This time, I won't be the devil.

The sandworm's body emitted a strong green light, and supported by the wind element, it actually floated directly into the air.

Immediately afterwards, the wind element gathered at the head of the sandworm, and it immediately fired three powerful wind erosion bombs towards the ground where Frey was.

The green wind-eroded bombs swooped down with sharp explosions, creating a terrifying wind pressure around them.

The surface of the wind bomb is a wind blade that rotates continuously like a meat grinder. Even rocks are instantly ground into powder wherever they pass.

Facing this terrifying attack, if it were in the past, Frey could only dodge in a panic, but now he has new means of defense.

After judging the power of the wind erosion bomb by the amount of magic power it contained, Frey opened his arms, and deep blue magic power gushed out from his palms. Then he quickly constructed magic and released an air wave.

The moment the two air currents collided, they created a visible circular shock wave, causing the surrounding space to tremble.

The energy contained in the wind erosion bomb was extremely huge, and Frey had to use all his magic to barely offset it.

During the few seconds that Frey cast the spell, the sandworm hovered overhead and observed him.

It felt like a battle-hardened human observing his opponent.

Just as Frey finally blocked the wind erosion bomb, the sandworm seized the opportunity and launched a new attack.

It stopped circling, and its body, which was dozens of meters long, began to spin at high speed, rushing towards Frey like a spiral drill.

The drill came roaring with a sharp whistling sound that tore through the air. At the critical moment, Frey stomped on the ground, and two huge rock spears rose from the ground and stabbed at the sandworm.

While resisting the wind erosion bomb just now, Frey also injected magic power into the ground.

Although Frey, who had just broken through, had not yet mastered the 4th level of earth magic, after reaching Magic Lv2, his ability to control magic power was also improved, which enabled him to use two kinds of magic at the same time.

The wind element wrapped around the sandworm's body weakened the power of the rock spear, causing it to fail to pierce the sandworm's exoskeleton, but the powerful kinetic energy still changed its movement trajectory.

The sandworm finally crashed into the rock wall, and a large piece of earth and rocks collapsed.

Frey did not miss this opportunity. He immediately went behind the sandworm and prepared to launch a new round of attack on it.

But at this moment, the sandworm suddenly let out a sharp cry.

This type of sound wave is indecipherable to the human ear, and Frey discovered it by observing the vibrations in the surrounding air.

At the same time as the sound wave was emitted, a sharp bone spur shot out from beside Frey.

The one who attacked Frey was none other than the two-thorned monkey Xiaobai who was hiding aside and watching the battle.

Unlike before, Xiaobai at this time seemed to be hypnotized, and the agility that symbolized wisdom was gone in his eyes. He stretched out his claws and attacked Frey like a mad beast.

Frey immediately took out his dagger to block.

Xiaobai is certainly no match for Frey, and it is not difficult to kill him.

But in order to find out the truth behind its sudden madness, Frey chose to knock Xiaobai unconscious instead of killing it.

After Frey spent more than ten seconds to subdue Xiaobai, dense footsteps were heard from a distance, as if a large number of monsters were gathering in this direction.

At the same time, a group of flying monsters, represented by the chicken snake beast, have arrived above the passage that was collapsed by the sandworm.

Frey immediately realized that it was not advisable to stay here for long.

After summoning these monsters, the sandworm started moving again and drilled towards the other side of the maze.

These successive changes were obviously related to this sandworm. Now the road back to the ground has been blocked. After weighing the pros and cons, Frey decided to chase the sandworm first.

He put the unconscious Xiaobai into the bag he was carrying, carried it on his back and started chasing the sandworm.

Frey tried to hook the sandworm with a grappling hook, but it blew it away using the wind element on its body.

After destroying the spiral passage on the fourth level, the sandworm first drilled back to the third level, then continued to break through the rock wall, moving towards the right direction in the shortest straight distance.

It was extremely fast, but because it took time to drill through the rock wall, Frey could barely keep up with it.

In order to shake off Frey, the sandworm released one wind-erosion bomb after another from its tail.

After several rounds of fighting, the sandworm seemed to realize that it could not get rid of Frey in a short time, and Frey was the same, so it stopped attacking and concentrated on its journey.

Along the way, the sandworm made that special chirping sound many times, commanding batch after batch of monsters.

This ability seems to be similar to the Skeleton King's [Monster Domination], but the range of influence is much larger.

But according to the information Frey had found, humans had fought against the wind-eroded sandworm several times so far, but there had never been any record of it possessing this ability.

The sandworm itself is difficult to deal with, and it would be terrifying if it could also give orders to monsters in the entire maze.

Frey tried to use [Law of Silence] on the sandworm, but the skill did not activate successfully.

In his previous experiments, the [Law of Silence] was effective against intelligent monsters such as the Two-Horned Ape. There are two possibilities for this situation now.

Either the sandworm cannot speak, and the commands it issues are not language, but some kind of special ability.

Or, the one issuing the order wasn't the sandworm itself...

In this way, Frey followed the sandworm closely and ran all the way.

During this period of exploration, Frey gained an in-depth understanding of the terrain and routes of the maze.

After reaching the bottom of the third-level spiral passage, the sandworm began to drill upwards through the rock layer.

Frey used rock pillars, grappling hooks, and air waves to continue tracking along the channel drilled by the sandworm.

But after all, he was not like the sandworm that could float in the air directly, so he eventually fell behind when facing the vertically rising sandworm.

After the sandworms destroyed the spiral passage on the third level, Frey finally climbed up to the main path on the 21st floor and rescued Palu and Wright who were surrounded by monsters.

After rescuing them, the sandworms disappeared, and a group of flying monsters once again appeared above the collapsed passage.

Frey then took the two frightened people back to the production base of Fuleda.

The two spiny apes staying in the base were not affected by the order.

After hearing the cry of the sandworms, more than a hundred monsters headed towards the main road. Based on Frey's understanding of the distribution of monsters in the vicinity, he could judge that the impact range of the order was about 3 kilometers.

In order to find out the specific content of the order, Frey decided to start with Xiaobai who was under control.

After waking up, Xiaobai still couldn't get rid of the order and tried to attack Frey.

Having witnessed the Skeleton King's [Monster Domination], Frey has prepared a plan to deal with similar situations.

He took out a bottle of Izanami from his waist bag and fed it to Xiaobai.

The illusion brought by Izanami quickly overwhelmed the command's mental control. After Xiaobai returned to normal, Frey asked him about his experience.

"I don't remember it clearly. It was like my consciousness was tampered with. The only thing in my mind was the desire to eliminate all humans..."

After realizing what he had done, Xiaobai wanted to die to atone for his sins, but Frey quickly stopped him.

Now that we are facing a powerful enemy, it is not the time to reduce our own combat capabilities.

Combining all the currently known information, Frey sorted out the current situation.

During his retreat, the elite monster Wind-Erosion Sandworm on the 29th floor was refreshed.

Relying on the magical changes in the maze when monsters refreshed, Frey successfully broke through and collided head-on with the sandworm.

For unknown reasons, this wind-eroded sandworm gained the ability to ignore the magic stone line and command the surrounding monsters.

Its order to the monsters was to exclude all humans from the maze.

To achieve this, the sandworm immediately destroyed the spiral passage connecting to the ground above the fourth level, which was closest to it, after it was born.

Then, it drilled to the other end of the maze and destroyed the upward passage of the third level. Judging from the direction it disappeared, the sandworm should have wanted to destroy the passage of the second level as well.

The purpose of the sandworm doing this is obviously to cut off the connection between the inside of the maze and the ground, trapping the adventurers in the maze to death.

And those monsters that accepted the sandworm's orders also gained the ability to ignore the interference of the magic stone line and get closer to the right path.

If only the spiral passage was destroyed, Frey might be able to use the grappling hook and earth magic to crawl back to the ground bit by bit from the collapsed area.

But the sandworm seemed to have predicted this in advance. During its movement, it ordered a large number of monsters to rush towards the main road and let a group of flying monsters block the passage.

Even if Frey's magic had improved, he wouldn't be able to climb and deal with so many flying monsters at the same time.

Once the right path is lost, if you want to return to the ground, you can only look for natural roads in the huge maze.

If you want to use this method to pass through the 20-level maze, it will take more than 10 days under the best circumstances, and the sandworm will most likely order monsters to block the road.

After listening to Frey's analysis, Wright and Palu became more deeply aware of the desperate situation they were facing.

Although Frey also anticipated some crises in the maze during the expedition, including the possibility of sandworms respawning.

However, it took only three hours for the sandworm to completely destroy all the adventurers' retreat routes after its resurrection, which was somewhat beyond his expectations.

It can be said that the maze has now become a besieged city.

Those who are inside cannot get out, and those who are outside cannot get in.

But unlike Wright and Palu who were at a loss, Frey's emotions did not fluctuate much.

Since the danger has already occurred, instead of wasting time lamenting, it is better to think about countermeasures immediately.

If we put aside the ability to ignore magic stone lines and command monsters, the sandworm itself does not pose a fatal threat to Frey.

At this time, Frey had two relatively safe options.

First, wait for outside rescue.

The production base is still safe for the time being, and in order to prevent possible accidents, Frey has stockpiled various supplies including food and weapons in the base in advance.

These supplies are enough for them to live for about 3 months.

But now most of the high-level combat forces in the city have participated in the expedition. They have no way of knowing whether the expedition team is safe, and they cannot guarantee that the Holy See can defeat the sandworms in time and rescue the adventurers trapped in the maze.

The second option is to abandon the conventional path and use earth magic to dig back to the ground layer by layer.

But the ground of each layer in the second level is hundreds of meters thick on average, and unlike digging downwards, digging upwards is more difficult.

With Frey's current magical power, he can only dig through one layer a day at most.

In other words, it would take more than 20 days to dig all the way back to the surface, and that's without any monsters interfering.

As time goes by, the wind-eroded sandworm may evolve like the Skeleton King.

Therefore, neither staying in the base and hoping for rescue from the Holy See, nor slowly digging the ground and gambling that no new changes will occur in the maze in the next 20 days, is in line with Frey's style.

Instead of pinning his hopes on people and things that he cannot control, he would rather take the initiative to open up the situation.

In addition to the two passive solutions mentioned above, there is another strategy - kill the sandworm that can only command monsters.

After making up his mind, Frey immediately began to make a plan. Every second of delay would increase the uncertainty.

"Wright, tell me in detail about your previous experience fighting sandworms."