Belida’s footsteps stopped right in front of a broken minecart rail. The giant knight looked down, staring in horror at the bottom of the abyss filled with glowing red magma. The intense heat could be felt piercing straight through the soles of their boots. The underground wind blew thick dust into the air, making the view of the ancient ruined city in front of them look even more terrifying.
Papuyu suddenly took two steps back. Her daggers were already pulled completely out of their leather sheaths. The female hitman crouched low, her eyes sweeping toward a pile of overturned iron train cars about twenty meters ahead of them.
"Something is moving," Papuyu whispered incredibly quietly. "A lot of them."
Kanos immediately closed his left eye. He forced his brain to activate the Structural Analysis ability native to his class. But the result was a massive zero. No blue grid lines appeared. No red screen notifications popped up to warn him about threats. His eye only felt a sharp stinging pain like it was being poked by needles. The system was truly and completely paralyzed in this zone.
"Sili, get behind that stone pillar," Kanos issued a quick command without looking back. Sili immediately sprinted away in a total panic, seeking cover behind the ruins of an old guard post without saying a single word of complaint.
Kanos walked slowly forward, stopping right next to Belida. He regulated his breathing, trying to rely entirely on his pure artistic instincts to read the spatial layout of the room. Kanos’s eyes caught shifting shadows behind those rusted train cars. It was not just one. There were five or six bizarre shapes crawling down from the steep cliff wall.
Their shapes resembled severely emaciated humans, but they crawled using four limbs that looked more like praying mantis pincers. Their skin was deathly pale like corpses soaked in water for days. They had absolutely no eyes on their faces. There was only one giant mouth stretched wide open, completely filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. The creatures let out a constant clicking sound, exactly like bats using echolocation to find their way.
"Blind gargoyles," Belida spoke quietly. His hands gripped his sword hilt so tight his knuckles turned white. "I heard stories from veteran adventurers in the upper city. These creatures are blind, but they have a deadly instinct for tracking heartbeats and leftover mana. Once they bite you, they will suck every single drop of energy in your body until you dry up into a husk."
"They smell the mana coming from your sword and the magic potions inside Papuyu’s bag," Kanos calmly reached into his pants pocket. His left index finger slipped inside the small glass bottle, touching the pure purple smoke ink that instantly stuck to his fingertip like cold glue.
The pale creatures stopped crawling. They simultaneously turned their heads toward Kanos and his group. Their clicking sounds grew faster and incredibly high pitched. In a matter of seconds, the six blind gargoyles leaped off the cliff wall. They glided down fiercely, aiming straight for where Belida and Papuyu were standing. Their speed was absolutely insane, far faster than the mutant wolves on the sixth floor.
Belida took a deep breath, getting ready to swing his giant sword to slice the first creature that reached them.
But Kanos moved much faster. His brain, already highly accustomed to working like a madman under pressure, instantly took absolute control of the situation. He did not draw any lines in the air. He simply issued a mental command straight to his black golem.
BAM!
The two meter tall stone golem launched forward, passing Belida in a blur. The sound of its heavy footsteps crushed the mining floor rocks into tiny pieces. The golem slammed directly into the first two gargoyles in mid air. The pale creatures were thrown backward brutally, crashing hard into the rusted iron train cars. The sound of snapping bones could be heard loud and clear over the rumbling magma river below.
Two other gargoyles immediately shifted their direction in the air. They landed right on Kanos’s black golem. Their giant mouths opened wide, instantly biting down hard on the golem’s stone shoulder and neck to suck its mana out.
But those bites only produced a pathetic clanking sound. The creatures’ sharp teeth shattered and fell out the moment they struck that pitch black stone surface. Kanos’s golem had no blood. Kanos’s golem had no mana. The creature was absolute nothingness that completely rejected all the logic of this world.
The gargoyles looked panicked and deeply confused. They tried to release their bite to back away. Too late. The golem’s giant stone hands instantly grabbed both monsters by the neck simultaneously. With zero hesitation, the golem slammed their bodies down hard onto the stone floor until they were completely mangled. Four monsters dead in under five seconds.
Papuyu exploited the chaotic opening perfectly. The girl slid in from the side with incredibly smooth movements. Her twin daggers swung lethally, instantly slicing the throats of the last two gargoyles that were still confused looking for a new target. Black blood splattered, staining the ground, but Papuyu had already leaped away before a single drop could touch her gray clothes.
Belida lowered his sword while exhaling roughly. The knight turned toward Kanos with a highly mixed expression. "Your monster just slaughtered high tier mutants like it was swatting annoying flies."
"Nothingness always wins against predators that need to eat," Kanos answered quietly. He walked closer to the pile of gargoyle corpses in front of his golem.
Kanos did not immediately feel satisfied. He felt something was incredibly off. The composition of this battle was way too easy. If the Dead Zone was truly so dangerous that even the Sensor Bureau was too lazy to come down here, the threat could not possibly be just six stupid pale lizards.
Kanos looked up toward the pitch black roof of the giant cave high above them. The soft clicking sounds started echoing again. Not just six this time. Thousands. The clicking echoed from every single direction, making the entire stone room vibrate slightly.
From between the cliff pillars, from behind the train tunnels, from the top of the broken suspension bridges. Hundreds of blind gargoyles began crawling out like an army of starving white ants. They smelled the fresh blood of their kin that had just been slaughtered. Now their target was extremely clear.
Belida took one step back, raising his sword back up to chest height. Cold sweat dripped from the knight’s temples. Papuyu dropped into a low stance, her dead eyes locking onto dozens of monsters crawling closest to them on the left side.
"Sili," Kanos called out without looking back. His tone of voice was completely flat and incredibly cold. "Stay ducking behind that rock. Do not make a single sound."
Kanos walked forward, passing Belida completely. He stood exactly next to his black golem. The hundreds of pale monsters began sliding down the cliffs simultaneously like a horrifying waterfall of rotting flesh.
This was no longer a survival fight. Kanos raised his left hand high up. His fingertip, still thickly coated in pure purple smoke ink, began moving rapidly through the empty air. Line after line he pulled with terrifying precision. Skulls, spinal cords, razor sharp claws.
Thick purple smoke exploded from his finger, merging in the air to form five giant Shadow Wolves all at once. Kanos did not care that his head felt like it was going to split into two pieces. He needed this entire area cleared, and he was going to wipe his brand new canvas clean using the most brutal method he possibly could.
"Slaughter them all," Kanos ordered. His voice echoed quietly through the cavern. "Leave the crystal cores for me."
Five shadow wolves and one golem of nothingness instantly launched forward to welcome the incoming sea of white monsters. The one sided massacre truly began.