortune. Then there were the hearts of those giant omnivorous trees. The Cloud Prowler had managed to grow all the way to Ruler-class rank simply by relying on them, which meant they were clearly extremely valuable resources as well.

Together, they would make quite a haul, even if I failed to find any True Evil before leaving this place because of my prior commitments.

Not a bad consolation prize for a trip into the Realm of True Evil.

However, I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I didn’t need the True Evil corpse merely to fulfill a request made by one of my citizens. I needed it as a trump card for the upcoming battle. I had already made enough preparations, but it didn’t hurt to be more prepared.

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