Chapter 221 - 215: Reverse-Practicing the Flame Dragon Dance = ?
Chapter 221: Chapter 215: Reverse-Practicing the Flame Dragon Dance = ?
Although he had his doubts, Jon didn’t dwell on them. On the Yino Continent, a land where various races lived together, people of mixed blood were all too common. Whatever secrets Dolores held, as her employer, he was in no position to ask. For now, he needed to focus on clearing the Dungeon.
Under the effects of the Silence Seal, what happened in the corridor could hardly be called a battle. It was a one-sided slaughter.
Ice Spears flew, swords and halberds glinted, and arrows rained down ceaselessly...
As the last Twisted Tree Spirit crashed to the ground, its frozen trunk shattering into pieces, the group finally relaxed.
Moon pulled his Short Sword from the frozen roots of a Flower Demon and wiped the sweat from his brow, his face beaming with incredulous excitement.
He walked up to Jon, his voice trembling slightly with excitement.
"Mr. Jon, this... this is incredible! I’ve been an Adventurer for ten years, and I’ve never seen such a clean and efficient strategy!"
"Those Tree Spirits and Flower Demons... usually, they’d pounce on us like rabid dogs the moment they smelled blood. But just now... they couldn’t even figure out where we were!"
Sati nodded in agreement, leaning on her halberd as she chimed in.
"Yeah, every other time we’ve entered a hellhole like this, we’ve had to risk our lives just to get by."
"But today was like chopping wood... no, it was even easier than chopping wood!"
Her gaze toward Jon was filled with reverence.
"This must be a combat technique that only a knowledgeable Mage like you could have devised!"
Facing the siblings’ praise, Jon simply gave a slight nod. He then glanced at the Demon remains scattered across the corridor floor, untied a folded leather pouch from his pack, and tossed it to Moon.
"Collect any valuable Root Cores, Activated Wood Cores, and untainted flower petals. When we get back, you’ll get a thirty-percent cut based on the Adventurers’ market price."
His gaze then shifted to the depths of the corridor—beyond a vine-entangled archway lay an even darker, more winding ruined hallway, which emitted a faint, sweet, and rotten scent.
"You two clean up here. I’m going to scout ahead."
Hearing this, Moon subconsciously took a step forward to try and dissuade him.
"Mr. Jon, that’s too dangerous! Why don’t you let us scout instead—"
In his simple Adventurer’s creed, letting an employer venture off alone into danger was a dereliction of duty.
But before he could finish, Sati tugged on his arm, cutting him off.
The pull on his arm was an instant wake-up call for Moon—this Mr. Jon, who could casually freeze an entire corridor and whose tactics were cunning and unpredictable, was no Ordinary Mage. If he wanted to act alone, he likely had methods or secrets he didn’t want others to see.
So, the honest Warrior’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced himself to swallow the rest of his words.
Jon took in the siblings’ silent exchange but didn’t point it out.
His gaze turned to Dolores, who was leaning against the wall, idly poking at a shard of ice with the toe of her boot.
The purple-haired girl was uncharacteristically quiet. Her amber eyes were fixed on the ground, and she unconsciously twirled a lock of her hair between her fingers, showing none of her usual liveliness.
"Dolores."
Jon’s voice wasn’t loud, but it held an undeniable authority.
"Behave yourself and stay here. Help them clean up the battlefield."
"Yes, Boss!"
The girl responded almost instantly, looking up with a forced, obedient smile. She even proactively bent down, picked up a piece of wood core glistening with dark blue sap, and deftly stuffed it into the leather pouch Moon was holding open.
This excessive obedience was like a fine needle pricking at Jon’s mind, causing his eyes to narrow slightly.
This Dolores, who had instantly transformed into a "model teammate," was like a completely different person from the lively girl he knew—the one who mediated disputes in the tavern and casually snagged a bird on the way out.
’Is it the effect of the Silence Seal that’s reminding her of a bad past, or is there some other reason?’
Dolores’s various abnormalities made questions creep into his mind like vines.
But the Dungeon’s progress couldn’t be delayed. A faint rustling sound, like old wood grating together, echoed from the depths of the distant corridor, heralding the awakening of a more troublesome prey.
Jon gave Dolores one last, deep look, forcibly suppressed the strange feeling, and then his figure flickered. Like a cheetah melting into the shadows, he silently crept toward the dark archway’s depths.
The Warrior siblings left behind in the corridor first exchanged a look, then glanced at Dolores, and finally lowered their heads and got back to work in tacit understanding.
There was clearly something going on between the pretty, lively Ranger and their employer, but that was none of their business.
One of the ironclad rules an Adventurer must follow during a commission is to not ask questions that shouldn’t be asked.
That was the way to survive long-term.
...
Jon had left his teammates to act alone, naturally, to complete his own Trial Task.
’I hope it’s not like that time in the Abandoned Mine, where the boss just ran all over the place...’
Jon muttered to himself as he followed the route from memory, heading deeper into the ruins.
The deeper he went into the ruins, the scarcer the traces of architecture became. It was as if the ancient stone structures had been completely devoured and assimilated, replaced by gnarled vines and twisted tree trunks.
The cloying, sweet scent of decay in the air grew stronger, mingling with the earthy smell of soil and the sharp greenness of plant sap. It created an unsettling sense of vibrant rot.
The combination of the two turned the depths of the ruins into a chaotic and disordered botanical labyrinth.
But Jon moved through this labyrinth as if he were returning home.
His footsteps were silent. His ice-blue eyes scanned every fork and corner with sharp intensity, avoiding the spore traps that emitted faint fluctuations of Magic Power and the lurking, fledgling Demon Vines.
As the corridor grew narrower and more rugged, with vines hanging from the ceiling like giant pythons and roots coiling underfoot like horned dragons, the path finally reached its end.
After rounding two sharp corners almost completely sealed off by vines, the view suddenly opened up—or rather, it violently forced its way into his vision with an overwhelming presence.
A massive, collapsed space suddenly appeared.
This had once been a core area of the ruins. The dome above had long since crumbled, and huge blocks of stone hung precariously.
Yet, the area showed no signs of decay.
Because a colossal ancient tree, so large it was suffocating, was holding up this teetering "sky"!
Like a colossal pillar supporting the heavens and the earth, its trunk was so thick it would take more than a dozen people to encircle it. Its dark brown bark was covered in deep cracks, from which oozed a viscous, dark green sap that resembled blood.
Its incredibly dense, ink-green canopy stretched and coiled savagely toward the shattered dome above, forcefully propping up countless tons of rubble and creating a bizarre and terrifying "tree-dome."
Countless grayish-brown vines, as thick as a grown man’s arm and covered in slick moss—or rather, what looked more like activated tentacles extending from the ancient tree—dangled from the dense canopy, hanging just a few meters above the ground.
These tentacles were not still.
Like the arms of a deep-sea octopus sensing the presence of living creatures, they slowly and silently twisted, writhed, and lashed through the air.
Every slight twitch produced a grating "CREAK" of old wood, a sound that was particularly jarring in the dead silence of the chamber.
At the same time, an intense aura of Life radiated from the massive trunk in palpable waves, pressing down on the intruder’s nerves.
Jon stopped in the shadows of the corner. He watched the scene, which looked like something out of a horror movie set, with no fluctuation in his eyes, calmly surveying the space and its master.
’So it is here... Good, it didn’t run off.’
He mused to himself, the tension in his nerves easing slightly. He couldn’t help but mock himself.
’Then again, where could a tree possibly run off to?’
The giant tree before him was one of his secondary objectives for this trip: the [Demonized Ancient Tree], an Official Level elite Demon—also commonly known as a boss.
An Ordinary player would need a well-rounded five-person party to take it down.
But Jon didn’t need to worry about any of that.
’Perfect. I’ll use you to test out a new move...’
He whispered softly, his right hand silently resting on the hilt of the sword at his waist.
The unadorned Longsword, showing slight signs of use, was slowly drawn. Its blade, catching the dim, pale light filtering through the gaps in the vines above, reflected almost no luster, instead exuding a deep chill.
Almost as soon as the Longsword left its sheath, an icy, bone-piercing chill, like a slumbering Ice Dragon awakening, erupted from his fingertips!
An ice-blue glow of Magic Power instantly spread out, coiling around the sword’s blade like a living thing and emitting a faint "KRAK KRAK" of freezing.
But that was only the beginning!
The chill did not stop at the weapon. Like a surging cold wave, it rapidly climbed and spread up his arm!
CRACK! CRACK!
A series of faint yet dense freezing sounds echoed across his body.
A layer of pure, translucent ice, gleaming with the hard, cold luster of a diamond, formed over his leather armor, Arm Guards, and Shoulder Armor at a visible speed... until his entire body was encased within it!
This Ice Armor was no simple coating. Its surface was sharply angled with edges as keen as blades. The joints were exquisitely crafted. Far from looking cumbersome, it accentuated the contours of his already well-built frame, exuding a heart-stopping, cold dominance!
[Flame Dragon Dance: Ice]!