Chapter 307
Captain Lagrange’s group has fanned out across the chamber the way a hand fans cards: every man and woman exactly where their Captain has put them, every line of sight covered, every retreat path mapped. The Undead Drakes spit acid across the front line and the Shields drink the spray with their barriers; the Breakers answer with lightning, fork after fork, the smell of cooked rot crawling up the walls. It looks like control. It looks like a fight already won. That is exactly what the Primordial Dungeon prefers — for a group to believe in the fight it is in — because that is precisely the moment a Lancer steps out from behind the bodies of monsters smaller than itself and the fight that was already won becomes a fight nobody had been having.
“Douse them with lightning!” Captain Lagrange shouts above the clamor of battle. “Left flank, there’s a goddamn Lancer there! Two Shields interception!”
Two tanky Shields detach from the front and switch to the left side just as their Breaker casters finish raining hell on a pack of Undead Drakes that spat acid fire. Right as the Undead’s heads are fried and destroyed by lightning, a white figure appears almost from thin air.
Hiding behind the other monsters and concealing its aura, a short monster, barely five feet tall, jumps toward the group of fighters.
Its left arm is shaped into a massive lance, twice the size of its body. It beggars belief. How can such a small monster even lift that limb?
Yet, the scariest part is that despite two Shields using two Mana Barriers, the Nightmare Lancer of Apocalypse throws an attack so fast and powerful that the first of the two barriers shatters on impact. The second cracks and it barely holds.
Two more Shields scramble to create barriers and contain the monster.
Captain Lagrange watches on and waits for the signal.
The Lancer’s body is wrong in the way only a thing built for one purpose can be wrong. It stands barely five feet tall and its right side is almost normal — a thin shoulder, a thin arm, a hand with the right number of fingers. Everything else has been sacrificed to feed the limb on the left. That limb tapers from the shoulder into a single, faceted lance of bone-white chitin, twice the length of the Lancer’s body, the tip honed so fine that it carries no glint at all; it simply ends, as if the air around it had been cut and forgotten to grow back. When it strikes, it does not pull back to wind up. The lance is already moving. The body that holds it merely tilts, and the strike is already three feet into the space that held a Shield’s barrier a half-second ago.
“Clear!” A woman shouts.
Beats later, the second scout, too, shouts, “CLEAR!”
Captain Lagrange’s body comes apart like vapor pulled in a draft. The lance passes through the place his chest had been an instant ago and finds nothing — no flesh, no bone, no resistance. By the time the Lancer has registered the miss, the Captain has reassembled himself behind it, sword already raised, already moving. The cut is small. It does not need to be large. The blade slips through the seam at the base of the Lancer’s pale skull and the head leaves the shoulders and lands somewhere among the rest of the bodies the Drakes have left behind. Smoke wraps Captain Lagrange one more time, and when it thins, he is standing exactly where he had been before the Lancer ever jumped, sword sheathed, expression unchanged, as if he had merely blinked and the monster had decided to die on its own.
Captain Lagrange watches on as his men finish killing the Undead Drakes. Only after several minutes since the actual end of the battle does he relax for a moment, stationing several Daggers at the entrances of the room, establishing a perimeter.
The problem, however, is that in a Primordial Dungeon’s Intermediate Ground, monsters can literally come out from anywhere. It’s not unlikely to see fake walls, fake floors, and fake ceilings collapse and give way to hordes of monsters.
Of course, the Daggers that Captain Lagrange brought with him are actually specialized in scouting for these exact issues, but you never know when it can happen. That’s why he doesn’t allow his men to ever take their armor off or even sheath their swords unless they’re surrounded by combat-ready people.
If Captain Lagrange had to say what’s the most difficult part of the Dungeon, he would probably point to the fact that you have to be alert at all times. That slowly grinds your sanity away, making you more and more tired as you go deeper into the Dungeon. And as people grow tired, the chances of them dying for an easy-to-avoid mistake increase exponentially.
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He turns to look at Jacob Cloud’s group, expecting them to be reeling after this fight. It usually scares newbies to death to see one of the real Nightmares. Lancers, especially, are the most dangerous ones. They’re extremely powerful, despite having a weak body. But that means their attack power is solidly half a step into Imperium Rank.
“So, Cloud, are you rethinking your—“
Captain Lagrange finds the group of Champions and Dark Champions playing cards.
“How do you have another ace?” Jacob frowns at the Blood of the Devils, the man who goes by the name ‘Baal.’ “Are you cheating?”
“Luck favors those with a pure heart,” Baal says with a warm smile. “Maybe you should become a monk.”
“What the—you go become a Monk! Dammit!”
They’re all sitting in circles and playing cards with each other, with Jacob just throwing his own on the ground and forking over several True Diamond Coins.
Captain Lagrange suddenly feels a pulsating vein about to explode on his head.
“ Cloud !” He shouts, walking straight to the group.
Jacob looks at the angry Captain Lagrange walking over, but right before the man can shout his head off, there’s some sort of alarm going off.
Stunned, Captain Lagrange sees Jacob Cloud take out a ringing pocket watch from inside his armor’s chestpiece and show it to him.
“Well, sir,” Jacob says with a big smile, “would you look at that? It’s time for our sanctioned training. See you later.”
“ What?! ” Captain Lagrange fumes. “Maybe you can’t tell, but it’s nighttime. It’s time to rest and for those who can, sleep . Where do you think you’re going?”
“Yeah, sleep. Whatever,” Jacob smiles. “We’re going training.”
“You’re way too far from the entrance, Cloud. If you step into one of the corridors, you might die at the first batch of monsters you encounter—“
“Sir,” Jacob says, “technically speaking, I can take your advice. Can, not must . It’s in the agreement with the Knight Commander. I’m a stickler for the chain of command, as you might know. I wouldn’t want to defy Sir Maximilian’s orders.”
Captain Lagrange’s main objective is to clear these ruins with as few casualties as possible, hoping to make progress toward the destruction of the Original Primordial Dungeon. And if he must be honest, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about these Champions.
But if they die, the Academy wouldn’t be happy.
“I can’t send people with you, Cloud. You don’t know the Dungeon.”
“Sir, we’ve been observing you all day. Don’t worry, we will come back in about six hours. We just need to practice our Skills a little bit. It’s about time we reach Diamond Rank, you know?”
“Cloud, I don’t like repeating myself. You’ll die .”
Jacob Cloud, however, just straightens his spine, cracks his neck, and gestures at all the Champions and Dark Champions. They all get up, stretching their limbs and spine.
Captain Lagrange trembles in fury before gesturing for Narzla. “Give them the map.”
Narzla, the Infernal woman, fetches a map from her Interspatial Ring and gives it to them.
“The paths in blue have already been cleared. Try to stay in those for this training of yours.”
Jacob takes the map and points at some red rooms and corridors.
“What’s that?”
“Dead ends,” Narzla says, “our scouts can mark the places that lead nowhere but that clearly have hordes of monsters ready to drop on you the moment you enter. We’re avoiding those since the most important thing is not to clear the entire ruin, but to find clues on where we can access the innermost layer of the Dungeon.”
“I see. Well, see you later.”
Captain Lagrange and Narzla look at each other.
“Do you want me to follow them?” Narzla asks. “Make sure they don’t kill themselves?”
“No,” Captain Lagrange sighs. “If they’re lucky, a few of them will die and they’ll learn their lesson. I won’t be risking our people for those kids.”
The man looks as Jacob’s group sets up their own Lights and slowly becomes a disappearing beacon of light into the darkness of the ruins.
The hours pass and Captain Lagrange manages to sleep only a couple of them as people keep taking shifts.
There’s no threat during their break, which started at around midnight. Not that one would be able to tell the time this deep into underground ruins.
As the six-hour mark nears, Captain Lagrange looks impatiently at his pocket watch.
“Captain, I know you hate this, but we should see if we can fish them out—or their corpses—from wherever they ended up. They’re still part of the Academy, sir,” Narzla says, looking worried.
“I guess you’re right,” Captain Lagrange sighs and rests his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“They’re probably dead,” one of the other Knights says. “Who’s crazy enough to venture around scary True Diamond monsters when they’re not even Diamond Rank?!”
“Heh, I’ve seen it when I was graduating myself. There were three Champions in my year and they all died on one of their last Special Quests. The more time passed, the more they felt invincible. It’s not surprising that the ‘Generation of Legends’ has let the title go to their heads this quick.”
“Still, what a waste of good potential and Rainbow Skills,” another sighs. “I’m surprised the Headmaster just allows them to do whatever they want. If one of my kids had a Rainbow Skill, I’d have him wrapped in security until he reached Mithril Rank, dammit!”
Captain Lagrange understands and shares the sentiment that his men are expressing. It’s normal to be cocky if you’re a Champion — his year’s Champions, too, had died prematurely. Yet, he had hoped that Jacob, being a touted grand strategist and supposed mastermind, would have had the common sense to listen to him.
“Let’s just hope some of them survived,” Captain Lagrange says, turning to his men.
“Survived? Captain, do you really think this little of us?”
The Captain spins in place to find Jacob Cloud and the rest of the Champions and Dark Champions covered in grime, blood, and dirt. Yet, as he scans their faces, their exposed skin, and their gait, it’s immediately clear to a veteran like him that not one of them is even injured.