Chapter 504: Operation: Save The Beast Goddess [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 504: Operation: Save The Beast Goddess [II / Bonus Chapter]

Every single worm suspended in mid-air was instantly diced into dozens of neat uniform cross-sections.

The pressurized wind sheared clean through the overhanging branches, severing the worms still clinging to the bark before they could even coil their muscles to leap.

THUD-THUD-THUD-SPLAT!

A shower of diced rubbery meat and severed teeth rained down around the wolves’ paws, splashing harmlessly against the ambient mana barriers woven by Eluned’s roots.

Morwenna’s thumb pressed the crossguard back down with a sharp echoing clack.

"Sloppy little leeches," Morwenna muttered, leaning her elbow back against the pommel. "Not even worth drawing the steel..."

Overhead, the obsidian bird let out an urgent shrieking rattle, banking hard to the right, cutting clean through a dense curtain of hanging moss to exit the suffocating hollow.

"Right flank! Keep moving!" Silas barked.

The wolves bounded after the feathered guide, tearing through the moss curtain and bursting out of the low-lying ravine.

Almost instantaneously, the humid foul-smelling white vapor thinned out, replaced once more by the biting clean frost of the high ridges.

The obsidian bird fluttered down to a low-hanging rock shelf, perching on its talons and puffing out its dark chest, letting out an audible rattling wheeze of pure relief.

"Krrr-clack... squawk..."

Silas pulled Valkyrie to a halt, looking back over his shoulder at the pale swirling bank of fog they had just escaped.

"What was that about?" Silas asked, his brow furrowing as he looked up at the bird. "Why the sudden panic over low-tier leeches?"

The bird launched into a frantic sequence of squawks, bobbing its head toward the mist, fluttering its wings in wide circular motions, and then stabbing its beak toward the dirt, mimicking a creeping spreading shadow.

Eluned listened intently, her emerald eyes tracking the bird’s erratic movements before turning to Silas with an informative nod.

"It is a phenomenon of the deep basin," Eluned explained, adjusting the ermine trim of her cloak. "That fog is a manifestation of stagnant necrotic dampness that bleeds from the bogs. Those worm creatures... Corpse-Leeches do not exist as physical entities outside of that specific vapor. They are born from the mist, they feed within the mist, and they dissolve when the mist dissipates. If a monster lingers in the fog for more than a few minutes, the vapor thickens until a lot of them manifest simultaneously, suffocating prey beneath a living tide."

Silas raised his golden longsword, bringing the flat of the blade to eye level.

His blue eyes narrowed.

The thick black ichor that had coated the steel when he cleaved that first worm clean in two... was completely gone.

Not a smudge remained... hell not even a single stain either. The polished mythril was immaculate, reflecting the gray sky like a flawless mirror.

’That’s very weird...’ Silas thought. ’A biological entity that exists only as an extension of an atmospheric anomaly... If the blood doesn’t even leave physical residue, what kind of mutated core is anchoring this basin?’

Again and again, it just proved that the Umbral Basin was very dangerous.

He flicked the sword clean on instinct and slid it back into its scabbard with a crisp clack.

"Let’s keep moving," Silas ordered. "We don’t want to be caught in the open when the sun drops..."

The path dictated by the obsidian bird wound upward along the spine of a jagged black shale ridge, skirting the edges of several plunging drop-offs that vanished into lightless ravines.

For the next two miles, the march was eerily quiet but as they crested the ridge and looked down into the valley below, the terrain flattened into an unavoidable bottleneck.

To the west, the entire valley floor was completely submerged in that same crawling milky-white fog, bubbling like a witch’s cauldron between the jagged rock walls.

’Not only do I hate snow now... I hate the fog too.’

And directly blocking the only clear, frost-crusted path to the east was an enormous sprawling sunken grove.

The trees in this grove were colossal with their roots arching out of the permafrost like the ribcage of an ancient petrified leviathan.

But unlike the quiet forest behind them, the air within this grove was vibrating with the sounds of guttural snarls, clicking mandibles, and the wet tearing of flesh.

Tasmin dropped from her mount, melting into the shadows of a basalt boulder to scout ahead.

She returned thirty seconds later, stepping out of the rock face with a grave focused expression.

"Path is blocked," Tasmin reported quietly, crouching beside Valkyrie’s stirrup. "The western pass is completely saturated with that necrotic fog. We can’t push the wolves through that soup without getting swarmed by the leeches and the eastern grove... is an active monster den."

"What are we looking at?" Silas asked, his hand casually resting on his sword hilt.

"A mixed congregation," Tasmin detailed with crisp, professional efficiency. "Roughly thirty Hound monsters with spines, they’re Tier 2 pack hunters with hardened bone carapaces along their spines and pressurized acid bile. Anchoring the center are four Tier 3 brute abominations that are roughly twelve feet tall with a thick hide and crushing clubs for arms... Haah..."

"Roosting in the upper branches are at least a dozen giant mantises with cloaking carapaces."

Silas analyzed the layout in an instant.

’An unavoidable junction... The fog cuts off the bypass and the grove holds the throat of the pass. If we try to skirt the outer edge, we’ll trigger an ambush from the mantises while the hounds flank our mounts.’

He looked back at his detachment.

Aeliana was gripping her reins with her pointed ears pinned back, her silver-gold eyes wide as she listened to the numbers.

Beside her, Kadi was nervously rolling a handful of fine golden sand across her knuckles with her dark braids trembling slightly in the wind.

Silas looked over at Thor.

The towering God of Thunder was sitting cross-legged atop Titan’s back, her head tilted back, completely unbothered by the impending clash.

In her massive calloused hands, she was holding an enormous, two-foot-wide wooden trencher loaded with thick strips of cold roasted wild boar, heavily seasoned with crushed garlic and black pepper from Kaelia’s morning rations.

She picked up a three-pound slab of succulent meat, shoved half of it into her mouth with savage enthusiasm, and began chewing with loud blissful smacks of her lips.

CHOMP! CHOMP! GULP!

"Mmmph!" Thor grunted, wiping a smear of pork fat from her chin with the back of her forearm, her storm-blue eyes sparkling as she looked down at Silas. "Are we fighting now, Silas? Or are we waiting for the cold to tenderize them? Because this meat is magnificent, and I am not putting it down for a pack of overgrown mangy dogs..."

Silas stared at her for a flat unblinking second with a dry incredulous smirk tugging at his lips.

"Keep eating, Thor," Silas said dryly. "Try not to choke on the bone while we work."

"Gwahahaha! A true god never chokes on glorious meat!" Thor roared happily, ripping another massive bite from the shank with a wet tear.

Silas turned back toward the grove with confidence descending over his features like an iron mask.

"Detachment, dismount..." Silas commanded quietly.

CLINK!

The wolves were anchored to the rear beneath a low basalt overhang with their instincts keeping them silent and still.

Silas stepped into the open snow, drawing the golden longsword from his hip.

SHING!

Beside him, Aurelia drew her silver rapier, the pale holy flame igniting along the slender steel with a gentle fwoosh.

Morwenna drew Tidebringer, resting the broad spine casually against her shoulder pauldron.

Eluned stepped forward with a wooden staff lightly tapping the permafrost, sending a soft green pulse through the soil.

"Standard kill-zone protocols," Silas instructed, his blue eyes locking onto the dark silhouettes shifting between the massive tree trunks fifty yards ahead. "Tasmin, take the high branches and eradicate the mantises before they can dive on our flanks... Aurelia, lock down the hounds with Argent Flame. Elu, root the brutes... Morwenna and I will take the center. Aeli, Kadi... provide perimeter denial and protect the Princess."

"Understood!" the women chorused in disciplined whispers.

"Move."

BOOM!

Silas detonated into motion.

His boots pulverized the shale beneath him, launching him forward in a low sprint that closed thirty yards in a fraction of a second.

The golden longsword flared with sun-bright Gold Core mana, casting long, dancing shadows across the snowy grove.

"GRAAHHHHH!"

The sudden blinding radiance shattered the grove’s stillness.

From the hollows beneath the massive roots, thirty Spine-Hounds violently reacted.

Their mangy gray-skinned bodies were covered in thick jagged plates of external bone armor and their red eyes burned with feral fury as they snapped their jaws, venomous green bile dripping from their serrated teeth.

"WOOOOOOH!" a shriek tore through the air as the pack surged forward like a chaotic gray wave.

WHOOSH!

From the high frozen canopy forty feet overhead, three massive Chitin-Stalkers disengaged their camouflage, dropping from the branches like falling anvils with their eight-foot serrated scythe-limbs cocked to decapitate Silas from above.

SHSHSHK!

"Too slow," a raspy whisper echoed from the empty air above their heads.

Tasmin materialized out of the empty shadow of a high pine.

She rode the liquid darkness like a wave with her twin void-daggers spinning in reverse grips.

SLASH-SLASH-CRUNCH!

In an imperceptible blur of high-velocity assassination, Tasmin executed a mid-air double flip.

Her left dagger drove straight through the neck joint of the first mantis, severing its nerve cluster with a sickening squelch, while her right blade caught the second stalker dead between its faceted eyes.

KRA-CLATTER!

Before the third mantis could even swivel its triangular head, Tasmin wrapped her weighted void-chains around its thorax, yanked violently with her entire core, and hurled the multi-ton insect bodily into the trunk of a dead pine, shattering its carapace into greenish goo.

"Clear above!" Tasmin called out, landing lightly on a high branch with her amber eyes scanning for the next target.

Down on the ground, the wave of thirty Spine-Hounds was barely ten paces from Silas’s boots, their throats expanding as they prepared to unleash a coordinated barrage of pressurized acid.

FWOOOOOOOOOOSH!

A brilliant wall of pure silver-white fire erupted across the snow in a flawless sweeping arc.

Aurelia stepped forward with her silver rapier thrust forward in a crisp, immaculate lunge.

"Cleanse," Aurelia commanded softly, her golden eyes radiant with divine authority.

The Argent Flame burned and judged at the same time as the silver inferno swept through the front fifteen hounds like a holy scythe.

The moment the holy fire touched their corrupt mutated carapaces, the bone armor cracked like brittle glass and the acid in their gullets detonated internally with muffled popping thuds.

"SKREEEEEEE!"

The burning hounds shrieked, collapsing into piles of smoldering white ash before they could even cross the silver line.

From the rear, sitting atop Titan while happily gnawing on a succulent pork rib, Thor raised her flagon of ale, cheering with her mouth completely full.

"Gwahaha! Good form, Saintess! Crisped ’em right up! Needs a bit of garlic salt, though!"

"Focus on your breakfast, Thor! Let them work!" The Princess shouted from the rear guard, waving her wrench in exasperation.

GROOOOOOOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAH!

A deafening bass-heavy roar tore through the center of the grove, shaking the snow from the high branches.

Crashing through the massive ironwood trunks, completely ignoring the burning hounds, came the four Grave-Gorgers.

The Tier 3 abominations were colossal like Tasmin had described... they were twelve feet of dense slate-gray muscle covered in weeping pustule-ridden tumors.

Their lower jaws split horizontally into three fleshy mandibles, and their massive club-like forearms were dense as solid bedrock, dragging along the snow with terrifying momentum.

The lead brute locked its milky, dead eyes onto Silas, raising both colossal arms high overhead, bringing them down in a brutal ground-shattering pile-driver.

KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The bedrock shattered and a shockwave of pulverized stone and jagged shale blasted outward in a thirty-foot cone.

’Really slow...’

Silas sidestepped horizontally with terrifying precision as the brute’s stone-hard fist cratered the earth barely an inch from his left shoulder with the pressurized wind whipping his coat.

VUUUM.

"Now my turn."

Silas’s right hand clenched around the hilt of his golden longsword. The dense reservoir of his Mythic Gold Core flared to life, channeling straight through his bicep.

KRA-FLASH!

He executed a clean upward diagonal slash.

The golden mythril blade carved through the air like a laser, meeting the brute’s twelve-inch-thick wrist joint.

CHOP-SPLAT!

The massive rock-hard forearm was severed cleanly off at the joint as a geyser of thick foul-smelling black blood erupted into the freezing air as the Grave-Gorger let out an ear-splitting agonizing bellow.

"Elu! Pin it!" Silas barked without looking back.

CRRR-WHIP!

From the frozen permafrost directly beneath the howling brute’s boots, four colossal emerald roots... thick as ancient oak trunks and wrapped in sharp jade-hard thorns erupted like striking serpents.

The roots wrapped tightly around the monster’s thick legs and torso, violently slamming it down onto its knees with a concussive crunch that cracked its kneecaps!

"Bound, my love!" Eluned’s melodic voice chimed from the perimeter, her green eyes glowing with playful dominance.

Eluned really enjoyed holding back, it was like bullying in a way especially when you knew you were stronger than them.

SWOOSH!

Silas vaulted off the pinned monster’s shoulder with his boots driving into the creature’s skull with enough force to fracture its bone plate.

BANG!

"GRAA—!"

He spun mid-air, bringing the golden blade down in a clean vertical execution strike.

SHING-CRACK!

The golden steel drove straight through the crown of the brute’s head, sinking to the hilt.

The mana of his Gold Core detonated internally, blowing the monster’s nervous system into smoking ash and Silas pulled the blade free with a wet sound, landing lightly in the snow, his eyes instantly tracking the remaining three brutes.

To his left, Morwenna was putting on a masterclass in brutal violence.

’No matter how hard I train... I doubt I’ll be able to reach her level in this life.’

The Pirate Queen was facing down two of the massive Grave-Gorgers simultaneously.

She stood completely relaxed with her feet planted in the red-stained snow and her dark hair whipping across her gray eyes as the first brute lunged forward, swinging its massive club-fist in a horizontal sweep meant to crush her torso.

FWOOM!

Morwenna leaned back by an eighth of an inch with the crushing fist whistling past her nose with the force of a wrecking ball.

"You aren’t even in the sea and you’re this slow?" Morwenna mocked coolly.

CLANG!

Tidebringer flashed.