Chương 317: Chapter 312

Jacob observes the two thin lips for a fraction of a second before two people jump from behind him, charging the thing. Lady Helena Ashenvale and Sir Lucas Valaris. Among the present, they are the strongest bar none. Jacob has seen them both fight, and he understands why they charge toward the monstrosity with the human mouth — they think that killing it as fast as possible is the best possible outcome, that any seconds longer it lives, it poses a risk to the entire group.

"You two! GET BACK!" Jacob shouts at the top of his lungs.

"Get back immediately!" Helena and Sir Lucas have crossed almost all the distance, but when they hear Jacob, frowning, they skid to a halt and jump back toward the group, finding themselves at Jacob's side. Jacob, who has walked to the front of the group, looks at what he'd call the Mithril Nightmare Lancer. Nightmare Mithril Lancer? Mithril Nightmare Lancer? Mithril Lancer? He shakes his head.

"We have to kill it now!" Helena shouts at Jacob, beside herself. This is their first loss in a long time, and it has rattled her, who has previously led Team One to victory after victory.

"That thing will reap more lives!" Sir Lucas agrees. Jacob, however, ignores both, tilting his head at the scary wide smile on the monster. The entire group, an expedition two hundred strong, all focuses on Jacob.

"Only Sir Lucas and Lady Helena can face that monstrosity," someone says warily from the back. You can hear the fear in his voice, and it is echoed in the responses.

"Lodvig was a great Shield, how did it even manage to kill him like that? This Dungeon… it's changing."

"I don't think we can continue like this! Look at it! It's not even attacking, it's just waiting for us to become sacrifices!"

"Yeah! Go Sir Lucas! Go Lady Helena! Get that bastard!" Everyone agrees on the same point. From now on, if the Dungeon's default is monsters like this Mithril Nightmare Lancer, only the strongest can enter it. Everybody else will just become a sacrificial lamb to the Primordial Dungeon of Apocalypse. So, everybody awaits Jacob's order. They all think that he probably wants to warn Sir Lucas and Helena about some quality of this Mithril Nightmare Lancer, that there's something fishy about it, perhaps.

Jacob has always given very clear instructions on how to deal with monsters. And so, they're waiting for him to lead Sir Lucas and Lady Helena, the only ones who can really take on such a terrifying monster.

"Do that again, panic like newbies and you're both getting locked up," Jacob says calmly.

"Stand back. You're not needed." The entire group, even the Mithril Nightmare Lancer, who seems to have a certain degree of awareness, is dumbfounded. What? What is he saying? Locked up? The only two strong enough to solo the Mithril Nightmare Lancer? Everybody is thinking the same thing. Has Jacob lost his damn mind?

"You two are not needed for such a weak monster," Jacob says casually, shoving them back into the middle of the stunned group. Everyone's just gone slack-jawed, including the Mithril Nightmare Lancer, who's stopped smiling and has dropped the giant lance-arm to its side. Weak monster? What weak monster?! That thing just killed a Shield in one hit!

"This job comes with risks! It was a lucky hit that killed Lodvig, let's not get scared of such a wimpy thing!" Jacob shouts over the murmurs.

"Let's show this weakling what we're capable of!" Before anybody can protest the absurdities that Jacob's spouting, the Mithril Nightmare Lancer roars, offended, and is about to lunge forward.

"Sabrina, Nimirea, containment!" Jacob shouts. Sabrina Margrave immediately opens both the Gate of Heaven and the Gate of Hell, creating a buff zone for all the group and a debuff for the monster, which tries to shrug off the aura, but it cannot avoid a Rainbow Skill—not Sabrina's at least. Nimirea activates her Devouring Ocean Eating the Heavens, but instead of flooding the room with water that cannot discriminate friends from foes, she just coats her sword's edge with it and swings.

Before the Mithril Nightmare Lancer can realize what's happening, droplets touch him, and he has no real reason to be afraid of such an attack. Yet, when the droplets touch him, the damage is already done. Nimirea looks at Jacob, who is the one who suggested this incredibly simple strategy. During her training with him and Baal, Nimirea struggled to find a way to synergize her Rainbow Skills. One makes her stronger with poison, one gives her great perception, and one is a massive debuff.

After a few weeks of deliberation, Jacob's Grimoire still hadn't found her a solution. So the Leader of the Champions, just as he always does, offered his own. When he said it, even Baal remained speechless. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"You can't synergize them. Just… use them well together. You literally can't find a good style that merges them. There's no way to do that. If there is, we don't know it. Stressing about it is becoming really stupid. How about you just make the water Skill less dangerous for friends, maybe like restrict it to the sword, empower your body with the poison one, and just fight better with the perception one while you kick the enemy's ass."

Now, the reason why this solution had sounded so preposterous to Nimirea wasn't exactly far-fetched. Rainbow Skills are beyond rare. The fact that the Generation of Legends carries so many at once is beyond unique. Truly, beyond unique. Without the convergence of an amount of Karma that rivals the era that pre-dates the Gods, it wouldn't have been possible. That's how absurdly rare and strong they are. They're the pure aspect of a Skill, an absolute tool that one must build their entire fighting style around.

Not doing so would be truly the apotheosis of… Nimirea doesn't have enough bad words to describe how foolish it would be. So, while to some amateur Jacob's solution might sound reasonable, in reality what he was saying was…

"Are you saying," Nimirea asked, "that I should treat my Rainbow Skills as common Skills and rebuild my entire fighting style around something else? Jacob, I've already made Eye of the Prophet the center of my style. I was planning on making its perception the building block for my future Class, so that it would evolve alongside it, growing stronger and stronger."

"It makes no sense," Jacob shrugged back then.

"Just because you can do something like that, it doesn't mean you should. Think about it, why focus on just one Skill? Why didn't you use the full power of the water one against me? Because you never incorporated it in your style. Because, if you did, you'd have to effectively make it on par with the Eye of the Prophet. And if you do that, you downgrade the Rainbow Skills to auxiliary Skills and can't evolve a Class from it.

So, despite the fact that it might sound like a bad idea, you should actually get an Imperium Skill like everybody else, and focus on that." Nimirea understood what Jacob was saying and… it was surprisingly reasonable. She was the only Dark Champion, well, ex-Dark Champion, with more than one Rainbow Skill. And nobody among the Dark Champions, besides the dead Astabazos, tried to make the lynchpin of their Class their Rainbow Skill. It would make them too one-dimensional.

She, instead, had decided to try and do that by incorporating all three Rainbow Skills into one, or, to be more precise, trying to do that. If she had managed to make two Rainbow Skills support one of the three, she'd be able to make her entire Class about one Rainbow Skill and ascend to Diamond Rank with so much power in her hands that no other Champion or Dark Champion would have rivaled her. Yet, it had been impossible.

So, weeks ago, she had picked an Imperium Skill and easily leveled it to Level 100 thanks to Jacob's Grimoire and her own talent. Now, three Rainbow Skills supported her one Imperium Skill—an Imperium Rank Complete Skill. Her father had given it to her. Sir Renquell hung around Ashenmere and had dinner with his daughter every night without fail. It was his one request, even in the midst of this apocalyptic Dungeon. And she hated how well the ridiculous Skill he gave her fit her.

Nimirea bares her sword at the Lancer, whose Mana will now be drained at the rate of an absolute 10% against his full reserves per minute, meaning he will be killed by his lack of Mana in ten minutes. Feeling that, the Mithril Nightmare Lancer lunges for her, and not only can she see its path with Eye of the Prophet, but she closes her eyes and activates the foundational Skill of her Class. One would expect something specific from the ex Leader of the Dark Champions.

To say that Nimirea is an angsty person, and has been borderline evil, would be the understatement of a century. Sure, Nimirea ultimately was liberated from Asmodeus's chains thanks to Jacob, but she isn't exactly a ray of sunshine. She wears dark clothes everywhere, complementing her raven hair, and light silvery eyes. If she entered an inn in the middle of an empty road, where just a few patrons are drinking beers, they might think, 'holy, a witch. Where did we leave the pitchforks and the torches.'

And she is proud of that. She likes it like that. She has never been the cutesy type. Even among the Dark Champions she is, without a shadow of a doubt, the broodiest, the moodiest, the darkest. And her reputation as a slaughterer, despite being a source of shame, is also a source of pride. She has always lived in a world where might makes right, where you must be strong. Not cute. And she's lived there until… Now.

"Avatar of Clouds." A pink mist erupts from Nimirea's pores and a sword identical to hers, coated in the same Mana-sucking water, blocks the devastating attack of the Lancer. And it doesn't stop there, because around the sword an avatar appears. The avatar is an angelic form, a clone of her with rounded edges, softer and, to be honest, very exaggerated curves. Seeing it, Nimirea is tempted to let the blow of the Mithril Nightmare Lancer slide and undo her for good.

In the end, why would she cultivate such an image for her entire life if the best-fitting Imperium Rank Skill she'd ever found, literally a perfect match for her Rainbow Skills, would be… The big-titted avatar parries the attack and blows a kiss at the monster. The kiss, however, is made of all the poisons that Nimirea has ingested to make her body stronger. To her, thanks to the Body of Myriad Poison Skill, it is a tonic that makes her much stronger.

But to the monster, even one coated in Mithril, it is pure poison. An amalgam of poison that starts rotting away the giant lance parried by her avatar and forces the Mithril Nightmare Lancer of Apocalypse back. Nimirea sighs and she turns to Jacob. Unlike everybody else, she understands what the Leader of Champions is trying to do.

"Shields up front!" Jacob shouts.

"Zibrek, Boomgar, Nimirea, containment!" The three surround the monster while Shields, after a brief moment of hesitation, go up to it. Nimirea seamlessly coordinates with her shameful avatar to block the path of the Lancer who tried to get to the side of one of the Shields. And, forced to attack the man frontally, even the empowered lance can only bounce away from the Rafnov Quality True Diamond.

Seeing that, seeing how powerful their own equipment is, the next Shields that block the subsequent attacks shout out loud.

"Hell yeah! This thing actually is a wimp!" No, it's not. Its fighting abilities are Imperium Rank. This is a monster beyond imagination. Its appearance should be as scary to all of you, if not scarier, as what you initially thought. But the fear is slowly melting away. Yet, Jacob is giving you all courage. You can't face this thing alone, but we can't clear the Dungeon with just Sir Lucas and Lady Helena. We need all of you…

"Daggers!" Jacob shouts. And the Daggers jump into the fray, fearless now, helped by the Champions, Dark Champions, and Jacob's own instructions. They whittle the monster down, mostly thanks to the effect of Nimirea's Rainbow Skill.

"Breakers! Now!" Some casters rain hell on the thing and it quickly dies after accumulating so much damage. Nimirea smirks. Nine minutes have passed. It is basically fully out of Mana. And even though this hasn't been an easy fight at all, with many people having grievous wounds, an arm, a leg, even a piece of their chest missing, Jacob rolls his shoulders, yawns and says…

"Piece of cake guys. Ready for the next?" Piece of cake?! Nimirea facepalms. What do you mean piece of cake?! How shameless can you be?! At least say it was hard but we made it! What piece of cake! At least five people are on the brink of death. But of course, Garros goes up to the ones who have reported mortal wounds, heals them back completely, and Jacob pats them on the shoulder.

"See? A couple of scratches can't stop us. So, are we going or what? What are those faces? Are you tired already? Of one little, tiny mowster? Come on! Don't be a bunch of wimps! We've got this!" And, of course, everybody is convinced, entertained, and, most importantly, invigorated by the ridiculous claims Jacob just made. Nimirea envies the disposition of the Leader of Champions. If he hadn't done all of this, morale would have tanked. Everybody would be scared out of their mind.

Yet, even in his ridiculousness, Jacob says, "one moment, though. It's important to show respect to our dead." He walks forward to Lodvig's body, puts the True Diamond armor back on his chest, straps it there, and then, closes his eyes.

"Rest well, Lodvig, you fought like a true hero. You'll be avenged," Jacob says, turning to everybody else.

"Right?" Nimirea flinches at the soundwave of shouts that agree with Jacob's words.