Chapter 511: ...Swallowed...?

Because the three Tier 4 titans had dragged the center of gravity into the heart of the plateau, the extreme eastern lip of the clearing... running beneath an overhanging shelf of solid granite was relatively clear.

Only a scattering of bleeding stragglers and minor scavengers were skirting the perimeter.

"We have an opening," Silas said, his voice dropping into razor-sharp focus. "We shouldn’t engage the horde, we ride the wall instead..."

He looked back at the girls.

"We punch through the eastern shelf at maximum velocity and break through to the northern pass."

"What about the stragglers?" Morwenna asked, her gray eyes burning with combative heat as she drew Tidebringer.

"I take point," Silas declared, drawing his golden longsword with a clean shing. "Any beast that steps onto our path gets cut down by my steel... You girls hold the rear and flank lines, keep the Princess covered, and wipe out anything that tries to pursue. Do not decelerate. If you stop, the horde collapses on our flanks."

"Understood!" the women answered in disciplined unison.

"Valkyrie! CHARGE!" Silas roared.

HOWOOOOOOOOOL!

The lead wolf exploded forward.

Valkyrie hit an instantaneous dead sprint with her powerful hindquarters launching her down the shale embankment like a silver missile, creating an immediate fifty-pace gap between Silas and the rest of the formation.

Behind him, the obsidian bird, realizing Silas was carving the path, tucked its wings and shot through the air right beside his shoulder.

"FORWARD!" Morwenna roared, her weapon blazing with heavy-water mana as the seven riders followed in a tight protective wedge behind their Lord.

BOOM!

The sudden radiant intrusion of Silas’s Gold Core immediately drew bloodthirsty attention.

From the churning edge of the horde, three massive eight-legged Grave-Stalkers... their chitinous carapaces dripping with acidic slime spotted the charging wolf and lunged horizontally across the snowdrifts to cut him off!

The obsidian bird let out a terrified shriek, banking wildly to the right.

"Eyes front, bird!" Silas barked! "Hold your line!"

Silas didn’t slow Valkyrie by a fraction of an inch.

VUUUM!

He channeled a surge of dense high-pressure water mana from his core straight into the golden mythril steel of his blade.

The blade began to hum with the deafening, high-pitched scream of a breaking wave.

"Abyssal Sever!"

SHING-FZZZZT!

He executed a clean horizontal flick of his wrist as a razor-thin forty-foot crescent of pressurized aqua energy detonated outward from the blade’s edge.

CHOP-CHOP-CHOP!

The aqua crescent carved through the freezing air at high speed.

It sliced clean through the lead stalker’s armored skull, through the second beast’s torso, and severed the third monster’s front four legs in the span of seconds.

SPLAT!

The three beasts collapsed into the snow, their severed parts skidding across the ice as Valkyrie vaulted directly over their smoking corpses.

"More on the left!" Tasmin shouted from thirty paces behind!

From a high basalt ledge, a cluster of five winged Frost-Gargoyles folded their stony wings, diving toward Silas’s head like falling artillery shells, their talons extended to crush his skull.

Silas didn’t look up as he twisted in his saddle, his core spinning into rotational torque.

He drew ambient moisture from the freezing gale into his lungs, cycled it through his Gold Core, and unleashed the fury of Morwenna’s martial art.

"Tidal-Blade Arts: First Style... Severing Horizon."

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

A colossal thirty-foot-wide crescent arc of phantom heavy-water exploded upward from his blade.

The phantom wave hit the diving gargoyles with the concussive, bone-shattering force of an oceanic tsunami.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!

The stone-hard gargoyles were violently crushed into pulverized gravel mid-air with their bodies exploding into gray dust before they could even scream.

"And stay down," Silas muttered.

Before the airborne moisture could dissipate, he flicked his left hand toward the falling debris, releasing the next spell.

"Ice Transformation!"

FROOOOO-SH!

The pulverized mist and heavy-water residue instantly flash-froze into a massive twenty-foot wall of crystalline ice spears that slammed down behind Valkyrie’s tail, completely barricading the eastern flank from the main horde.

From the rear of the column, Morwenna watched the colossal ice wall erupt with a sharp, toothy grin.

"Tch! Look at him using my art like he was born on a deck," Morwenna clicked her tongue in arrogant pride with her gray eyes burning. "That’s my Captain for you!"

"Don’t lose your focus, Morwenna!" Kadi shouted from her wolf!

Kadi thrust both hands forward, unleashing a roaring torrent of golden sand that caught three leaping Spine-Hounds in mid-air, shredding their flesh into red ribbons before they could breach the perimeter.

Beside her, Aeliana snapped her fingers, opening a vertical spatial tear that cleanly sheared the heads off two pursuing crawlers with a crisp terrifying snik.

"Flank clear, Lord Silas!" Aeliana reported proudly, her spectacles gleaming in the blood-stained snow.

THUD-THUD-THUD!

Valkyrie cleared the final basalt shelf, bursting cleanly out of the eastern gorge and onto the wide unobstructed snowfields of the northern pass.

The sounds of the clashing monster armies abruptly fell behind them, muffled by the granite wall they had just skirted...

They had made it through.

Silas pulled Valkyrie around in a smooth sweeping turn, bringing the dire wolf to a halt as the rest of the detachment thundered up behind him.

He stood tall in his stirrups, looking down at his seven warrior maidens with a broad radiant smile.

"Heh..."

He raised his right hand, flashing them a clean effortless peace sign with two fingers.

The girls caught his gaze and every single one of them smiled back.

Tasmin let out a rare genuine chuckle, raising two fingers in an identical peace sign.

Aurelia offered a gentle smile, mirroring the gesture with her slender hand.

Kadi and Aeliana grinned brightly, flashing their peace signs with flushed triumphant cheeks, while the Princess practically bounced in her saddle.

’Eh... it’s a bit cringe but whatever.’

She did it.

Even Thor, looking at the gesture, threw her head back with a booming laugh, raising two calloused fingers high into the freezing air.

"Gwahahaha! Victory!"

Behind them, five desperate Spine-Hounds managed to scramble over the ice wall, snapping their jaws as they lunged in a frantic pursuit—

SHING-SHING-SHING-SHING-SHING!

Morwenna didn’t even turn her head.

She simply brandished Tidebringer in a lazy backhanded arc behind her flank as an invisible crescent of vacuum wind sliced across the trail.

CHOP!

All five hounds were decapitated in a single fluid stroke, their severed heads rolling into the snowdrifts as Morwenna casually slid the blade back into its scabbard with a crisp clack.

"Too slow, you mangy mutts," Morwenna mocked coolly with a triumphant smirk curling her lips. "Go chew on some shale."

She looked back toward Silas, her smirk widening as she raised her hand to return his peace sign.

Silas was still facing away from the trail, looking down at his companions with that warm reassuring smile.

Because he was facing backward... he didn’t notice.

No... it wasn’t a matter of noticing.

It was simply too fast.

SZZZZZZZZZZT!

From the clean empty snow directly beneath Valkyrie’s front paws, a dense plume of milky-white necrotic fog detonated upward like an erupting geyser.

High above, the obsidian bird let out an ear-splitting, shrieking rattle of pure horror.

"SQUAWWWWWWWK! CAW! CAW!"

The whiteout rose in an imperceptible fraction of a microsecond!

Thor’s storm-blue eyes dilated violently as the divine thunder in her veins flared to life with her muscles coiling to launch across the ten paces separating them—

KRA-FLASH!

Before the God of Thunder could take a single step... before Morwenna’s blade could clear the hilt... before Eluned’s roots could even twitch in the soil—

SNAP!

The blinding white vapor collapsed inward with the concussive hollow pop of an imploding vacuum as the fog vanished.

The air was clean once more.

The falling snow continued its lazy silent descent from the gray sky. ℯℯ𝑙.

Valkyrie was standing alone in the center of the trail with her head lowered, sniffing the disturbed snowdrifts with a confused whimper.

The saddle was empty and Silas... had completely vanished.

...

’Strange...’

The thought had barely crossed Silas’s mind before the cold seized him.

He had felt the unnatural power of this whiteout before, back when the pale ribbons clung to the basalt slopes, but this was different.

The instant it gathered around his boots, the air didn’t just chill... it liquefied into pure suffocating malice.

Every instinct honed through countless skirmishes screamed that this was an active trap but before his muscles could even coil to kick free of Valkyrie’s stirrups, reality folded.

The snowy pass, the triumphant cheers of the girls, and Morwenna sheathing Tidebringer were ripped away in an imperceptible fraction of seconds.

Light vanished and sound died as his vision was violently submerged in pitch-black void... a spatial dislocation so abrupt it made his inner ear spin and his Gold Core lurch against his ribs.

The sensory blackout lasted only an instant.

FWOOOOOOSH!

Freezing air battered Silas’s face as gravity violently reasserted itself.

He was tumbling through empty space, plummeting out of a lightless ceiling toward jagged frost-bitten ground dozens of feet below.

A frantic fluttering sound cut through the rush of the wind beside his ear.

"SQUAWWWK!"

The obsidian bird was tumbling through the empty air right beside him with its dark crystalline wings flailing in blind panic as it plummeted headfirst.

"Haah... What is this...?"

Silas reacted without a breath of hesitation.

He extended his right arm, snapping his gloved fingers out to create a steady perch.

The bird recognized the lifeline instantly, banking its wings and latching its sharp talons onto his reinforced leather vambrace with a desperate clattering grip.

VUUUM!

With his left hand free, Silas channeled a controlled pulse of atmospheric wind mana through his palm, releasing a foundational burst of [Hurricane Repulsion] downward against the approaching bedrock.

BOOM!

The concussive downward shockwave met the frozen stone floor, decelerating his terminal velocity in an instant.

Silas hit the permafrost in a low three-point crouch with the kinetic dispersion woven into his silver-threaded cloak absorbing the remaining force as a small concussive ring of pulverized frost rippled outward from his boots.

He straightened slowly, his breath steadying into pale quiet wisps and the air here was dead.

"Hmm..."

It was an enormous cavern, far beneath the surface ridges of the basin as the ceiling was lost in high shadows, but curling across the jagged floor was that same milky-white creeping fog.

It didn’t rush or surge like before... it drifted with the bloated laziness of a well-fed serpent.

"Strange."

The bird gave him a look, was he not bothered about all this?!

Silas looked down at his arm.

The obsidian bird was perched on his wrist, its crested head twitching rapidly, its small beady eyes dilated with unmistakable terror.

"Do you know this specific part?" Silas asked quietly.

The bird bobbed its beak once in a stiff trembling nod but it didn’t flap. It crouched low against his forearm, its crystalline feathers trembling against the cold leather.

Silas turned his gaze outward, letting his eyes adjust to the pale gloom.

As the fog drifted across the uneven stone, the terrain revealed itself as littering the cavern floor in every direction were skeletons.

...Hundreds of them.

They weren’t human bones.

These were the colossal petrified remains of ancient beasts... massive five-yard-wide rib cages arching out of the permafrost like shattered ships, skulls the size of carriages with broken horns, and serpentine spinal columns coiled in frozen agony.

Every single skeleton was hollowed out, their marrow long since dissolved, coated in the pale frosted residue of the necrotic mist.

The bird let out a sharp mournful squawk that rattled off the distant stone pillars.

Silas exhaled a slow frosty breath.

He really didn’t need Eluned to translate the bird’s panic this time as the environmental pressure weighing against his Gold Core told the entire story.

"We’re in the Domain of one of those Tier 5 monsters... and the one behind the fog, right?" Silas murmured.

The bird snapped its beak shut, nodding frantically with its talons digging deeper into his vambrace as if begging him to turn back, find a crack in the wall, and run.

Silas stared into the sprawling graveyard.

A Tier 5 monster huh?

A slow smile crept across Silas’s lips.

SHING!

With a crisp ringing draw of steel, the golden mythril longsword cleared its scabbard, illuminating the creeping white mist with the radiant glow of his Gold Core.

The light cut through the pale gloom, casting long defiant shadows behind the towering rib cages.

"What are we waiting for then?" Silas chuckled. "Let’s go kill it."

He stepped forward, his combat boots crunching steadily through the brittle frost and bone dust as he marched directly toward the deep heart of the fog.

The obsidian bird puffed its feathers, throwing its head back to unleash a high-pitched squawk of pure indignant outrage.

"SQUAWWWWWK! KRR-CLACK! CAW!"

Silas didn’t even look back.

He gave his wrist a sharp dismissive flick, cutting through the bird’s frantic scolding without breaking his stride.

"Shut up, bird," Silas muttered with an amused smirk with his grip tightening around the golden hilt. "Have some balls... We’ve got a monster to hunt."