Chương 459: (452) 6.66. Carving a Path

In the wake of the fallen village whose people would forever remain a mystery, Alka wanted to forgo the original plan and hit the tunnel closest to Scule's and Reginald's location hard and fast. Thankfully, Vin managed to talk her out of doing so, realizing there was a different idea he could try. A modified Sense Soul was able to pinpoint Scule's location perfectly, but they didn't have any method of actually getting a message to him. At least, they hadn't before."

Whispering Wind," Vin cast, closing his eyes and focusing on the Soul Mark telling him precisely where Scule was located underground. He had no idea of the layout of the tunnels or how to get from their current position down to Scule, but that didn't matter. The mana certainly knew the path, and he encouraged it to take hold of his spell, bending and twisting the air carrying his message through the tunnels and directly to his waiting friends.

Whispering Wind usually required line of sight in order to work, but Vin wasn't held by the same restrictions anymore.

"We're on the surface. Reginald should be able to smell us once you're out." Confident his message would be delivered, Vin sat back and somehow managed to convince Alka to wait a couple more minutes before doing anything rash. The Slayer wasn't a fan of remaining still, but she relented when Shia pointed out that attacking now while Scule and Reginald were trying to sneak out of the tunnels could make things go very badly for them. Thankfully, they didn't have to wait too long.

Less than twenty minutes after sending his message, two familiar, tiny heads appeared on the horizon, running between rocks as they made their way over to the team.

"Took you lot long enough!" Scule called out, keeping his voice reasonably down as he cast a glance over his shoulder to ensure they weren't being followed.

"Neat trick with your voice there, Vin, I didn't think you had that kind of range."

"I got a bit of an upgrade," Vin said, letting out a sigh of relief at the sight of his teammates returning unharmed. They were understandably covered in blood, seeing as they'd been hiding within an animal's carcass, but otherwise totally okay.

"How did it go?"

"We didn't want to risk dragging the carcass too close to the trogums and have them see us moving it, so it took them a bit to find us. Once they did, they made a beeline straight for their base, didn't bother checking over the body or anything, and thank the Gods for that," Scule said, snorting as he shook his head.

"That said, it's wild down there. We're talking thousands, probably tens of thousands of trogums scurrying about in those tunnels. At the very least, we know what the Rebel Queen's been up to all these months."

"The good news is we don't have to fight them. We just need to take out the Rebel Queen," Shia said. She had a firm hand on Blossom's head, as if holding the wooden beast back from taking off and ripping the first trogum it encountered to shreds all on its own.

"Do you know where she is?"

"We were taken to some sort of storeroom. I didn't want to risk moving around and have you think we weren't in position yet, so I stayed behind while Reginald did the scouting. He said he's pretty certain he found her location." Sitting up on his hind legs, Reginald let out a number of rapid squeaks as he gestured with his tiny paws and tail alike. Listening carefully, Vin nodded, pulling out his journal and sketching down the described path.

"Thanks, Reginald, that's exactly what we need," Vin said, smiling to himself as he traced the path with a finger.

"Uh… You actually got all that?" Scule asked, giving Vin a strange look.

"I thought you only really got the gist of what Reginald was saying. That was a lot of detail."

"Like I said, I got a bit of an upgrade," Vin said, snapping his journal shut. Just like how his magic felt more natural, the meaning he got behind Reginald's words felt more clear as well. He still didn't really hear them translated like any real language, but somehow, the rat's intentions were clear as day.

"It sounds like we're going to have to fight through a handful of elite trogums. Shia, the plan for you and Scule to distract and draw some of them away is still on. I'd rather Alka and I only have to fight through a few elites down in the tunnels rather than a hundred all at once. I haven't forgotten just how fast they tend to be." The trogum elites tended to prioritize speed over brute strength.

They couldn't hit all that hard, but that didn't matter too much when one ended up getting stabbed through the heart faster than they could react. With his high focus Vin was confident in his ability with keeping up with a few of them, but each elite added to the mix was one more blade to have to keep his eyes on.

"Fine by me," Shia grinned, her jagged teeth glistening as she turned to Scule.

"We're going to be a monster again, just like back in the rankers' fragment. Only no need for the non-lethal sleeping poisons this time."

"Can't say I disapprove. You guys should have seen just how many corpses and body parts were held in that warehouse they dumped us in," Scule said, shuddering at the thought.

"If we had my way we'd burn these tunnels to the ground and wipe our hands of the whole situation. I don't even think it was the only room like that!" Reginald squeaked out a confirmation, sadly shaking his head as he did so.

"Just one more reason to hit them hard and fast," Alka said, looking between them all.

"I'm done waiting. If you guys are going to stand around and keep talking, I'll go in solo and finish the Rebel Queen off myself."

"I think we're all ready," Vin said, getting a host of nods from the rest of his team.

"Let's do this." Scule, Shia, and Reginald ran off to one of the farther tunnels, telling them to wait ten minutes before launching their own attack. In a perfect world, those three would manage to draw most of the elite trogums away from the Rebel Queen, and Vin and Alka would be able to swoop in and take her out before she even knew what was happening. Vin didn't think things would be quite so easy, but he could still hope. He and Alka waited silently as time ticked down.

The moment ten minutes were up, Alka hopped up and sprinted straight for the tunnel, and Vin chased right after her. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. The trogums' reaction to seeing the two of them running full-tilt toward them was jarring and unnatural. Without a word, all of the trogums began releasing that same deep, eerie buzzing sound within their chests at the same time before rushing forward.

They didn't have any weapons or armor, racing forward to meet Alka with nothing more than four arms outstretched and open jaws ready to try and overwhelm her with numbers and tear her to pieces. They didn't stand a chance. Alka flowed forward against the literal tide of bodies as easily as if she were walking through a light crowd. Every time the light flashed off her sword another trogum fell, and Vin watched in awe at the incredible display of martial skill.

It had been some time since he'd really gotten the chance to watch Alka in action, and now that he got an opportunity to witness her, he came to a startling realization. Alka was better than she used to be. The Slayer strode forward, a literal whirlwind of death as her blade severed limbs and sliced through hardened carapace. A trogum tried to lunge at her from the side, only to have its hands, arms, and then head all removed from its body one after another in three rapid slashes.

Two more tried to take advantage of the distraction to reach her from the front, but Alka's third slash continued on, cleaving them in half as her body and limbs spun in a way no human body could ever hope to match. Alka's natural combat flexibility that she prided herself in as a Slayer had grown by leaps and bounds due to her golem body, and while Vin had known she'd been practicing to improve her skills, only now that she was facing down a literal sea of enemies did he realize just how far she'd come.

Even if she couldn't improve her attributes or gain any more help from the System, Alka hadn't been sitting idly by and letting that keep her from improving right alongside the rest of them. Tearing his eyes off the incredible display of skill, Vin joined the fight, knowing that they needed to move fast before the distraction Scule and Shia were running ended. Casting Fireball, Vin aimed the spell up, before curving it back down, dropping it from on high like a literal meteor.

The ball of fire and magic detonated directly in the tunnel entrance, wiping out dozens of trogums in a single blast. He cast the spell a second and then a third time, bending the projectile around Alka before curving it right back down to maximize its effectiveness and help Alka clear a path. With the giant gaps he created, Alka was able to carve even more easily forward, and the two of them reached the tunnel in no time.

"That way!" Vin shouted, getting a nod from Alka as she turned and began cleaving her way forward. The tunnels themselves were a lot less packed than the entrance had been, no doubt largely in part to Shia and Scule's distraction, and the two of them raced through the earth as they followed Reginald's scouting report. The Rebel Queen was a good quarter-mile past their entry point, which meant they had no time to lose.

Alka sliced through three more trogums and Vin picked two others off with Stone Shot, before they ran into their first elite. A blur from across the tunnel was all the warning they had before Alka deflected a sword with the side of her blade, lashing back out and forcing the elite to leap back. While nowhere near as fast as the divine warrior had been, the speed of the elite trogum was no joke.

Unlike the rest of the trogums, it had four antennae instead of the usual two, and all four of them twitched in the direction of the Rebel Queen. Holding its sword before it, the elite trogum paused, staring at them with wide, unblinking eyes." You have returned," it said, its voice broadcasting directly into Vin's head as its antennae turned and pointed in his direction." The Queen demands to know why you are attacking."

"Guess she got promoted now that she's not a rebel anymore," Vin said, remembering Alka couldn't actually hear any of the trogums' telepathic speech. He briefly considered relaying the trogums' words, before realizing there was no point. Nothing the Rebel Queen could say would save her after what she'd done. As if Alka could read his thoughts, she raced forward, striking toward the elite trogum with all the speed she could muster.

At the same time, Vin cast Enhance Gravity, forcing the trogum's spindly knees to buckle and slow it down. The warrior clearly hadn't expected such magic, and it desperately tried to run out of the way. Unfortunately for it, the largest downside to placing all of one's points into dexterity was a significant lack of strength, and it couldn't fight very well against the increase in gravity.

Before it could take more than two steps, Alka reached it, cleaving the elite trogum in two and sending both halves tumbling to the ground.

"That's the plan for those guys!" she shouted as they kept running.

"Slow them down and I'll finish them off! The Rebel Queen knows we're here, so no more playing around!"

"Got it!" Vin said, more than happy to follow through with that plan. Now that their presence was known, their battle through the tunnels got a bit dicier. Swarms of trogums rushed out of side tunnels and elites attacked in larger and larger groups as they ran, but the two of them continued forward, refusing to be brought to a stop.

Vin used Stone Wall to seal tunnels as they passed and prevent trogums from overwhelming them from behind, and he lobbed Fireballs up ahead to help clear the denser patches of trogums trying to slow them down. The elites were handled just like the first one had been, with a combination of Enhance Gravity and Alka's own sword skills. The elites quickly realized going straight for Vin was the optimal strategy, but unfortunately for them, the dense tide of mindless trogums ended up working against them.

The elites couldn't utilize their speed with the crowds in the way, and with Vin sealing the passages behind them, they couldn't circle around from behind. He and Alka scythed their way through hundreds if not thousands of mindless, bloodthirsty beings as they fought their way toward the Rebel Queen, and despite how awful Vin felt about killing them, he knew they didn't have a choice. Five dead fragments… he kept repeating to himself, picturing the destroyed village covered in bloodstains.

He thought of Huark and the always grinning Urlana who had already fallen to the trogums, and her smile ignited a righteous anger in his chest that drove him forward. What they were doing was dirty, horrific work, but it needed to be done. Someone had to save Edregon. Eventually, he and Alka carved their way to what Reginald was pretty certain were the Rebel Queen's chambers. But the moment they rushed through the door, before Vin could seal it behind them, he was attacked.

By an icepick formed out of desperation, fear, and sheer rage, driving itself directly into his mind.