The passage was as dark as night. If not for Val’s Nocturne Vision Trait, he wouldn’t be able to see what was inside it.
Many disgusting things filled the passage, but he entered it nonetheless.
As he began to move through it, a few dozen tiny silver spiders began crawling towards him. Each was palm-sized, with blade-like appendages and sharp V-shaped teeth.
These creatures could pose a threat to beginner-stage bloodline users, as even though they weren’t high-leveled, they made up for their weakness with their numbers.
Unfortunately for the spiders, they had met their match. Val was likely the only beginner-stage bloodline user against whom numbers held no advantage.
Val narrowed his eyes at the advancing spiders. It seemed they were eager to meet their ends, and he was all too willing to fulfill their wish.
“Descend, my horde of the undead,” he commanded.
Responding to his call, all level 2 undead stepped out of the Shrine of Evil, appearing beside him. The swarm of silver spiders was stunned into inaction as one horrifying undead after another materialized around Val.
“Hit them with your nightmarish aura!” Val instructed his undead army.
Complying with his command, the thirty undead targeted a spider, casting their nightmarish aura on the palm-sized creatures. Like a tsunami, the nightmarish aura surged forward from their very beings, crashing on the tiny silver spiders who tried but failed to dodge the onslaught. Struck by the nightmarish aura, their consciousness was instantly submerged in a terrifying nightmare, so intense it felt as though their souls had left their bodies.
The spiders were left stunned, as still as statues. Val was unsure how long it would take for them to break free from the nightmare and recover from the effects of his undead’s nightmarish aura skill. Maybe they would never wake up from their nightmares. But he wasn’t about to take any chances. He decided then and there that his priority was to eliminate them before they could regain their senses.
With a snap of his fingers, dozens of bullets crafted from blood materialized in the darkness, illuminating the area in a ghastly crimson glow, reminiscent of rubies.
And then with a flick of his wrist, the bullets were set into motion, raining down on the paralyzed spiders. There were thirty such spiders trapped within the effects of the nightmarish aura and they were powerless to evade the onslaught. In the blink of an eye, all thirty were struck by the bullets; holes were drilled into their heads from which blood erupted.
The shock of the pain jolted them out of their nightmares, only for them to meet a grim reality where they had been so severely injured that life had already vacated their bodies. They dropped dead to the ground, laying there lifelessly.
Being creatures of a relatively low level, between levels 5 and 15, Val only earned a negligible amount of EXP from causing their demise.
Out of the few dozen, only several spiders remained. Val looked at them coldly as they began to retreat. 𝔬𝓥𝑳xt.𝓒𝑜𝗆
“Put them out of their misery,” Val instructed his undead.
Without hesitation, the horde of undead descended upon the six remaining tiny silver spiders. Outnumbered and outpowered, they were swiftly torn apart and killed by the ruthless undead.
Val then continued his journey through the passage by stepping on their corpses, his undead following behind him like bodyguards.
This secret path led him directly to the underground area he had glimpsed earlier using his Heavenly Eye.
The underground area reeked of a horrendous smell. Despite Val’s emotional impairment making it harder for him to feel emotions as compared to others and the fact that he didn’t need to act humanely as he wasn’t in the presence of others, he could not help but wrinkle his nose in revulsion.
Val didn’t need to sniff the air again to discern that the smell that wafted through the air belonged to rotten corpses, and it was originating from the sealed well at the center of the area.
‘Let’s get a clear view of what’s hiding inside.’
As he began to approach the well, a sudden thunderous pounding echoed through the underground area.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The steel plate that sealed the well was being struck from within as if something wanted to come out. The horrendous smell, the thickening darkness, the incessant pounding — it all amalgamated into a horrifying scene that could make anyone’s blood run cold. However, Val was an exception; the more chilling the scenario got, the more determined he became to face what lay inside the well.
Val had only taken six steps towards the well when, abruptly, the steel plate enclosing it exploded outwards, falling towards him. He slapped it to the side with wizardry.
KURIAGHHH!
Just then, from the depths of the well, a monster burst forth — its form grotesque and terrifying. Its body was elongated. It had 36 pairs of long, sinewy arms and a hideous face with empty eye sockets. It lacked hair all over its body and possessed a gaping mouth devoid of teeth. Its mouth was 2 meter long and 1.3 meters wide.
After coming out of the well, it moved straight towards Val. It didn’t have eyes and the underground area was submerged in darkness, yet it could still tell where Val was. It meant that it was using some other method to locate him.
‘The smoke bombs wouldn’t be useful in this battle,’ Val thought.
The henious monster moved in a manner reminiscent of a centipede, using its many arms to scuttle towards Val at a horrifying speed.
Not even the most seasoned bloodline user would be used to witnessing such an abomination.
“And damn, it’s ugly!” Val blurted his thoughts out loud, unfazed by the monstrous apparition in front of him. Instead of being taken aback, he only became interested in knowing how something so ugly was created and what it was doing inside the well.
“I will study it thoroughly, but only after I have eliminated the threat it poses.”
He kicked these thoughts to the back of his mind. Then, with a sweeping motion of his arm and intense focus, he initiated wizardry, sending waves of his soul power crashing towards the hideous creature. The waves crashed into it like a violent tempest, causing it to stagger backwards, its multiple limbs flailing wildly as it was knocked to the ground, kicking up dust.
But it seemed to recover instantly as it scrambled back to its feet swiftly and leaped forward like a grotesque frog.
The next moment, Val was submerged in its shadow as it came flying towards him!