THE STRONGEST NEXULYTE

"What is it?" Karin asked, her gaze moving from Ralph's shocked face to the strange flower.

As if still unable to believe his eyes, Ralph moved closer to the plant and picked it up, his movements careful as if he was holding something very fragile.

After thorough observation, his shocked face turned into one of excitement.

"It's really it, it's a nightmare flower!" Ralph exclaimed.

Everyone stared at the plant in Ralph's hand, their minds wondering what a nightmare flower was.

"Wait, it can't be that nightmare flower, right?" Karin suddenly voiced out and looked at Ralph with eyes that hoped they were dreaming but Ralph's nod made her eyes widen.

*Can someone speak in a language I understand? What's a nightmare flower?!" Glen snapped at the two who were acting like animated characters, his face filled with annoyance.

Their reactions showed that this strange flower was something important, so why were they leaving the rest of them hanging with curiosity?

"I've heard my grandfather mention it before, although I have never seen one. The nightmare flower is an incredibly rare plant that is only found in the dreamscape and in forbidden zones ; they are always guarded by powerful guardians!

Who would have thought that we would find one here, these rabbits must have obtained it by luck!" Karin explained while staring at the flower in Ralph's hand with sparkling eyes.

"I get it that it's only found in such places and bla bla bla, what's it used for?" Glen yelled, even more annoyed by Karin's explanation.

" Oh, about that. I don't know, I only know that it's very expensive. One can be sold for over a hundred million bucks!" Karin replied.

Glen's eyes widened and glowed, a money sign appeared in his eyes; he was yet to calm down when Ralph joined.

" It's not its price that's shocking, nightmare flowers are part of the main materials for making Nexus chambers"

Everyone moved their heads to look at him in shock.

" You mean like the Nexus chamber at the tower?" Ivan asked.

" Yes, those Nexus chambers. The nightmare flower contains a vast amount of Nexus energy and is capable of generating Nexus energy, which makes it reusable; the more of them in a place, the more abundant the energy in the place will be," Ralph enlightened the group.

" No wonder it's so expensive," Karin exclaimed.

" If it contains so much energy, isn't it just like a Nexus crystal then?" Ivan muttered.

" Yes, isn't it like a Nexus crystal? What if someone tries to absorb it?" Glen remarked.

" That's why it had the name 'nightmare' in it" Clint suddenly voiced out in a low tone.

Ralph nodded. "He's right. The energy in the nightmare flower is very useful to Nexulytes, but it's not a good idea to absorb it directly. This is because the nightmare flower is corrupted and absorbing the energy directly with corrupt the person, causing their Nexus flow to be disorganized and causing them to hallucinate about terrifying things that can make anyone go crazy"

Their eyes lit up after Ralph's explanation; now, the nightmare flower in Ralph's hand didn't look so beautiful anymore to Glen and Karin, but its price value still made their eyes shine.

"We can sell it and split the money after returning," Ivan said to Ralph, who passed the nightmare flower to him, and he kept it in his storage device.

"Wait, I thought you three are from the same training center? How come Ralph seems to know more than you two?" Karin suddenly moved closer to Glen and whispered.

"Oh, it's because he spent so much time in the library during our training; he must have read all the books in the library within the first three months" Glen replied casually.

"I see them. Ivan must have been to the training room a lot since he's so good at fighting and is the strongest, right!" Karin continued with a look of realization in her eyes.

"Correct" Glen nodded.

"Then…what about you? What were you doing when they were reading and fighting? To be honest, you look ordinary compared to them" Karin suddenly said with a poker face.

Glen froze, he felt a slight sting in his cheeks but didn't react.

"Umm, I don't feel fine talking about this," He said after a while.

"Are you sure? Or you're just embarrassed to admit it?"

"Are you looking for a beating!"

"Would you hit a girl? I'm pretty!"

"True, you're pretty, and I…no! That's not the main issue, leave me alone or I'll spank you"

"Pervert"

"You!!"

….

After storing the nightmare flower, they continued moving forward.

Moving for another hundreds of meters in a narrow path, they arrived crag that poked above a cavern.

The cavern was hundreds of meters deep under crag and it stretched so far that they suspected that this was the last part of the mountain range that was region 17.

But knowing that they had almost reached the end of their objective didn't make them feel relieved, instead, an uncomfortable feeling formed in their hearts.

"At least now we know where the stream of blood stopped," Glen said with a nervous and uneasy chuckle.

This was because, below the crag, the entire cavern was a labyrinth made from solidified blood!

The unpleasant stench of the blood even reached all the way to the top of the crag where they were standing, causing their noses to twitch.

The blood labyrinth had red mist hovering above, preventing them from seeing what kind of creatures could be hiding inside; they were also unable to draw out a route because of the red mist.

Suddenly, they heard a loud rumbling sound and the place began to shake violently.

Grrrrr! Clang! Bwishhhh!

Different strange sounds thundered before coming to an abrupt stop, silence fell over the cavern after.

The five of them stared down in shock, unable to believe what they had just witnessed.

The blood labyrinth…just shifted spaces!

"A labyrinth that can shift space within it, there goes the idea of drawing a route" Ralph mumbled with a serious expression on his face.

With such a labyrinth, it was definitely going to take them weeks to find their way out in the worst-case scenario; if they were lucky and the monsters inside were not powerful, their coming out in a few days should be possible.

"This is going to take forever, what if we get lost?" Karin remarked with a fearful look. Getting lost in such a labyrinth would be horrible.

" That's not necessarily the case; labyrinths that can shift space often have guardians guarding them, and they are mostly found in the heart of the labyrinth. We simply have to find the labyrinth, kill it, and the labyrinth will create a straight path for us" Ralph replied to her.

"What do we do now?" Glen asked, and everyone looked at Ivan; he was in charge after all.

"What else is there to do? We go down" Ivan simply said.