Chương 26: True face

"The Mantises are probably over there. The village was destroyed by a fire too." Raymond voiced his thoughts and the others agreed without question. They had come this far, there was no way they were going to back down when they were so close to their goal.

Without further consideration, the team of eight increased their pace towards the source of light and as the gap between them became closer and closer, the light grew brighter and bigger.

30 minutes of running later, and the group stood before a house sized opening in the cave wall, with the light they were chasing being so bright at this point they had to squint to properly get a view of what was inside.

"Stay alert, we don't know how many enemies we might find in here. Even with the fire lighting up most of this sub-cave, there may still be some dark corners where a Mantis could be ready to pounce on you at any time." The group nodded in unison to Raymond's advice as they surrounded the cave entrance from both sides.

The scene reminded Alex of the old fashioned way police on ancient Earth would raid people's houses, but he brushed the thought away to not cause any distractions for himself.

Being so close to the entrance, nobody wanted to speak — not wanting to alert the beasts inside to their presence, so Raymond, as the team's de facto leader, raised his hand and counted down from five using his fingers.

Five…

Four

Three

Two….

One!

Szzz!

Right as the group rushed through the entrance into the grand and spacious cave, only one thing came to their mind.

'Hot!'

It was scorching in there, the difference in temperature inside and outside was like night and day.

However when Alex, Brute and the others recovered from their stupor, shock and confusion filled their faces.

'Where are all the Mantises!? What the heck is that thing??'

Instead of the dozens of Mantis beasts they were expecting, inside there lay a huge lion like creature which until a moment ago was lazily snoring away on its back, before Alex and his group came storming in and awakening it from its sleep.

Alex instinctively looked at Raymond and Joanne — unlike the others they didn't seem to be shocked. Instead their eyes were filled with jubilation, Raymond looked like some sort of crazy maniac with the way greed just oozed out of his eyes when he looked at the huge lion.

'It seems these two know something that we don't.'

However right now he had more important things to think about.

Like how they were going to deal with this situation.

'This thing is clearly not in the same league as F rank beasts. This can only mean it is an E- rank beast, or…'

Alex had his suspicions that this thing wasn't even an Early E rank beast either, and just the thought of it terrified him to his core. The strongest in their team was only E- rank! How were they supposed to take down something a whole level above him with only a few measly F and F+ ranks to support?

"Everyone, get into formation! If we want a shot of making it out of here alive, then you need to cooperate with each other so I can whittle it's health down, this thing is a Mid E rank beast!"

Raymond shouted his orders with a much more commanding tone than he had ever had before. It seemed he had shed his previous affable and approachable persona for this new cold and commanding one.

Everyone listened to his order and moved into the formation they had discussed previously in their plans to fight the group of Mantis beasts. However the formation was incomplete as both Alex and Brute hadn't moved from their location.

"Explain yourselves. You said you were 100% certain those were the tracks of Mantis beasts we were following. Care to explain why we end up encountering this flaming lion at the end of your tracks, with no Mantis in sight?"

At first glance, one might assume Brute to be all muscle and no brains due to how he looked and how he preferred people called him, but he was no idiot nor a pushover.

A bitter grin appeared on Raymond's face as he heard Brute's demanding questions.

"You are too smart for your own good." With that, a small dagger appeared in Raymond's hand and before anyone could even react in time to what he said, he flicked forwards and it flew at incredible speeds.

Fwoosh!

On the other end, Alex only heard the sound of wind splitting and a dull thud before all hell broke loose.

Right as the dagger left Raymond's hand, the flaming lion attacked with a supremely hot breath of fire that spewed sticky, flaming liquid everywhere like a flamethrower.

Alex didn't notice this though.

'What just….'

His thoughts paused when he looked towards the source of the thud.

Brutus.

Right where he had been standing, with his hand still on the hilt of his sword, Brute lay lifeless with a dagger protruding out the back of his head.

'Raymond just… Killed him?'

'Why?'

Nothing made sense to Alex anymore. His whole life he had been living in the slums on a random no name mining colony. Humans over there were much more cooperative and worked together to survive. Yet the whole time he had been in the Primordial Expanse, all he had seen was senseless slaughter and bloodshed.

He only truly understood now why that policeman told him to be so wary of other people.

Alex shifted his shocked eyes towards Raymond, who was currently dodging the lion with an apathetic look. Joanne stood far back, firing an arrow from time to time with her bow, causing some minor annoyance for the lion whenever one left a scratch on its skin.

On the other end, Raymond looked back at the only uncooperative person left in the team.

"Alex, If you don't want to end up like him then I suggest you get over here and help." He said while he shifted his eyes towards Brute.

His previous facade of being like an elder 'brother' was abandoned.

It seemed his true face had been revealed.

'He's been lying to us this whole time! I was right to suspect him!'

Alex gritted his teeth at the threat but took a deep breath to calm his raging emotions.

Right now there was an even bigger threat to his life, to all of their lives including even Raymond.

'First I deal with you!'

Alex dashed over to the side of the lion and launched his first attack.

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Chương 27: All out battle

This was the first time since Alex had bought his dagger that he got to put it to use, and it was against a beast a whole major level above him as well!

Due to his unique talent and the few soul orbs he had absorbed so far, although he was an F rank adventurer, he possessed physical strength near that of an F+ rank.

But it was unfortunate to say that it didn't make much difference whether he was F or F+ rank in front of the tyrant like E rank Flaming Lion.

The moment he neared the beast while it was distracted by the other 6 adventurers on his team, his dagger drew near to its hind, with the sizzling atmosphere surrounding the beast causing burns on the skin of his hand.

But he didn't let that stop him and with the full force of his entire body, slashed diagonally across the ankle of the lion's rear left leg. However the disparity in their strength was clear and Alex's full force attack barely left an inch deep mark, which compared to the size of the lion it was just a scratch.

"Keep attacking! Your attacks are wearing the lion down, if this keeps up long enough I might be able to slip in an attack strong enough to do some major damage!" Raymond shouted from the side lines. Alex gritted his teeth when he realised that Raymond and Joanne hadn't even joined in on the fight yet even though they were the two strongest combatants they had, with Joanne being the only F+ rank after Raymond murdered Brutus.

Moments after Raymond shouted his order, the lion lifted one of its huge paws and performed a slashing motion through the air towards an adventurer who slipped out of formation.

Instantly, the man was barely able to defend against the attack of a beast a whole major level above himself and when the flaming claw reached his sabre, it melted instantly before the fire continued through it with little interference and burned a deep gash through the man's thin layer of armor.

The man was sent flying when he took the full brunt of the attack, as he travelled through the air for quite a distance until the light of the lion no longer reached him. Whether he was dead or alive was unknown, with only a few pieces of unmoving molten metal lighting up the area where he had landed.

'This is an impossible fight, Raymond is just setting us up for death!'

After seeing what happened to the poor sod who just got hit, Alex increased his caution another level.

No way did he want to end up like that guy!

The lion, completely oblivious to the thoughts of the annoying humans surrounding it, continued to hound more and more attacks in their direction. It seemed performing such flaming slash attacks took quite a lot of energy out of it as it never launched another one.

It was only after 10 minutes passed of excruciating and exhausting guerrilla tactics against the lion that Raymond made his first move.

From seemingly nowhere, he brandished a sword with a faint white glow surrounding it as he leaped forwards with incredible speed nearly matching that of the lion and stabbed his sword into its side, penetrating so deep only the hilt of his sword remained visible. The blow instantly made the lion shift its focus to Raymond as it let out a miserable howl.

With a fast swipe of its head, it smashed its thick skull against Raymond and his silver shining armor, sending him flying a few metres before he landed with a dull thud back on his feet.

"Joanne!" Raymond called Joanne's name and as if everything was pre-planned, she equipped her bow and took out some ominous looking arrows.

These arrows had some sort of purple goo covering the tip, with a similarly faint white glow surrounding them just like Raymond's sword.

'It seems all awakened do in fact get an inventory.' Alex was more focused on the fact that both Raymond and Joanne summoned their weapons out of thin air, just like when he summoned his Soul orbs.

However if he spent more time gathering information in the city he would have known a rather interesting fact.

The concept of an inventory was completely unknown to everyone. Raymond and Joanne had artifacts that housed a separate space where they could store non-living objects.

Ignoring these side tracked thoughts, Alex turned his attention back to Joanne. She had already nocked one of those new unknown arrows and aimed it at the lion, looking for the perfect timing to strike.

Boom!

Yet another adventurer was hit by the lion as the original formation had long broken down and everyone was just following their own instincts. This adventurer ended up getting crushed under the foot of the lion as it stamped down on the man when he tripped up and fell onto his back.

The fate of this man was certain.

However even while the lion was actively succeeding in hunting members of her team, Joanne's expression didn't even falter once and she kept her aim up, until finally the moment came where she let loose her arrow.

Fwoosh!

It flew through the air at even faster speeds than Raymond threw his dagger. In less than a second it reached the lion, specifically in the exact same spot Raymond had penetrated it with his sword less than 10 seconds prior.

The effects of her attack were immediate.

The arrow entered the still open wound and disappeared inside the lion's body, with the flesh around its organs and wound quickly taking on a blackish, purple colour.

This enraged the lion to a level it hadn't shown yet as it finally moved from its spot and started trampling in the direction of the 4 remaining adventurers.

With the speed the lion was barrelling towards them, they had no time to even react before they were trampled down and splattered across the cave floor like mince meat. They couldn't even put up a fight.

Alex, the lucky soul he was, was spared from this slaughter as from the beginning he kept his distance from the formation Raymond had set up for the F ranks to follow.

This instinctive decision to not follow Raymond's orders had spared his life.

But whether that still remained the case in a few moments would remain to be seen…

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