They Hated Me in My First Life, But Now I Have the Love System

Chapter 329: So Close to the Edge

“Now, pull!” Nnenna shouted.

All three of them pulled, muscles straining, feet digging into the forest floor. The quicksand gurgled angrily, refusing to let go.

Then pop!

Karen’s shoulder broke free. They kept pulling.

Another heave, and finally, with one last desperate tug, Karen slid out of the muck and collapsed on solid ground, coughing and gasping for air.

“You saved us again,” John said, his voice rough from exhaustion.

They all stood there, panting, coated in sweat and mud. Even Nnenna could barely speak. Her knees trembled beneath her, but not from fatigue, from what almost happened.

She had nearly lost all of them.

After everything they had endured for almost a month in the Black Forest, after countless trials, it would have ended here? So close to the edge?

She clenched her fists. She wouldn’t let that happen.

Once she caught her breath, she turned to Abuchi, who was still staring at the place Karen had almost sunk.

“We need to move,” she said quietly.

“But… how?” Abuchi asked, his voice strained. “How do we get past that?”

all turned to

not just a patch, it was a sprawling stretch of sludge stretching out

canopy cracked open above, letting in more sunlight than they had seen in weeks. But the sight wasn’t

this the border?” Ekene asked, narrowing his eyes. “Is this thing covering

ridge,” Karen said,

cut in, pointing up toward the slope that angled gently to the left. “If we climb a bit further north, we might find a

at one another,

sand, then up at the overgrowth. Her eyes

be

for that. Who knows what’s happened to Ruth and her family in the past, what, almost a

tense with urgency. “Every second we lose might

what do you plan to do? Magically fly across it? You can’t always have

hadn’t always been like this, but the forest, the fear, the

to fix it. She just wanted to let the bitterness

flinch. She had learned

they had a hundred times in the past weeks. Look, adapt, survive. She had gotten good at

then… she spotted

around sturdy trees stretching high

then more firmly. “Look, those trees. The vines are strong. We can make our way across

were tall, old, and deeply rooted, stable enough. The vines…

brow lifted.

sucked into the

blurted out, arms folded, voice sharper than

trees have been here for years. The vines are