Why can't humans do it too?

These crazy gophers!

Without time to think, Suer tried his best to adjust his posture in mid-air, striving to land in the water in the sharpest possible way to minimize the damage.

Xin Ke was right next to him, unaware that they might have been separated along the way, and also unaware that Xin Ke, with multiple injuries, might not be able to withstand the water damage upon entering the water, and that the wind pressure had prevented Su Er from opening his eyes.

Pfft!

Pfft!

Two sounds of water hitting the surface rang out in quick succession, almost like explosions. Suer's figure was like a penguin entering the water, and he plunged into the water to a depth of more than ten meters before finally coming to a stop.

Suer felt dizzy and lightheaded, and white bubbles kept coming out of her nostrils and mouth—she had to stop it immediately!

Unable to form coherent words, Suer was simply instinctively forcing herself to hold her breath, hold her breath, and hold her breath some more!

Floating upwards, my eyeballs were squeezed by the water pressure, causing excruciating pain.

The mark left by the God of War was far deeper than Suer had imagined. Except for the part near the water's surface, which was still barely visible due to the outside light, it became increasingly dark as it went down, like a bottomless cave from which no one knew what terrifying creature might crawl out.

Chapter Ninety-Eight: Falling into the Water

Even light will be swallowed up.

The initial dizziness from hitting the water's surface and the pressure upon entering the water caused Suer to instinctively lose some of the air stored in his lungs, making it impossible for him to stay underwater for long. He frantically swam upwards, his arms outstretched, and he could already see Xin Ke.

Using the light filtering through the water, Suer could clearly see something seeping out from Xinke's bandaged wounds, scattering in the water as she moved. Her limbs twitched strangely, and Xinke looked extremely distressed.

The entire strait seemed to have collapsed on a massive scale, with constant rumbling sounds and huge rocks falling into the depths of the cracks.

In the unique stillness of the underwater world, even the deafening roars became quiet thanks to the isolation provided by the seawater. Suer finally swam to Xinke's side and pushed her upwards from below. It was much easier than on land, but what made it even more difficult for him was the cold.

Without the sun's rays, the seawater on this planet is much colder than that on Earth. Especially since the two of them fell into such deep water without any prior training to acclimatize to the temperature, Suer and Xinke suddenly jumped in. With each swing of their arms and legs, Suer felt his body heat being clearly taken away.

Don't cramp, don't cramp, don't cramp...

His limbs were stiff as a corpse.

He kept praying in his heart, and at the same time praying that he could return to land before he was completely frozen. In this mechanical movement, Suer suddenly saw Xinke stop paddling upwards in coordination with him - she was patting his shoulder and gesturing for him to look back.

From the deep, dark crevice at the bottom, something was spreading outwards, like shadowy figures swaying and scattered like seaweed, worms that brought death. If this were on land, Su'er would probably have screamed in fright, but here they could only gurgle and bubble.

His previously cold and stiff limbs regained their vitality, and Suer suddenly felt warm. He frantically moved his arms, glancing back every now and then—it was too slow. Compared to the rising, lightless black shadow, Suer and Xinke were rising at the speed of two snails.

There was no time to lose. Su Er gritted his teeth, took out his dagger from his side, and then made a light cut on his bare arm.

Stay down there, stay down there, stay down there… This thought kept echoing in his mind, hoping that it could be conveyed to the terrifying creature coming from below. Sull watched his blood, which looked like black threads, slowly dissipate in the dark water, and then he continued to swim upwards.

The lack of oxygen caused his face to gradually turn an abnormal bluish-purple.

We're getting closer, almost there.

"Plop!" Suddenly raising his head from the water's surface, Suer gasped for the long-awaited fresh air, then forcefully lifted Xinke in his hand, allowing the forest elf to regain its favor with the air.

However, the joy of regaining oxygen could not offset Su's terrible mood at the moment.

"……Grass."

As Suer looked up in a daze, a straight, enormous beam of light, like a brush, swept across the landscape from afar. Without any extraneous explosions, all that remained of it were wisps of steam rising from the ground and smooth rock surfaces.

Taking a deep breath, Suer and Xinke once again dived under the water. The beam of light grazed the surface, evaporating a large amount of seawater. The only benefit was that it brought some warmth to Suer and Xinke.

The clump of seaweed underwater remained motionless in that spot, seemingly hesitating and confused.

Above the two, these brutal goblins seemed determined to turn the landscape left by the God of War into history, firing and attacking relentlessly. If they persisted, they could indeed succeed. Even without directly attacking Suer and Xinke, the rocks collapsing due to the attacks would send the two to their doom.

If they can continue their attack.

A slender beam of light fell from the sky, something even a spaceship covering the entire goblin race couldn't do; it simply made a hole in the middle. However, for any sophisticated machine, such damage was fatal enough.

Explosions erupted continuously from within, and goblins were blasted out of the ship. This airship, filled with vengeful killing intent, plummeted straight down. The horrific scene of its final fall was quickly obscured by the stone walls on both sides of the strait, leaving only a loud explosion.

It was unexpected, yet not entirely unexpected. No longer paying attention to the airship that had just been swaggering overhead, Suer swam desperately toward the shore with Xinke.

In this infinitely long war, such accidents are the most common and the most prevalent. Death needs no reason. That slender beam of light falling from the sky could come from a race that hates the goblins, or it could come from a casual strike by a powerful person who is in a bad mood passing by... or it could even come from a fanatical fan who can't stand them destroying the wonders left by the God of War.

never mind.

To be honest, if the good thing about the goblin vengeance warships was that it freed Sull and Xinke from that vampire, the other good thing was that it cleared a shoreline at the bottom of the strait that was big enough to stand on.

At the very least, if the terrain on both sides were still marked by the God of War, Suer and Xinke would not be able to climb to a dry place at all, and would only become two corpses frozen to death in the sea.

The noise that Suer heard while the two were still underwater was not wrong. A large-scale collapse had indeed occurred on one side of the strait. Many dead trees on the surface above and plants that had grown on the cliffs of the strait over the long years had collapsed and been squeezed together.

"Huh...huh..."

Once ashore, he quickly started doing push-ups. The heat from the exercise warmed his cold body, and Suer felt his blood flowing again, and his limbs were no longer stiff.

"...Are you...whew, alright?"

After his physical condition finally improved, Suer had the energy to ask about Xinke's condition. Apart from the wounds that had started to bleed again, the forest elf was sitting on the ground with its legs bent and hugging itself. Even for a forest elf, the temperature underwater was far too cold.

Chapter Ninety-Nine: Keeping Warm

Like Suer, her lips were blue from the cold. Xin Ke simply nodded without saying a word. The pain and cold from the wounds all over her body intertwined, and even she wanted to fall asleep at this moment.

Unable to do push-ups to warm up her body like Suer, Xinke curled up, waiting for the pain to pass.

As a gust of wind blew across the shore, it seemed that not only warmth was carried away from their wet bodies, but also their souls.

With trembling hands, he bandaged the wound he had cut himself underwater, and swayed as he walked toward the collapsed wreckage—they needed fire to warm themselves, branches, fallen leaves, anything would do.

“…I’ll do it,” Xinke said weakly, watching Suer struggle to drag the flammable materials he could find to the deepest part of the gap cut by the goblin’s light cannon.

Exhausted to the point of being unable to speak, Suer simply lay down on his back on the ground. He didn't know if the strait, which had just suffered a collapse, would collapse again, but it didn't matter anyway. Both he and Xinke had lost the ability to move. Their clothes, soaked with water, were constantly draining his heat and strength. Dying here was no different from dying on the road.

Being right next to this dead corner where the landslide had occurred, the wind from outside couldn't reach this place, and Suer felt a little better. He was sleepy and wanted to sleep, but he didn't dare to fall asleep, afraid that he would never wake up again.

“…Say something…anything is fine,” Suer murmured, trying to keep his eyelids open as they tried to close on their own.

"Hmm? Say something?" Xin Ke paused slightly, mimicking what Su Er had done before, and placed the sharpened wooden branch into the small hole dug in the wooden block below. Her physical strength was much better than Su Er's, and her resistance to the cold was also much stronger. Even though she was still inevitably weak at this moment, her mental state was indeed better than Su Er's.

"Hmm... Mr. Monkey's painstakingly left the information in the cave must have been buried by the attack and the collapse just now, right?"

You'd better not say anything!

Sul squeezed his eyes shut in agony, and the sleepiness that had been washing over him vanished instantly. It was too damn painful. Couldn't we talk about something else?

This elf with long, pale golden hair was clearly doing something malicious on purpose; Suer could even hear her chuckling and the sound of her rapidly rubbing a wooden stick.

Too lazy to pay attention to her.

He almost sat up abruptly.

The strength of the forest elves far surpasses that of humans. Before long, as the sound of continuous breathing came from Xin Ke's direction, a strange radiation, warm, appeared in Su Er's hazy senses from that direction.

One piece of firewood after another was thrown into the fire. Suer was so impatient to see the flames blaze up that he was so cold that his eagerness almost extinguished the tiny flames.

Finally, in his dazed state, the flame reflected in his pupils illuminated this corner.

"...Only in situations like this do you realize how convenient the Forest Elf's clothing is, huh?" Suer couldn't help but glance at Xin Ke and complain.

There was nothing to be embarrassed about. On the other side of the campfire, his simple leather armor and clothes were laid out to dry. At this moment, Suer was only wearing a pair of knee-length shorts, his upper body directly exposed to the air, but he did not feel cold. The heat generated by the campfire had warmed this corner well. To be honest, if Xinke hadn't been there, Suer would have wanted to take off the shorts instead of wearing them and waiting for them to dry.

As for the few pieces of cloth on Xin Ke's body besides her robe, there was no need for such trouble as he did; they could be dried naturally in a short while.

"Not bad figure, huh?" Xin Ke poked at the campfire in front of her with a stick, looked up at Su Er and smiled, saying, "If you remove all the coverings, Mr. Monkey's appearance is surprisingly good, isn't it? He's as gentle as a woman, which is quite to my liking... The only regret is that he has a few minor flaws."

Without the slightest hint of shyness, this forest elf even offered its critiques like some seasoned old rogues.

He was just an ordinary person who lacked exercise in the past, but in the years since he transmigrated, he has developed a well-defined physique. His only drawback is that he is a little thin due to lack of nutrition, but he is still quite pleasing to the eye.

"...Looks don't really matter, do they?" Sul said listlessly, sitting a little closer to the campfire.

He should have had black hair, but for some reason, it turned into a faded platinum blonde after he transmigrated, and even the color of his pupils changed. If he had lived in his previous life, he might have been able to enter the entertainment industry, but in this world, he was completely useless.

He felt absolutely nothing about the scar on his right eye and forehead that Xin Ke described as a flaw.

Does being good-looking allow him to defeat the God of War with a single punch?

"Hmm?" Xin Ke hummed noncommittally and continued, "I was really startled when Mr. Monkey suddenly stood up and started taking off his clothes. I thought he couldn't take it anymore in this environment and was preparing to do something before he died so he wouldn't have any regrets... Isn't that what they say? Leaving behind the instinct to reproduce?"

"These are indescribable feelings~ Should I agree~, or refuse~, or pretend to be something I'm not—"

"Even in this situation, you still have the energy to make jokes like this?" Su'er's speechless exasperation interrupted Xin Ke's words.

There's no way he'd believe Xin Ke.

If he had really lost his mind and tried to do something, he would probably be the one who got hit by that triple magic that even vampires didn't get hit by.

Although he always seems to be making dirty jokes, Suer has no idea that this elf really thinks that way... He has seen through it all, and anyone who thinks they understand this elf's personality will only suffer the consequences of that overconfidence.

In her world, she was the only one; everything else was beneath her feet.

Too lazy to deal with Xinke's sudden outburst, Suer only wanted to do his best to send Xinke back to the city of the forest elves as agreed. That would provide Riku and the others with a layer of covert protection. As for himself...

I turned the food placed next to the campfire over to make sure it heated more evenly; these were supplies I had brought from the now-collapsed safe haven.

Thinking about this made Suer regret it so much he wanted to pound the ground – if only he had taken all the supplies there, why was he so restrained back then!

Chapter 100 Changes

Now they're all gone.