Chapter 399: Finding a Secret Door

It had been a couple hours since Joshua and Lilly had started taming different colonies of bees and the repetitive work was some of the most boring yet tiring work that Joshua had ever done. Since he had to constantly use his aura pressure to cowl all of the bees before they could become aggressive and annoying to deal with it had been a tiring couple of hours for Joshua. Luckily at this point his aura regeneration was strong enough to get him back to full strength within a few minutes after using so much aura constantly. Even so it was boring having to do the same thing over and over again without gaining any experience or having a fun fight. Those thoughts definitely came from his father's side of the family Joshua said bringing a smile to his face.

"So are you sure twenty colonies of these bees are going to be enough?" Joshua asked as they started heading for the last group of bees that they were going to have to tame. "Although this forest is big, the entire area of the garden has at least four times the size of this place. If it takes this many bees in a place like this than how many will it take in the garden?"

"True this won't be enough bees at first…" Lilly said as she tilted her head with a thoughtful look before smiling once more and continuing to pet her dog as she got back up on its back. "After a while they will start to reproduce and expand within the garden. That's probably the reason why your mother didn't want certain animals in the garden in the first place. After all some beast could be ok in small numbers, but if they breed and overrun the garden then the whole place will become useless."

"Wait how does that exactly work? Are the children of your soul beast under your soul realm as well?" Joshua asked a bit confused. That would basically mean that Lilly would be like a walking day care center.

"They are under my control as well, but they have to be trained up since they are low level when young. Of course they can't reproduce while they're in my soul realm otherwise I'd have hundreds of rabbits in my soul realm at this point, but they can reproduce in the stables or in an open area like the garden." Lilly explained as they approached another colony of bees.

"I guess you know this since you've already seen some of your own soul beast having children in the stables? It's not faster than normal is it?" Joshua said fearing the stables might get overwhelmed if that were the case.

"No they grow at a normal rate in the stables, especially since there is a cap to the amount of beast we can keep in the stables of the town. We're nowhere near reaching that cap at the moment though so no need to worry about that." Lilly said before she chuckled a bit. "It was actually my pair of rabbits that had children in the stables. I'd only left them in therefore a short time so it's clear that leaving rabbits in the stables wouldn't be a good idea."

"Well let's go ahead and finish this so that we can move on to the next creatures on the list." Joshua said as he let his aura out in full force once more causing all of the angry bees that came out of the large hive to fall down. Lilly got to work taming them as Joshua kept them all under control. With one last colony finished Joshua was able to let up on the pressure. "Alright next stop is the prairie. Time to get some more horses."

With that Joshua and Lilly both took a portal out of the area so as to avoid any more crazed fans. They had done their best to stay away from them while searching for bee colonies, but every once in a while they would run into people. The moment they stepped through the portal they no longer had to worry about such things since they were now in an area where it was impossible for other people to get to without going through James Town. The prairie was as massive as the last time they had been there, but this time around Lilly brought out a pair of horses for them to ride on as they made their way through the area.

"Well this time things should go a bit easier. We've got a ton of practice in taming horses up to this point." Joshua said as they galloped through the prairie. Although he was certain that he could keep pace with these horses as he ran through the prairie with his aura shroud empowering him it would be a huge waste of energy. Besides it was far more relaxing to go on horseback. "How many horses do you think we should get for the garden?"

"Hmm, we won't need to get nearly as many horses or goats as bees since the horses are more there to graze on the plains and balance out the oxygen and carbon monoxide levels within the area. Plus I guess their poop can help the plant growth if needed, but I'm not sure how the system will handle things like that. If I had to guess we probably should get around a hundred of each. That should be a few herds worth."

"Yeah plus if they can breed inside of the garden than after a few years we will have more animals inside of the place anyways. No need to fill it up to the brim right away." Joshua said as they finally came across their first heard of horses. They had teleported towards the center of the prairie so the horses were of high level. They still weren't high enough level to ignore the pressure that Joshua could give off, but in this situation Joshua didn't need to use his aura pressure to tame the horses. Instead he could use the tried and true method of taking on the herd leader and getting the rest of the herd to follow along.

"Don't hurt him too much. Your higher level than you were last time we did this so be careful with your new found strength." Lilly warned as she could see that the horses were already warry of them. They could tell that Joshua was powerful and most likely wanted to flee, but Lilly's somewhat calming presence seemed to confuse them. Plus the fact that they came up to the herd with two horses of their own was a bit confusing to the group. Even so the leader of the heard marched forward thinking the two horses had come for a challenge. Instead Joshua stepped in front of the large horse gaining its attention as he let out some of his aura aggressively.

The horse reacted in the way that Joshua expected as it rushed forward trying to trample him. He caught its front hooves while holding its body up surprising the creature. Joshua didn't want to use too much of his own strength and end up killing or seriously hurting the much lower leveled creature. So instead he used the horses own momentum to send it flying over his shoulder and crashing into the ground. The force of the impact stunned the horse long enough for Joshua to quickly pin it down. "He's all yours." He said as he turned to look at Lilly.

Seeing as how Lilly was used to taming horses it didn't take long for her to get the stallion under control. With the stallions aid they were easily able to tame the rest of the horses getting their first heard of horses for the garden. Since they didn't need to tame as many horses as they had to tame bees it didn't take them more than about an hour to end up taming six different herds of horses. Each herd was around twenty horses or so meaning they had more than enough horses for the garden. Lilly quickly put the two horses that they were riding around away as Joshua created another portal to lead them to their last destination.

They both appeared at the center of the bottom of the canyon near where the entrance to the dungeon was. Of course they didn't plan to go into the dungeon, but they wouldn't have to worry about hordes of bats attacking them since it was the middle of the day and they were in the brightest portion of the canyon thanks to the large opening above them. Even though Joshua was powerful and Lilly had several beast companions that could help fend off the swarm of bats it would still be annoying to deal with and waste a bunch of time. Last time they had come through the area with a large group so they were going to have to be careful with how they handled the powerful beast in the area.

"Alright let's head to the cliff side so that we can find some of these rams. Staying in the big open areas like this might just attract some of the more powerful creatures." Joshua said as he led the way. Just to be safe Lilly brought out Cinder and synchronized with her so that she would be able to defend herself.

It didn't take them very long to reach the cliff face, but Joshua didn't immediately climb up and look for some rams. He made sure to pick out any interesting plants that he saw along the way. He had done similar things in the other areas they had visited, but he was finding far more interesting plants in the base of the canyon than the other two places. Joshua also didn't plan on scaling the cliff just yet because he knew that they were in the area where they could likely come across the trapdoor spiders if they weren't careful. At least with the giant snakes at the base of the canyon he could easily see them from afar as they usually laid out in the open sunbathing.

They kept going until they eventually saw a large group of rams scaling the cliff. For the most part the rams seemed smart and would avoid areas where there was a lot of danger, but Joshua wanted to tame them fast before a spider or snake decided they were eager for some lunch. Joshua climbed up the cliff while Cinder easily carried Lilly up the cliff behind them. Do to Lilly's calming presence they were easily able to approach the large groups of rams. The bigger one of the group looked aggressively towards Cinder, but after a short clash Cinder was able to easily pin the creature down quickly causing the rest of the rams to freeze up in fear.

Lilly rushed to tame the rams before they ran away and got themselves killed by some other creatures in the area. In the end it only took a little over an hour for them to tame enough rams. Along the way Cinder and Joshua had to take care of a trap door spider that was going after one of the larger rams. Luckily no snake came along and made things even more difficult than they already were. When Joshua killed off the trapdoor spider with a powerful strike to its skull he noticed that there was something odd next to the trapdoor.

There was another portion of the cliff that had an odd texture to it as if it was being covered up. Joshua hit the location with an aura blast clearing all the rock and ruble away and was surprised to see a large door on the side of the cliff. He was certain that it wasn't a dungeon by the way it was hidden away, but he got the feeling that there was something powerful inside of it. The sudden killing intent he felt coming from beyond the door was just another glaring red flag that something was up.