Chapter: 477

Jay, along with the other adventurers, had analysed the whole fight – not just the boss, but the guards too.

Paul and the other guard didn’t panic. One of them gave simple orders as the other followed them. They had remained calm during the whole fight, quickly dealing with any problems that sprung up during the battle.

For some of them more novice adventurers, it was an eye opening experience. Typically they would panic as soon as one unforeseen event happened during a dungeon – the worst of them acting like Peter who would turn a simple situation to shit.

Jay and his human troops now had to deal with the fallout. The nest spore had not only drawn the elementals in Jay’s field towards it, but also from the two fields on each side of them.

The other fields were barely left with anything to fight – some of the adventurers from the field on the right (the disorganised bunch) even looked on with sneering glances.

To the field on the right, it was a good thing, as each of them had been struggling desperately since the beginning.

“Ignore them.” Jay said, seeing Conroy who was being distracted by their glances.

“Pf, yeah. They couldn’t even bring down a treant. What do they know.” he chuckled as he readied himself for battle.

It was sadly true, their guard even had to kill all the treant hectopedes that came charging out of the forest. Just by looking at their faces during the battle, Jay could tell they felt a mix of desperation, frustration and shame – though this was now replaced by looks of jealousy and bitterness.

The field with Stephen’s adventurers on the left was doing just fine though. With the battle nearly over most of them look cheerfully relaxed. They had even managed to kill a treant hectopede themselves.

Some of the melee troops even looked longingly at Jay’s field, it seemed they still wanted to fight, their thirst for battle was not quenched. Fighting side by side in an intense battle had made some of them invigorated, like extroverts of the fighting world.

It was easy to tell what some of them were thinking: ‘More… more! MORE!’.

The wood elementals had almost formed a small mountain. Balls rolled over each other while the skittering nestlings ran across the tops.

The final wave of the wood elementals had gathered – and it would be focused on Jay and his human troops.

There were still more waves of wood elementals moving against other parts of Losla, but it seemed that the weak ones of the north-west had been successfully crushed.

All that was left to deal with was this single large wave of enemies.

– – –

~Mist Keep, Level 3 Dungeon, Losla~

*SCRIIIiii!*

Pain. Intense pain. It was the last thing the dihexapede soul eater felt before it died.

Perhaps it was a good thing – the only other things it felt were loneliness, hunger and an empty feeling in their souls; their hearts cried out for something that they couldn’t comprehend.

Consuming their own kind’s soul stones, found at the centre of the stone statues, would at least make two of these feelings go away, for a moment at least. It was a torturous existence.

The dihexapedes sensed a familiarity in the stone soldiers, and a sense of longing and sadness moved through them each time.

Still, it didn’t matter now; they had become monsters as they lost their minds to time, waiting in the darkness – meanwhile the stone soldiers had become their enemy, their own minds similarly broken. Perhaps they were not so different.

However, whatever familiarity they had and whatever bond they held was broken, lost to time. All that remained was emptiness and hunger.