The Paladin in the Abyss

Chapter 47 - 42 Clues

Kalalin’s right hand emitted a strong glow, the very Flash Ring he had used against the Abyssal Hounds before.

He stood at the rear of the group, with all but Lancelot facing away from him, and with the giant body of the worm creature shielding Lancelot, the bright light didn’t affect any of his teammates. Enjoy new chapters from empire

The worm creature’s four black eyes granted it excellent dark vision, but as a consequence, it was extremely sensitive to intense light. Instinctively, it turned its head away, spraying the acid that was in its mouth onto the walls. Immediately, a hissing sound came from the tunnel’s rocky walls as the soil softened like heated chocolate, slowly flowing to the ground.

Some residual acid still flew toward Kalalin’s direction, but Baron, ever vigilant, blocked it all with his shield.

Lancelot naturally wouldn’t just stand by and watch. In the moment the enemy turned its head, he seized the opportunity at the vulnerable spot between the thick back armor and the jaw of the worm creature, stabbing the tip of his Great Sword in and effortlessly out the other side.

"Beautiful!" Bruto shouted loudly, commencing his attack on the second knee.

Under the stimulus of pain, the worm creature flailed wildly at Lancelot with its forelimbs, which resembled two Longswords, while desperately twisting its body in an attempt to turn its head around and spew acid at the Human Knight.

But Lancelot tightly gripped the sword’s hilt, unmoving, and his 7-foot Great Sword kept the worm creature from reaching him no matter how it tried.

However, such an injury was not enough to kill the worm creature immediately. For this type of creature, each nerve node in the limbs could function like a brain, and the one in its head was just a more versatile one. If destroyed, it could simply grow a new one.

"Bruto!" called Lancelot, now a bit embarrassed as the enemy wouldn’t die anytime soon and he couldn’t draw his weapon out, nor could he push it further in; he could only call for the Dwarf’s help.

"I’m a bit busy here!" Bruto’s warhammer swung wildly, and soon enough, the worm creature’s thickest middle leg also collapsed.

"Never mind those legs for now!" Lancelot shouted. "Hammer my Sword Blade!"

The Dwarf quickly grasped Lancelot’s intent; he leaped up from where he was and, with all his might, smashed his Warhammer onto the exposed sword edge on his side.

The Great Sword propelled forward with the impact, the Sword Blade slicing through all the flesh and Carapace blocking its path, leaving the body of the worm creature from a position roughly corresponding to its lower jaw.

A horrific wound appeared at its jaw, with copious amounts of Acid mixed with blood flowing out. The giant insect’s body convulsed, and its two front limbs futilely attempted to cover the wound, but the outpouring Acid corroded them together.

Lancelot and Bruto had already retreated to a safe distance, and after a while, the terrifying insect finally stopped struggling and died completely.

"I’ve never heard of a worm creature this huge," Kalalin said in awe as he looked at the massive insect corpse, feeling extremely uncomfortable despite the fact that it was already dead, its body full of Carapace and limbs intimidating.

"It’s a mutation, probably ate something it shouldn’t have in the Abyss," Barrend commented while rubbing his shield on the ground. The Acid’s corrosive effect on steel wasn’t that strong, after wiping off the Acid on the ground, several dulled areas appeared on the otherwise shiny Shield surface, but it didn’t affect the Shield’s performance.

"I should get the credit for this kill," Bruto said, puffing out his chest proudly, "Hmm, at least the fatal blow was mine."

"Indeed, we owe it to that hit of yours," Lancelot smiled and nodded, then raised his own sword. The edge at the end of the Sword Blade was clearly no longer sharp, a favor from the Dwarf’s hammer. "So, uh, could you hammer my sword a few more times? This time aim for the blade itself."

"Piece of cake," Bruto took Lancelot’s Great Sword, found a relatively flat rock, and under Barrend’s supervision, he began the repair work with a clang.

After the repairs were completed, the group swiftly continued on their way.

The winding tunnels seemed to have no end, and they encountered several burrower worms again, but with the experience from the first time, everyone dealt with them quite adeptly. Occasionally, they also came across wandering Coward Devils, but in most cases, their first reaction was to flee, causing no trouble for Lancelot and his companions.

About two hours after leaving the miner’s rest area, the group finally arrived at their first target, the fourteenth mining workface.

A workface refers to the place where minerals or gemstones are mined, and it moves with the progress of mining. When miners find a vein, they don’t rush to mine it because only a few people at the very front of the tunnel can work, which is too inefficient. They first dig a passageway along the edge of the vein, and then attack the vein on one side of the passage. The dug-out wall is the workface.

As the mining progresses, the workface extends continuously, gradually forming a larger space, which entirely depends on the shape and direction of the vein. A vein is not necessarily continuous; sometimes, when you think you have finished mining, but after digging through a foot of soil, you could find a brand-new vein.

Dwarves believe that the places where veins form are more closely connected to the elemental planes of earth, so for mining crews lacking a target, continuing to dig from an existing workface is a good choice.

The fourteenth workface was such a place. It was about three thousand feet beneath the surface, which wasn’t considered too deep for these professional Dwarf miners, but it had probably been hundreds of years since it was first mined. Years of repeated exploitation had turned this place into an open space like a square, akin to an organ connected to intestines.

The group quickly discovered the target of their journey, two Gray Dwarves, but unfortunately, they were already dead.

Lancelot had seen these branch of Dwarves in the Blacksmith district before, with their beards gray-white and their heads seemingly naturally bald, but the two corpses in front of them were so shattered that it was almost impossible to recognize their racial characteristics.

Barrend crouched down and examined the bodies of his kin carefully, his face looking very grim.

"Was it the burrower worms?" Lancelot noticed a huge hole in the ground nearby that looked quite similar to the state after a burrower worm emerged from underground.

"Doesn’t look like it; burrower worms wouldn’t leave a body behind," Barrend shook his head, pointing to a basin-sized hole in the chest of one of the bodies. "They couldn’t make wounds of this severity."

"The bodies also show no signs of acid corrosion," Kalalin stared solemnly at the hole in the ground, "and this hole is a bit too large for a burrower worm; it’s big enough to fit three of them. The culprit must have a very thick waist."

"There’s also a pool of blood over here," Lancelot found another clue, "Someone was lying here, barely alive. How much blood do your people have to lose before dying?"

"They would have been dead long before bleeding this much out," Bruto said with a frown, "but where did the body go?"

No one responded to him; everyone had the same explanation in mind.

"So here’s the question," Lancelot gestured towards the other two bodies, "Why are these two corpses here? Judging from the monster’s girth that Kalalin deduced, one Dwarf wouldn’t be enough to fill its stomach."

"Uh," Bruto tried to explain, "Maybe it ate the first one and realized it didn’t quite suit its taste?"

"These creatures that tunnel through the ground aren’t picky eaters," Barrend said gloomily, recalling some not-so-pleasant memories from his long mining career.

"No, Bruto is right," Kalalin suddenly spoke up, his voice trembling slightly.

"What did you think of?" Barrend looked at the Human with surprise, unable to believe that the robed figure could guess the true identity of the culprit before him.

"Huge size, terrifying puncture wounds, not fond of eating Dwarves," Kalalin spoke softly, as if afraid of awakening some dreadful existence. "In our world, there’s also a kind of food these monsters do not like, Elves."

The look of fear on Barrend’s face showed he had come to the answer. The old Dwarf’s lips quivered softly as he uttered a name.

"Shark Lizard Beast."