In the end, I decided to increase her magic since all of her skills escalate with it, even the physical ones, since they require mana.
“All right, wait on the staircase. We should test the range of this experience sharing…”
“Chi-chi-chi!”
“I am never going to understand you if you keep changing the sounds you make. It was already hard in the first place, and it is even harder with different sounds. In any case, I turned around and then began to focus on the sounds coming from that direction. I wasn’t going to hide anymore. It was time to face the enemies directly and get them by surprise.
After half an hour, I heard the sound of their hurried footsteps… They were quite slow. Still, soon they slowed down when they found me. They raised their hands to attack, but then I fired an explosive arrow. A bunch of tentacles showed up to block the attack, and that happened.
I saw the ice around melting and then I saw a small hole in the tentacle wall immediately healing. I squinted my eyes and then fired another explosive arrow and then another, and then another. Each shot made the area tremble and the damage on the tentacles began to pile up… I had no idea what that was, but it had mana and if it had mana, my bow could drain it.
Soon enough, the enemies realized what I was doing and then decreased the size of their defensive wall. Instead of blocking the whole corridor, they just blocked the frontal area and then sent their tentacles to attack me. I immediately attacked the breaches of their defense and then made a wave of hot air reach them. The tentacles trembled in response.
‘It feels their pain… what the heck is even that?’
I fired a bunch of other arrows, but while I caused a lot of damage at first, eventually, the tentacles began to regenerate faster. I didn’t know how, probably thanks to the mana of those guys, but it didn’t look like I was going to outlast their mana. I eventually stopped shooting and then the area grew silent.
The enemies raised their guard and then soon panicked when they saw a shadow passing on the wall on their side. As it turns out, I could also use Shadow Step when my feet were touching the walls or even the ceiling. It was a lot harder to do on the ceiling, but fairly easy on the walls.
The enemies sent their tentacles behind them, but soon enough, a barrage of arrows exploded from behind and sent them spiraling away. I was surprised to see that no one died with those attacks. Still, when they fell on the ground, I fired more of them since their weird tentacles vanished and this time, I went for the head.
You received 1500 experience points.
You received 1500 experience points.
You received 1500 experience points.
I felt a bad feeling in the back of my head as I killed them, but it didn’t make me stop. Still, I left one alive and then used Demon’s Snare. Chains of light emerged from the ground and then grabbed the limbs of the enemy and it also raised them. Their limbs began to emit smoke as if they were being burned… the figure trembled in pain and soon woke up.
I approached the figure and moved their hood down… soon found a black-haired guy with a pale complexion. One of his eyes was red, and the other was completely white. He also had pulsating purple veins on his neck.
“I told you to leave me alone, didn’t I?”
The vampire glared at me and then opened his mouth and then fired a blast of blood toward me… I jumped to the side and then kicked him in the stomach. That closed his mouth… the chains were supposed to seal his magic, but that probably didn’t count as magic.
I decided to put some silver arrows on his legs and arms and then attach them to the ground since the chains couldn’t last forever. Still, as soon as they vanished, the guy struggled to free itself, even while blood was gushing from those spots.
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I was forced to put more arrows on his body until he couldn’t move any other muscle. I wondered why he didn’t call his tentacle… maybe his body had to be in tip-top shape for that to work. My guess was that this body was being used as a vessel to summon that thing.
“Who are you guys?”
“The others will make sure to capture you and then we will have our revenge against them.”
“I can’t see how that will make your revenge better or easier… but I guess that confirms that you are part of the Forsaken.”
The enemy’s reaction to being called “Forsaken” was one of intense rage. It became clear that the term was not just a simple insult but a deeply derogatory label, one that struck at the heart of their identity. He began to struggle again, even though only his head could be moved under normal circumstances..
The word “Forsaken” likely symbolized something like abandonment, or a fall from grace, which the enemy found humiliating and enraging. It was a title they despised, one that reminded them of their shame and isolation, and the very mention of it seemed to unleash a fury as if the insult reopened old wounds. The enemy’s hatred for the term was palpable, their emotions flaring as they reacted to being reminded of a part of their history they wished to forget or deny.
“You guys tried to kill me, but I still can’t hate you guys… I could have sniped you all easily, but I avoided that, but I guess you wouldn’t want even that kind of sympathy, right?”
“Rest assured that you completed your goal… we were planning to just capture a few of the people here and take their resources that they left behind, but you are a lot more valuable than that.”
“I suppose you guys know who I am as well, but what were you plotting to use me for?”
“You will soon find out.”
In the next moment, the guy suddenly began to inflate like a balloon and his body turned purple… it looked like he was going to self-explode, but I stopped that with an arrow on his head.
You received 1500 experience points.
I let out a sigh… I had to move on. The corridor was filled with corpses now, quite the ominous sight. I wondered why those guys didn’t turn the monsters into their minions… couldn’t they do that against labyrinth monsters?
In any case, I decided to check their bodies and soon found something very disgusting about it. They indeed had some deformations, but they were quite minor… I imagined that the vampires who turned them only want vampires serving them without any physical flaws. Putting that aside, they had a weird wound on their backs that had the shape of a magic circle. The wound was quite recent…
‘Did they have something inside them that exploded when they died? Some sort of parasite?’
The magic circle didn’t have a detailed format since it exploded, creating some nasty wounds in the back of the figure. It was impossible to recognize anything aside from the round shape. They all had the same wound… so it made me wonder where they got that… it wasn’t a power that they got from clearing labyrinths.
Maybe I had damaged the magic circle with my arrows, and that was why they were unable to summon those tentacles. This world is seriously messed up… They didn’t have any items with them, which was quite weird since I felt that they also had more access to mana thanks to the weird magic circle.
“Awooo! Awooo!”
Glacien showed up, and it didn’t look like she wanted to be in this area for long. I could understand the feeling. Understanding her words was close to impossible, but her facial expression was easy to read.
“Let’s get going. I will deal with most of the monsters, but I will leave to you. You can also look for the mana cores.”
“Chi-chi-chi!”
“Sure…”
I pretended to understand the last message and then we headed to the next floor. Perhaps I should confirm what the other enemies were doing outside… they still had twenty or so, whatever the heck they were. That made me wonder, they could have all come in a single ship, but they came in five… they probably had come with more ships in order to bring some minions or prisoners.
On the next floor, the snow rats showed up in groups of four and I disposed of three of them and then Glacien fought the remaining. Even though the beast had resistance to ice magic, Glacien still ripped apart easily thanks to extra physical damage Icerend granted.
“Maybe we should take out time and let you grow strong enough in this section until you can fight two of those at the same time… this might take some time, but it is the best option for your growth. Or maybe not giving that you gain a portion of my experience. What do you think?”
“Chi-chi-chi!”
“Chi-chi-chi, huh? I guess that makes sense.”
Maybe I would leave the labyrinth in one month and find that all the clans had been decimated or an army of all the possible enemies looking for me, but at this point in time, it was a common occurrence. Besides, I don’t think that the guy would have lied in his final moments, so perhaps I was the one in trouble.
Slowing down my plans out of gear wasn’t something that I was planning to do, so I just resumed my journey deeper into the labyrinth. As I walked, I watched Glacien working like my watchdog. She kept a certain distance and then stopped and grunted when the monsters were about to emerge… it looked like she could sense the changes of the mana in the environment as well.
That made me recall Nimir… he also had such good instincts. It probably wasn’t a good idea to compare them, though.
“If nothing happened, he must have cleared more labyrinths than me. Perhaps I should check the land of the beastkin as well soon since their labyrinths are free to be used. It makes me wonder if he has gotten stronger than me… probably not. Maybe I don’t work hard when it comes to fighting, but I certainly work smart.