Book 7, Chapter 109
Two Legends Fall
Richard turned around the moment he left the tunnel, his followers already alerted and prepared to fight the incoming nightmare creatures. He could already sense that the portal was destroyed, but in the few moments it was open thousands of powerful shadow warriors had streamed through.
Had he known an entire troop from the Legion of Nightmares were secretly lying in ambush on the other side, he would never have opened the portal the second time. There were other ways to go up against Lyos and Cyril, but the threat from the Legion was much more dangerous. Even he couldn’t know just how many creatures had made their way into Faelor.
The entire mountain started to tremble as he unsheathed Moonlight, holding it before him. The sword had grown aged and dull, lacking the lustre of its past. It had been kept alongside the iron spear all these days, starting to absorb its essence. Its nature had been altered over the process, the blade growing to legendary might. Strangely, Carnage was still in its cocoon without any signs of coming out; it was taking much longer than expected.
As the vibrations grew in intensity, even Zangru lost his happy-go-lucky smile and turned serious. A dozen shadow warriors rushed out from the tunnel and were blocked immediately by Richard, only three left for his followers to deal with. Each one of them was level 16 or 17 in strength, and without a physical body they were difficult to defeat. Moonlight with its power of nature was a natural choice to take them on, especially with his own laws of life. He could cut through the nightmare creatures like cloth, the cuts burning with milky white flames.
In stark contrast, Waterflower cut her enemy into ten parts but the different sections just wriggled and reformed into one body. The shadow warrior lost a few levels of strength, but she had to cut it down multiple times until it was only a bunch of fragments in the air. Tiramisu smashed Tenton into his, but the core evaded him and just reformed without any damage. Unlike the Shepherd of Eternal Rest, the hammer wasn’t a magic weapon and couldn’t do much damage to the incorporeal creature. He could only roar around in annoyance, eventually killing it with a blast of mana.
Even as the first wave of shadow warriors met their end, more of them emerged from the tunnel. Although they did not have a physical self, they still found it much more difficult to move through some materials than others. The worker drones lining the walls with a special material that they could not pass through. This was originally meant to make for a strong cage that forced them to attack Lyos and Cyril, but now it was serving as a funnel that directed them.
The mountain kept quivering as more nightmare creatures rushed out. Richard could intercept almost all of them at first, but soon he was at less than a third. Moonlight was a powerful blade for the situation, but there were far too many enemies to deal with. Even the Ring of Destiny could only attack up to ten shadow warriors. Still, all of these creatures could only come out of the narrow tunnel instead of swarming like they were used to; past Richard were his followers, and further still were the rune knights. Not one enemy got past all three lines.
As wave after wave of nightmare creatures was destroyed, the mountain eventually stopped quivering. Things seemed to calm down for a moment before hundreds of nightmare creatures poured out in one last push, injuring almost half of his followers and even some rune knights. By the end of it all, everyone was panting hard.
Richard waited for exactly ten minutes before he could be sure that all the nightmare creatures were annihilated. Even then, he refused to let down his guard and led the party down to inspect the battlefield. The tunnel looked the same as when he had retreated, but the altar hall itself was an unrecognisable mess. Scars from powerful attacks were everywhere, all the stone construction now reduced to debris. Strewn all across the ground were ruined golems, each carrying an enormous number of scars from the shadow warriors’ attacks.
Richard walked up to one of the golems, carefully examining the wounds on its body. While the nightmare creatures were incorporeal, their powerful weapons had still left deep cuts that were many centimetres long all over it. The fatal wound was in the chest, looking especially deep from the combination of many attackers. It had accurately damaged the inner core, finally stopping the golem’s function.
Searching around underneath, he quickly found an image diamond. This crystal was an especially dark black, containing power that even his attackers normally didn’t possess. It seemed like the nightmare creature that had left this was some sort of captain in the Legion. He stood up and looked through the hall, a light going off in his mind; most of the shadow warriors this time had been powerful! This meant a windfall of image diamonds!
Image diamonds were a crucial component required to grow the astral chrysalis. This being was extremely useful in battle, to the point that he couldn’t do without it anymore, but to improve it further from where it was would take 500 diamonds. Even after years of ambushes from the nightmare creatures, he had only accumulated 200 of them. Now, this one event would give him all he needed.
“Master, there’s a tunnel here!” Zangru called out.
Tunnel? Richard flew over with some surprise as the former demigod smashed into the wall, leaving a gaping hole with only a few strikes. He looked closely and saw signs of intense battle everywhere, with the auras from Lyos and Cyril prevalent. Not too far into the tunnel were nearly a dozen glimmering image diamonds that were clearly of high quality.
“It doesn’t look like they’ve gone too far,” Zangru commented, “Unfortunately for them, the small wall they put up wasn’t enough to block the more powerful nightmare creatures.”
Richard nodded and made his way further in, conjuring a blue fireball both for light and safety. Lyos and Cyril were still legends, and one could never be too careful with those.
As the tens of metres ran into the hundreds, Richard summoned a dozen worker drones to follow along them. More and more image diamonds could be found within, and the amount of blood on the walls increased with distance. Evidently, both legends were seriously injured.
It was a kilometre in that he suddenly came to a stop, ordering the drones to investigate further up front. A few hundred metres further, the tunnel stopped at a hall that was a few metres wide. He saw Lyos standing silently through the mental connection, Cyril crouched unmoving behind his legs. Seeing the extent of damage, he flew over and only stopped a few metres away.
“You’re the invader?” Lyos asked.
“Mm, Richard Archeron.”
“Archeron… Sounds familiar, is that an abyssal name? But I don’t sense any abyssal aura on you.”
“The bloodline’s thinned out over time,” Richard dismissed.
“Hehe, Your Majesty Richard. Even though you are an invader, I greatly respect power and intelligence. Now, I wonder whether you would be interested in a deal.”
Richard’s eyebrows rose up, “I’m listening.“