"What a pity, a pair of twins!"
The lecherous voice beside him made Hack involuntarily glance back at the three figures rapidly disappearing at the end of the corridor.
He naturally understood what this so-called "pity" meant.
The speaker was called Short Axe—an ugly man with a centipede-like scar running across his cheek, carved open by an iron hook during his early days of raiding merchant caravans.
Years of heavy drinking had left his complexion dark and sallow. When he grinned with his gap-toothed mouth, the two short axes slung outside his leather armor would bounce with his protruding belly.
But despite his deteriorated physique, in battle he remained a desperado who dared to use [Berserk], capable of whirling his dual axes into a whirlwind.
It's just that his brain wasn't working properly—constantly thinking about his pathetic desires, not considering the current situation at all. He still acted like he was back in his bandit days...
Hack secretly glanced at Viscount Louisa walking in the middle of the formation. This tall vampire seemed not to have heard Short Axe's complaints, or perhaps she had heard but didn't care?
Cursing Short Axe silently in his heart—after all, if it weren't for Short Axe and those other bastards letting their lust get the better of them and playing that baron's daughter to death, they wouldn't have been forced to flee to the Hermit Empire due to the high bounty on their heads, and they wouldn't need to participate in this obviously dangerous operation. Did he really think Hack coveted that so-called eternal life?
Only living long enough to enjoy it could be called eternal life. What good was longevity if you got killed right after? That wasn't eternal life worth a damn!
Unfortunately, circumstances were stronger than people. From the moment they pledged allegiance to the vampires, they had no room for choice.
Short Axe beside him pulled out a small box from his chest, poured out a gray-white pill that reeked of decay, and swallowed it in one gulp.
Hack recognized what it was—Necrostatic Elixir refined from Mourning Lilies. He had some in his own chest too.
Long-term consumption could make one's flesh more similar to the dead, considered a necessary step before being transformed into a half-vampire.
This bastard Short Axe was obviously quite enthusiastic about the Viscount's promise to transform them into half-vampires upon successful completion of the mission. Really...
Hack also took out a Necrostatic Elixir and swallowed it...
An axe suddenly came spinning through the air in front of him, causing Hack to involuntarily stop in his tracks.
"Short Axe?" Hack's voice suppressed his irritation.
The axe passed through the puffshrooms and slimes that were fighting nearby, achieving a perfect double kill before flying back into Short Axe's hand.
"Why aren't you talking the whole way? Trying to act like some kind of expert, haha—"
Short Axe's unbridled laughter made everyone turn to look at him, even the Viscount.
Hack didn't find it amusing at all—he just wanted to give him a wind blade to slice up that ugly face!
He quickly distanced himself from Short Axe, still hearing his muttering from behind: "Tch, guy who can't take a joke."
Setting aside this brain-damaged fool, the others were relatively reliable and were currently discussing the unusual nature of this dungeon.
"Didn't they say the Amethyst Dungeon had different ecosystems on each floor? How come there are puffshrooms all the way down, and mutated varieties at that?"
"I came here six years ago, it wasn't like this then."
"I heard this place experienced a mana surge before. It's probably the effect of the mana surge."
"It's so... dark here..."
Hack looked around—indeed it was.
All along the way there were fungal carpets, luminescent mushrooms, and mutated puffshrooms. Regardless of what ecosystem the floor was supposed to have, you could see them everywhere, and in no small proportion.
This situation reached its peak when they set foot on the fifth floor.
*Splat—*
A strange sensation came from underfoot.
"Illumination!"
"What is this?"
In the orange-yellow light, everyone could see the thick fungal carpet beneath their feet. Each step brought up a patch of stickiness.
"How disgusting!"
Someone disgustedly scraped at their shoe sole, only to make it worse.
"Look what this is!" Short Axe suddenly called everyone's attention.
Hack looked back to see that Short Axe had scraped away the fungal carpet under his feet, revealing an unremarkable... disc-shaped stone underneath?
Hack felt something was off—if it was stone, this piece was far too regular...
"Look, it's soft!"
Short Axe kicked the disc twice, feeling it bounce elastically, quite satisfying to kick.
Then he stepped down hard—
Hack witnessed with his own eyes as the disc under Short Axe's foot suddenly exploded, blasting away a layer of soil.
"Ahhh—"
Amid Short Axe's heart-wrenching screams, several dark shadows actually leaped out from the surroundings and pounced toward him.
Although Short Axe was a disgusting and detestable fellow, letting him die in vain like this wouldn't be good.
Third-tier magic—Wind Surge!
A hurricane blew away those pouncing figures, and only then could Hack barely make out what these things were.
"Puffshrooms!?"
They were mimetic puffshrooms!
The blown-away puffshrooms exploded one by one before they even hit the ground, but fortunately didn't injure anyone else.
"Be careful! These puffshrooms are hiding underground!" someone warned.
Hack looked at the holes left in the ground after the puffshrooms departed, then at the endless fungal carpet ahead—surely it wouldn't be like this the whole way?
"Ah! My leg!"
Short Axe's screams drew Hack's attention back. Only then did he realize this scoundrel had actually taken a serious hit this time—his right leg from the knee down had been blown off!
Come to think of it, this idiot had stepped his entire foot directly into the explosion source. It could be said that his thick skin and tough flesh had saved him from losing more limbs.
Hack hesitated—should he use one of the healing potions he carried for him? But looking at his condition, he'd be hard-pressed to be useful in future battles.
"What's that in the sky?" someone pointed upward and asked.
Against the backdrop of the dome's luminescence, small black dots were approaching through the air one after another. They seemed to be some kind of flying magical beast, with M-shaped wings that looked familiar...
"Bats?" Hack thought they did indeed resemble the bats commonly seen throughout vampire territory.
But why were these bats so fat?
Getting closer, they finally saw their true appearance.
"More puffshrooms!"
Having learned from earlier experience, no one dared let the puffshrooms get close now.
Magic and arrows were unleashed simultaneously. These flying puffshrooms weren't fast and were easy to hit. After being attacked, they fell down one after another...
*Bang—*
"Damn it! Don't let them fly overhead! Hack, blow them away!"
His teammates cursed as they gave orders. Hack simply stopped using wind blades and focused on using Wind Surge to blow the falling puffshrooms far away. Finally, everyone avoided being caught in the explosions.
But—
"How many damn puffshrooms are there?"
The sky was filled with small black dots flying up and down, making Hack's scalp tingle.
Even if they exhausted everyone's mana and arrows, they couldn't shoot down this many puffshrooms, could they?
"Let's... let's retreat first!"
Hack loudly suggested. After all, they weren't far from the stairs yet. He wanted to fall back and regroup before figuring out how to deal with these strange puffshrooms.
"No need."
Viscount Louisa, who had been coldly observing the situation, suddenly spoke!
With a casual gesture from her, Short Axe's screams on the ground suddenly became even more miserable as fresh blood gushed from his severed limb, gathering in Louisa's hand to form a blood orb.
The blood then burst into countless fine threads that shot toward the sky, precisely piercing through puffshroom after puffshroom.
Each blood thread attack didn't deal high damage, but the puffshrooms happened to have very little health. Whether she had seen through this point or not...
After one strike, the blood orb in Louisa's hand was completely depleted, and the puffshrooms fell from the sky like dumplings. Only a few scattered survivors remained, which were picked off one by one by the archers.
It seemed their crisis was temporarily resolved?
Hack glanced at Short Axe, who had become a mummified corpse—it looked like he didn't need to worry about whether to waste a healing potion on him anymore.
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