Chapter 146 — The Ones Still Living

Several longswords sealed off the monster's path from every direction, and then blazing blades, poison-coated daggers, and a volley of arcane missiles came crashing down on the creature's head—except that the arcane missiles all struck the ground, while every other attack landed squarely on the twisted being.

Yet its vitality was terrifyingly strong. Even with its limbs hacked to the bone and even the weak point on its back—the mark of a mutant—struck by Gao Cen's sword, it still did not die. It struggled back to its feet and lunged at Amber, who happened to be in its line of sight.

Amber had stabbed it once at the very start and then immediately retreated to one side to slack off. She had never imagined she would become the monster's target, and with a shriek of fright she shrank whole into the shadows, vanishing into the darkness.

The monster's pounce met empty air, and as it struggled to steady itself, the knight Byron seized the chance, stepped forward, and ran the enemy clean through with a single thrust.

The monster, that hybrid of human and mutant, crashed heavily to the ground—yet it did not begin to dissipate as a normal mutant would. Instead it writhed and slowly recovered, showing signs of rising again!

"It's still not dead?!" Startled by this abnormal turn, Gao Yang immediately took his sword in hand and prepared to step forward and finish it off—but before he could act, Amber, who had just fled into the Shadow Realm, suddenly popped out of thin air, clutching his arm with a look of sheer terror: "Gao Yang! There's... there's something in the Shadow Realm!!"

Gao Yang had never seen such terror on the face of this fearless half-elf. Unlike her usual deliberately exaggerated scares, Amber was genuinely frightened out of her wits now—so much so that Gao Yang even thought that if this place were any gloomier, the girl might burst into tears on the spot!

Glancing at the monster, which had once again fallen into a standoff with Byron and the others, and confirming that aside from its formidable vitality it was not about to overwhelm Byron and his group for the moment, Gao Yang seized Amber's arm: "Take me in to see!"

Amber hesitated—a rare thing for her. "But in the Shadow Realm..."

"You've got me!"

Amber gritted her teeth and gave Gao Song's arm a hard pull. "Fine!"

That strange sense of imbalance swept over him again, and the sounds and sensations of the real world receded swiftly; Gao Yang's vision blurred, and already Amber had dragged him into the Shadow Realm.

This world, existing parallel to real time and space, seemed forever to hold the same level of brightness, neither dark nor bright; whether on the surface or in deep mountain caverns, it always maintained a dim, murky half-light that never hindered sight.

The first thing Gao Yang did upon entering the Shadow Realm was to look around: like everywhere else in the Shadow Realm, this place mapped the real world in some disordered fashion. The circular hall took on a pallid hue, and around its perimeter churned rings of darkness like billowing smoke—in the real world, that was where the magical devices were stored; and at the center of the hall was the "thing" Amber had spoken of.

The original metal base and transparent tubular vessel were gone, replaced by a pool of black mist surging at the room's center, and by blood-red mud that kept creeping out from within the mist.

And together with the mud, ceaselessly welling forth, came countless chaotic whispers that suddenly flooded his mind!