Chapter 164: Dragon Vitality (1/2)
The body of the dead creature was carried as the group fled. The creature's body was surprisingly light to carry and didn't hamper the speed of their escape by a bit.
”Cut off the body parts of the creature into smaller pieces. Then, tear off its limbs and absorb what you can from the body!” Martha ordered.
The knights began to do so but found that the dried-up and thin pieces of flesh were tough.
”If Lord Kyros's words are true, then this thing used to be human. But this place has changed the composition and its body parts!”
”Human? How can humans have such hard skin? It's like the carapace of the Lizards!”
”The dragon egg! It absorbed things that we placed outside the egg! It must be that the vitality and tenacity of dragons are so strong that they began to devour the fallen bodies of these humans and created something like this! Haven't we all heard of the tales of how strong the vitality of dragons is! It could be this! Vampires are strong for their ability to devour blood. It might be that dragons absorb and feed on the body!”
”So every monster down here is as hard as this creature?! Great! This is just great!”
”Stop drinking the blood. It's already starting to make you guys irritable.” Martha frowned.
”S-Sorry.”
”Keep a firm control on your emotions. We will be drinking more of those blood. And I don't want you guys to fall into that Dark Maddening status that Kyros talked about... Ugh. It's even affecting me!” Martha realized that her emotions were getting disturbed as she felt a rising resentment towards her lord.
”We could face stronger dragons. Imagine if a Dracanae Ghoul has merged with the fallen body of any warriors with high vitality!”
They could hear various movements in the darkness as they moved. The group soon came across a large hole on the wall, and it led deeper into the ground, but Martha suddenly stopped.
”These tunnels... They are not formed naturally! Knights, it looks like whatever's downs here is more than one.” Martha assessed.
Suddenly, Martha felt something and drew her bow and shot towards the darkness. Although she could not see in the deeper parts of the darkness, the arrow still managed to fly and hit something.
”Grraaaaaahhhh!” A pained roar was heard.
What followed was some trembling. It was as if a stampede was approaching them.
”It's like we're back in that cave!” Hems cursed out.
”Knights. Form a perimeter around me and maintain it. I will support you. Remember our previous battle. We fight while fleeing. Let's move this way.” Martha ordered as they ran towards a path that was leading upwards.
As they reached a certain part, Martha could sense Fate calling.
”Hold your ground here! We fight in this uphill terrain. Rip off the limbs now and carry one piece with you in case you need a quick mouthful of blood.” Martha readied her bow.
The knights began to stab their swords inside deeper as they moved and managed to rip off the creature's limbs.
The creature's limbs would twitch now and then, but the group placed it in their backpack and stood their ground.
”Lady Martha. Shouldn't we be fleeing up?”
”Try to sense Fate. If we move up there, we will see more enemies. And if we find more of them up there and have to deal with more from the back, we'd get caught in a pincer. And so we need to deal with this. Hold the line as long as you can. I have a plan. And take note of how I am using Fate's leading. At times it's not telling us what exactly to do but what we can expect. And out of those expectations, we must take the necessary actions to push things to our advantage. Their coming.”
Several humanoid creatures emerged from the small hole they saw earlier, and Martha immediately fired her arrows.
The arrow exploded as it struck the leg of one of the dracanae, and it stumbled down. But the surrounding dracanae suddenly humped and moved accordingly to avoid a stampede from occurring.
Martha cursed and fired more arrows.
The dracanae suddenly began to spread out, and some were even clinging on the wall and made high jumps.
”What kind of undead are they?! They're so organized!”
The more Martha fought, the more she began to understand how such mindless creatures could react. She then recalled the stories that glorified the dragonic cultivators in the Midlands and Highlands. They had such terrifying battle instincts that some could even defeat warriors nearly five levels higher! And now, Martha understood why this was so.
”Combat... This is Path of Combat!” Martha stopped shooting.
”Knights, hold the line. This battle is different from our battle with the orc squadron. Each one of those monsters has the Path of Combat!” She explained.
As the group was finally rushing closer, Martha started to shoot once more.
FWIP! FWIP! FWIP!
The arrows that Martha shot would arch and move in an unexpected direction. The targets were the mid-air dracanae who were jumping or avoiding the fallen allies and those that were slowing down to avoid the fallen dracanae in front of them.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The arrows exploded even before they struck the dracanae, and some of the dragons stumbled and struck each other, finally creating chaos on the back row.
But the dracanae at the front of the rush continued on unhindered.