While the entire city was now gone, there was no way that even someone as powerful as one would need to be to eradicate the entire city from the existence, would be capable of destroying the landmark of this place, the great forest.

With all the formations and arrays that protected it and controlled the behaviour of the beasts ever since the ancient civilisation left it to cultivate their younglings, not even the protectors that I saw back when I first teleported to the island where my stronghold now stood, would be able to destroy it!

Since there was nothing I could do in this city as just a single look around was enough to confirm that the reason why I came back to this area was absent from this place, rather than lingering here for no reason, I jumped slightly to the air, activating the flight skill while propelling myself forward with the shockwaves to my back.

The devastation of this city meant that there would be quite a lot of traces of my travels left by the shockwaves expanding in all directions rather than putting all its force directly at my back, but with how I hoped that this mission would be rather quick, I couldn't be bothered about it. In the end, if I were to ever return to this place again, I would come not only with enough power in myself to deal with the entire organisation that gave birth and cultivated that bastard who hurt Eve but with an army big enough to make sure every member of the said organisation would suffer a fate worse than the death!

But with my current mission taking the priority position in my mind, I simply disregarded the thoughts about this place, as even planting the portal seed here could lead to some nasty people suddenly entering my own home unannounced. Even if there was nothing of value here for me, that didn't mean this place was free from grave robbers!

After plunging headfirst into the forest, I stopped for a moment by smashing a few trees on my way and losing the momentum that was carrying me forward. Recalling the guide book that we all received all the way back at the sword sect where my journey in this world started, I took my time to locate the place where I was currently hovering above the ground in relation to the map I could still somehow remember, before using my shockwaves again to fly towards the first location where the monsters of level matching my query would be roaming.

Yet even after reaching this place, I found no sign of what I was looking for! While there was quite a lot of monsters that would pose a threat to me if I was still as weak as when I moved back to the archipelago, but at this point, they were nothing more than a source of meat for me if I happened to feel a burst of hunger.

But I simply had no time for fun stuff like a grill, even if I knew that Eve would love to see me taking care of those basic bodily needs of mine despite the fact that my cultivation and magic alone were easily capable of replacing the nutrients normally provided by food.

After looking through the entire area, I had no other choice than to move to the next spot, only to leave it just as disappointed. While the time was ticking on my forced return so that I could still take part in the challenge even if my scheme was foiled by my failure in this place, I still roamed this forest seemingly without any reasonable route, visiting all the areas I found potentially holding the treasure I was looking for.

Yet there was simply no point in reaching for the deeper parts of this forest since the logic behind my reasoning proved that if anywhere, the thing I was looking for would be relatively close to the boundary of this grand forest!

After checking up on all the nearby areas that fitted the initial criteria, I had no other way than to move to even harder places, inhabited by the monsters who could actually swarm me and deal a few bruises worth of damage to me in such situation. Yet even after moving around those places, while I found some clues indicating that I was slowly getting closer to my target in form of a strange, leftover frost present in places where it had no physical way to appear naturally, the target I hoped so much to find, still remained outside of my reach.

Quite desperate, rather than lingering around those places that seemed to only increase my anxiety, I moved even deeper, to the places where just a small group of the bests could already force me to make a serious move against them in order to come out unscathed from a potential fight. Yet to my surprise, I failed to find even a single living lifeform or valuable herb in the entire place, while the amount of the frost present in the area only increased in a geometrical way.

What used to be just a few hints of coldness, now was turning the entire swaths of the forest into the land known from a popular franchise from Earth, in which a queen Elisa with her gift of Ice magic turned her entire kingdom into a big ice plate! (no copyright with 'i' hehe)

By the time I reached the border of the place where I was still relatively safe and approached the area that would put me once again in real, mortal danger, I realised a single thing that escaped my attention so far.

During my travels through this place, I already reached and passed past the point where all the way back during my initial escapades here, I decided it was too dangerous to go forward, with the death knights riding the zombified versions of their victims proved to be far too great of a challenge for me and Eve.

But from all the hints I gathered around this place, it seemed like, despite the areas changing, all the places I moved past were all inhabited by the same kind of monsters as if they created their own kingdom within this forest!

Yet there was no way I would risk my life just for the sake of finding a treasure only because I wanted to take over the heavenly city! Even though it held quite an important spot in my heart, I wouldn't dare to risk even this small part of Eve's soul that resided inside my inner self!

*Bonger, I think its the time to improve my resistance and strength statistics…*

If I was too weak to enter this place safely, then I could improve those stats that were itching to reach their new heights!

"Sure thing, partner!"

In a flash, I felt like if the entire world suddenly condensed, making all movements of mine far harder to make, forcing me to pay a far greater energetical price to even lift my arm that I had to do just a moment ago!

Puzzled by the sudden change, I moved my palm around, trying to spot any differences on it, yet with this move, I accidentally brushed past the branch of a tree that was simply handing above my head.

Yet rather than bending under my light move and retracting back as soon as my palm would move closer to my face, the entire tree suddenly exploded!