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Chapter 312: Ryuu's Doubts
"Jura!"
Ryuu's sharp roar struck like a crack of thunder, instantly draining the color from the self-satisfied man's face.
Hearing that furious shout laced with biting bloodlust, Jura flinched instinctively, letting out a pathetic, undignified yelp. Yet, in the very next second, he forced a twisted, intensely malicious grin onto his fear-stiffened face.
He acted as if he had expected this exact scenario. With a flick of his wrist, he casually snapped his whip against the floor.
CRACK!
Another whip crack. The Lambton, still enraged from the blow to its face, violently whipped its massive head around.
It was a precise, almost mechanical shift in direction that completely defied all biological inertia. Without a single moment of hesitation or deceleration, its enormous body forcibly turned, launching a lightning-fast pursuit aimed squarely at Ryuu's back.
It was fast—too fast. The glinting tip of Ryuu's wooden sword, Alv's Lumina, was less than an arm's length from Jura's throat.
Just a hair's breadth away. But that tiny gap became an insurmountable chasm.
The howling, lethal threat bearing down on her back forced Ryuu to abandon the perfect opening. Aborting her forward momentum, she threw herself into a desperate sideways roll, narrowly avoiding the giant serpent's steel-crushing fangs.
Before her, Jura's face warped into a sick, triumphant smile.
The Lambton's assault didn't pause for even a second. After sweeping past Jura, its massive body carved a wide arc. With mind-boggling agility, it coiled itself into a tight ring, wrapping its master securely within the center of its barricade.
Raising its giant head high, its six pairs of icy eyes locked onto Ryuu, radiating a clear message: If you want to touch my master, you'll have to step over my dead body.
"Haha... Hahaha... HAHAHAHA!"
Standing safely inside the Lambton's defensive ring, Jura erupted into a manic, triumphant laugh.
"Of course, of course you'd aim for me! Isn't that just standard tactics? But really, Gale... did you honestly think I wouldn't have prepared for that?"
Ryuu bit her lip, staring silently at the impenetrable, iron-clad defense before her. A deep wave of helplessness washed over her.
"I've been drilling this guard-the-master routine into it since the day I got it, see? Drilled it so much I'm completely sick of it!"
Sporting his stiff but smug grin, Jura shamelessly bragged about his masterpiece to a scowling Ryuu.
Ryuu's face was dark. Her breathing remained steady, her heartbeat normal, but deep within her emerald eyes, a storm was quietly brewing.
In her past memories, during those blood-soaked days spent tangled with Evilus, the name Jura wasn't particularly famous. He was just a mediocre tamer belonging to a second-rate Evilus splinter group. The monsters he controlled were mostly mid-to-upper-floor trash. While they posed a threat to normal adventurers, against her and her comrades in the Astrea Familia, they were mere grunts, wiped out with a casual wave of a hand.
She could have effortlessly slaughtered Jura and his entire menagerie on her own. That was a fact based on her past experiences.
But now, everything had changed.
The man before her had become incredibly troublesome. And this difficulty didn't stem from his own personal strength, but from the terrifying giant snake beside him—a deep-floor beast from the 37th floor that had absolutely no business being here: the Lambton.
Mere taming could never make a monster perform such precise tactical maneuvers that went completely against its biological instincts.
Ryuu's mind rapidly replayed every exchange from the fight. The ambush from the wall, the suicidal burrowing mid-air, and just now—the coiling defense to protect its master, perfectly synchronized with Jura's whip crack...
These actions had far surpassed the limits of normal monster intelligence. They were no longer simple feral instincts, but meticulously designed and rehearsed tactics.
With that level of precision and execution, Ryuu dared say that not even the elite tamers of the Ganesha Familia—the largest Familia in Orario, renowned for their beast-taming—could train a monster to be this obedient and intelligent.
Something was undeniably wrong here.
Is it because of that?
Ryuu's gaze pierced through the lingering dust, locking onto the metallic collar around the Lambton's neck, pulsing with an ominous red light.
That was no ordinary accessory. During the battle, every time Jura issued a critical command, every time the Lambton executed a complex maneuver beyond normal comprehension, the crimson gem on that collar flickered. It was a magic item—a high-tier artifact capable of assisting, or perhaps forcefully overriding, a monster's mind and actions.
Question after question exploded in Ryuu's mind. Where did Jura get a magic item of that caliber? Moreover, how did he manage to tame a deep-floor monster with latent abilities rivaling a Level 4? This was completely beyond the capabilities of an ordinary tamer.
He definitely wasn't acting alone.
Was he backed by accomplices? Were they the Evilus remnants who had managed to escape and lay low all these years? Where were they hiding? How many of them were left? And... what exactly were they plotting?
Ryuu bit down on her lip so hard the rusty taste of blood spread across her tongue. Her face grew even darker. The endless killing intent gathering in her emerald eyes was nearly boiling over into a tangible, crimson glare.
Meanwhile, safely inside the Lambton's defensive ring, Jura seemed entirely oblivious to the terrifying aura of slaughter building up around Ryuu. Reaching out, he lovingly, obsessively stroked the giant serpent's cold, slippery scales, ignoring the blackened burns from the explosion, treating it like his most precious treasure.
"Ah... damn it... damn it all..."
He groaned. It was an incoherent sound, a mix of sheer terror and twisted excitement. His voice trembled uncontrollably, laying his true emotions bare.
"Even knowing I have plenty of ways to deal with you... I'm still... I'm still so terrified... Lion, you damn Gale!"
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