Bertram's face immediately paled.
"Follow me and run!"
He said no more and moved his tiny legs at an impossible pace, running faster than most normal-sized people!
Damien and the girls were alerted by his sudden actions but didn't ask questions.
Now wasn't the time to be overconfident. If a guide who regularly traversed this place was acting like that, there had to be a good reason.
The group ran after Bertram and matched his pace. He ran parallel to the cliff wall, not daring to go more than 10 feet from it.
Whoosh!
A chilling wind flowed through the ravine and became fiercer with every passing instant, barraging the group with the same evil sensation they felt in the Netherworld Fog heightened to a new level.
"Damn! What's happening?!" Damien asked while watching the growing fog and blocking the Ghostly Wind.
"I don't know either! The Ghostly Wind is back too early! We needa find a cave before it's too late!" Bertram responded without breaking his stride.
"Do you have a location in mind?!" Damien asked again.
"I do, but it's too far away! There ain't many safe places around here!"
"Tch!"
Damien clicked his tongue and concentrated his awareness forward, evading the Netherworld Fog to send it as far as possible.
'He's right. There are no caves for another 500 meters, and with the way the fog is growing…'
OOOOOOOOOOOH!
A deathly howl reverberated off the walls and broke through the defenses of any who heard it.
"Damn!" Bertram exclaimed as his body jerked to a stop.
Damien and the rest were also stunned by the effect of that roar, but rather than this, their worry was elsewhere!
From within the dense fog only a few tens of meters away, countless undead auras were emerging.
By the time Damien and the rest rid themselves of their stunned state, the undead were already charging!
Perhaps they underestimated Ghost King's Crevice beforehand, because they definitely weren't expecting anything like a horde of tens of thousands of undead.
Damien gritted his teeth and looked at Bertram, whose eyes were stern unlike they'd been to this point.
"The plan?"
"What plan? We needa fight our way through and find shelter! The undeads won't attack the caves since that's Human-Faced Spider territory!"
"Then don't we have to face the spiders?"
"Would you rather fight an army of undead?!"
"Fair enough."
Damien looked at the girls with a wry smile.
"Everyone ready? Let's try to conserve as much mana as possible, but in the worst-case scenario, I have plenty of recovery elixirs in my spatial storage. The goal now is survival!"
It had been a long time since a number in the tens of thousands meant death for them, but again, Damien wasn't in the mood to be arrogant.
Usually, the guy who got overconfident and disregarded the advice of those familiar with these environments was the first to die, and Damien didn't plan to die until he'd punched his father in the face!
He and the girls stood in formation around the non-combatant, Bertram, and summoned their mana.
"Lead us to where we need to go. We'll take care of the fighting until then," Damien said.
"I got it! Let's go!"
Their conversation ended just in time. Bertram got free from his negative state and began running again, a moving turtle shell formed by Damien's group protecting him along the way.
And protect they did.
The undead started their assault the second the group started moving.
An army of skeletons and ghouls approached from every angle, climbing over each other in a frenzy to devour the flesh of the living.
Damien took the Twin Moons in his hands and charged mana into the crystals that embedded themselves in his wrists. Shots of spatial mana spread through the air, exploding into spatial ruptures that devoured tens of undead at a time.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Explosions tore through the environment in front of Damien, clearing the path forward. At the same time, a barrier of Vector Points appeared before his body, moving with him like a riot shield.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Flashes of light slammed against the barrier before disobeying the laws of physics and making complete turns to attack their senders.
'Luckily, I set it up early. In a situation like this, there's always mages!' Damien exclaimed as his eyes darted from side to side and noted the position of every enemy he had to eliminate.
'But damn, these things take up so much mana!'
Damien obtained the Twin Moons when he was approaching his Baptism, and compared to that time, his mana capacity had dropped several hundred thousand units. Every shot from Freya and Hel drained a massive chunk of his mana, making it impossible to fire more than a few hundred before running dry.
And to think just days ago, a few hundred shots from these weapons was nothing more than an opening move for him!
BANG!
A hole tore open in space, giving way to a black vortex that flew behind Damien's head like a halo. It flew into the air above him and expanded, sucking in every bit of mana in the surroundings to replenish him.
'Good. This still works.'
He'd prepared elixirs for the girls, but elixirs weren't enough to sustain his mana abuse.
Along with this alternative usage of Devour, there was one more thing Damien wanted to try to sustain himself.
'Demon Transformation.'
His body changed into demon form, his hair white and his skin white as snow. He almost grinned, thinking he'd outwitted the universal law, but how could it be that simple?
The laws didn't absolutely restrict his body like they did his soul, but it wasn't going to give him such an obvious advantage easily!
The transformation Damien underwent was partial and many of his bloodline abilities were locked, but for now, the ability he wanted to use was still available.
'Enhance.'
The Blood Runes on his body shone with blue light and his mana absorption rate and ability were enhanced exponentially.
Damien nodded, his eyes solemn.
'Good. 100 meters down, 400 to go!'
He said it like it was easy, but the number of undead was, no pun intended, unholy.
And this time, he wasn't alone in his struggle.
Elena and Ruyue stood to Bertram's side and back, holding off the undead with Damien. Meanwhile, Rose stood to Bertram's other side and cast her Illusion Magic on the cliff wall, hiding their presence from the Human-Faced Spiders.
While Rose was only acting on intuition, she didn't realize that she held the most important role in the group.
The Netherworld Fog was rising and the Ghostly Wind was reaching its peak, far ahead of its regular schedule for no known reason.
It was an incredibly rare situation, but it had happened before.
And in those instances, it wasn't the undead that caused the most casualties, but the spiders!'
The spiders went into a frenzy whenever the fog acted strangely, and what would adventurers do when the only safe zones in the crevice were suddenly turned into death pits filled with maniac spiders?
The answer was: nothing!
They could only die!
With luck and skill aiding their charge forward, the group continued moving against the undead tide, bent on overcoming the hurdles they faced.
In the back of their minds, they knew it. This trouble was severe, but…
It was only the start of their grand adventure!
