Chương 315: Chapter 310

Lady Kisanna, unknowingly in a similar position to her daughter when it comes to Jacob Cloud, feels like she's about to burst a vein in her eyes, forehead, temples, and perhaps in the back of her head. Whatever Jacob Cloud is doing, he must have a Rainbow Skill that tells him exactly where she's sending the Nightmares. Her attempt to kill the Knights has so far been thoroughly unsuccessful. Every time she thinks she's about to get them and kill them, shouting, "You're mine now!"

— which she has shouted about twenty-three times in the past forty-eight hours — she finds nobody in Rafnov's Bounty. The Knights and Adventurers have been completely ignoring the treasures and the Skill Crystals that one can find by roaming those rooms, but have instead fully focused on extracting ore and gems from a few rooms. Through the eyes of the Nightmares she possessed in order to check, she has swiftly uncovered the Knights' methodology.

They set up fortifications and then almost immediately start digging as far as they can. One would expect that Knights and Adventurers, despite their power, would have some… restraint when it comes to such a humble activity as mining. Yet, using some hidden Nightmares that the Knights didn't spot immediately, Kisanna has been left completely speechless at the activity of those men and women.

They dig like crazed beasts, using the pickaxes so roughly, charging them with Skills, and hitting so hard that rock detaches from the tunnels in large explosions that generate flying debris that could have killed an ordinary man. Yet, even when they cut themselves or one another, they barely stop, acting like men and women possessed. The ore in Rafnov's Bounty is akin to poison for the Cultists and the Nightmares, so they can't excavate it themselves.

Therefore, Kisanna has never really gotten a good look at the quality of it. Yet, she can't believe that people are going so crazy after some ore. Even Lady Kisanna Ashenvale, a Cultist of Apocalypse, a woman who was ready to kill her children to fulfill her goal of destroying the world, stares in dumbstruck horror at the crazed looks of those people. She is convinced that if she had more Cultists like them, they would have swarmed the world with Nightmares a long time ago.

"Maybe we should open a mining division of the Cult," she mutters to herself.

"What did you say?" Karzun asks.

"Nothing, nothing," Kisanna frowns. They have been scattering the monsters more, ready to catch the Knights and Adventurers by surprise despite their ability to teleport. She has found a pattern to the ruins they're exploring, and she believes she's pinned down where they're going next. There, she has gathered a bunch of Nightmares concealed by Primordial Spells — a hundred Lancers and a hundred Archers ready to kill whoever teleports in.

And she's even pinned the room they'll enter first, following the logic that Jacob Cloud seems to be following.

"This should be where they'll appear next," Kisanna cackles.

"And Jacob Cloud often enters first. We'll have him killed like a dog!"

"Like a dog!" Karzun, the man with many golden piercings, laughs himself to tears. Suddenly, with Kisanna possessing one of the Nightmare Lancers of Apocalypse, she sees a Dark Door opening and feels a shiver going down her spine. She's got it right! The bastard is about to die! Like a goddamn d— A spherical object rolls into the room, and the Dark Door suddenly closes right after it reaches the middle. Kisanna spurs the Lancer, ordering it to get closer, using its massive arm to prod the thing.

As the vision of the Lancer gets sharper, aligning with her own, she sees that the thing has several runes on it that are becoming brighter and brighter.

"I've learned Runes from my pa'," Boomgar explains with a chuckle, carving some more Runes onto a bomb that could kill literally everybody in the room.

"Basically—ohh, oops!" Boomgar almost drops the thing on the ground and both the Champions and the Dark Champions, and Sir Maximilian, all of them in the war room of the Ashenvale estate, almost jump out of the window.

"Sorry, sorry! It's safe, I swear! They must be activated through my Skill! Well, sort of! I can activate it and delay its detonation with the runes." Boomgar's Rainbow Skill, Kinetic Overlord, allows him to store any amount of kinetic energy he has absorbed and release it either through his body or, as he once used to do… with bombs.

"It's been a few months since I've done any serious tinkering," Boomgar laughs, stroking his beard and looking at the runic pattern with a little jeweler's loupe to examine it closer.

"But this should help in mining. My pa' used bombs to mine all the time. You just need to make sure that the blast is strong enough to pulverize literally everything. Otherwise, it's a pain to move all the big rocks." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. The Champions and the Dark Champions, hearing the word 'pulverize,' don't look reassured. Kisanna has seen the spherical object detonate.

The explosion was so powerful that she immediately lost the possession of the Lancer since it was most likely blasted to smithereens.

"Did they know?" Karzun asks, puzzled. At this point, despite being Cultists themselves, they start getting creeped out by Jacob.

"He's a weird creature," Kisanna nods.

"Perhaps… he's a Demon."

"Most likely," Karzun nods back.

"I gathered some information in Ashenmere through a spy. They call him the Fake Champion back at the Academy and he has embraced it. I believe he means it as a joke, as 'Fake Human.' He's definitely a Demon."

"No, no," Kisanna suddenly shakes her head and slaps herself across the face a couple of times.

"It must have been bad luck. Let's try again." They have just lost two hundred souls, but they don't have any choice but to try again. And so, try they do. As soon as they calculate the next spot where Jacob Cloud is going, they send not just Lancers and Archers, but a veritable army of Soldiers powerful enough to block the blast and wait for the Knights to cross over. The only problem is that… Ten bombs roll through the Dark Door this time.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Kisanna swears while the Lancer she is controlling is enveloped by a roar of white flames.

"Why ten?" Jacob frowns at Boomgar.

"Wasn't one enough?"

"Lad, the Knights came to talk to me! They said that with my bomb they could skip a lot of the prep work! They said I should have thrown in a couple more!"

"Ten?!" Jacob frowns.

"That's not a couple more!"

"Heh, lad, when I explained how the bombs work, they insisted they help me charge my Skill. I don't mind people knowing my boring Rainbow Skill. But so many people came to hit me to gift me kinetic power that I had too much! Hell, don't they know that even Rainbow Skills have limits based on the user! I'm just a Platinum Rank!"

"But why didn't you stop at the second bomb, then?" Jacob frowns.

"You could have just said, let's stop here, I have enough."

"Heh." Boomgar scratches the back of his head.

"It was fun to see the lads fired up about mining. Brought me back, you know? I didn't want to let them down, either." And so, the game of cat and mouse continues for three weeks. And it continues until the Cultists have thoroughly lost it. After so many days of their Dungeon being robbed non-stop of ore and gems, they start feeling robbed themselves. How do these people dare take so much without even a thank you?! Don't they know how much work went into this Dungeon?!

Just because that bastard Rafnov cursed the Primordial Gods, does it mean they can just take whatever they want?! Kisanna has decided to step up alongside Karzun, leaving the third member of the Cult behind. There are ten thousand Nightmares under their control. It doesn't matter what kind of outlandish bomb, spell, or weird Skill Jacob Cloud intends to throw their way. This is it. This is the moment they swarm them and kill every last one of them.

"They're going to pay," Kisanna says, foaming at the mouth.

"I will strip them of their pathetic lives once and for all!" If it hadn't been for Jacob Cloud, the world would have been theirs. But Karma tends to tie fates together in an era. And 'tis the era of the Generation of Legends.

"Wait," Kisanna frowns, with her hands on the Dungeon Core.

"They… eliminated a random patrol. But they're nearby! It's all of the Champions and the other bastards! I'll redirect every single—" Kisanna opens her mouth and then hisses.

"AH!" She retracts her hand from the Dungeon Core and her eyes go wide.

"What was that?!" Karzun looks at the Dungeon Core with suspicion but still touches it. He feels nothing out of the ordinary, but when he tries to move the monsters around as Kisanna had been doing, he feels a sharp pain in his hand. The Champions and Dark Champions alike have killed the patrol and sliced their own wrists. Even Garros is there. Even Lancelot. The blood that drips down the heroic forearms of all these people doesn't touch the reddish stone, though.

No, it slowly floats upward toward a seven-layered Mandala. They are all focused on their life energy, trying to channel as much as they can through their blood. Of all those present, only one person besides Jacob understands the Mandalas. This Mandala's power is beyond Mana. This is a… A word comes to Baal. Not from anything he's heard. From his memory. Karmic Mandala. The seven layers of runes and symbols spin slowly in place and suck their blood, extracting power, essence, but most importantly, Karma.

The blood does not fall. It rises, drawn upward in thin red threads, and where it touches the outermost ring of the Mandala it ignites in a soundless yellow flame. Each ring spins at a different speed, the runes inside each ring catching and releasing the light in pulses, slow at the perimeter and faster as the eye travels inward. By the third ring the light has stopped looking like fire and started looking like something else — older, gentler, the color of long afternoons no one alive can quite remember.

By the seventh, the air around the spell has gone still, and even Baal, who has lived two lifetimes among Devils, takes one quiet step back. Then, the seven Mandalas slowly join and merge into one large Mandala. And ever so slowly, it dissipates into a thousand yellow butterflies flying away. They scatter outward in every direction at once, as if the Dungeon itself has been holding its breath all this time and has just exhaled. Some of them slip through the walls without leaving a mark.

Some drift up through the ceiling and are gone. A few hover for a heartbeat in front of Jacob's face, as if studying him, and then they too are gone. The room is darker after they leave than it was before they came. Jacob, who has been casting the Mandala, suddenly falls to his knees, putting his hands on the ground and puking blood. It's viscous and black. It soon comes out not only of his mouth, but also of his eyes, nose, and ears.

Team Six, the Champions and the Dark Champions, sway, but they soon stabilize again. The drain they suffered is not even close to what Jacob has just gone through. Jacob had already told them they'd go alone this time. He had Augusta, who has been running from ruin to ruin covered in Primordial Spells that made it impossible to retrieve her position for the Cultists, create a mark in the same Dungeon where the Cultists have amassed more than ten thousand Nightmares.

He needs so many to cast a Primordial Spell that routes through those creatures and goes back to the Dungeon Core. Delefagus looks at the weakened Jacob, regretting that he has had to sign away the chance of killing the Leader of Champions. Yet, he also admires the kind of mystical power Jacob just summoned.

"It's done," Jacob says, slowly, shakily getting up.

"I've severed the Cultists' control over the Dungeon. To be more precise, I've reestablished Karmic balance. With this Dungeon at their hands, they had accumulated too much power. Now, the Dungeon will still generate monsters and try to kill us all, but it won't be artificially stirred by the Cultists." They have mined all the ore they needed to outfit literally every single Knight and Adventurer here. They have mined so much, actually, that they'll be able to sell it afterward by the ton.

Jacob has created a mining craze that will crash the True Diamond equipment market once the Original Primordial Dungeon's barrier drops. But for now, they're done with mining.

"Now," Jacob says, cracking his neck side to side, "it's time to loot."