While riding on Elenei's back, Mira's group quickly made their way towards the center of the Formation. They also left it up to the flying Phoenix to place down the tracking markers as well.
So, right now Mira and the rest were just enjoying the ride.
It had to be said that Elenei is a really great mount. Not only is she extremely powerful, but she's intelligent as well. Mira also likes the fact that she doesn't talk much and only interferes when necessary. In the future, Elenei might completely replace Rhydian as her exclusive flying mount since that dumb wolf seems to enjoy sleeping a little too much.
Luckily, Elenei couldn't hear Mira's thoughts or she would definitely beat her black and blue and would stop assisting her in their escape out of the Natural Formation.
As Elenei flew through the air, she ran into a few problems like being teleported away or having beasts thrown at her. It also tried to confuse her to make Elenei think she was in a loop, but nothing seemed to work. No, that's not entirely correct.
Elenei did fall for these traps as they are nearly impossible to spot, but it didn't really matter. They had already left tracking markers all over this Formation and these latest ones even had her blood in them. If she can't even locate her own blood then she might as well commit suicide on the spot!
These traps were nothing more than a nuisance to Elenei as not only was she too strong, but she was so fast that even if she was trapped or teleported away she would be back a few minutes later.
Plus, sending out so many traps, illusions, beasts, and things of that nature uses up tons of energy. Not only that, but the Natural Formation was also trying to adjust to Elenei's strength, but if it were to do that then it might as well just hand them the Core. The amount of energy the Formation would have to use to dispatch Elenei would be enormous and even then it might not be enough.
Killing a Phoenix, or any mythical beast for that matter, is an extremely difficult task as they are nearly invincible in the same realm against those of weaker bloodlines or races. They can even fight above their Realm or sometimes even multiple Realms!
If this Natural Formation really wanted to deal with Elenei, the action with the highest probability of success is to blow itself up. The blast from such an explosion would most likely take out Elenei, but it would also remove a significant chunk of land and Qi from the Western Continent.
Of course, the Natural Formation would never do such a thing. It may have basic intelligence and was at least smart enough to determine what is a threat to it and know what precautions it should take to prevent such a threat from reaching its Core, but like every living thing, it didn't want to die. It especially didn't want to die by blowing itself up.
However, that's about the extent of its intelligence. If Mira were to describe it, she would definitely say it's similar to a low-level artificial intelligence with very basic code.
Although it tried its hardest, it couldn't stop Elenei from reaching the Core of the Formation, unfortunately. Maybe if it had been a Natural Killing Formation then it could have already gotten rid of them, but all it had were illusions and space. These two elements might be extremely deadly in the right hands, but unfortunately, it was too young and inexperienced.
It was used to dealing with lower-level beasts that only act on instincts or the occasional wandering cultivator. It could just teleport them into a horde of illusory beasts and kill them off or keep showing them illusions until they starve to death.
There was so much more that it could do, but it was simply not used to dealing with these kinds of situations and Elenei was so fast that it could barely react in time, much less come up with new ways to use its powers.
Half a day later, Elenei finally made it to where they assumed the center would be. They didn't know what to expect when they finally made it here, but they figured it would be a bit different than the rest of the areas in the Formation.
However, that wasn't the case at all. It was still an empty grassland. There was no metallic dodecahedron, no altar for the Core, not even anything that signified this place held any relevance to the Natural Formation.
Mira's group simultaneously cursed as now they had to physically search for the damn thing. It was most likely underground, but they can't rule out the fact that the Core could be hidden in some illusion right under their nose without them even knowing.
Elenei started making her way down since she knew exactly what Mira wanted to do, but before she could reach the ground, something happened.
Thousands of metallic dodecahedrons started appearing around them. At first, one might think that these were just illusions forming right in front of them so it shouldn't be hard to tell them apart and find the real one, but they would be wrong! Instead, it was like the illusions were being formed somewhere else then teleported near them in their complete form so they wouldn't be able to tell the difference!
It was right in its assumption because they couldn't! They only knew what the Core looked like and even that was pushing it because this place could simply cast an illusion on the Core to change its appearance.
Almost like it was sensing their thoughts, that's exactly what happened. Now, illusions were forming around the fake, or maybe real, Cores to randomly change their appearances.
,m Mira's group saw the changes happening right in front of them and started cursing out loud.
"What the heck?! How shameless! You can't deal with us like normal so instead you force us to sift through this endless amount of fake, but potentially real, Formation Cores?! How shameless can a Formation be?!" (Maria)
"Are you fucking kidding me? Before this, I was forced to fight wave and wave of beasts and now I have to go through this shit? Sigh… I'm feeling tired just looking at it." (Celaine)
"I should've known something annoying like this would pop up once we reached the center. I suppose all we can do now is rely on Mira's Storage Space and hope we get lucky." (Elenei)
"How troublesome…" (Mira)
What Mira's group had once thought would be the end of their journey appeared to only be the beginning…
The beginning of a massive headache…