novelnext Chapter 440 The Tide
Chapter 440 The Tide
The next day, Godfrey stood before Dering Woods with Isolde, Isaac, and Neila. Donning his Immortal Armour, a sword strapped to his waist, he stared at the canopy trees. The Dering Woods looked haunted without the sun.
"Are we too early?" Isaac asked.
"No. We're right on…" Godfrey watched space distort right within the forest, and red mist began to gather. It kept swirling as it grew bigger.
"...time." Godfrey shot a glance at Isaac, then went straight to the gate with large strides. The green gate core from the Creeping Darkness dungeon was returned by a man they didn't know.
He was too preoccupied with Isolde to remember in time. Luckily, after he woke up, Isolde brought the core, along with two more from the dragons she killed.
Together with the green gate core, it was three, which he had given to the Alchemists. All that remained were seven more.
If he was lucky, earning three more cores from this dungeon might be plausible. Step by step, he was closer to unsealing the reunited Black Order Knights.
His ironclad boots crushed the leaves beneath his feet, leaving faint prints on the soil, but the moment Godfrey went through the gate, he found himself in a desert.
Isaac blocked his eyes from the hot sun. Sand covered most of the desert. Large rocks and jagged stone formations rose from the dunes, the only interruption in the otherwise barren landscape.
Isolde crouched, dug her hand covered in a golden gauntlet into the sand, and brought it out. Sand poured through the gaps of her fingers.
She looked at the gate behind them. "So we're going to redirect them from the gate and kill them."
"That's the plan. How good it will be depends on when we see those stag-like monsters. We had an estimate of thirty or forty thousand. We've prepared to handle a stampede of fifty thousand monsters, which would be at least Origin Tier. The only variable here might be the number of mini-bosses and the ability of the main boss."
Godfrey responded.
"I hate this place." Neila said under her breath and transformed into a huge spider while Godfrey summoned an Echo of Lament's horse.
Isolde sat before him, holding the reins of the huge horse.
"It's strange, isn't it? Red gates mean an army or a really great threat is about to invade our world, but here there is no army. Just endless sand and stone formations." Her voice flowed into his ears.
"I'm also puzzled."
"You said you saw them storm out of the gate, right?" Isolde asked softly.
"I did."
"You also knew the day it would open. Wait, what if you knew the day and what would happen if they came out, but you don't know when exactly they came out?!"
Godfrey's eyebrows creased behind his helmet. "If they were on their way right now, we would have sensed the vibration of a stampede that great. This means we can catch those monsters off guard."
"That's why I did not summon my dragons. They're too big and fly too high. Those monsters will see us the moment we see them, giving both sides less than a second to react. If there's something we haven't planned for, then we'll be the ones at a disadvantage."
"True. But I don't hate this." Godfrey's words made Isolde squint.
"Hate what?" She tilted her head. Isolde right now had golden gauntlets over her arms and ironclad boots, but the rest of her body had no armour.
In her Pathan form, she was quite tall, and she didn't want that while sitting in front of Godfrey.
"You know what I mean." Godfrey replied nonchalantly, forcing her to scoff.
"Us riding together?"
"Stop asking questions to those who already know, Isolde." Godfrey whispered and grunted when she hit his chestplate. It didn't hurt, but he had to act the part.
"We won't have forever, Iso. So keep your eyes on me, even if we're in a dungeon." Godfrey said that and gently hit his heel against the horse. It sped up, kicking up sand and dust as they charged toward the rock formations ahead.
He didn't want to know how Isolde reacted to what he said. When they got to the rock formations, they moved through a narrow path between towering formations, and after hours of movement, all of them finally arrived at the top of a formation and laid eyes on what none of them had even dreamed about.
They all perched at the edge of the forty-foot-tall formation, and Isaac's mouth hung open in pure disbelief.
"Scotland is doomed." He muttered, eyes quivering at the sight ahead of them. There was a massive oasis with tall trees and greenery around it.
This oasis was large enough to contain a small city, and in this oasis were stags. Strange ones. They had dry, patched gray skin, wicked-looking horns, and great height. They were about six to eight feet tall and were grazing in this oasis.
Their uncanny looks weren't as frightening as their numbers.
"We prepared for fifty thousand. There's like a million monsters there! Not even Isolde's dragons can burn them before they go through that gate and wipe out not just one city."
Isaac retreated from the edge.
The others also left, but Neila remained.
"It's not up to a million." Isolde said. "Maybe half a million. I think their numbers should be roughly around three or four hundred thousand. But we'll have to count to verify."
"That's still more than five times the initial estimate." Neila joined them with a frown.
"We should locate the mini-bosses and the main boss." Godfrey said.
Isolde rose. "Killing the boss and the mini-bosses won't stop a stampede of nearly half a million monsters. I'm afraid even my dragons won't be able to stop them unless I form a wall of dragons constantly breathing dragonfire, but that would deplete your mana before we can completely burn all of them down."
She faced Godfrey.
Godfrey went to the edge once again. "It looks like they love their oasis, so what exactly would make them stampede through that gate?"
"I had a feeling the Ruination wouldn't make things easy, and I wasn't wrong."