Read Novel Full Chapter 1923: Rapid Climb
Chapter 1923: Rapid Climb
Forty-five floors beneath Aldoria’s market square, a chamber the size of a cathedral was trying to kill two of the Primordial Villain’s women, and Black Fang was taking notes.
She waited on a shelf of black rock above the killing floor, one thigh crossed over the other.
Below her, forty-five monsters poured out of the tunnel mouths in waves. Ashmaw Orcs led the charge, tusked and plate-muscled, crude cleavers hammering off Kaelira’s raised shield.
Behind them, Cragspit Tortoises squatted at the chamber’s edges, spitting fists of rock in flat arcs over their own line. Gloomhide Prowlers slid along the walls, hunting a path around the shield to the caster behind it.
*RRAAGH!*
The Venomborne Terror had split the family into pairs of her own design, shield and curse in this case. The rule she had given them was one sentence long: your chamber is yours alone, and nobody comes to save you.
The pace they were setting would’ve floored any professional dungeon explorer.
Behind the labyrinth’s little stone doorway, buried countries unfolded, one per floor, corridor systems feeding chamber after chamber, and all of it stocked full of monsters.
"Left tunnel," Kaelira reported from behind her tower shield, runes flaring along its rim as tortoise shot and cleavers hammered it in turns. "Eight more incoming."
"I see them~" Vex sang from atop a dead orc, one hand weaving, and a wave of grey rot rolled across the chamber floor like spilled water.
Green flesh withered. Six charging orcs folded mid-stride, muscle rotting off the bone, and Vex hopped down to open the nearest one’s throat with her sword, as an afterthought.
A Gloomhide Prowler dropped from the wall at her back before her boots touched the floor. Two dancing steps took her out from under its claws, and the third put her blade up through its jaw.
"Four minutes," Black Fang said from above.
"Yesterday it was six!" Kaelira called back, and drove her shield edge down through a crippled orc with a *CRUNCH*.
"Kaelira, you’re powerful. But you keep acting as though your worth was only your shield." The verdict came down flat.
"...But I’m-"
"A tanker whose job is to protect others," Black Fang finished for her. "The best way to protect those behind you is to kill what’s in front of you."
Without wasting a breath, she moved on. "Vex. You spent mana on six when only four would breach the wave."
"Master watched me kill six at once?" Vex tipped her head back at the shelf, red eyes shining hopefully through the gore.
"I saw you waste mana on two." Black Fang let that sit. "The footwork was acceptable."
Vex beamed like she’d been handed a medal.
...
On the western border of the Beastman Confederation, snow lay knee-deep on the watch-ridges, and the wolfkin posted there could no longer feel their own faces.
They were the best eyes the Confederation owned, sent by Skarn’s standing order to watch every wagon the Villain’s lands dared roll their way. The schedule taken down from the first delivery said the second installment would cross the pass in eight days.
The horn blew on the fifth.
"Count again," the senior watcher growled.
"I’ve counted three times!" The younger one’s ears were flat against his skull. "Same banners, twice the wagons. They’re early. Who is early with a mule train through mountain passes in deep winter?"
Below their ridge, the column crested the pass road unhurried, trade-white banners bright against the snow, and the escort riding its flanks was so thin it read as decoration.
...
On the fiftieth floor, Quinlan Elysiar stood at the mouth of a chamber built for an army and flooded it.
One hand lifted, magma answered, and a burning tide rolled wall to wall in a single breath, climbing the tunnel mouths, swallowing fifty war-howls before they could finish leaving fifty throats. Heat washed back over him like a furnace door opening.
Duskhorn Minotaurs went under mid-charge beside Gravehide Trolls, and with them a whole rank of Ashmaw Orcs, five levels heavier than their kin upstairs. The labyrinth reshuffled the previous floors’ monsters into its deeper stock now and then, raised to the local level, and today the orcs had drawn the short straw twice.
[You’ve Slain Duskhorn Minotaur (Level 50). You’ve Gained 12,400 XP.]
[You’ve Slain Ashmaw Orc (Level 50). You’ve Gained 12,000 XP.]
[You’ve Slain Gravehide Troll (Level 50). You’ve Gained 12,150 XP.]
The kill notifications climbed the edge of his vision faster than he could dismiss them, a waterfall of blue script with no end in sight.
"Cheater," Ayame observed from the corridor behind him, arms folded, entirely unbothered by the heat rolling past her.
"It’s called skill," he corrected pleasantly.
"Saber only next chamber," came the flat voice from the corridor mouth. Black Fang had arrived without sound, as always, and her violet eyes gave the cooling lake of stone exactly zero appreciation.
"Yes!" Ayame grinned, already victorious.
"...Yes, teach," the Primordial Villain sighed.
The next room he took with the Soul Reaper alone, and the Venomborne Terror’s corrections fell on him the entire time, precise as thrown knives.
Your left hip opens before your cut. You gave that cleaver your shoulder for free. Stop killing them in the order they arrive, kill them in the order that costs least.
Ayame hugged her scabbard and committed every second of it to memory while her big sister dismantled her lover’s swordsmanship layer by layer.
Quinlan was already a great user of the blade, even if not on her level. But the fact that her sister found so many tiny gaps to voice...
Ayame sported a brilliant smile.
...
The convoy reached the Confederation’s western gate at midday, and the watchers above it got their first clear look at the crews.
Dwarves drove the lead wagons. That much was expected.
Then came the second rank, and it was human.
Then the outriders dismounted, and they were elves.
"Elves," the senior watcher said, as though saying it plainly might unmake it. "Riding escort. For dwarven wagons. Carrying human cargo hands."
This wasn’t like the first delegation that arrived. Something had clearly changed.
His partner had stopped hearing him. The gear had all of him.
The humans wore interlocking plate that moved with them like cloth and shed the cold like a hearth, dwarven make in every line of it, fitted to human frames.
Scaled mail rippled on the elven outriders, forge-runes glowing faint at the collar seams.
No kingdom’s army had ever fielded armor like it. These were cargo guards, and they were equipped beyond the Confederation’s finest champions.
And the strangest part wasn’t the steel.
The elves passed crates down to the dwarves at arm’s reach, close enough to smell beard and sweat, and stayed there. The dwarves griped about the cold, the mules, the crate count, about everything except the elves.
"Even Elvardia never looked like that," the senior watcher muttered. The old alliance had put elves and dwarves under one banner, and they had still salted every shared road with contempt. "What did he do to them?"
Nobody answered him.
"You saw it," the senior said at last. "You write it."
"I am not writing that. The great lords will have the messenger skinned."
"I outrank you."
"Then you write it."
"...Fuck."