Chapter 184: Everyone Else Is Putting In Work—How Are You This Useless?
The twisting green leaves rolling through the sky lted together into a mass, raining continuously down onto the fleshy terrain and spreading across the entire space without a gap.
This place was the 29th Layer of the Magical Creature Rift.
【Jade-Green Sky Path】
From the green fleshy terrain, sharp and warped dead trees jutted upward, rising in dense clusters.
Their branches forked apart like the arms of dried-out corpses.
A Demi-human unit clad in bone armor marched in formation, pressing steadily forward.
Each Demi-human gripped a blade in hand, their eyes resolute and calm.
They had already passed through many Layers and fought countless ferocious Magical Creatures along the way.
Even though the Adventurer Guilds had cleared out a fair number of the lower-Layer creatures, the Rift continued to generate all manner of strange Magical Creatures without end.
Yet despite their armor being stained with purple blood and droplets of alien-colored liquid dripping from their blades,
not a single mber of the unit showed any sign of exhaustion.
Their eyes were sharp and bright, brimming with drive.
In under a single day, this Demi-human unit had already pushed through to the 29th Layer of the Magical Creature Rift.
The deeper they ventured, the stronger the monsters that appeared.
In the early Layers, only lower-tier Magical Creatures spawned—nothing more than weeds before a well-equipped Demi-human unit, utterly effortless to handle.
But the closer they drew to the 30th Layer, the more powerful the Magical Creatures beca.
So had even reached 3rd Tier in strength.
This place was like an inexhaustible Magical Creature-generating machine, relentless and untiring.
Without warning, over a dozen powerful Magical Creatures burst up from beneath the fleshy ground.
They swung sharp claws, extended mouthparts 2 to 3 ters long from their mouths, and fixed their gaze on the Demi-humans before them.
Their massive bodies looked particularly grotesque under the all-consuming green glow, their original coloring impossible to make out.
Dragging along slug-like lower halves, they slowly closed in on the Demi-humans.
Watching the creatures draw near, the Demi-humans exchanged glances. The elongated column broke apart, reforming into a circular double-layered formation.
They held their blades horizontally before them, cold gleams flashing in their eyes.
The Magical Creatures extended their mouthparts, attempting to drive them into the Demi-humans' chests.
But the mont danger arrived, the inner-layer Demi-humans swept their blades forward in a single stroke, severing the elongated mouthparts clean off.
Dozens of Magical Creatures reeled in pain. Their eyes turned blood-red. They retracted their mouthparts, now leaking green blood, raised their claws, and twisted rapidly through the dense dead trees toward the unit.
The outer-layer Demi-humans flipped their bodies, blades moving in their hands—hooking and severing the tendons on one side of a claw before driving the blade into the back of an oncoming creature's neck.
The remaining Demi-humans seized their mont, cutting off the creatures' attacks in the sa fashion, then quickly crouched and drove their blades into the creatures' chests.
Both sides yanked downward simultaneously in a sharp, violent pull—and a 3rd-Tier Magical Creature was torn in 2 in an instant!
Green blood gushed out, staining the already jade-green ground to a near-black hue.
In the blink of an eye, every Magical Creature had been dealt with.
Skirmishes like this—they had lost count of how many they had been through.
Their thods for handling Magical Creatures had long grown into second nature, and their experience now compared to before was far more assured and fluid.
Among them, Gwen and Elsa had not joined in.
Even 3rd-Tier Magical Creatures were too simple for the 2 of them.
Even a dozen creatures at once would take nothing more than a single strike apiece.
If the 2 of them stepped in, this unit would never encounter a single fight that could pose a real challenge.
For the sake of training, that would have been a hindrance rather than a help.
And so Gwen stayed close at Auréliane's side.
Only in monts of genuine ergency—to ensure the Princess's safety—would she choose to act.
With the Magical Creatures dispatched, the unit pressed on, and before long they stood at the foot of the stairway leading down to the 30th Layer.
Beyond those stairs lay the 30th Layer of the Magical Creature Rift.
The final reaches of the Jade-Green Sky Path.
【Dim-Green Cage】
Before the gate at the top of the stairway, the dead trees erupting from the ground grew even more warped and bizarre.
Faces carved with expressions of anguish were embedded in the wood, leaking a faint, eerie glow from within.
The Demi-humans stood in place, awaiting Gwen's command.
Once past the 30th Layer and into the 31st, they would be entering the lower depths of the Abyss.
The Magical Creatures there would be far stronger—the likelihood of encountering 4th-Tier creatures was very real.
Even with the Demi-human unit equipped with exceptionally powerful gear and extensive combat experience,
taking on terrifying 4th-Tier Magical Creatures would still be a trendous stretch.
Their mission, therefore, was to enter the 30th Layer and explore it to its very end.
They would not be entering the 31st Layer.
The unit ford into a long column, preparing to press deeper.
But all of a sudden, Cocotte, who had been dozing on her cloud, let out a sneeze and felt every hair on her body stand on end.
A chill ran from the soles of her feet through her entire body.
Auréliane noticed that Cocotte looked a little unwell and asked in concern:
"Council mber Yadh, are you feeling alright?"
Although Cocotte was no longer a mber of the Mage Council, those who knew her identity still addressed her as 'Council mber Yadh' out of respect.
Cocotte sat up straight, blinking in a drowsy daze.
"Sothing feels strange."
"It's like an odd sensation of my father fighting my father."
Auréliane: "?"
As everyone knew, Elves had no parents.
So Cocotte's thoroughly abstract description left Auréliane at a complete loss.
Fortunately, Cocotte had already gathered her wits.
Recalling the strange remark she had let slip in her half-asleep state, she felt a touch of embarrassnt.
She rubbed the back of her head and laughed softly.
"Ahh, don't mind it—this is how we Elves express reverence for the forces of nature."
Elves were born of nature, and their power drew its source from nature.
Wind, Water, Earth, Wood, Fire, Lightning—the 6 great natural elents were nature's gifts to the Elves.
And right now, she could clearly sense it: within the Abyss, 3 elents were raging with intense turbulence.
The disturbance of Fire and Wood's natural forces—that, Cocotte could still make sense of.
After all, Viktor was sowhere inside the Abyss, and anyone who had actually witnessed him in combat would naturally understand where those 2 forces ca from.
But the Wind elent……she was at a complete loss.
Could it be that, sowhere high above, an unprecedented Calamity War was being waged at this very mont?
It suddenly struck Cocotte that she might now understand why Viktor had chosen to leave early.
Calamity Slayer—that title was well earned……
But Auréliane remained puzzled.
Cocotte simply smiled serenely at the young girl before her—a girl younger than herself by over a hundred years—and said calmly:
"Your teacher is in the middle of sothing big right now. We can't afford to fall too far behind in our own progress."
"Let's keep moving."
She had a strange feeling she couldn't quite shake.
Perhaps Viktor had known sothing in advance—which was why he had arranged for her to accompany this young girl into the depths of the Abyss.
Floor 30, underground.
Viktor had specifically designated this particular Layer as their target. What exactly did he have in mind?
Perhaps only by entering it personally would the answer beco known.
Hearing Cocotte's words, a new resolve hardened in Auréliane's eyes.
She stared at the far more terrifying scene beyond the gate, without a trace of hesitation.
Descending one flight of stairs after another, the group passed through a twisting green doorway.
The surrounding space began to waver and sway. The green grew denser, its churning hues ever more restless and agitated.
4 towering colossal beasts tore into each other, and the entire space trembled without cease.
The entire battle had beco a grinding deadlock.
Blazing sun-like flas ignited the dense branches and surged toward the gloomy storm, as a spiraling fla tornado erupted and detonated skyward.
The powerful gale turned searingly hot, and the green leaves swirling in the air seed to transform into sparks of razor-sharp blades, slashing the fleshy terrain open into stunning purple gashes.
"What……what even is this?"
"Is this the end of the world….."
The Adventurers sat far back in the spectator seats, staring blankly at the horrifying scene in the distance.
They couldn't make their bodies leave, and besides, no one dared to.
Beneath a battle like this—a catastrophe made real—anyone who stepped outside the protection of those spectator seats would be torn to ash by the shockwaves of that epic clash.
Yet Viktor, as the master who had summoned all those colossal beasts, stood still in place as though frozen in ti, quietly watching the battle unfold.
The Giant White Bird that carried him on its back looked infinitely small and fragile beside those 4 entities that defied all ordinary description.
Viktor at this mont, rather than a Mage, looked far more like a summoner.
With his own hands he had summoned the terrifying entities one might find in the depths of the Rift, and just as casually he had called forth 2 earth-shaking monsters of breathtaking power.
The entire Arena was completely engulfed by those 4 staggering colossal beasts.
They ripped and grappled with each other, each trying to annihilate the entire space.
The Incarnation of Wood reared its massive body upright and lunged its claws toward the White Dragon.
The void entity, hollow-eyed and formless, swung the tentacles beneath its body in coiling loops toward the dragon's skull.
Tearing through layer upon layer of storm, the Incarnation of Wood felt the hurricane growing ever more violent. Its enormous compound-eyed head turned toward the sky, and a streak of fluorescent light burst from its body.
In an instant! Green flooded the space behind it, like a rippling lake—tens of thousands of razor-sharp lances, each half-erged from its surface.
With a single sweep of its massive hand, those lance tips blotted out the purple sky and pierced through the dense storm-clouds, driving toward the dragon.
Dorakon's body rolled. The white scales across it began to rotate, deflecting as many of the countless green arrows as it could.
The storm expanded further. Black shattered blades steadily pushed back the grasping tentacles one by one.
The piercing wail could not break through the thunderous roar of wind.
The harder the 3 colossal beasts attacked, the higher they were driven into the sky.
The Incarnation of Fire, however, stood alone on the fleshy terrain, head tilted up, watching the sky.
Its pupils were drawn tight, brimming with boundless fury.
Only during the rare monts when the hurricane encircling Dorakon eased slightly and its body dipped closer to the ground, did it spit out 2 lava fireballs—taking a few symbolic shots at contributing so damage output.
The purple sky grew chaotically frenzied. The ground shook without pause, erupting jets of purple-black blood.
The Void Creatures and the Incarnation of Wood covered each other in turns, relentlessly pressing in on the dragon, seizing every opening to hamr its weakest points.
Gradually, Dorakon seed to sense that its advantage was slowly crumbling, and the thought of retreat began to take root.
If it were only Viktor alone, Dorakon could have dragged the fight out for a good while longer.
But now, the surrounding terrain could not be shattered, and it held no advantage in numbers either.
And before it stood a kin of the sa origin—so even in terms of attack power, it was comparatively weaker.
Fortunately, the enemy's attacks landing on its body hadn't produced any particularly devastating effect either.
After all, Dorakon's Level already far surpassed Viktor and his magical constructs.
Even so, through each successive humiliation of being struck again and again, its fury only grew.
It was supposed to be the freest incarnation within the storm—why had it been reduced to such a miserable state?
Finally……
The storm around it seed to gradually still, and it let the overwhelming barrage of arrows rain upon its body.
It didn't care in the slightest about the pain.
The white scales slowly spread and stretched, drawing all of the storm inward into its body.
A faint white glow flickered across Dorakon's body, making the entire dragon appear hazy and indistinct.
【Ascension】
The next second, the air currents erupted in an instant. A vortex appeared behind its body, whipping up flowing white mist.
Dorakon coiled its body and transford into a streak of daylight—a shooting star—piercing through the void of space.
It slamd straight toward the tentacle-swinging Void Creature.
Because it still rembered, with perfect clarity.
It was that very monster before it that had driven it to the edge of annihilation.
The Void Creature sensed Dorakon's hostility. Purple mist sprayed from the orifices on its face and coiled around its body.
The tentacles covered in enormous eyes snapped upright in a row before it, as though bracing for that terrifying collision.
But the high-speed current arrow pierced through everything, slicing clean through the tail-ends of those tentacles and sending black blood spraying, punching straight through the chest of that gaunt body.
The current began to spread from inside that body outward to its extremities, as though trying to burst it apart from within!
The Void Creature, like a fly with shattered wings, was blasted away on impact, slamming hard into the Formation walls rising around the space.
Thud!
A violent cloud of dust exploded outward. Watching that utterly crushing display, the group of 4th-Tier Adventurers broke into a cold sweat.
Taking on 3 opponents at once and still managing to hold the advantage like this.
As expected—it was that terrifying roaming dragon that still ca out looking the stronger.
But then, all at once, a flash of red drew their eyes away.
Their gazes shifted to the Incarnation of Fire, Gulton, standing on the fleshy terrain below, and a look of deep puzzlent crossed their faces.
This colossal monster dripping with lava all over its body—why wasn't it flying up there to join the fight?
Everyone else was putting in serious work.
How was it that when it ca to this one, it was this useless?
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