With Lake leading the way, the group was able to traverse the underground caverns and tunnels, rarely encountering any trouble and when they did encounter sothing, it was planned.
Lake’s senses allowed them to always be the one ambushing the opponent, allowing them to finish most fights in the first round of attacks.
Sotis a few Lizardn would be left over after the initial assault but the group would quickly deal with them before they could cause any commotion to attract the attention of the other Lizardn in the cave.
Since they wanted to kill as many Lizardn before they were discovered, the group had adapted a blitz run strategy, killing one group of Lizardn before imdiately moving on to the next.
In this manner, after only an hour had passed, the group had already killed more than twenty Lizardn.
However, because they left the corpses of their battles behind, it didn’t take long for their presences to be known to the rest of the Lizardn.
Their subsequent encounters beca more and more difficult to approach as the Lizardn were on guard and were starting to search for them.
They couldn’t continue with their ambush tactics as they were soon discovered before they even got close to the Lizardn.
This resulted in them having to face the enemy head on.
This worked well for the first few encounters but soon the patrol parties started to get larger the more Lizardn they killed.
After another hour of running passed, the group only managed to kill less than fifteen Lizardn before the patrol groups got far too big that they couldn’t kill them all before the next group arrived, causing them to now be on the run.
....
"They’re still behind us!" Jayce shouted as he took a glance behind him.
"Damn it Hana! if you hadn’t taken so long to kill the Lizardman on your side we wouldn’t be in this situation!" Landur shouted to Hana who was running behind him.
"Look, I’m sorry, okay! I didn’t expect them to still be alive after I stabbed them in the chest!"
"You use a dagger! You’re supposed to expect it to not kill them in one hit unless you aim for a vital spot!"
"Ahhhh! I don’t want to hear it anymore! I’m not listening to you so shut up already before I shut you up myself!"
Hana and Landur continued to bicker back and forth as everyone ran through the tunnels. Strangely enough, their bickering only seed to increase their speed as Hana constantly chased after Landur who tried his best to stay out of her reach.
"Left!" Lake shouted out as Gwen, who was in the lead, ran into the left tunnel.
The group closely followed behind with Lake being in the back.
His agility index was far slower than the rest of the group so it took a combination of both mana and his Parkour Master skill to barely keep up.
As the group ran, Lake would frequently take a glance behind him to check on the fate of the Lizardn.
After their attacks, Lake confird that they had killed a total of 41 Lizardn, almost half of the entire tribe.
Behind them was a hunting group of around thirty Lizardn chasing them down and the group was only getting bigger as ti went on.
Lake knew a few Lizardn had left to alert the Lizard King so they had to co up with a solution to the current situation fast.
"After the next left, take a right through the narrow tunnel!"
Gwen didn’t say anything as she focused on running ahead.
Soon she turned left and imdiately spotted a narrow tunnel only big enough to allow one person to fit through at a ti.
The group followed behind her as she ran through the tunnel before finding herself in a familiar tunnel near the entrance of the cave.
"Stop!"
Hearing Lake’s shout everyone imdiately stopped.
Lake, who had spread out his King’s Aura long ago imdiately ordered, "The tunnel we ca from is narrow and the Lizardn will be running through one by one soon enough! Take the chance to take out as many as possible!"
The situation was slightly dire so the group didn’t question Lake’s orders.
Jayce imdiately stood in front of the tunnel as Landur and Lake stood on either side of him.
"Gwen, the Lizardn will soon co from the main tunnel, hold them off as long as possible! Hana, the main tunnel is wide and straight enough. Take out your bow and focus on supporting Gwen while she deals with the second group!"
Soon after Lake issued his orders, several roars sounded out as Lake saw the first Lizardman erging from the narrow tunnel.
The Lizardman released a low hissing sound as it thrusted its spear at Jayce’s head.
Jayce dodged swiftly to the side as he threw a counter punch at the Lizardman’s head.
BANG!
As the Lizardman’s head was blown to bits, Lake moved forward before grabbing its fate before throwing its body to the side, allowing the other Lizardn to rush forward.
After dealing with a few Lizardn however, they were quickly starting to get overwheld as before they could deal with the first Lizardman, another one rushed out.
Landur also joined in the battle but it was apparent that they would quickly be overrun if this continued.
All throughout the operation, Lake kept track of each Lizardn they killed.
"43... 44... 45..."
As more and more Lizardn continued to die at the hands of the three, another group eventually appeared at the end of the main tunnel.
There were around twenty Lizardn in this group and they all rushed towards Gwen who was guarding the tunnel by herself.
As she saw the group of Lizardn rush towards her, she unsheathed her sword as a brilliant silver light enveloped it.
Swoosh!
Before the Lizardn even arrived near her, she had already swung her sword horizontally as a long crescent shaped beam of light was sent flying towards the Lizardn!
Slash!
The beam of light cut into the chests of the Lizardn at the head of the group causing them to slow down or fall over.
However, it didn’t stop the rest of the group behind them from rushing forward.
Gwen also rushed forward with several arrows alongside her, hitting several Lizardn ahead of her.
A few minutes quickly passed as the battle continued on the two fronts.
Gwen kept the group of more than twenty Lizardn at bay with just her sword and the occasional help from Hana’s arrows.
Lake and the rest had already killed almost twenty Lizardn at this point.
When Lake counted the death of the sixtieth Lizardn, he suddenly felt a set of vibrations coming from deeper within the tunnels.
At this point, there were only a little more than twenty Lizardn left in the entire tribe.
After dealing with one more Lizardman, Lake quickly shouted out.
"It’s ti to move! The Lizard King is almost here! Quickly, get out of the cave!"
Hearing Lake’s command, Gwen swiftly disengaged combat with the group of Lizardn after releasing a large sword light behind her, forcing the Lizardn surrounding her to step back.
Once Gwen and Hana had passed behind them, Lake and the rest also abandoned their choke point before rushing out of the cave.
As they stepped outside into the valley, Lake imdiately turned around as he saw the horde of Lizardn rushing towards him.
With his enhanced eyesight, he could see all the way to the back of the main tunnel.
"ROAR!!"
With an earth-shakingly loud roar, Lake saw the large body of the Lizard King for the first ti as it quickly crawled towards him from the back of the tunnel!
Seeing this, Lake quickly started drawing upon his mana as two spell formations appeared on both of his hands.
With a wave of his left hand, Lake casted the first spell on the entrance of the cave, Fracture!
Crack!
As soon as the spell was cast, several large fractures and cracks erged on the walls surrounding the cave entrance.
At this point, the Lizardn who were rushing forward were about to reach the exit of the cave.
After gathering the mana in his left hand, Lake didn’t stop to think before firing off the second spell at the fractured walls.
Mana Blast!
BOOM!!
The entrance to the tunnel imdiately collapsed as Lake casted the two spells, blocking off the Lizardn from advancing forward.
Lake gasped for air as he placed his hands on his knees.
Casting those two spells in quick succession was him pushing the limits of his level one Spellcasting skill. This was especially so with the Facture spell, a new spell he invented after combining the information he learned from the spell scroll with his high level of knowledge in the arcane.
The spell could be considered to be on the boundary of becoming an interdiate spell as it combined several high level spell formulas in the casting process along with requiring a high level of knowledge of environntal awareness.
When he combined the fact that he casted that spell before casting Mana Blast right after, he was both ntally exhausted while having his mana heavily drained.
However, Lake knew that this battle was far from over.
"Quick! Move into position to ambush! We won’t be able to escape with the Lizardn’s tracking ability so we might as well take the opportunity to finish them off once and for all!"
Hearing this, the group thought about it for a second before quickly moving into position.
Normally they wouldn’t take such a risk as to fight a group of Rank Two creatures that was accompanied by a Peak Rank Two beast, but under the effects of King’s Aura’s commanding ability, alongside the trust they had developed in Lake after following his lead in the cave system, they were willing to take the risk and fight!
Everyone quickly rushed up the nearby pathway, arriving at the top of the valley.
Lake and Hana jumped over to the other side of the valley before grabbing their bows as they focused their attention on the entrance to the cave that was quickly being cleared out by the Lizardn.
Gwen, Jayce and Landur stood at the top of the pathway leading down towards the collapsed entrance of the cave.
Everyone had turned the flashlights on their wristbands on before taking them off and attaching them to several areas around the valley.
Combined with the light from the moon, they were able to illuminate most of the area.
Everyone’s nerves were tense as more and more rubble continued to be cleared away by the group of furious Lizardn.
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