Dungeon of Niflheim-Chapter 922: Elders sacrifice (2)

"...." Shocked silence lingered in the air for a good few seconds, no one knowing how to proceed. A force that could kill not just their boss but also their strongest elites, could they really defeat such an enemy or perhaps should they even try? With Valend and the seven seats dead what reason did they have to carry out such a vendetta?

Eventually however a pair of individuals stepped forward, their strengths both at the late stage of C-rank, siblings given their strikingly similar appearance.

"Valend is dead and so are the seven seats. Whoever did this is far beyond our capabilities but you three are not." The person that spoke had snakelike features, bluish purple scales, a long neck and forked tongue.

"My brother is correct, given your injuries you’ve probably been abandoned by your group, sacrificed to delay us or perhaps serve as an outlet for our frustrations given the heavy loss of our leader." The second man was more insidious with his words, quickly galvanising the innate nature of the monsters behind him.

Standing before them were three Lunar maidens, a tad old but still maidens, nonetheless. They couldn’t handle whatever monster dealt with Valend, but they could devour these three and consider him avenged.

The two snake like brothers were using this chance to take a swing at the newly opened leadership position and their methods seemed to be proving fruitful. More than half of the summoned forces started to gaze at Purvella, Shalla and Yana with greed, hunger and lust, completely forgetting the corpses lying at their feet.

"Abandoned no you misunderstand we’re here because we haven’t had our fill of death." Purvella titled her head to the side in a somewhat robotic and emotionless manner before releasing a thick wave of bloodlust. It wasn’t backed by aura simply her overwhelming hatred towards Valend’s lackies. She would slaughter them until her last breath.

"Take them down but keep them alive, we have a lot of frustrated brothers here after all hehehehe." The two snake men quickly gave the order through malicious grins, chilling at the rear as the weak disposable chaff charged ahead.

"Slaughter till our last breath!" Purvella roared at the top of her lungs before welcoming the onslaught alongside Shalla and Yana.

Alas with their extensive injuries it didn’t take more than a few seconds for their strength to become all but spent. The three of them were pushed to the ground, their limbs held tightly by several D-rank monsters as C-ranks tore off their garments and dared to assault their sacred gardens.

Strangely they showed very little resistance by this point as though accepting their fate as payment for the actions of their party, but it was merely a lure to draw more of them in. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

The instant one of the monsters attempted to breach their lower gates the three maidens revealed victorious smiles before their bodies suddenly exploded, killing dozens of the unprepared enemy.

As a species known for their beauty and their ability to devour sexual energy it wasn’t uncommon for others to force themselves upon them thus in ages past the Lunar maidens developed a self defence mechanism to protect their chastity. With the ultimate cost they could twist and destabilise their mana veins and consume their life crystals to conjure great explosive power, summoning strength that could kill even those of a higher rank.

Given their low status, inability to leave the external regions and lack of knowledge in regards to species native to other regions this horde of monsters had no idea that the Lunar maidens had this ability and thus paid dearly for it.

Purvella, Shalla and Yana died, their honour intact and the scales of life heavily in their favour, the perfect sacrifice but still... a sacrifice, nonetheless.

The explosion was so loud and destructive that it echoed through the mountains passes for tens of kilometres, rapidly catching up with the desperately fleeing caravan.

Neve wiped a tear from her cheek while others bore solemn expressions, their minds filling with the memories they had of the three older women.

’It’s more destructive than I thought....guess you should never look down on an ancient species even after they’ve fallen on hard times.’ Frost’s opinion of the Lunar maidens moved up a couple notches as he recognised some their hidden potential but at the same time he felt an even greater degree of pity, wondering how they could fall so low despite the obvious signs of decline.

"Don’t stop running, we’re not out of danger yet." Frost spoke in a loud voice quickly dragging the maidens out of their distracting despair before launching a large [freezing fireball] into a nearby cave. A giant bug with a tough looking outer shell and a set of gnarly mandibles soon exited in response, screeching in pain as half its face burned in the silver flames.

Schwing!

Its screeches were brought to a sudden end by Frost’s glaive, severing the creature’s head from its shoulders.

"The plan remains the same. We’ll delve further into the mountains before heading directly south. Don’t slack off because I’m here, there are far more dangerous things dwelling in these mountains than a bug like this." He sternly warned while disposing of the blood on his blade with a rapid swing. The bug was merely in the early stages of C-rank, hardly a threat to the caravan let alone Frost who appeared invincible in the eyes of the Lunar maidens due to his victory over Valend however it was just one of the many dangers present. Frost was confident in protecting his charges during their journey but only if they kept apace, maintained their wits and were blessed with a bit of luck.

"Understood Master." Neve being a quick witted loyalist acknowledged his words by increasing her speed and sending several harsh glances towards a few of her subordinates, all of whom understood the message loud and clear.

"Yes Master, sorry Master." They replied like trained birds bringing a subtle smile to Frost’s lips.

’I do like well-trained subordinates.’ Hearing them respond to his orders with such gusto he couldn’t help but think of the forces under the direct command of his right and left hand men.

With his mood uplifted by their animated responses and the delectable flow of life energy entering his body Frost led the caravan deeper into the mountain boundary getting as far away as possible from Valend’s territory just in case a crazed monster horde was on their tail.

In the end his decision was both right and wrong. The horde after suffering casualties from Shalla, Yana and Purvella were enraged instead of pacified. The death of comrades and sometimes even family invoked a strong desire for revenge against the Lunar maidens and thus despite the obvious danger a large chunk of this group chased after Frost and the caravan like starved dogs.

Following their tracks was easy, every few hundred metres there’d be a blood pool left by Frost’s instant culling but even if that wasn’t the case they had failed to erase their footprints as well as their scents. More than a few monsters in the horde were quite skilled when it came to following smells so there was no issue with their chosen direction however given how many of them there were the ground literally shook with their footsteps which unfortunately drew the ire of the natural inhabitants.

The more aggressively they chased the more enemies they ended up getting in conflict with. Within the first hour nearly 15% had been killed with roughly the same either seriously or lightly wounded but still their rage didn’t simmer instead it grew into an uncontrollable blaze. So much death and such an amount of fresh meat eventually summoned entities that the horde couldn’t hope to defeat, B-rank hunters who’s strength paled only in comparison to Frost and Valend.

It was only when over half of their number had been killed that the leaders of this desperate charge were finally brought back to reality. Chasing Frost and the Lunar maidens wasn’t worth it, they had lost and they just had to begrudgingly accept it otherwise none of them would be able to return home.

If Frost hadn’t pushed the caravan to run at a sufficient and constant speed they would have been caught either by this offshoot horde or drawn into the dangers that they had summoned but just because they avoided one trouble didn’t mean their journey was smooth sailing.

At one point during their fast paced travel Frost killed a group of ant monsters, small and weak, barely D rank. They posed little threat to the caravan’s members but that was only when they were small in number. Frost wanted to avoid alerting their nest at all costs because even he would struggle to survive being swarmed by hundreds if not thousands of these ants but unfortunately this small group was part of a larger force working in the area therefore their deaths didn’t go unnoticed.

The group had to run even faster with Frost working overtime to protect his charges while repeatedly cursing his bad luck and foolish actions under his breath.

Not long after escaping that danger they ended up encountering a B-rank monster, an iron scaled vole. Thankfully it was a lone hunter and rather weak for it rank, relying on the element of surprise to critically injure its prey before dragging them underground to feast on. And despairingly for the vole Frost encountered it while it was in the middle of such an act thus losing it’s only advantage. The young Dungeon core even left the caravan so as to quickly take care of the unfortunate offender before he could scamper away and hunt them on his terms.

The life energy gained from all these aggregate kills was certainly delicious but every time he was forced to abandon the materials held in their corpses a little part of Frost died, lamenting the sheer waste.

Eventually however the caravan did manage to escape the mountain boundary and find themselves within the external regions now all that was left was to safely make their way towards the Dungeon.