Juliet observed Jacob tie up a sweater around his waist to avoid showing off his cute underwear. She kept giggling through all the process, ignoring the glares Jacob was giving her.
“So, what’s in this next room?” she asked while peeking from the corridor.
“Necromantic monsters,” Jacob replied.
“What?”
“Skeletons, in theory. People who die in the previous rooms get hauled back in here, and they become guardians. They are not overly strong, but there should be quite a few of them. The only way to kill them is to crush their skull or the spine at the neck level.”
Everyone looked around as if they heard it wrong.
“There are Demonic Beasts and Dragons around, and you don’t believe that skeletons can be manipulated?” Jacob asked, exasperated.
You fuc**ng people believe in conspiracy theories, and now you want me to make you look nuts just because I told you what’s in the next room?
Being frustrated was putting it simply.
“Ok, anyway, Fred and Juliet, you go ahead. You should be able to smash those fuckers without a problem.”
“Skull and spine,” Frederick whispered to himself.
Juliet nodded, feeling the slight irritation from Jacob through their Ancestral Bond. Of course, she didn’t want him to be upset, but the current situation was indeed quite ridiculous.
She looked to Frederick and stepped through the room, waiting for some fearsome monsters to appear. Everyone looked at those two with stiff limbs, expecting a massive jump scare. But, after a minute, nothing was happening.
“Oh shit,” Jacob said, jumping in the room with them and running around it.
“Those fuckers already cleaned it. No more monsters.”
Jacob looked at some small treasure chests that were now empty. He went over and inhaled deeply, catching a whiff of a strong medicinal scent.
This is terrible news.
“Let’s go. Hurry up! You all, be ready for fighting to break up. Stay together and try not to get separated.”
The pills’ residue that he had just smelled was something he had not expected to be here.
Why, when something can go wrong, it goes even worse?
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Jacob ran toward the end of the room and saw no one on the corridor visible on the other side. Instead, he stared at the fighting marks, the scratches, and black blood on the ground.
Again, the room was empty. But, this time, there were naked warrior mannequins and even more treasure chests that had been pillaged.
There were so many things that went through his mind at this moment. First, if the people in front of them ingested those pills, they would become much stronger than average, even if they couldn’t absorb them properly. Second, what Jacob had just smelled were Cockroach Empowering Pills. Besides the bad name, they were extremely beneficial for cultivators in the Cockroach realm. They would almost guarantee at least one, if not two, level jumps in Qi.
And sadly, he had also smelled some Cockroach Enlightening Pills, meaning that they had the equivalent for Magic cultivation. And any cultivator would sense the strong energy inside those medicines, meaning that it was very likely that they had ingested them.
“Faster! They cleared this room too! It’s safe!”
They had gone through ghouls, and there were no bodies on the ground.
Fu*k me, Ghouls are at the early 3rd level of the Cockroach realm. I need the sword if we want to win.
Jacob was already in the corridor between the 4th and 5th rooms. And then he saw them. They did not look like the monsters that everyone would make out of them. The people he saw on the platforms wore regular clothes, jeans, and sweaters. What gave them away was the humongous amount of blood that covered their bodies.
“Here they go, boss! The fuckers that entered after us!” a skinny guy screamed toward a burly-looking man sitting on the most central platform.
The 5th room was completely submerged in water save for those platforms. The challenge was to defeat the Demonic Beasts in the water if you wanted to recover the treasures. It was a ruthless and enticing trap because fighting aquatic Demonic Beasts in water was twice as complex as fighting a normal one on land.
What they referred to as Boss was a man in his thirties, tall and strong. His build was even more muscular than Frederick’s, and he had a powerful aura around his body. They had already cleaned this room clean, but each and every one of them was now sitting on the platforms inside the room and…
FU*K!
They were cultivating!
They had found a Cultivation Technique inside these shitty ruins. It probably couldn’t be compared with the ones Jacob had handed out, even the inferior one he had given to Joseph, but it still meant that they had probably absorbed most of the medicine energy from the pills.
Jacob took a look at them while the rest of his people started gathering at his back. He could already feel Joseph trembling and Juliet getting angry.
Their enemies had weapons in their hands and wore pieces of armor that looked old but solid. Those were not Spiritual Weapons, but they were still more than enough to butcher all of them without breaking a sweat. His people were underleveled and less experienced in fighting and without any equipment at all.
Jacob suddenly recognized a couple of those people as inhabitants of Fort Mountain, and an even more ominous feeling came upon him. But it wasn’t the time nor the place to think about bigger problems; he had to deal with them first.
“Juliet, Fred, protect all the others. I need three minutes. The guy in the middle is too strong for both of you. Just don’t die or stall for time. Once I’m back, I’ll take care of them. If I don’t come back, make a run for it. You will never be able to defeat all these people. They have taken pills and are armed to the teeth. Please, just survive long enough.”
Jacob turned toward the boss, who was still sitting while looking at him. That guy had somehow already reached the 6th level of the Cockroach realm.
Jacob took a last look at him and then jumped in the water.
“Jacob!” screamed Juliet before all the water could drown her voice.