With that said, their extermination journey continued.
The further they went, the more the tunnel widened. The claustrophobic pipes gave way to natural cavern walls, slick with dripping moisture.
The stench of sewage was replaced by the sll of briny, stagnant water.
"Stop," Damien ordered, holding up a fist.
Isabelle froze instantly.
Ahead of them, the tunnel floor seed to be moving. A carpet of dark, clicking shapes blocked the path.
[Monster Analysis]
[Species: Armored Mud-Crab (Tier 3)]
[Traits: Abyss-Hardened Shell, Magic Resistance (Low-Tier)]
Spending a few points in the sytem, Damien quickly identified what king of monster this was
There were at least thirty of them. Each one was the size of a coffee table, covered in jagged, black chitins that looked like volcanic rock.
"Crabs?" Isabelle scoffed. "Easy."
She wound up her arm, channeling a sphere of Hellfire.
"Fireball!"
WHOOSH.
The green fla struck the center of the pack.
It should have been a massacre. But when the smoke cleared, the crabs were still there. Their shells glowed faintly red from the heat, but they were unhard.
The Abyss-hardened chitin had absorbed the magical impact, dispersing the heat before it could cook the at inside.
CLICK-CLACK.
The crabs hissed, waving their massive pincers aggressively.
"What?" Isabelle gasped.
"Direct hit... and not even a crack?"
"Abyss Chitin," Damien explained, leaning casually against the wet cave wall.
"It’s resistant to energy projection and highly durable against slashing. If you try to cut them with regular swords or hurt with regular magic then most of it gets nullified."
"However, considering your rank gap, they shouldn’t be unhard, sothing strange is going on here"
Saying that last part to himself, Damien held his suspicons inwardly, fortunately the crabs didn’t die with that one it, so he could use them to train Isabelle on will
Thinking of this crossed his arms, a slight smile on his face under neath the mask.
"Show , Isabelle."
"Show you what, Master?"
"The thing we talked about," Damien said, his eyes narrowing.
"Forget the fire. Forget the gravity. Use your Obsession."
Isabelle hearing this swallowed hard. She looked at the swarm of clicking pincers moving toward them.
After a slight pause she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, Damiens words echoing in her mind.
’Mana burns,’ she recited internally. ’But Will overwrites.’
She thought about her desire. What did she want?
She didn’t want to conquer the world. She didn’t want gold.
She looked at Damien.
She wanted to be useful. She wanted to be the shield that broke the spear. She wanted to protect the her young master, her family, she wanted to never loose anyone again after her family disappered.
In a trance, she rebered how she had spent days crying and crying on eld after she found out the Voss mansion had been destroyed.
Even if she knew now there was a possibility that the Madam and the Master could be alive, she never wanted that feeling of loosing soone again
Thinking this, her aura shifted.
The Hellfire around her hands vanished.
In its place, the air distorted. It looked like heat haze, a transparent, heavy pressure condensing around her knuckles.
[Will Art: Will Cladding (Incomplete)].
A crab lunged, its pincer snapping at her leg.
Yet this ti Isabelle didn’t dodge. She simply side stepped into the attack and threw a punch.
THUD.
Her fist connected with the crab’s shell. The sound was dull, like hitting a wet sandbag with a sledgehamr.
The crab froze. Its shell was completely intact, not a single crack.
Then, slowly, foam bubbled from its mouthparts. It collapsed into the mud, dead.
"I... I didn’t break it?" Isabelle looked at her hand, confused.
"Shake it," Damien commanded.
Isabelle nudged the dead crab with her boot. The body jiggled like a water balloon.
"Gross," Isabelle grimaced. "It’s like soup inside."
"Exactly," Damien nodded approvingly.
"You bypassed the armor. Your Will struck the ’Existence’ of the crab directly, liquefying the organs without wasting energy breaking the shell."
He drew his sword.
"That is the power of will!"
.......
And so ti continued to pass
For the next hour, the sewer echoed with the dull thuds of Isabelle’s fists and the sharp shing of Damien’s sword.
They moved like a storm. Isabelle acted as the hamr, crushing the armored targets with Will Cladding.
Damien moved through the gaps, using his sword to decapitate the faster, softer targets that tried to flank them.
By the ti they reached near the end of the tunnel, they were covered in gri, but their sack was heavy.
Damien sat on a rock, counting the loot.
"Forty Tier 3 Cores. Eighty Tier 2s," Damien muttered. "quite a lot"
He sighed.
"However, I plan for us to leave this layer of the abyss after getting better gear, so we might as well collects as much as we need."
Isabelle wiped sweat from her brow. "So we go deeper?"
"Deeper!," Damien agreed. "Who knows, we might find sothing interesting"
And sure enough, after reaching the end of the tunnel, what the saw next made both of them stunned
It was a massive, circular blast door made of rusted iron and Adamantite. It stood twenty feet tall, sealed shut with chains as thick as a man’s torso.
Glowing red runes pulsed faintly on the tal surface, ancient, geotric warnings that looked like they hadn’t been used for hundred of years.
[Warning: Do not cross]
[Status: Sealed]
[Reason: Waste Disposal Overflow - Do Not Enter]
Damien ran his hand over the cold, heavy chains.
"Abyss Iron," Damien murmured, a greedy glint entering his eyes.
"Even the chains are valuable."
He pressed his ear against the door. He activated his [Sensory Intent].
Through the thick tal, he could hear it. A low, rhythmic thrumming. Like a massive heart beating in the dark.
And the sll... a concentration of mana so dense it leaked through the microscopic cracks in the seal.
"Isabelle," Damien grinned, stepping back and gripping his sword.
"High risk... High reward."
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