Chapter 117: Desperate Straits 2

Kent was thoroughly miserable by now.

If he had known beforehand that this temple would be filled with so many troublesome encounters, he would rather have faced the Cerberus outside.

Or perhaps he should simply have stayed in the passage and waited.

Surely that three-headed hellhound could not have remained there forever.

Regret, however, was useless.

For now, all Kent could do was run.

As he sprinted through the underground passage, he silently swore that once he got back safely, he would find a way to obtain the incantations for wind-element magic.

Or better yet—

spatial magic.

Spatial magic was said to possess the greatest offensive power among all magical elements.

Wind magic, meanwhile, could greatly increase a mage’s speed.

And after reaching Level Six, a wind mage could even fly.

At that thought, Kent glanced sideways at Daphne.

She looked almost perfectly relaxed.

Meanwhile, beads of sweat were already forming on his forehead.

That only made Kent even more depressed.

There was nothing he could do about it.

Their professions were simply different.

Daphne’s physical abilities were naturally far superior to those of a mage like him.

“Despicable humans!”

Joko’s furious voice echoed from behind them.

“You won’t escape!”

The Phantom Wraith pursued them like a wisp of dark smoke, drifting effortlessly along the route Kent and Daphne had taken.

Her speed was not merely a little faster than Kent’s.

It was easily several times greater.

That could not be helped.

It was an advantage granted by her race itself.

“Damn it!”

Kent heard Joko’s enraged shriek from far behind and immediately cursed.

“How the hell did that thing catch up so fast?”

At this point, Kent was no longer even running under his own strength.

Daphne had grabbed hold of him and was practically dragging him along.

When they had reached the three-way fork earlier, Kent had simply chosen one of the passages at random.

They knew absolutely nothing about the underground area.

Under those circumstances, choosing the left tunnel, the right tunnel, or the middle one made little difference.

They were all equally unknown.

Kent and Daphne continued racing forward.

Then Kent suddenly noticed a faint glow in the distance.

There seemed to be light coming from the far end of the tunnel.

His spirits immediately lifted.

“There’s something ahead!”

He quickened his pace.

Behind them, Joko’s figure had already become visible in the distance.

Kent glanced back and sneered.

“Hmph.”

“You like chasing us that much?”

“Then have a little candy.”

Without slowing down, he raised one hand and hurled a Soul Dispersion spell backward.

The gray-white magic flew straight down the tunnel.

The moment Joko saw it, she immediately retreated.

She had no other choice.

Kent had deliberately chosen the narrowest of the three passages.

There was barely enough room to maneuver.

If Joko refused to retreat, the Soul Dispersion spell would almost certainly strike her.

And she had absolutely no desire to deal with that troublesome magic again.

Soul Dispersion might not inflict devastating damage immediately, but removing its effects was painfully inconvenient.

Besides—

Joko was in no hurry.

There were plenty of Wraiths farther ahead.

She did not believe for a moment that these two humans could simply charge through an entire swarm of them and escape alive.

So let them run.

Sooner or later, they would have nowhere left to go.

“Damn!”

Kent and Daphne both skidded to an abrupt stop.

The sight beyond the end of the passage was simply too terrifying.

Before them stretched an enormous underground cavern, covering several square kilometers at the very least.

Massive stalagmites rose from the ground like stone towers, while huge boulders lay scattered everywhere in chaotic heaps.

But none of that was the real problem.

The real problem was the light.

Kent had originally thought the glow ahead came from some natural source.

Now he realized how wrong he had been.

The cavern was filled with Wraiths.

Hundreds upon hundreds of ghostly bodies drifted through the darkness, each emitting a faint spectral glow.

Together, they illuminated the cavern with an eerie, pale radiance.

Kent felt his scalp go numb.

Behind them, Joko saw the two suddenly stop.

Excitement immediately surged through her.

The moment she had been waiting for was finally here.

She had barely advanced a few steps when Kent and Daphne suddenly charged straight out of the passage and into the cavern.

Joko froze.

For an instant, she simply stared after them.

Then she let out a piercing shriek.

If Kent’s soul were devoured by some other Wraith first, then everything she had done would have been for nothing.

Joko’s speed was terrifyingly fast.

Even so, by the time she flew out of the tunnel, Kent and Daphne had already put a considerable distance between them.

Joko was just about to give chase when the two nearest low-level Wraiths suddenly turned toward her.

Then they lunged.

“Get out of my way!”

Joko roared.

But what happened next left her completely stunned.

The two weak Wraiths attacked her as though they had gone mad.

They threw themselves at her and began tearing savagely at her spiritual body.

For a moment, Joko could hardly believe what she was seeing.

In almost every species, the weak instinctively avoided the strong.

Lower-ranked creatures gave way to higher-ranked ones.

When had low-level Wraiths ever dared to attack a Phantom Wraith?

Then pain tore through her body.

Reality snapped back into focus.

Joko opened her mouth.

A visible ripple burst outward.

The strange wave struck both low-level Wraiths.

Their bodies shattered instantly.

Pale spiritual forms broke apart into countless fragments of light, which slowly faded into the darkness.

Only two dim gray objects remained behind.

Each emitted a faint magical glow.

They were Wraith Essence Cores.

“Damn it…”

Joko caught both cores in one hand.

She opened her mouth and swallowed them.

“These two were far too weak. There’s no way they could have gone insane from absorbing too many memories.”

She muttered to herself in confusion.

Then she turned her gaze toward Kent, who was weaving through the distant maze of boulders.

One glance was enough to make her even more furious.

She wanted nothing more than to tear him apart.

Along the route Kent had taken, Wraith after Wraith was suddenly turning on its companions.

They attacked wildly, without distinction.

Clearly, Kent had cast some kind of spell on them.

The affected Wraiths began tearing into those nearby.

Then the surrounding Wraiths retaliated.

Within moments, more and more creatures were dragged into the fighting.

Chaos spread rapidly.

Wherever Kent passed, the Wraiths erupted into violent conflict.

The disturbance expanded outward like ripples spreading across a perfectly still lake after a stone was thrown into the water.

One circle after another.

Larger.

Wider.

More chaotic.

Joko was almost beside herself with rage.

“Damn you!”

“Get out of my way!”

As she flew after Kent, Wraiths repeatedly attacked her from every direction.

Joko roared in frustration as she was forced to fight her way through the swarm.

Far ahead, Kent heard the familiar furious voice behind him.

A smug smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

Of course they’re attacking you.

They’ve all been hit by Soul Pierce.

They’re in so much pain they probably don’t even know who you are anymore.

Soul Pierce was a Level Three necromantic spell.

It acted directly upon the soul.

And against Wraiths—

creatures that were, for all practical purposes, almost entirely composed of spiritual essence—

its effects were several times stronger.

Any Wraith struck by Soul Pierce would have its consciousness thrown into severe confusion at the very least.

And Wraiths already carried countless foreign memories and negative emotions inside their spiritual bodies.

Once their minds were disturbed, all those buried emotions surged together.

How could they possibly remain rational?

That was exactly what Kent wanted.

Chaos.

The greater the chaos, the better.

Not only would it disrupt Joko’s ability to sense and track them—

it would also slow her down and force her to deal with the rampaging Wraiths along the way.

In truth, Kent’s tactic had only worked because of one crucial detail: every ghost in the cavern floated above the ground. Not a single one of them touched the earth.

Kent had noticed that almost immediately, and it was precisely this discovery that allowed him to come up with such a desperate plan in so little time.

Even so, he had been gambling with his life.

Fortunately, the ghosts surrounding him were relatively low-level creatures and could do little real harm to him. The pursuers behind him, however, were another matter entirely. Those things were vicious beyond comparison.

“Run? Just where the hell do you think you’re running? This is my territory!”

Just as Kent was beginning to feel a flicker of relief, a deep, thunderous voice rang out from directly ahead.

A figure emerged from the darkness.

The newcomer was clad from head to toe in heavy knightly armor, and beneath him crouched a grotesque undead mount—a Level Seven Nether Rat.

Nether Rats were creatures of the undead. They were originally Shadow Rats that, after death, had either undergone some strange twist of fate or been transformed through forbidden necromantic arts.

The instant Kent saw the armored rider, all the color drained from his face.

A Death Knight.

And not merely some ordinary undead creature, either.

Death Knights were high-ranking undead beings created when a low-level ghost possessed the corpse or body of a human warrior and gradually cultivated itself into a more powerful existence.

Such creatures were extraordinarily rare.

The reason was simple. Ghosts themselves belonged to the undead order, which meant that any body they attempted to possess also had to be compatible with undead or death-aligned energy. Such suitable vessels were exceedingly uncommon—perhaps one in ten thousand.

Worse still, once a ghost successfully took possession of a physical body, there was no turning back. It could never again return to its former ghostly state.

In most cases, the result was little more than a skeleton or some other crude corporeal undead.

For that very reason, ghosts rarely chose possession unless they were facing truly desperate circumstances.

After all, compared with skeletons, ghosts had a far easier time surviving in this world. Skeletons possessed fleshless but tangible bodies that could be struck and destroyed, while ghosts moved silently and without substance, slipping through darkness like drifting smoke.

Only when confronted with mortal danger would a ghost willingly abandon such an advantage and seize a human body.

Yet if it somehow survived that transformation and eventually became a Death Knight, its combat power would be terrifying.

There was no denying that.

“Mandar, get out of my way!” Joko shouted the moment he recognized the Death Knight before them.

His heart tightened with unease, but none of it showed on his face.

“Move aside, or I won’t be polite about it!”

Mandar glanced toward Joko.

Then his expression changed.

He immediately sensed that Joko was on the verge of splitting apart.

At first, Mandar had intended to mock him. After all, Death Knights cultivated in an entirely different manner from ghosts. A Death Knight merely needed to continuously absorb death energy in order to grow stronger; it had no need to devour souls.

But before he could speak, Mandar noticed the chaos farther ahead.

His gaze fell upon Kent and his companion, then shifted toward the ghosts that had descended into a frenzy.

A strange cry burst from Mandar’s throat.

At once, thousands of ghosts from the surrounding darkness surged forward.

They descended upon the maddened spirits like a black tide.

The ghosts afflicted by the Soul-Piercing Spell barely had time to react. Within only a few blinks of an eye, the swarm tore into them and devoured them completely.

Not a single one remained.