The Paladin in the Abyss-Chapter 771 - 792: Mysterious Stone Statue

Lancelot unlatched the heavy door and led his companions cautiously inside.

Behind the door was a rather spacious room lit by torches crackling on the walls, allowing everyone to easily see inside. The left half of the room was set up like a dining area, with four or five rectangular tables and chairs, enough to accommodate dozens of people dining at the same time; the right side of the room, however, was filled with life-sized statues of men and women. The craftsmanship was incredibly detailed but clashed somewhat with the surrounding environment.

Opposite the room, there was a door wide open, leading down a set of stairs to the second underground floor of the building. According to the visions they had seen in the Prophecy Spell, Uncle Barrend was being held in a cell down there.

’Brother, there are people hidden behind those statues.’ Due to an unexpected master-servant pact, Little Isha could communicate with Lancelot through telepathy, ’It’s the scent of blood, I can smell it...’

’I know,’ Lancelot silently replied while walking towards the statues with an appearance of no defense, reaching out to touch the chest of one of the statues while loudly saying, "Guys, look, these statues are so lifelike..."’

His voice drew everyone’s attention, and they immediately noticed the hand signals Lancelot made under the cover of the statues—there were enemies nearby. The well-coordinated companions didn’t show any signs of alarm, but they all tensed up quietly and kept their eyes on the shadows behind the statues. It didn’t take them long to spot fluttering robes, protruding boots, and...

Barely audible incantations.

Lancelot suddenly kicked out fiercely, hitting the female elf statue in front of him. The statue flew backward, crashing into another statue and causing a domino-like chain reaction. Screams followed, coming from the cultists caught between the statues.

Indeed, hiding fragile flesh and blood within a pile of solid, massive stones was not a good choice, especially when the stones were not particularly stable.

For most spellcasters, casting magic is a complex and delicate process, involving incantations, gestures, materials, and willpower to harness the omnipresent raw magic power, twisting, entangling, reshaping, and vibrating it back in a specific way before releasing it at a specific spot for the desired effect. This is why mages need to spend a lot of time preparing spells in advance, even though the actual casting takes only mere seconds—any disturbance during casting could lead to unpredictable, often disastrous outcomes.

A burst of colorful magic aura lit up from within the statues. A hooded male human’s hair caught fire, while a half-elf woman clad in black seemed to be gradually fading into nothingness. Meanwhile, three luckier ones were merely injured by the statues. They drew daggers that glowed green and, shrieking, rushed at the group.

Lancelot thrust his longsword cleanly, slicing open an enemy’s throat, while Bruto first used a shield bash to throw his opponent off balance, then slammed his heavy warhammer into the enemy’s chest. The half-elf Tanya, using her deceptively sized halberd made a feint that tripped her opponent onto the ground, then she employed her skilled capturing technique, attempting to seize a living captive for the team.

Just then, the human knight suddenly caught a strange scraping noise with his ears. He quickly turned his head to locate the source of the sound and discovered that a stone statue, close to Tanya, had suddenly come to life, raising its fist high, about to smash the unsuspecting half-elf.

By the time it was too late to shout a warning, Lancelot’s figure dashed forward in a leap, wrapping his arms around the half-elf’s waist, rolling away with her from the attack trajectory of the statue. A sound similar to tomatoes being crushed echoed behind them. The half-elf turned her head and immediately understood the reason for Lancelot’s previous action—the captive she had just seized exploded from the waist up, looking like a spilled dish of pasta, while two relatively intact legs indicated what the mass of pasta had originally been. A bizarre-looking stone statue was slowly retracting its fist, turning its gaze toward the two.

Those were a pair of deep brown pupils in bloodshot white eyeballs, eyes that belonged to ordinary humanoid creatures, but they were set in a gray, lifeless stone face, which looked particularly eerie. But upon closer inspection, what was even eerier was not just the eyes. The statue’s palms, arms, upper body, abdomen, thighs, and calves all had a subtle discoordination, like...

"This is a flesh golem!" Kalalin shouted loudly, "Ignite!"

A flame shot out from the scholar’s fingertips and instantly hit the nearby enemy. However, to everyone’s surprise, the flame simply bounced off the enemy’s skin and then dissipated into the air, seemingly without any effect on the foe.

By this time, Lancelot had already picked himself up off the ground. His longsword, exhaling a green sword aura, followed the scholar’s flame arrow, striking directly at the target’s chest. However, the area he pierced burst out with a shower of sparks, and the air was filled with the distinctive thud of metal clashing with stone.

His sword had pierced the opponent’s chest, but it had only left a two-inch long crack; for the golem, such damage was merely a superficial wound, nowhere near enough to bring it down.

The attacks of his companions arrived at that instant. Bruto threw away his shield, swinging his warhammer with both hands at the knees of the bizarre flesh golem; Little Isha flashed to the enemy’s side, her short dagger stabbing towards the enemy’s armpit; even Alamir joined in, activating his Holy Strike ability. The Hammer of Dissolution radiated blinding gold light, fiercely striking the back of the monster’s head.

Everyone had intended to quickly finish off the enemy while it was disabled by Kalalin’s flame spell, but the effect was far from their expectations—Little Isha’s dagger penetrated only an inch into the enemy’s body before getting stuck and could not be pushed further; Bruto’s warhammer fared slightly better, the dwarf’s full-force hit severely deformed the opponent’s right leg, yet the golem strangely managed to maintain its balance and did not fall; the Elf Priest’s hardhead hammer deviated from the target at the last moment (partly due to the dwarf’s strike) and struck the golem’s shoulder, but the holy powered hammer only made the creature sway slightly, the usual scene of corrupt flesh melting did not occur.

As everyone was still shocked by the unexpected outcome, the enemy’s counterattack arrived. The golem’s upper body suddenly started to spin violently, its raised arms turning like windmills, the whistling sound of the air even making Lancelot’s scalp tingle, and those surrounding it had no time to retreat.