Chương 48: Beyond Detection

"A priest?" Serin's gaze drifted involuntarily toward Adeline. Her silver-gray armor covered nearly her entire body, and a one-handed flail hung at her waist. Dark red blood still clung to the flail's head and chain, not quite wiped clean. What kind of church had priests who dressed like this? Adeline seemed to notice her stare. She glanced down at her armor, then followed Serin's gaze to the weapon at her waist and let out a soft laugh.

"You seem rather interested in how I'm dressed, fellow priest." Having been called out so directly, Serin felt her cheeks grow warm. She had meant to look away, but after a moment of hesitation, she nodded honestly instead. Adeline did not take offense.

"Priests of the Silver Oath are all equipped this way." She raised her gauntleted right hand and rested it lightly against the armor over her chest.

"We must be able to protect ourselves in battle. We must also be able to keep pace with those who need our help, rather than forever hiding behind someone else's shield." As she spoke, the smile on Adeline's face gradually faded. She turned toward Graywood Town, half-veiled in thin mist, and let out a quiet sigh.

"Back then, there was nowhere left to retreat to and wait for our wounds to heal."

"Back then?"

"More precisely, ever since the Demonic Tide broke out." Adeline glanced at Serin.

"None of you are from Freyland, are you? To be honest, we have no idea what things are like beyond the kingdom anymore." As she spoke, she turned and began leading the group toward the breach in the town's outer wall.

"I can explain the rest properly once we have more time." Adeline stopped. Her expression turned serious once more.

"You're heading into the town next, correct? Could I ask you to find Lord Basque and have him bring his people out first?" She looked back toward the depths of the town, undisguised worry gathering between her brows.

"If this drags on much longer, I'm afraid the wounded and the guards out here won't be able to hold on either." Just then, the sound of crying came from nearby. The group turned toward it and saw a little girl curled up on the ground, surrounded by several guards who were speaking softly as they tried to comfort her.

"What happened to that child?" Rayne asked. Adeline followed his gaze and sighed again.

"She's the daughter of Graywood Town's garrison commander." Her eyes returned to the depths of the town, her expression heavy.

"The garrison commander became separated from us while covering the retreat of the other townspeople. He's still trapped inside." Rayne and the others exchanged uneasy looks. They had not even entered the town yet, and somehow the list of problems they needed to deal with was already getting longer. More importantly, they were unfamiliar with the situation inside. Going in to survey the roads and identify where the monsters were concentrated was one thing.

Searching an entire town for missing people was another matter entirely. One wrong step, and they might end up trapped inside themselves. Adeline appeared to notice their discomfort, and her tone softened considerably.

"Don't put too much pressure on yourselves."

"If you manage to find them, I would naturally be deeply grateful. But no matter what happens, your own safety must come first." Only after hearing that did Rayne and the others quietly breathe a little easier. They quickly checked their packs, exchanged a few words with Adeline and the nearby guards, then passed through the gap in the wooden palisade and officially began their second expedition into Graywood Town.

Perhaps because Adeline and the others had only recently withdrawn from the town, the outer district was unusually quiet. Aside from the monster corpses scattered across the streets and the dark shadows wandering between the buildings, they did not notice anything else out of the ordinary. Along the way, Tyren even crouched beside one of the corpses and rummaged through it for a while. He found nothing useful. All he accomplished was getting both hands filthy and earning another disgusted lecture from Serin.

Rayne and the others carefully retraced the route they had taken to the old apothecary on their previous expedition. They planned to inspect the area surrounding the apothecary first. According to the information Mr. Ashford had given them earlier, Graywood Town's almshouse seemed to be somewhere nearby. After some time, the old apothecary slowly came into view. Every sign of the fighting from their last visit had vanished. Even the monster corpses that had fallen nearby were gone.

As the group gradually approached the apothecary, Serin suddenly spoke.

"Rayne, should we go inside and bring out some more medicine?" She looked back in the direction they had come from.

"Adeline and the wounded outside might be able to use it. Mr. Ashford probably still needs quite a bit as well." Rayne checked their packs, glanced toward the old apothecary, then nodded.

"Alright."

"Asar, go inside with Serin and collect the medicine. Tyren, Barton—you're coming with me to scout ahead."

"No problem." Asar had barely taken a few steps with Serin when a rapid series of metal-on-metal clashes rang out from the alley ahead. Clang! Clang—! Rayne's expression changed. He raised a hand, signaling for the two of them to stop. Asar and Serin hurriedly halted and returned to the rest of the party.

"Wait." Rayne lowered his voice, his eyes fixed on the direction of the noise.

"We'll deal with the nearby threat first, then come back for the medicine." The others nodded, lowered themselves into a crouch, and crept quietly toward the mouth of the alley. Rayne took the lead. At the corner, he pressed himself against the wall and leaned out just far enough to peer into the alley. The enemies in the alley were not goblins. Three Graywood Town guards were desperately holding off a single Desiccated Guard. Their bodies were covered in wounds, and their movements had clearly slowed.

They were exhausted. However, Rayne quickly noticed something was wrong. Farther down the street, another set of stiff, heavy footsteps was drawing steadily closer. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Thud. Thud. Thud... That rigid, lifeless rhythm clearly belonged to more Desiccated Guards. Rayne's brow furrowed. If they charged out recklessly now, the entire party might be caught in a pincer.

He was just about to give an order when the Desiccated Guard suddenly knocked aside one guard's weapon and followed through with a slash across the man's chest. The guard screamed and crashed heavily to the ground. Rayne's expression changed sharply. He burst out from the mouth of the alley.

"Hey! Over here!" The Desiccated Guard completely ignored him. It gripped its longsword in both hands and brought it down without hesitation upon the fallen guard. Blood splashed across the wall beside them. The guard let out a piercing scream. His body convulsed violently several times before falling completely still.

"You bastard!" The remaining two guards' eyes turned red. Gritting their teeth, they charged the Desiccated Guard. But the two exhausted men had no strength left to resist. They lasted only moments before the Desiccated Guard struck them down in turn. The sight sent a surge of anger through Rayne.

"Take it down!" He drew his sword and rushed forward. Asar and Barton followed close behind, while Tyren quickly drew his bow and joined the fight. With an angry roar, Barton lowered his greatshield and crashed into the Desiccated Guard from the side. Bang! The heavy shield smashed into its body, knocking it off balance and forcing it half a step to the side. Rayne seized the opening. He closed the distance and swept his longsword upward in a diagonal slash, aiming directly for the arm holding its weapon.

He intended to sever it while the creature's footing was still unstable. But just before the blade connected, the Desiccated Guard abruptly twisted its body and shifted aside, avoiding the worst of the strike. Clang! Rayne's longsword struck only its battered armor. A shower of tiny sparks erupted alongside an ear-piercing screech of metal. The blow carved a deep gash into the armor, but Rayne had lost his best chance to sever its arm.

"Damn it." He quickly pulled his sword back and retreated, his expression darkening further. Strength was not the only thing that had improved. These Desiccated Guards were far more agile than before. At that moment, the rigid footsteps from deeper in the alley finally drew near. Two spear-and-shield Desiccated Guards rounded the corner and closed in on the fight. The reinforcements had arrived. Tyren was firing armor-piercing arrows from the rear when he caught sight of their spears and froze.

A flicker of naked fear surfaced in his eyes. He would never forget the spear that had come flying straight at him during their previous expedition. If he had not dodged in time, it would have pierced straight through his body and pinned him alive to the ground. Fortunately, the two spear-and-shield Desiccated Guards were not moving particularly fast. They would not reach the battlefield immediately. Rayne gritted his teeth and pressed forward again. The Desiccated Guard brought its sword down.

Rayne dropped low beneath the longsword as it whistled over his head. He stepped inside its reach, slipped to its flank, and sent a backhand slash at the arm before it could fully draw it back. Schk! This time, his blade did not miss. It severed the Desiccated Guard's sword hand at the wrist. The withered hand and the longsword it held dropped together onto the ground. The moment the Desiccated Guard lost its weapon, Barton seized the opening.

He raised his greatshield high with both hands and brought it crashing down upon the arm holding the creature's shield. Bang! A crisp crack of breaking bone followed. Crack! The heavy shield broke the withered arm, bending it at an unnatural angle. The round shield slipped from its grasp. The Desiccated Guard had lost every means of defending itself. Tyren, already at full draw, loosed.

The armor-piercing arrow screamed across the alley and punched through the Desiccated Guard's empty eye socket, burying itself deep in its skull. Its body suddenly stiffened. The next moment, it toppled straight backward. Rayne took two quick, ragged breaths. He had no time to feel pleased with the victory. At the other end of the alley, the two spear-and-shield Desiccated Guards were approaching one behind the other. They had barely managed to bring down one. Now there were still two more in front of them.

Rayne and the others quickly re-formed around the two exhausted guards and braced themselves against the advancing pair. ◆ ◆ ◆ Inside the Core Chamber, Owen watched with barely contained excitement. The Desiccated Guards he had generated last time had been too weak. Against Rayne's current party, they no longer posed much of an obstacle. After this latest upgrade, however, the difficulty felt just right.

They were strong enough to make Rayne and the others struggle and force them to stay focused, but not so strong that the party had no chance to fight back.

"Looks like I got the difficulty adjustment exactly right this time!" Owen swayed his core smugly, his attention never leaving the screen.

"At this rate, they might genuinely have a shot at that Low Silver-level boss beneath the almshouse." Honestly, Rayne's party was performing far better than Owen had expected. After all, Rayne was the only member of the party who had reached High Bronze. Tyren, Serin, and Barton had only recently advanced to High Black Iron. Asar was already brushing against the threshold of Bronze, but he had yet to truly cross it. Yet even against a Desiccated Guard with High Bronze-level strength, they were holding their own.

The fight was not easy, but neither had they been driven into a truly desperate situation.

"Still, Rayne's group is probably an exception." Owen switched his view to Sinner's Canyon. At that moment, a party of five Bronze-rank adventurers was fighting the Whisperer. The battle appeared to be nearing its conclusion. The Whisperer's body was covered in wounds, and its movements had slowed noticeably. It looked ready to collapse at any moment. However, the party had paid a considerable price as well. Of its five members, two had already fallen and triggered Trial Return.

The remaining three were all wounded, barely maintaining a formation that looked ready to crumble at any moment. By comparison, Rayne's party was performing almost absurdly well.

"Mm. The Skill Book probably made a huge difference to Rayne's swordsmanship, and Asar has his family's sword techniques." Owen watched the battle in Sinner's Canyon for a little longer.

"That party looks like it was thrown together at the last minute. They barely have any coordination. It's not strange that they're performing worse." At this rate, it would not be long before a second party gathered all three Prisoner's Tokens and officially entered the second area. The thought lifted Owen's mood.

"Heh heh... Once that happens, more and more challengers will be inside the dungeon at the same time."

"And I'll definitely start earning Soul Energy even faster." Owen savored the thought, then casually checked what it would take to advance his core to the next tier. [Core Tier Advancement] [Requirement: 120, 000 Soul Energy] The Core Chamber immediately fell silent. Honestly, the first time Owen had seen that number, it had nearly made him gag. Fully restoring the core last time had cost only fifteen thousand Soul Energy. This advancement required a full hundred and twenty thousand. Eight times as much.

"One hundred and twenty thousand..." Owen stared at the number, and even the light across his core dimmed slightly.

"The next one isn't going to jump straight past a million, is it?" The impoverished core trembled. Worse, something else bothered Owen even more than the distant prospect of advancing his core. The last time curiosity got the better of him, he had connected to the Management Sprite Empathic Channel. The channel had been filled with chaotic, distorted noise. Before he severed the connection, he had felt as though something had noticed him. Even now, the memory still filled him with lingering dread.

Owen could not shake the feeling that those demon cores had placed some kind of mark on him. The problem was that he had no idea what they intended to do next. Ever since that day, a faint sense of unease had lingered inside him, refusing to disappear no matter how hard he tried to push it away.

"But... dungeons can't move." The more Owen thought about it, the stranger the situation seemed. If all of them were confined to their own dungeons, what exactly could those things do to him even if they had marked him?

"What, are they going to turn their dungeon into a flying fortress, follow the network connection all the way over here, and eat me?" The idea sounded completely absurd. Yet precisely because everything remained unknown, it was even more frightening. Even without a body, Owen felt a chill run through his core. He drifted unsteadily in the air, unable to hold still. He was, quite literally, too unsettled to hover in place.

After a while, he finally managed to suppress his agitation and turned his attention back to Rayne and the others. There was nothing he could do about it right now anyway. Rather than keep frightening himself with wild speculation, he might as well focus on what he could actually do. Fine-tune Graywood Town's difficulty curve. Help more adventurers grow. Speed up his Soul Energy accumulation and push his core toward the next tier.

Whatever those demon cores planned to do in the future— By then, both he and Blackstone Dungeon needed to possess enough strength to face the danger. As Owen watched Rayne and the others pull out every trick they had and finally bring down the last two spear-and-shield Desiccated Guards, the system panel before him suddenly began flashing violently. One crimson warning window after another appeared in rapid succession, nearly filling the entire screen in an instant.

Owen had not even managed to read their contents before his entire core shot up to the ceiling with a whoosh. Half a second later, he hurriedly floated back down in front of the system panel. [Warning!] [A severe threat of unknown rank is approaching the dungeon.] [Warning!] [A severe threat of unknown rank is approaching the dungeon.]"Wh-what does that mean?" The light across Owen's core flickered violently.

"Did those demon cores really come to attack me?" He hurriedly switched the observation screen to the dungeon entrance. There was no overwhelming tide of monsters. No enormous demon core. And certainly no flying fortress following the network connection over to him. There were only a few people standing before the white portal. One of them was Greer.

The other two were a tall, slender, handsome middle-aged man whose silver-gray hair was tied into a short ponytail, and a gentle-looking woman with a chestnut ponytail. Owen did not recognize either of them. His attention settled on the silver-gray-haired man.

"Is he the dangerous target the system was warning me about?" Owen activated the dungeon's scanning function. However, the instant the scan result appeared, the entire panel was swallowed by distorted strings of gibberish. [■■■■■■] [Detected rank: ■■■■] [Warning: Target rank exceeds current detection range.] [■■■■■■■■■■]"..." Even worse, at the exact moment the scan activated, the silver-gray-haired man appeared to sense something. He had been speaking with Greer, but his voice abruptly stopped.

Then he raised his head slightly and looked toward the dungeon. Those eyes seemed to pierce straight through space and lock directly onto Owen.

"Fuck!" Owen's entire core jerked backward.

"Help! This guy can even tell when I scan him!"

"What do I do? System! Do you have any emergency survival functions? Preferably something other than self-destructing the core!" [Energy currently sustaining the dungeon and a portion of the core's structural integrity may be forcibly extracted to generate one Orichalcum-rank guardian.] [Warning: Doing so will exhaust all extractable energy currently sustaining the dungeon.] [Warning: The core will return to a severely damaged state. Most construction and management functions will be temporarily suspended.] [The Orichalcum-rank guardian can exist only temporarily. Once it dissipates, the Core Integrity expended during generation will not be automatically restored.] [Subsequent repairs will require a large amount of Soul Energy.] Owen stared at the prompts before him and gritted his teeth. It was not time for a last stand yet. The man had not shown any hostility either. But if the other party truly intended to destroy the dungeon, Owen had already made his decision.

Even if it meant damaging his core, he would never sit still and wait to be destroyed.

"I-if you're really planning to fight to the death..." Owen tried his hardest to make his voice sound fierce, but his entire core still drifted half an inch backward of its own accord.

"Then my Orichalcum-rank guardian will still give you one hell of a fight!" The Core Chamber fell silent once more. At least, that was what Owen told himself.