Chapter 113: Encounter with a Nether Creature

This time, Kent’s backward glance really did reveal something he had overlooked.

There was one place inside the passage that he had never properly examined.

Behind the stone door.

The opened half of the enormous door was pressed tightly against the wall, making the space behind it almost impossible to notice.

But just because the door lay flush against the stone...

did that really mean there was nothing hidden there?

“I’ll search one more time. If I still find nothing, I’m giving up.”

Kent muttered loudly as though talking to himself.

He deliberately made his voice a little louder than necessary.

At the same time, mana was already gathering within his body.

In one hand, he silently began compressing a light-element Healing spell.

By now, Kent was almost certain that the strange creatures haunting this underground temple belonged to the undead.

Otherwise, whatever had been hiding near their room earlier would not have screamed and fled the instant it was struck by light magic.

Kent slowly approached the great stone door.

One half remained closed.

The other stood open, pressed tightly against the wall.

That was precisely why he had missed the space behind it before.

“Come out!”

Kent suddenly shoved the stone door aside.

The instant it moved, a recessed hollow in the wall was revealed.

Kent did not hesitate for even a heartbeat.

He hurled the compressed light-element Healing spell straight into the recess.

“AAAAAAAH!”

A piercing scream exploded through the corridor.

Then something emerged from the hidden space.

Kent had never seen anything like it before.

The creature was half-transparent and stood nearly seven or eight meters tall.

Its features were blurred beyond recognition.

At first glance, it looked almost exactly like the ghosts described in stories from Earth.

But this ghost was writhing violently in agony.

Black smoke poured from its body as though the light magic were burning it from within.

Kent stared in surprise.

“A Nether Creature?”

The creature thrashed wildly in midair.

Kent immediately rushed toward the recess in the wall.

Sure enough, Daphne was lying unconscious inside.

He crouched beside her and quickly checked her condition.

Her breathing was steady.

Her pulse was normal.

She had merely lost consciousness.

Kent carefully helped her out of the hollow and laid her to one side.

Then he slowly turned back toward the Nether Creature still twisting in agony.

A cold light flashed through his eyes.

Daphne was his companion.

The two of them had already faced life and death together.

Admittedly, she had spent much of the journey being more of a burden than a help.

But over the past several days, Kent had come to know her well.

Unlike many dark elves, Daphne carried none of their usual arrogance.

Her temperament was gentle, and she treated him sincerely.

Kent had noticed that the way she looked at him sometimes seemed a little strange, but that hardly mattered.

She was still his companion.

His friend.

And somewhere along the way, Kent had already begun to think of her as a younger sister.

They had survived danger together.

If this Nether Creature had not harmed Daphne, Kent might actually have been curious enough to capture it and study what kind of creature it really was.

But now?

There was only one thing he wanted.

To kill it.

Only then would the anger burning in his chest finally subside.

“Illumination!”

“Healing!”

Kent began hurling light-element spells one after another.

Nether Creatures were, in essence, spiritual entities.

Because they lacked true physical bodies, they could pass through certain obstacles, including walls that were not especially thick.

That was precisely why Kent attacked so aggressively.

He was afraid the creature might escape.

“AAAAAH!”

“We won’t let you get away with this!”

“You’re dead! Just wait!”

Kent had barely managed to cast a few spells when the screaming Nether Creature suddenly split into two halves.

One half instantly shot toward the wall and vanished straight through the stone.

The other remained behind, shrieking horribly as light burned across its translucent body.

Even as it fled, the creature still managed to spit out a vicious threat.

“We will not spare you!”

“Just wait for your death!”

Kent did not pay much attention to the creature’s threat.

The conditions required for Nether Creatures to form were extremely harsh, but such conditions would never produce only a single one.

There had to be more of them below.

And some of those were almost certainly far stronger than the one he had just encountered.

The Nether Creature from before had clearly only recently taken shape. Even its appearance was still vague and indistinct, as though its spiritual body had not yet fully stabilized.

Kent had no intention of staying there any longer than necessary.

He immediately scooped Daphne into his arms and hurried back to the small room they had used earlier.

After laying her carefully on the floor, Kent cast several more Illumination spells around the room.

Nether Creatures feared light.

The room was also small and enclosed.

Admittedly, neither of those things would be enough to stop a powerful spiritual creature, but Kent still felt somewhat safer here.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

He crouched beside Daphne and checked her condition once more.

Everything appeared normal.

She was merely unconscious.

Kent decided not to wake her.

Instead, he raised one hand and cast a dark-element spell.

“Slumber.”

A faint wave of magic passed over Daphne.

Her breathing became even steadier.

Kent wanted her to rest properly while he figured out how to deal with the Nether Creatures.

The problem was that he knew almost nothing about them.

He did not even know how many different kinds of Nether Creatures existed, much less what weaknesses each type possessed.

Worse still, although his light-element magic could injure and frighten them, it was not powerful enough to kill them outright.

The fundamental problem was his level.

Kent was still too weak.

He simply did not possess any truly destructive light-element spells.

If he could reach Level Four and learn Holy Light, things would be completely different.

Holy Light was a genuine offensive spell, and its destructive effect against Nether Creatures would be far greater.

That was the difference between support magic and attack magic.

Illumination and Healing were both classified as support spells.

Useful, certainly.

But they had never been designed to kill.

To make matters worse, Kent did not know many light-element incantations in the first place.

For the first time in quite a while, genuine anxiety began creeping into his heart.

Then he heard it.

A howl echoed from somewhere far away.

Then another.

And another.

Kent’s expression slowly changed.

These were not the furious cries of kobolds.

The sound was completely different.

And as far as Kent knew, there were only two kinds of creatures in this area.

Kobolds.

And Nether Creatures.

Which meant—

“These are all Nether Creatures...”

Kent felt his scalp go numb.

Judging by the number of voices, there were a lot of them.

Far too many.

“What do I do...?”

He began pacing restlessly.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Then he felt it.

A faint chill.

Not ordinary cold.

A coldness that seemed to seep directly into the bones.

Kent froze.

That was the presence of Nether Creatures.

Before long, the icy aura around the room grew noticeably stronger.

Then stronger still.

It seemed to gather from every direction.

Kent looked toward the window.

Something translucent flickered beyond the opening.

Then another vague shape appeared.

And another.

The creatures were hiding in the darkness, their forms difficult to make out clearly.

But Kent did not need to see them.

The distant howls—

the oppressive cold—

the steadily thickening aura of death—

all of it made one thing perfectly clear.

There were already many Nether Creatures surrounding the room.

And they were waiting in the dark.

“Is there any other way...?”

Kent racked his brain, but no matter how hard he thought, he could not come up with a good solution.

The Nether Creatures outside were clearly waiting for him to exhaust his mana.

That was probably why they had not attacked yet.

Kent tightened his grip on the staff.

Perhaps he should test what this divine artifact could really do.

But just as he was about to try, a sudden thought flashed through his mind.

Kent’s eyes lit up.

He immediately reached for the mysterious spellbook—the one he still had not been able to determine was related to undead magic or necromancy.

“Hahaha!”

Kent used his spiritual power to open the book.

He had barely read the first page before he burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! Good! You came at exactly the right time!”

Excitement filled his face.

The spellbook was, in fact, a necromantic grimoire.

And the very first spell recorded within it was called Soul Dispersion.

It was a spell specifically designed to deal with spectral creatures.

The Nether Creatures surrounding the room were known as Wraiths, the lowest class of necromantic beings.

And Soul Dispersion had been created precisely to counter creatures like them.

However, despite its name, the spell did not truly disperse or destroy the Wraiths themselves.

Instead, it erased the spiritual imprint that bound the creature together.

Once that imprint was broken, the caster could absorb the pure necromantic mana remaining within the Wraith’s spiritual body.

Kent had actually activated the spellbook almost entirely by accident.

As more and more Wraiths gathered around the room, the concentration of necromantic elements in the surrounding air had increased dramatically.

By now, those cold, sinister magical elements had become extremely dense.

Kent had simply taken the chilling elemental energy around him and converted it through his mutated Mana Source into an equally cold stream of mana.

To his surprise, the moment that mana touched the spellbook, the hidden magical script on its pages appeared.

If the Wraiths outside had known what their arrival would allow Kent to discover, they probably would never have chased him here in the first place.

But what excited Kent most was not merely that he had finally found a way to deal with the Wraiths.

There was another benefit.

And that benefit was even greater.