Chapter 204: Teamwork Against A Swarm Of Giant Cockroaches

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"Tsk! I know you’re talking to me!" Vladimir hissed, his voice sharp with irritation as he glared at Riven’s shadowy form. "Look, I don’t need your fucking pity, okay?! You gave me the order and I’ll fulfill it! That’s what Fenrir turned me into, your fucking subordinate. Stop worrying about me, let alone pity me! Riven Claymore, my hatred against you has gone nowhere! Understood?!"

Riven raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly, a faint smirk playing across his face. "Hah, okay. If you’re so damn strong that you don’t need any help, then you better not pass out on the floor out of nowhere while we dive deeper into this place."

"Hmph! There’s only one more boss left," Vladimir said, rolling his shoulders as if to shake off the earlier exhaustion. "We just move straight forward. That thing is waiting for us at the end. You’ve never visited these low-level dungeons before?"

"No, I skipped directly to the Dark Cave Labyrinth..." Riven looked around carefully, taking in the cracked tiles, rusted rails, and flickering emergency lights that somehow still functioned in this warped space. "This Dungeon is quite a strange one. It’s somehow merged with the real world, right? After all, this is an Abandoned Subway Line... which is also the Dungeon’s official name."

Unlike the Dark Cave Labyrinth, which clearly seemed like a piece of another world ripped out and placed somewhere on Earth, this place felt different. It was more as if the entire abandoned subway line had simply turned into a dungeon in real life. Yet it still required a proper Gate to enter, because the original subway that once existed here had been long ago destroyed and buried under layers of rubble and time.

"It’s unknown how it works," Vladimir shrugged, his tone carrying a hint of practiced indifference. "That subway was destroyed years ago, and yet this one is like a perfect copy of it. The monsters themselves are mutated versions of normal creatures from the surface. Giant Cockroaches and Mutated Rats are the primary enemies, and... the final boss is something else entirely."

"Hm..." Riven nodded, analyzing the scattered corpses of the earlier waves of enemies with a critical eye. "I hope it still counts as if I killed them..."

His Shadow Self’s darkness flickered and expanded into a deep void, absorbing the corpses one by one and storing them safely within. This was a technique the Shadow Self had learned from Noir, copying the method and refining it into its own Inner Void Shadow, a personal space of pure darkness capable of holding almost anything without limit.

He walked past the clearing, noticing a large hole that had opened underground during the previous fight. It did not lead to any new floor, however. There was simply packed dirt and broken concrete down there, nothing of interest. "Let’s go."

The two moved faster into the deeper sections of the subway line, which now resembled an endless, oppressive tunnel stretching into darkness. The air grew heavier with every step, thick with the scent of mildew, rust, and something far more organic and foul. As they pressed forward, the sound of countless legs skittering across the walls and ceiling began to echo around them, growing louder by the second.

Then...

BOOOM!

An explosion erupted out of nowhere, blasting both of them further down the tunnel. Their eyes widened as they looked up and saw a group of around twelve Giant Cockroaches clinging to the ceiling, their segmented bodies glistening under the faint light. The creatures immediately began spitting explosive poison bullets toward them with disturbing accuracy.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

"And these are only E Rank monsters?!" Riven wondered aloud, nimbly avoiding the blasts while quickly firing a Ghostly Blade that sliced one of the cockroaches cleanly apart. The others scattered in every direction, continuing to fire Poison Bullets from all angles without pause. "Well, this isn’t bad practice either."

Vladimir blurred past him in a flash of red light, cutting through several of the cockroaches with merciless precision using both his twin knives and the sharp claws that had begun to extend from his fingers.

Riven smiled faintly. His Mana Aura quickly condensed into three long spectral blades that launched outward in different directions, cutting and slicing through the Giant Cockroaches one after another with ruthless efficiency.

Their guts spilled everywhere across the tracks as their broken bodies dropped one after another, yet more kept coming. A whole swarm of them poured out of cracks in the walls and from the darkness ahead, their chitinous legs creating a constant, sickening chorus of clicking sounds.

"KRIEEEEEHHH!"

As the swarm attacked from every possible angle, Vladimir was suddenly caught by dozens of the creatures at once. They pulled him down hard and began gnawing at him with their sharp mandibles. "What the... Ugh...! Stop!"

Riven looked over at him with mild interest. Since Vladimir was currently made of shadows and blood energy, the bites were not truly affecting him the way they would a normal body. "Don’t need a hand?"

Vladimir roared in pure defiance. Suddenly his aura exploded outward with intense crimson light as his entire body began to transform.

FLUOSH!

BOOOM!

An explosion of crimson flames erupted in every direction, sending the surrounding monsters flying through the air while burning and disintegrating quite a few of them on the spot.

Vladimir then stood in the middle of the chaos, gasping for air as his new form was fully revealed. He had grown massively in size, his body now overflowing with immense quantities of blood energy and raw bloodthirst that radiated outward like heat.

"Who are you calling weak, Riven Claymore?!"

He had become a massive, bipedal werewolf. Without hesitation he roared and charged against the remaining bugs, tearing them to shreds with claws and fangs as thick green blood spilled across the subway floor in heavy sprays.

Riven watched with a light smile, then spread his Poisonous Mana and carefully fused it with his Frost Mana. A wave of freezing poison rolled outward, slowing down the hundreds of Giant Cockroaches that were still pouring into the tunnel.

Then he combined his shadow and darkness elements with the ghostly sword nature of his mana, spreading the mixture through the entire area.

"Shadow Sword Ghostly Garden."

He created a powerful original Spell with the fused energies.

FLAAASH!

A small domain of pure darkness and spectral light extended around him. Countless swords of shadow and ghostly energy surged up from the ground in endless waves, impaling and piercing the bodies of the monsters with relentless precision, destroying them without any mercy.

And then, to finish it all...

"Explode."

RUMBLE!

A massive explosion of combined shadow, poison, and ghostly energy followed, consuming the remaining cockroaches and completely deleting them from existence. Only small, glowing cores were left behind on the ground.

BOOOMMM!!!

The aftershock of the explosion still echoed through the endless tunnel long after the last of the cockroach cores had clattered onto the filthy, cracked concrete.

Green ichor steamed on the old rails. Vladimir stood panting heavily in his massive werewolf form, crimson blood-energy still coiling off his thick fur like living smoke. His golden eyes locked onto Riven’s Shadow Self with open challenge and lingering pride.

"Still think I’m the one who needs rest?" he growled, his voice deeper and rawer than before. However, it was obvious that he was clearly exhausted, even if he hated to admit it. Riven’s assistance had helped him far more than he wanted to acknowledge in this prolonged fight. "Heh...!"

Nonetheless, he remained a proud man to the end, refusing to show any true weakness in front of the one he still claimed to hate.

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