A heavy sensation t my fingertips. My hamr, enhanced with holy power instead of mana, struck the skull of a zombie that had turned toward with perfect accuracy.
The feeling was familiar. A weapon crushing flesh and breaking bone. Like cracking a walnut with a hamr, or smashing a boiled egg on a desk. That satisfying impact with barely any resistance, yet knowing you've completely shattered sothing.
But what followed was an entirely unfamiliar sensation.
"These bastards explode too!"
"Poison! It's poison! Watch out for armor fragnts and gas!"
The orc zombie's crushed skull swelled up before transforming into a purple smoke bomb.
Like how monster corpses turned into mana stones, the flesh seed to transform into poison rather than organs splattering everywhere. But their armor flew outward like shrapnel as dark purple gas burst forth.
The startled knights swerved sharply, carving furrows in the plains. While they might handle explosions, there was no reason to breathe in what was clearly deadly purple gas.
"Roland, you okay?!"
"Thanks to the holy power, I'm fine!"
I'd forgotten since I hadn't encountered dark mages in this world, but thinking back, dark mages in my past life always used corpse explosions and bone magic.
Fortunately, I'd drawn on holy power instead of mana this ti. No special reason - I'd just thought I'd casually use holy power since we were dealing with re zombie at shields - but it proved quite helpful.
If dark mages exploding zombies was common sense, then dark magic being weak to holy power was equally common sense.
"These ones just spew poison? They don't chain explode!"
"Knights fall back, we'll handle this from range!"
Naturally, dealing with the zombies beca our party's job rather than the Ice Cross Knights'. Though Irene's holy power could provide immunity beyond purification, casting purification on all 26 people just for so shambling zombies would be wasteful.
I smashed them one by one in the center using holy power while Grace's arrows and Han Se-ah's magic swept away the slow-moving ones.
Sluggish movent plus isolation without support troops made them perfect targets for archers and mages.
'Co to think of it, not just Katie's sword but Irene's sacred law counters this too.'
anwhile Katie, having apparently asked Irene for blessing, circled the zombie horde's periter with holy power protection, thodically cutting them down.
Seeing how zombies sliced by Katie's special enhancent stone-enhanced blade turned straight to mana stones without exploding, the terrifying conclusion erged that three of our five party mbers countered dark mages.
I rembered rage-quitting mobile ga arena PvP when three of five opponents were counters - looked like we were carried again.
As I busily crushed zombies one by one, I found myself missing the suicide goblins. Their explosions took out multiple targets, while these zombies had to be killed individually since they released gas when dying.
Though their exploding armor sent fragnts flying like buckshot, a zombie wouldn't be a floor 60 monster if re shrapnel could kill it.
"Roland! Katie! Get clear, casting magic!"
"Got it!"
Han Se-ah finished off the zombie horde with her high-tier magic, Summon Ice Storm. Not wanting to waste too much mana on slow at shields, she precisely contained the snowstorm just around the zombies, shredding them like an efficient blender.
Between deflecting catapult rocks with Earth Control and precisely calculating rarely-used high-tier magic, she really seed like a hero when using magic.
The issue was that while she showed her heroic side when casting magic, she usually relied on inventory bombs and gar tricks to progress. Still, watching zombies flail and collapse in the mana-packed snowstorm before they could even spread their purple gas was satisfying.
...Maybe her love of AOE skills and bombs was rubbing off on .
※
Though zombie soldiers appeared on floor 60, fortunately their outposts weren't covered in corpses or too polluted for human habitation.
As if proving the main force was an army rather than dark mages, the zombie soldiers were neatly organized in corner barracks like equipnt. So the army was primary with dark magic as support.
This seed to cent the theory that the boss was a general with a dark mage aide as a nad elite minion.
"Everyone, ti to eat."
"Oh thank you so much!"
"It's nothing really."
A zombie unit cut down while returning alone to base. Checking where they were headed naturally led us to an enemy outpost.
After that, well - we sniped the ballistas, used mines as stepping stones to infiltrate, sliced through catapults and orcs wholesale, then tried capturing suicide goblins... but failed. They died instantly when we broke their limbs, as if their health was set extrely low.
We'd probably need magitech devices from the Magic Tower to capture them alive. Sothing like mana-restraining shackles or bomb-sealing tools.
So we passed a letter to the rchant group delivering supplies to the Ice Cross Knights. A simple note asking Charlotte, busy researching at the Magic Tower, if they had any magitech devices suitable for capturing suicide goblins.
Any sharp-minded mage would quickly realize "Ah, the hero party must want to capture goblins to send to the Magic Tower!" And that this could contribute to their research results.
"Ahh, warms the soul. Who'd have thought we'd eat like this on expedition?"
"Honestly, just thinking about going back north and chewing jerky makes sick."
"Hey, that's not up to !"
"Stop imagining such sad futures and just enjoy this soup. You're ruining my appetite just talking about it."
So boss monster hunting progressed smoothly, capturing suicide goblins and zombies seed feasible, and ogres were still nowhere to be seen.
Han Se-ah's voice cut through the Ice Cross Knights' praise of the hot soup, perfectly summing up the situation.
After clearing the outpost's monsters, Han Se-ah buried the zombie barracks with Earth Control since it felt gross. As usual, the knights then set up tents and cleaned the area while Irene and Han Se-ah prepared als.
"But isn't this seriously a problem? Never mind not finding any - there aren't even rumors of Imperial trainee commanders having their lives ruined by ogre encounters? I really think we need to check with Ellis at the Adventurers' Guild about what's going on."
But today's Han Se-ah had been tornted enough by hardcore enhancent fanatics.
From the mont she opened her eyes and greeted viewers to find chat spamd with "ogre", to getting hit with "should've enhanced staff lol" after cleanly handling the new zombie horde without wasting mana.
It had reached levels, with viewers beating up Han Se-ah in unexpected ways like suggesting enhancing Mom's rosary would make food tastier. In response, Han Se-ah kept initiating fights with viewers as if trying to prove she was Korean.
"I an really, right? If I just had bad luck and couldn't find them that'd be one thing, but are there any reports of ogre encounters? The rchants buying supplies haven't heard anything, and the adventurers and rcenaries at the safe zone we visited earlier said they haven't seen a single ogre either."
-Co to think of it, seems that way lol. Don't think it's just her not finding them
-Maybe so event started when floor 60 opened? Like the dark mage took all the ogres
-What is this, so rchant monopoly? Dark mage boss hoarding ogres?
-Ah lol territory grabbing and claiming ogres so the hero bitch can't enhance items lololol
-At this point could seriously suspect a bug from rushing through too fast lololol
True to her Korean nature, she'd exclaid "I an" over a dozen tis while sitting in a corner with her soup bowl.
Perhaps her heartfelt complaints resonated with viewers. The prevailing opinion shifted from Han Se-ah being unlucky to suspecting so quest-related bug.
Though nobody rembered exactly which floor they'd caught the previous ogre on, they hadn't seen any on the way to floor 60. So watching the suicide goblins and zombie bombers, theories erged that berserk ogres had been captured as the army's secret weapons.
Hmm, plausible?
Capturing rampaging berserk ogres from the wild to turn undead - wasn't that exactly what a dark mage should do? Just as knights practiced lance charging and mages researched, there was an unwritten fantasy rule that dark mages should modify wild monsters into troops.
"Oh, oh! Hanna! Hanna!"
"I an, this isn't my fault... What is it? What?"
"It's an ogre! An ogre's coming this way!"
But in this world, bad luck took precedence over common sense.
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