Chapter 711: Traitor (1/2)

Catheya's left arm was clearly broken, and multiple wounds covered her body. Her complexion was pallid even for a Draugr, and Zac sensed her aura was very unstable. She neither had his durability nor the ability to deal with the dense life-attuned energies from what he knew.

Encasing herself in ice was probably a desperate measure of hers to block out the surrounding energies, but it was just a stopgap. The block of ice was bobbing in a lake full of life-attuned energies, and it was gradually being whittled down.

Zac wasn't exactly sure how he could help with her situation, but he began by lifting the block out of the waters and carrying it over to an adjoining cave that wasn't submerged. He put Catheya in the middle before taking out a series of arrays. One was a dispenser array that he had prepared for when he would travel alone.

He placed it around the block of ice and put a series of Supreme Quality Miasma Crystals into it. Soon enough the block of ice was covered in dense clouds of miasma. The array didn't really purify the Twilight Energy like Catheya's array did, but it did push some away. It was the most common way to deal with the Twilight Energy, but it was far more expensive to run compared to Catheya's purification array.

In fact, such an array wasn't publicly available.

Zac himself sat down facing the Catheya within the ice, and he essentially used himself as a purification array by absorbing some of the Twilight Energy close by. The hours passed, and Zac put one Miasma Crystal after another into the array as he waited. Sitting inside the cloud did a lot of good for him as well, and after the better part of a day, he was pretty much back in prime condition.

Catheya's aura was slowly growing stable as well, partly thanks to Zac occasionally crushing Soul Crystals in addition to the miasma crystals. Finally, she opened her eyes, but Zac actually felt a pang of danger prompting him to jump out in the way. It was just in time as well as the block of ice exploded, launching shards in all directions like a cluster bomb.

Thankfully he had reacted in time, and a coffin-shaped barrier blocked the fallout. His array wasn't so lucky, and Zac grimaced when the miasmic cloud dispersed.

”You owe me an array, you know,” Zac said with a grimace.

“You! Stay back!” she answered with a ferocious glint in her eyes as a spike appeared in her hand.

“What’s the matter with you? What the hell happened?” Zac sighed, but he followed Catheya’s instructions.

It really looked like Catheya would attack him if he got any further, and he was in no mood for a fight at the moment.

“You think there was a traitor?” Zac said, soon understanding why she was so stand-offish.

“You, Sharpo, and Yod. One of you three did this,” she said.

“Well, Sharpo or Yod,” Zac corrected.

“Oh, I should just take your word for it?” she snorted.

“I mean, you were standing right in front of me. I was the first one to get screwed over,” Zac said with exasperation. ”Besides, I dragged you out of the waters and spent a small fortune to block out the surrounding energies for a while.”

Catheya looked at him for a few seconds until she eventually snorted and put away her spike. “Well, I am pretty sure it’s not you. For one, you have a connection to my ancestor. Secondly, I honestly doubt you’d have the skill to fiddle with arrays without me or Varo noticing.”

“Well, whatever,” Zac said, a bit miffed at being looked down on. Even if it was true. “I’m still young, I have plenty of time to pick up side-skills.”

Catheya laughed a bit, but her face froze into a grimace as she looked down on her arm. She took out a pill and swallowed it, closing her eyes for a few seconds before looking up at Zac with an unusually serious expression. ”Thank you, I owe you my life. And I'm sorry about just now, I wasn't in my right mind when I woke up, and I panicked when sensing a strong aura right next to me.”

”Well, don't sweat it,” Zac shrugged. ”Though you do owe me for the array.”

“How can someone be such a miser when walking around with enough wealth to topple nations,” Catheya wryly smiled, but she still took out an array that seemed even better than the one Zac had used. ”Here.”

”Great,” Zac smiled as he stowed away the array. ”Now, do you know how to get out of here?”

”This is a repeater point of the Living Pulse, where it goes below ground and then reemerges stronger,” Catheya sighed. “It was actually our next stop, but we obviously weren’t supposed to enter this way. Or go this deep.”

“So, we just need to make our way up?” Zac muttered.

“Wait,” Catheya said as she took out a black core.

Zac immediately recognized it, seeing it was the gathering array meant for when they arrived in this place.

“There’s another mark down here,” Catheya said.

“Wait, it works?” Zac said with confusion as he took out his shard again. Still nothing. “I think mine broke.”

“I obviously deactivated the daughter-arrays after realizing there was a traitor among us,” Catheya snorted. ”There weren't any signals active when I was forced to seal myself though. How long have we been down here?”

“Oh, right,” Zac said. ”We've been here around two days now. I was knocked out as well, then it took me a while to find you and stabilize your aura.”

“Two days,” Catheya muttered. ”I doubt the traitor allowed themselves to get caught by the stream and dragged down here, but it's more than enough time to get down here through the tunnel system. But even if they did, would they take out the tracking array like this?”

“Could be a trap,” Zac said.

“Either it’s one of our people who needs rescue, or it’s the traitor trying to lure us out. In either case, we should check it out,” Catheya slowly said, a ruthless gleam shimmering in her abyssal eyes.

Zac hesitated for a bit, but he eventually nodded. He wouldn’t mind getting some revenge on the person who almost got him killed. But there were some things he needed to make sure of first.

“Are you still able to locate the Life-Death pearls?” Zac asked.

If she couldn't, then he might be better off just setting off on his own. This traitor was probably connected to Catheya’s mission, and there was no point getting involved if there weren’t benefits to match. Especially considering Catheya's current condition. Her aura had stabilized, but she was still wounded and heavily suppressed by the area. He would definitely have to do the heavy lifting in any clashes down here.

“Of course, that had no connection to the submersible,” Catheya said. “And the reward has only increased. There’s at least one traitor, and there might be casualties among the others. Setting off alone now would be a mistake.”

”Right, let’s go get that scoundrel,” Zac immediately agreed.

“You know, next time you can at least pretend you’re helping out of gentlemanly convictions rather than greed,” Catheya muttered as the two set out toward the source of the signal.

“Like you’d buy something like that anyways,” Zac retorted with a smile.

Sometimes they had to descend into submerged tunnels to continue on their way, and they were teeming with plant life to the point they couldn’t even see the walls. Corals, Seaweed, large luminous fungi, and all kinds of underwater plants fought for space along the walls. There were also many types of smaller animals flitting about, all of them leaning toward life rather than death.

“This place,” Catheya sighed as she took out a Miasma Crystal.

“Why not take out the purification array?” Zac asked.

“I don’t have it,” Catheya said with a helpless shake of her head. “It was connected to the submersible when it broke apart, and the core was far from your room. Varo should have been sitting right next to it though. Hopefully, he managed to take it.”

“That’s a shame,” Zac muttered.

“Is it?” she said with a penetrating look. “For some reason, it looks like you’re absolutely fine walking in this poisonous environment. Come to think of it, it was the same while you fought next to the mothertree. Did my ancestor provide something for protection? Can you share?”