Chapter 543 - 540 – THE UNDERGROUND FORTRESS CITY AND THE HUNTERS

Outside the giant mechanical gate, the wind mixed with poisonous miasma howled, slamming against the cliff walls with merciless force. Yet behind that one-meter-thick steel, the Queen of Death stepped inside without triggering a single alarm.

Sylvia slipped into the human civilization hidden in the mountain’s belly completely unseen. Her body possessed no physical existence in this dimension; she had shifted into an astral form made of pure shadow and transparent black rose petals. She walked past the heavily armed guards standing rigid in the entrance corridor, past the dimly glowing mana sensors, and through the airtight doors as if they were nothing more than layers of morning mist. Not a single human there realized that an entity with the power to level a continent had just casually walked past them.

Once past the main corridor, the sight that stretched before Sylvia was enough to make the Queen of Death raise one eyebrow in mild impressment.

The space inside the mountain’s belly was extremely vast, illuminated by glowing moss crystals and giant forge furnaces that burned continuously. This was a civilization that, technologically and aesthetically, appeared somewhat backward. Their residential buildings were constructed from rough stone, fossilized wood, and scrap metal plates nailed together haphazardly. The air inside was filled with the smell of sulfur, forge smoke, and the sharp aroma of roasted meat. Rusted steam pipes crisscrossed the cave ceiling, channeling hot water to various sectors. Everything looked squalid, hard, and brutal.

Yet what truly caught Sylvia’s attention was not the architecture, but the physiques of the inhabitants.

Sylvia observed several men and women working as they moved iron ore chunks and monster carcasses. Their physiques were highly abnormal by ordinary human standards. They were extraordinarily tall even the shortest woman among them stood no less than one hundred eighty centimeters. Their muscles were dense and prominent, covered by skin that appeared as hard as copper, marked with various scars that stood as silent witnesses to the harshness of their lives.

"Extraordinary evolutionary adaptation," Sylvia murmured inwardly, stroking her chin elegantly. "They are trapped on a continent filled with abyssal energy and miasma. Normal vegetables and wheat are surely impossible to grow here. Their only source of protein and energy for several generations must have been the meat of the mutated monsters outside. Continuously consuming high-level monster meat has apparently rewritten their basic genetic structure, granting them physical specifications that far exceed the reasonable limits of humans."

In the center of the settlement that resembled a circular plaza, Sylvia saw a giant announcement board. In its middle was affixed a regional map drawn on an extremely wide sheet of wyvern hide.

Sylvia floated closer, ignoring the crowds of people walking through her illusory body. The map was highly detailed yet used simple color indicators. Most of the territory outside the mountain was marked with gradients of dense purple and black indicators of areas with lethal concentrations of poisonous miasma. Yet among that ocean of black, there were several points or paths marked in white or faded green.

From the notes pinned around the map, Sylvia quickly understood their living pattern. Because their air-filter equipment had a time limit, the majority of these humans would not hunt in the toxic zones. They would plan travel routes with precision to avoid the miasma clouds, then establish ambush camps in places where the air was clean. They allowed the monsters to come to them, or lured prey out of the miasma areas into prepared kill zones. This was an intelligent and highly tactical survival strategy.

Moving away from the plaza, Sylvia’s shadow steps carried her to the industrial sector of the underground city, an extremely noisy blacksmith area where the ringing of metal and showers of sparks dominated the space.

Here the eyes of the Queen of Death truly sparkled with full interest. Rows of weapon racks and assembly tables displayed armaments that were being crafted and repaired. Their equipment was not slender knightly swords or elegant magic staffs. The weaponry here purely embodied brutality and efficiency against giant-sized monsters.

Sylvia saw a Greatsword taller than its user, half of its blade made from heavy steel plate and the other half from the serrated jaw of a carnivorous monster. On another table lay a massive Hammer whose head was crafted from the intact skull of an armored monster. There was also a giant mechanical axe that appeared capable of changing form when its hinges were rotated.

She continued walking through the workshop. In a corner of the projectile racks she saw a bow of completely unreasonable size, drawn using special pulleys because its string was made from dragon sinew. Beside it stood a portable cannon or Heavy Bowgun exactly like the one she had seen in the broadcast from her Zombie Knight complete with a giant ammunition belt. Then, what drew her attention most was a weapon in the corner of the room: a giant spear and its modified version integrated with an explosive bullet-barrel mechanism at the tip. Everything was a crude yet lethal fusion of metal materials and monster bones, scales, or carapaces.

Seeing this composition of weaponry, Sylvia’s steps halted. The expression on her face turned slightly absurd as a realization struck her.

"Wait a moment..." Sylvia thought, blinking her heterochromia eyes several times. "A greatsword that relies on the momentum of the swing, a blunt hammer made from a skull, a giant bow, an armor-piercing portable cannon, and a heavy spear that can fire explosions... Why does it feel like I’m looking at the loadout from a certain monster-hunting game franchise in my past life?"

Sylvia held back a small laugh that nearly escaped her lips. "Ah, never mind. Better not mention the game’s name, or I’ll get copyright trouble from that company. But truly, human creativity in creating tools to kill each other or in this case, to kill giant lizards apparently always follows the same convergent patterns in any world."

After satisfying her curiosity in the weapon workshop, Sylvia floated to the highest point inside the cave to survey the entire colony. From up here she could easily estimate the population. The number of people there was not so small that they could be called nearly extinct, yet also not large. Perhaps only around two hundred souls inhabited this underground fortress. A scale too small to be called a kingdom, yet too resilient to be called a mere refugee camp.

Seeing how tenaciously these two hundred humans survived, trained hard, assembled weapons from monster bones, and planned hunts with full caution, Sylvia felt that intervening with them directly would ruin a beautiful work of art.

"Interesting. Extremely interesting," Sylvia thought, a mysterious smile once again adorning her lips. "If I conquer them now, they will only become boring pawns. Let them develop. I want to see how far this ’Hunter’ civilization can endure. Besides, managing a new territory is troublesome."

With a decision based on a mixture of respect and her legendary laziness, Sylvia flicked her fingers invisibly. She left that small civilization alone. Her shadow body faded once more, merging with absolute darkness, and shot back to her coastal base within seconds.

Meanwhile, at the coastal base of the Eclipse-Class Fleet.

Celes, the Supreme Commander of the Forces, was tying her silver hair tightly. She had just put on her full combat armor and was sharpening her sacred sword. Behind her, six three-meter-tall Death Knights stood rigid in a lethal formation, waiting for the order to raze the mountain fortress according to the instructions she had received only a few minutes earlier.

Suddenly, black rose petals swirled in the middle of her command tent. Sylvia emerged from empty space and landed elegantly upon her favorite velvet-upholstered chair.

"Ah, my diligent Celes," Sylvia greeted cheerfully.

"Your Majesty," Celes knelt on one knee and offered a knight’s salute. "The assault troops have been prepared. The alchemical drilling machine is being heated. We are ready to collapse the steel door in that valley whenever you give the signal."

"Oh, about that," Sylvia waved her hand casually, as if she had merely decided the dinner menu. "Cancel it. Disband the troops. Withdraw our Zombie Knights from there, but leave a few shadow-crow Familiars to monitor them from afar. We will not attack that mountain."

Celes fell silent. The sword she had just sharpened with such effort now felt heavy in her hand. She looked up at her queen with a blank expression. "Cancelled, Your Majesty? But your previous instructions..."

"I changed my mind," Sylvia cut in while reaching for a glass of fruit juice from the table and sipping it slowly. "They turned out to be only two hundred muscular humans who like playing with monster bones. Too troublesome to manage. Just let them live. Now, I’m going to take a nap. You can return to your work."

Having said that, Sylvia closed her eyes, allowing her aura of laziness to envelop the pavilion.

Celes could only draw a long breath, suppressing the throb at her temples. She nodded with a mechanical motion. "Understood, Your Majesty. Orders will be carried out."

The commander turned and walked out of the pavilion, returning to her own logistics tent. Her steps felt extremely heavy. Celes massaged the bridge of her nose. After all, even though she possessed extraordinary power, she was still essentially a human. Her muscles ached, and her eyes stung from lack of sleep while managing the logistics of the entire fleet, supply routes, camp construction, and perimeter defense.

And now she had to accept the reality that she, a tired normal human, had been given the full-time role of operational commander by an immortal Queen of Death who was the living definition of the word "lazy."

"I’m the only normal human at this base," Celes muttered to herself as she dropped into her wooden chair. She stared at the mountain of daily report parchments piled on her desk. "Sometimes I think becoming undead would be far more peaceful."

While Celes was troubled by administrative burdens and her superior’s laziness, a bloody chaos was unfolding at the border of the giant forest, precisely in the expansion project area of Sylvia’s troop camp.

Following instructions to build a wider perimeter, hundreds of worker Skeleton Knights had been deployed to the forest border to fell the ancient trees. The sound of axe swings, light explosive magic impacts to uproot roots, and the cracking of falling giant trees created an extraordinarily noisy uproar. The echoes of the logging reached tens of kilometers into the dense forest of the Chimera continent.

That uproar, combined with the distinctive scent of "life" (or at least residual life mana from the workers), had triggered the predatory instincts of the monsters in the surrounding region.

From within the dense monochrome forest covered by miasma, terrifying shadows began to creep closer.

Various kinds of savage monsters were drawn by the noise. There were three-eyed Direwolves the size of elephants, giant Arachnids with venomous pincers that melted stone, and a dozen land Wyverns that lacked wings but were equipped with scales as thick as steel armor. They moved in large groups, saliva dripping from their hungry jaws. In the narrow minds of those monsters, the noise meant weak prey was gathering. They came with one purpose: to feast on flesh.

Yet how shocked their primitive instincts were when they leaped out from the undergrowth.

Instead of finding humans or soft-fleshed prey that were terrified, the monsters were greeted by a tight formation of fully armed Death Knights standing in freezing silence. Behind the ranks of skeleton workers, these Elite Knights had erected a wall of dense black shields infused with pure necromancy magic.

A land Wyvern roared, charged forward, and tried to bite one of the Skeleton Knights.

TRANGG!

The monster’s teeth shattered instantly upon colliding with magical steel.

In the next fraction of a second, one of the Death Knights stepped forward. Without releasing any human-like roar or battle cry, the undead knight swung its greatsword with mathematical precision. The wyvern’s head was severed in a single smooth motion; its black blood sprayed across the ground while its massive body collapsed with a heavy thud.

The death of the wyvern was the signal for the slaughter.

The monsters that had originally come to hunt now found themselves trapped in a net of death. Hundreds of shadow arrows rained down upon the three-eyed Direwolves, piercing their skulls before they could howl. The giant Arachnids were split in two by the heavy axes of the Death Knights. There was no panic on Sylvia’s fleet side; only efficient, cold, and extremely systematic execution.

In less than twenty minutes, the uproar at the forest border subsided.

More than fifty high-level monster carcasses now lay scattered around the logging camp. Who would have thought that the pack of monsters that had come intending to turn the newcomers into prey would instead end up as extremely valuable raw materials? The worker Skeleton Knights, without wasting a single second, immediately set aside their tree-felling axes and switched to skinning knives. They began harvesting the meat, bones, mana cores, and thick hides of those unfortunate monsters to add to Celes’s logistics warehouse.