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Chapter 315: The Second Lambton
Under the disbelieving, ghost-struck stares of Jura and his companion, the multi-ton giant snake let out a short, agonizing shriek toward the ceiling. Its massive body acted like it had been hit square-on by a battering ram, tracing a wide parabola through the air before violently crashing into the far wall.
Amid the violent tremors and deafening boom, a cascade of crystal shards collapsed in an avalanche, completely burying the serpent's long body beneath the rubble.
Whether it was dead or merely knocked out cold was unclear. The once-unstoppable deep-floor monster was left with only half its tail sticking out of the debris. After twitching weakly twice, it stopped moving entirely.
With just the weapon in her hands and her seemingly delicate frame, Gale had forcefully launched a super-large class monster into the air with a head-on strike. This technique, overflowing with a violent aesthetic that defied all common sense, instilled a bone-deep terror into the souls of Jura and the werewolf youth.
A dead silence blanketed the cavern. Ryuu slowly touched down, her green cloak fluttering softly.
Her chest rose and fell slightly, and fine beads of sweat dotted her forehead, but the hands gripping her wooden sword remained as steady as bedrock.
She gave Alv's Lumina a light flick, shaking off the purple monster blood clinging to the blade with a soft hum. Then, she turned around. Those emerald eyes, blazing with the fires of vengeance, fell calmly and coldly onto the man collapsed on the ground.
Crossing the cavern she had personally reduced to a deathly silence, she walked toward Jura, step by unhurried step.
"Jura." Her voice wasn't loud, but it struck Jura's heart like an icy hammer. "You're the only one left. It's over."
"Pfft... Pfft-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
A bizarre, throat-tearing laughter suddenly shattered the momentary silence. The man who had just been driven to a dead-end and paralyzed by Ryuu's overwhelming strength was now laughing as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
He clutched his twisted face, his entire body convulsing violently like an epileptic patient. The laughter leaking through his fingers overflowed with madness and a cathartic, ecstatic joy.
"You said... it's over? Hahaha... You said... it's over?!"
Ryuu's body, which had relaxed slightly after defeating a powerful foe, instantly went rigid at the sound of that laughter. A bone-piercing chill crept rapidly up her spine like a nest of vipers, flooding her limbs and bones.
Every hair on her body stood on end.
This aura... This feeling... It was an aura of absolute destruction and slaughter—so pure that its mere existence was enough to wither life itself. It was familiar. Far too familiar. It was like a scar seared deep into her soul with a branding iron. Even after four years, even when she thought she had buried it away, the moment it reappeared, the agonizing pain and terror seeping into her marrow made her tremble instantly.
Ryuu's pupils constricted to pinpricks. She snapped back to reality.
Right... what idiot thing have I done...
The Lambton? The Lambton was nothing. Defeating a Lambton didn't matter in the slightest. Killing a lunatic like Jura didn't matter either. What mattered... was that Calamity.
This battle between her and the Lambton had caused a massive commotion. The earth-shattering noise, the destruction, everything—to the Calamity that was currently deep within the dungeon, silently devouring the corpses of its kin to slowly mend its body, it was nothing more than the most deafening dinner bell.
It... had been disturbed.
"Yes... That's right! That's the expression! That's the look, Lion!"
Jura seemed to peer straight into Ryuu's mind. Slowly lowering the hand covering his face, he revealed a visage flushed with the sickly red of peak excitement. Staring at Ryuu's drastically shifting expression—watching her go from a calm victor to terrified prey—he laughed even harder, even more hysterically.
"It's over? No, you are dead wrong! It's not over... it's just starting! The most wonderful party I've been looking forward to for four whole years is only just beginning!"
"Jura!!" Ryuu let out a harsh cry, a mix of fury and panic.
Her mind no longer had the luxury to overthink things. Her single, overriding thought was to eliminate the enemy in front of her at any cost, right now, before that absolute terror descended.
Alv's Lumina tore through the air with a shrill whistle. Without a single ounce of hesitation, she swung a slash packed with all her might directly at Jura's neck.
She couldn't care less about capturing him alive to interrogate him about the Evilus stronghold anymore. Everything had completely derailed from her plans. Originally, she only wanted to track the man silently, locate the nest of the Evilus remnants, and wipe them all out at once. But she never imagined this man named Jura would be so insane, so out of his depth, that his actual goal was to actively seek out that walking Calamity—the Juggernaut.
She especially hadn't expected her stealth skills to be seen through with the help of the Lambton, forcing her to reveal herself early and dragging her into a battle that never should have happened.
Now, she had to kill Jura and his shell-shocked werewolf companion as fast as possible, leave this place immediately, and run with every ounce of strength she had without looking back. Otherwise, she would truly die.
She would definitely die!
"Too late... Everything is too late, Lion." Facing Ryuu's thunderous, lethal strike, Jura simply continued his mad laughter. He didn't even try to dodge.
The very next second, in the fraction of a moment before Ryuu's blade touched his neck, the ground directly in front of him violently shattered without warning.
BOOM—! A second one. A second Lambton.
Erupting from the shattered bedrock, it burst forth with a posture even more frenzied and vicious than the first. The colossal, deep-blue scaled snake head slammed solidly and unexpectedly into Ryuu.
Ryuu's reaction speed was already pushed to its absolute limit. The instant she was struck, she instinctively brought her wooden sword across her chest to block the horrifying impact.
But it was too late. It was far too sudden.
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