Chapter 542 - 539 – RECONNAISSANCE IN THE MONOCHROME FOG AND THE IRON FORTRESS IN THE MOUNTAIN’S BELLY

Dawn on the Chimera continent did not arrive with warm golden light, but with a sweep of bleak gray. The poisonous miasma blanketing the region thickened in the morning, transforming the landscape of giant forests into a scene resembling a monochrome painting. Ashen-black fog drifted slowly between the colossal trees, as if drawn with thick charcoal strokes and dark ink-wash gradients. There were no bright colors here; everything seemed absorbed by the continent’s primitive darkness.

On a steep cliff tens of kilometers from the coastal base of the Eclipse-Class Fleet, a shadow rested in absolute silence. It was one of the Elite Zombie Knights assigned by Sylvia. Wearing a tattered brown wanderer’s cloak that covered its black steel armor, the zombie blended perfectly with the cliff’s shadow. A hood concealed its head, hiding the pair of glowing red eyes that were the only indicator it was not a living being.

Below the cliff stretched a black rocky valley that bordered directly against the wall of the giant mountain range.

GRRRRRRMMMBBLLLL...

A heavy mechanical rumble broke the valley’s silence. At the foot of the mountain, a giant boulder that appeared fused with the cliff slowly shifted aside. Dust and hot steam hissed out from the opening gap, revealing a corridor shielded by steel nearly one meter thick. This was not a natural cave, but a mechanical gate powered by steam and mana, designed to withstand assaults from high-level monsters.

From within that dim corridor, a group of humans stepped out.

The Elite Zombie Knight on the cliff narrowed its eyes and activated its long-range vision magic. It transmitted every visual it captured in real-time to Stacia and Sylvia at the main base through the shadow telepathy network.

The group consisted of twelve people. They wore highly unusual combat clothing. Their armor was not made of forged steel plates, but from arrangements of monster bones, thick carapace scales, and remnants of scrap metal bound together with leather straps. They moved in a tight tactical formation, their eyes radiating both exhaustion and high-level vigilance, the hallmark of humans living on the brink of extinction every single day.

Yet what drew the most attention were the weapons they carried.

The group’s leader, a muscular man with claw-scar marks covering half his face, did not carry an ordinary sword or axe. In his left hand he held a giant tower shield made from the lower jaw of an unknown monster. In his right hand he gripped a strange hybrid weapon: a heavy-grooved giant spear whose base was fitted with a large cannon barrel, complete with a trigger and mechanical bullet cylinder.

Meanwhile, two people in the rear ranks carried long-barreled weapons of highly disproportionate size, resembling a heavy bowgun or portable cannon powered by a mana crystal that glowed dimly at the receiver.

"Move quickly, don’t make more noise than necessary!" the captain ordered in a restrained voice. "The miasma concentration this morning is quite dense. Our mask filters can only last three hours. Collect clean water from the crystal spring in sector four, gather the remaining iron ore from the mine ruins, and we return inside immediately!"

"Understood, Captain Kael!" his troops whispered in unison. They immediately spread into a circular formation, protecting the resource gatherers in the center.

They began moving along the dusty valley. Their footsteps were light, highly trained not to trigger vibrations in the ground. Yet on the Chimera continent, human caution was often nothing more than an illusion of safety.

Only fifteen minutes after Captain Kael’s group left the steel gate, the air temperature in the valley suddenly plummeted. Dirty water puddles around them began to freeze. The miasma fog that had been drifting calmly suddenly spun unnaturally, sucked toward a narrow gap between two stone hills.

"Defensive formation!" Kael shouted instantly. His survival instincts, honed over decades in this hell, screamed danger. He immediately planted his monster-jaw shield into the ground, bracing his shoulder behind it.

From behind the thick fog came a disgusting wet sound, the sound of flesh tearing itself apart.

SKREEEEEEEECH!

A nightmare leaped out from behind the fog. It was not an ordinary mutated wild beast. The monster possessed an anatomy that defied sanity. Its lower body resembled a giant wolf with rotting muscles, yet from the neck upward there was no head. In its place was a pulsating mass of flesh that extended dozens of serrated tentacles and bright yellow compound eyes. Black slime dripping from its tentacles hissed when it touched the ground, melting the rocks into thick liquid. Its aura radiated cosmic madness, as if it were an entity that had crawled out from the deepest abyss.

"Shit! Rank 4 Abyssal Chimera!" cursed one of the portable-cannon shooters behind Kael. His hands trembled as he aimed the heavy barrel of his weapon. "This close to the gate?!"

"Focus! Don’t look directly into its eyes or your mind will shatter!" Kael roared, the veins in his neck standing out.

The tentacled monster howled with a voice that resembled a combination of a baby’s scream and the grinding of metal, then charged straight at Kael with speed that blurred vision. Its tentacles tensed into spears of flesh ready to pierce steel.

BAMMMM!

The monster’s tentacle slammed into Kael’s shield with force equivalent to a cannonball. The captain was dragged backward two meters, the heels of his boots carving trenches in the ground, yet his formation did not waver.

"Fire now!" Kael ordered.

The two heavy bowgun shooters behind him pulled their triggers. The explosion of magical gunpowder echoed deafeningly. Armor-piercing bullets shot forward, tearing through the air and striking the monster’s muscular flesh mass. Purplish blood sprayed out, yet the monster only screamed in rage. Its wounds began to knit back together at an unnatural regeneration speed, while its other tentacles swept in from the side, preparing to destroy the rear ranks.

Seeing the threat, Kael did not remain still. He released his shield for a moment, stepped forward, and closed the distance into the monster’s defensive range. He thrust the tip of his giant spear directly into the center of the monster’s tentacle mass. The moment the weapon’s tip was buried deep in the pulsating flesh, Kael pulled the trigger on the handle of his weapon.

"Wyvern Blast!" he shouted.

KABOOOOM!

The mechanism inside the barrel ignited. A mana-powered explosive projectile was fired from zero-centimeter range inside the monster’s body. A blue flame explosion swept outward from within, destroying most of the tentacles and burning the creature’s regenerative tissue. The extremely brutal recoil flung Kael backward, yet he managed to regain his balance and take cover behind his shield once more.

Thick smoke billowed. For a second the survivors thought they had won.

Yet from behind the smoke, the remaining flesh mass of the monster did not die. Instead, the surrounding miasma was sucked into the open wounds. Its giant wolf body exploded, growing muscular primate arms with claws as sharp as swords, while its remaining eyes now radiated a blinding red light. The monster had just entered its enraged phase.

Kael gritted his teeth. His mechanical weapon needed time to reload its explosive rounds, and the barrel was still too hot to use. "Retreat slowly! Maintain the protective fire line! We can’t hold a double mutation like this!"

Exactly when the mutated monster raised its giant arms to launch a lethal sweeping attack that would certainly tear Kael’s entire squad apart, a soft whistling sound came from above.

SWUUUSSSHH!

A black iron spear shot down from the sky like a meteor. The spear embedded itself precisely in the back of the monster’s arm with absolute precision, stopping its movement instantly. The momentum of the throw was so tremendous that it created a shockwave that flung dust around them.

Kael and his troops stared wide-eyed. They looked up and saw three figures in brown cloaks leaping down from the thirty-meter-high cliff. The three figures landed on the ground with soft thuds, as if the law of gravity did not apply to their mass.

They were the Elite Zombie Knights. Following Sylvia’s orders, they had infiltrated the battle. The zombie in the center stepped forward casually. It drew a large sword from its back, an unadorned steel blade, yet one that radiated an aura of death so dense that the air around it felt freezing.

The Abyssal Chimera shifted its focus, sensing the existential threat from these three newcomers. It charged forward with its mouth wide open.

The Elite Zombie did not dodge at all. With a single horizontal swing that was extremely simple and without any complicated technique, it cut through the space in front of it. The speed of the sword swing surpassed the limit of sound, creating a thin vacuum line in the air.

SRASSSSH!

The giant monster’s body was split into two perfectly symmetrical halves, right down the middle. The cut was so fine that blood did not immediately spray out. The Elite Zombie sheathed its sword again even before both sides of the monster’s body collapsed to the ground with heavy thuds, dying instantly before its regenerative function could react.

Absolute silence enveloped the valley. Kael and his troops held their breath, their weapons still raised, yet their hands trembled. The mutated creature that had nearly killed them had just been sliced as if it were nothing more than a piece of butter passed by a hot knife.

The Elite Zombie in the center slowly turned its body. It kept the hood of its cloak covering its face, while the other two zombies stood guard behind it in a relaxed ready stance. Using vocal cords that had long been dead and reanimated with mana, the zombie spoke. Its voice was hoarse, dry, yet clear.

"You are too noisy while hunting," the Elite Zombie said in the common continental language, a language the Nocture servants had learned from the memories of mortal races. "The miasma in this valley can react to the magical explosions from your weapons."

Kael swallowed with difficulty. He slowly lowered his shield, trying not to provoke hostility. "You... who are you? We have never seen other survivors operating on the surface for more than a decade. Where do you come from?"

The Elite Zombie fell silent for a moment, recalling the improvisation script prepared by Stacia for a first-contact scenario. "We are merely Wanderers. Refugees from a sanctuary beyond the black mountains that collapsed long ago. We are searching for shelter. We saw you exit from the steel door in that mountain."

Kael’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, even though gratitude for his troops’ lives still remained. As a leader in the post-apocalyptic world, trusting strangers with monster-level power was a recipe for suicide. "Our mountain does not accept outsiders. Our resources are limited."

"We do not need your food," the Elite Zombie replied calmly, a fact that was completely honest, given that undead did not need to eat. "We have our own ways of surviving. We only wish to exchange information. And perhaps, barter."

The zombie tossed a small pouch toward Kael. The captain caught it, opened it slightly, and his eyes widened upon seeing the contents: wheat seeds. That was an absolute treasure for a civilization struggling to find food sources especially since wheat had already become extremely rare for them.

"Take us to your leader," the Elite Zombie said.

Meanwhile, inside the wooden pavilion at the coastal base, a holographic projection from the Elite Zombie Knight’s viewpoint floated above the table.

Sylvia sat elegantly, swirling a crystal glass filled with a golden-yellow refreshing drink, a sweet-sour mocktail mixed with the juice of magical citrus specially prepared for her, resembling a light non-alcoholic beer.

The smile on the Queen of Death’s face grew wider. Her heterochromia eyes radiated extremely strong interest.

"Outstanding," Sylvia murmured, her eyes fixed on the projection of the spear-cannon and heavy bowgun the humans had just used. "They do not practice conventional elemental magic like ordinary mages. Instead, they have isolated mana into crude yet extremely brutal technical mechanisms. Their weapons focus on penetration power, momentum, and projectile explosions. A fighting style that relies on heavy blockade and reactive counter-attack. This is pure adaptation against thick-skinned monsters."

Stacia, standing beside her, rapidly recorded the data into her tablet. "The weapon concept is highly efficient, Your Majesty. Unfortunately, the materials they use are extremely outdated. If we modify their barrel structures with mithril, the destructive potential could increase by up to five hundred percent."

"A civilization trapped inside the mountain’s belly, developing such fascinating weapon technology solely to survive against abyssal monsters..." Sylvia set her glass down on the table. Her boredom had completely evaporated. This exploration was proving far more entertaining than she had anticipated.

"Stacia," Sylvia stood and smoothed the folds of her black gown. A heavy, suffocating aura suddenly seeped out from her small body, making the shadows inside the pavilion ripple in fear. "Contact Celes. Tell her to prepare. Bring half a dozen of her best Death Knights. The reconnaissance is complete."

Stacia blinked behind her glasses. "Do you plan to launch a direct invasion into the mountain, Your Majesty? I can begin assembling an alchemical drilling machine if..."

"Invasion? Of course not, my sister," Sylvia laughed softly, an elegant laugh that froze blood. "Our zombies there have already offered a very polite diplomatic exchange. It would be extremely rude if the leader of that wanderer faction did not appear in person. I want to see their blacksmith workshops up close, and perhaps... I will show them the difference between surviving in hell and mastering hell itself."

Sylvia’s body began to unravel into hundreds of black rose petals made of pure shadow. "Prepare my pavilion, Stacia. I will return shortly after introducing myself to those brave moles."

With a single blink, the Queen of Death vanished from the base, shooting through spatial dimensions directly toward the coordinates of her Elite Zombie Knight in the monochrome valley. The underground civilization of the Chimera continent was about to receive a guest who would change their history forever.