Chapter 455: A Mine With No Diamonds? [Bonus - ]

Chapter 455: A Mine With No Diamonds? [Bonus Chapter]

The chill of Cavern KB-22 clung to the jagged limestone architecture like a physical weight, carrying on its stagnant currents the coppery tang of freshly spilled monster blood and the acrid sulfurous stench of scorched bone and cartilage.

Across the wide uneven expanse of the cavern’s entrance floor, the aftermath of the brief but violent skirmish painted a gruesome picture.

Sixty dispatched Cavern Goblins and four massively mutilated Hobgoblins lay scattered across the jagged shale in broken, unmoving heaps.

Their crude flint knives, jagged bone daggers, and splintered wooden clubs lay discarded harmlessly in the gravel, slick with the dark viscous ichor of their former owners.

Silas reached down from the reinforced leather saddle of Valkyrie, wrapping his broad calloused hands gently but firmly around the Princess’s slender waist to hoist her back up onto the Blessed wolf’s saddle pommel.

"Mmm..."

The blue-haired royal maiden settled comfortably between his arms, her chest rising and falling in a steady adrenaline-laced rhythm as her porcelain cheeks retained a soft rosy flush from her recent dagger kill.

’My second kill, killing monsters is exhilarating for sure.’

She carefully drew a clean linen oilcloth from her belt pouch, wiping the dark foul-smelling fluid from the thin edge of her void-iron blade with deliberate precision.

Her small fingers trembled slightly with the lingering aftershocks of combat, but she maintained a steady grip, ensuring the metal was pristine before sliding the weapon back into its fitted thigh sheath with a crisp satisfying metallic sound.

Around them, the fifteen recruit maidens moved across the bloodstained floor with disciplined efficiency that spoke volumes of their rigorous training.

They worked in pairs, cleaning their ash-wood spears and steel-rimmed shields, checking leather harness buckles, and ensuring their weapons remained free of the corrosive monster grime that could dull a blade or rot a wooden shaft.

Near the rear rank, Brenda... a young freckled former border-wall soldier who had spent agonizing months surviving on dry, weevil-infested hardtack, bitter well water, and stale salted mutton before joining the Unmovable Wall hesitantly lowered the iron butt of her spear to the limestone bedrock.

"Uh..."

She looked down at the pile of thick, muscular goblin carcasses heaped before her boots, her stomach giving a phantom rumble born of old desperate habits.

She chewed nervously on her lower lip, glancing side to side before tentatively raising a single gauntleted hand toward Silas.

"Um... Lord Silas?" Brenda called out hesitantly, her voice echoing softly off the high limestone ceiling, instantly drawing the attention of her squadmates. "Are we... are we supposed to field-dress and harvest the meat from these beasts? For the territory larders?"

WHOOSH!

The entire cavern went dead silent.

The only sound was the drip-drip-drip of water falling from a stalactite in the distance.

Helen stopped mid-motion with her whetstone, her mouth parting in sheer, dumbfounded disbelief as she turned her head slowly toward Brenda, looking at the girl as if she had just grown a second head.

Sarah slowly lowered her void-iron arming sword, her eyebrows creeping upward so high they nearly vanished completely into her hairline.

Catelyn froze with a clean roll of bandages in her hands, blinking rapidly, while several other recruit maidens cast looks of soul-deep bewilderment across the chamber.

Even Aurelia, who was calmly brushing a stray speck of ash from the hem of her pristine white robe, paused mid-gesture.

The former Saintess slowly tilted her head, her serene golden eyes blinking in quiet confusion.

"Brenda..." Helen said slowly, her tone caught precariously between utter horror and dry exasperation. "Have you completely lost your mind? Who in the seven realms of creation is desperate enough to eat goblin meat?!"

"It’s rank! It’s absolutely rancid!" Sarah cried out, sticking her tongue out and miming a gag in pure revulsion. "It smells like stagnant swamp runoff mixed with wet dog, and it tastes like sulfurous bile! I would literally rather boil and chew on my own leather boots than put a strip of goblin flesh in my mouth!"

"I-I just thought... s-since we were collecting resources for Blessed Land and meat is meat—" Brenda stammered, her entire face instantly turning a brilliant shade of crimson.

She hastily pulled her hands back, dropping her gaze to her boots and ducking her head in agonizing mortification. "I apologize! Please pretend I never spoke! I’m sorry!"

Silas let out a deep, booming chuckle from atop Valkyrie, the rich warm sound bouncing off the high stone arches and instantly shattering the recruits’ tense awkward silence.

"At ease, Brenda," Silas said, offering her an easy, reassuring smile that immediately eased the tension knotting her shoulders. "There is no need to apologize. Old habits die hard, especially when you’ve been starved on the wall but you don’t have to worry about scavenging scrap meat ever again. In Blessed Land, our kitchens are stocked with wild boar, herb-crusted spirit fowl, savory root vegetables, and fresh river game... We don’t eat toxic cavern pests under my banner. You should know that."

Brenda let out a massive trembling sigh of relief, bowing her head deeply. "Thank you, my Lord... I understand."

"You’re not wrong about the scarcity, though," Silas noted, letting his gaze sweep across the jagged limestone tunnels stretching into the pitch-black subterranean depths ahead. "Aside from a few beasts, our expedition group has barely run into any monsters that can actually be eaten today. It’s been nothing but venomous spiders, parasitic worms, and underground vermin."

"A natural consequence of the deep mountain trenches, Lord Silas," Aurelia murmured gently, stepping up beside Valkyrie with tranquil, ethereal grace. "Creatures dwelling in these dark corridors feed primarily upon mana-tainted moss, cavern vermin, and toxic fungi, rendering their flesh completely unsuitable and often poisonous for mortal consumption."

VUUUUUUM!

With a subtle elegant turn of her slender wrist, Aurelia rekindled the floating orb of incandescent Argent Flame.

The pure white fire rose ten feet into the air, casting a brilliant unwavering daylight radiance that pushed back the oppressive shadows and illuminated the damp, winding tunnel ahead.

"Alright, enough chatter! Form standard search lines!" Helen commanded, clapping her gauntlet against her breastplate to refocus the squad.

She rolled her shoulders and leveled her ash-wood spear. "Keep your spacing tight! Spears front, blades flanking!"

The fifteen recruit maidens immediately fell into a tight overlapping wedge formation, advancing deeper into the winding corridors of Cavern KB-22.

The path sloped downward at a steep angle, twisting past ancient calcium deposits, dry fissure beds, and narrow rock chimneys that whistled with eerie drafts.

Along the way, the dark corners of the cave occasionally writhed with movement.

Three lone straggler goblins... scouts that had avoided the initial slaughter leapt from the rocky shadows, snapping their jagged jaws ferociously and swinging rusted daggers.

"GAK-SKREEE!"

They didn’t even make it within striking distance.

THWACK-SHIK!

Helen and Brenda thrust their spears forward in perfect, piston-like synchronization.

The void-iron tips pierced the goblins’ throats and chests before their feet even touched the ground, pinning them to the limestone walls with violent pressurized bursts of black blood.

SPLAT!

"Clear!" Helen called out, yanking her spear free.

Yet, as they pressed hundreds of yards deeper into the mountain, Silas’s brow furrowed in deep confusion.

He leaned over Valkyrie’s thick neck, his piercing blue eyes scanning the bare limestone walls, the rocky floor, and the dripping ceiling.

There was nothing.

There were no glowing crystalline veins... no rough gemstone deposits and not a single microscopic fleck of raw Mana Diamond shimmered under Aurelia’s holy light.

The walls were nothing but porous brittle gray rock.

’Why the hell is this cavern marked with an X on the map, then?’ Silas thought, his fingers drumming against his leather saddle pommel. ’Thora’s geological surveys and dwarven instincts are rarely wrong. If she noted Mana Diamonds in Sector KB-22, they should be here. Did the goblins mine them all? Did they conceal the deposits? Or is there something else buried deeper inside?’

RUMBLE...

Before his mind could ponder the geological mystery any further, the narrow winding corridor widened abruptly, the ceiling arching upward to reveal a colossal dome-shaped hollow spanning well over a hundred yards wide.

The squad came to an abrupt halt at the cavern threshold.

The sight before them explained exactly why the cavern had been so fiercely guarded at the entrance.

The entire massive chamber had been converted into an entrenched populated goblin settlement.

"CRK!"

"GHEEE!"

"PSSSSHT!"

Clustered across the uneven rock floor were dozens of crude, primitive makeshift huts constructed from stacked limestone boulders, stretched animal pelts, and splintered deadwood branches dragged in from the surface.

Smoldering bone-fires cast erratic, flickering orange shadows against the high ceiling, filling the air with a thick choking haze of smoke.

And occupying the settlement was an entire tribal horde.

Over eighty Cavern Goblins milled about the huts.

A dozen hulking muscle-bound Hobgoblins stood near the center, carrying massive spiked clubs And at the far back of the chamber, lounging atop a massive elevated throne carved from stacked granite blocks, was a Goblin King.

[Target Analyzed: Goblin King (Tier 2)]

The King was a bloated grotesque Tier-2 anomaly standing nearly ten feet tall, its corpulent flabby green-gray torso wrapped in thick, crude plates of scavenged and hammered iron.

Atop its misshapen cranium sat a tarnished brass circlet studded with cracked river stones and stacked directly beside the arms of its throne were two massive boulders weighing several hundred pounds each, clearly meant to be used as primitive artillery.

For a single, agonizingly tense second, the two groups simply stopped and blinked at each other across the vast cavern floor.

BLINK!

The goblins, mid-bite into whatever foul scavenged meat they were chewing, stared at the glowing white orb of holy fire and the armored women standing at their doorstep.

BLINK!

The recruits tightened their grips on their weapons, their eyes locking onto the overwhelming numbers.

The stillness shattered in an instant.

SKREEEEEEE!

GAK-GAK-GAK-GAK!

A cacophony of feral ear-splitting non-human shrieks, guttural roars, and rapid jaw-clicking erupted from the entire goblin horde.

The beasts dropped their food, snatching up stone cleavers, flint axes, and sharpened femurs.

Like a wave of starving locusts, the entire settlement surged forward across the cavern floor, rushing the entrance.

"They’re quite hostile!" Silas called out from the back. He sounded very calm and didn’t even draw his sword. "Squad One! You girls handle it! Sweep and clear the room!"

"UNDERSTOOD!" the girls roared in unison.

BOOM!

The recruit maidens surged forward to meet the horde, their combat boots detonating against the limestone.

Helen spearheaded the front line, her spear flashing with condensed mana.

’Let’s go!’

As the first wave of runts reached her, she executed a brutal low-angle sweep.

WHOOSH!

The heavy ash-wood shaft cracked through the shins of three charging goblins with a sharp echoing sound, shattering their legs instantly.

Before they could even hit the ground, Helen drove her void-iron point straight down through the central beast’s chest.

CRUNCH!

"Left flank, tighten up! Don’t let them surround us!" Sarah yelled.

She ducked smoothly beneath a hurled flint axe, her fluid agility a testament to her endless sparring sessions.

SHING!

Sarah’s void-iron short sword cut a clean blinding silver arc through the smoky air, cleaving a leaping goblin completely in half at the waist.

"Fuu... Exciting..."

She didn’t pause after that... pivoting sharply on her heel, she slammed her heavy iron pommel directly into the snout of another beast trying to bite her thigh.

CLACK-CRUNCH!

"Spears, cycle through! Thrust and retract!" Brenda shouted, finally finding her rhythm and confidence in the heat of battle.

She drove her spear forward in rapid succession, skewering two screeching runts with a pressurized sound before pulling back behind the shield wall.

While the recruit phalanx held the chaotic frontline, the heavy hitters of the vanguard stepped onto the battlefield.

From the center of the formation, Morrighan stepped forward.

The Demonic Caster Hero moved with imposing weight.

’More battles and battles... I don’t mind if I’m fighting for Blessed Land but can’t all these monsters just... die?’

Her long flowing crimson hair whipped behind her like a trail of liquid embers, and her deep molten-gold eyes blazed with terrifying majesty.

The two polished, obsidian-black horns curving from her pale temples began to hum and crackle with a dark violet glow.

CLANK! RATTLE-RATTLE-RATTLE!

"Bind." Morrighan’s deep voice resonated through the cavern, cutting through the screeching of the horde.

She thrust her open palm violently toward the ground.

KRA-CRACK!

The bedrock beneath two massive charging nine-foot-tall Hobgoblins violently fractured.

Four thick, heavy chains forged from pure pitch-black abyssal mana erupted from the stone, wrapping tightly around the Hobgoblins’ thick ankles in an unbreakable vice-like lock.

"GRAAAAAAH?!" the two giant brutes roared in panicked fury, stumbling forward and crashing to their knees as they struggled violently to lift their legs.

But the shadowy chains held them firmly anchored to the floor.

Morrighan didn’t just stand back and cast from afar. Despite her tall, commanding frame, she moved with shocking explosive agility.

VUUUUUUM!

"[Demon’s Resolve]!" she incanted.

Her obsidian horns blazed with blinding violet light as her physical strength, speed, and power doubled in a single instant.

BOOM!

Morrighan detonated the stone beneath her boots, closing the thirty-foot gap in a fraction of a heartbeat.

She closed her right fist, and an inferno of pitch-black suffocating brimstone fire ignited around her armored gauntlet, crackling with superheated demonic fury.

"[Brimstone Punch]!" she roared.

KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Morrighan drove her fiery fist straight into the chest of the left Hobgoblin.

The concussive impact generated a shockwave that blasted the surrounding goblins forty feet backward.

The Hobgoblin’s heavy scrap-iron chestplate caved inward like wet parchment, its ribs pulverized to dust as the dark brimstone flame detonated inside its torso, blowing a fist-sized crater straight through its back and instantly incinerating its internal organs.

SPLAT-CRACKLE!

Without losing a single ounce of momentum, Morrighan planted her pivot foot, gracefully twisting her slender hips through the air to carry the force of her punch into a spin.

WHOOOOOOSH!

Her heavy, scale-armored spade-tipped tail whipped through the air like a massive swinging steel mace.

THWACK-CRUNCH!

The dense armored tip of her tail smashed directly into the side of the second pinned Hobgoblin’s skull as the force snapped its thick neck at a horrifying violent ninety-degree angle, sending the giant beast crashing lifelessly to the stone in a heap of broken bone.