202 Nordic Centipedes

The more they walked forwards, the more friends started to appear and tried to take them into the water. Because of the number of the fiends, Arrora also joined the battle with Knight and Don while the tigress and the cubs stayed between them.

Just when they were killing the fiends, Arrora was grabbed by the fiend.

"Hey, look"

The tigress shouted at Don as he quickly sent a wind blade at the fiend who was grabbing Arrora and accidentally grabbed her by her hip.

"Ah"

Arrora squealed when she felt Don's hand around her hip as he pulled her close.

She had never been this close to Don while she wasn't drunk or unconscious. It felt like the time had slowed down as his heated breath was breezing down on her face.

A slight redness appeared on her face because Don's hand was still wrapped around her hips and her chest area was pressed against his chest.

With one hand wrapped around her hips, he sent wind blades to the fiends that were approaching them. At the moment in her mind, she was even prepared to face the entire world if he stood by her as she cherished this moment.

However, Don was too busy killing the fiends and never looked at Arrora's face or noticed his arm wrapped around her. Many screams of humans echoed through the fog and meant that the fiends had pulled them into the water.

"How much further do we have to go?"

Knight shouted while fighting with the fiends.

"I dont know"

"We should move faster"

Don looked at Knight and shouted at him as Knight understood his plan and nodded.

Then Knight retrieved a metal plate that had enough surface to hold two people.

"Step on it"

Knight ordered the tigress as she quickly jumped onto the plate while Don took out his shield.

"Hold me tight"

And before Arrora could say okay, he jumped onto his shield and soared through the fog but was still following the path.

Yet, after flying for a few moments, they saw a black shadow with two horns protruding out of its head appeared before them. If it wasn't for Don's quick reflex, the ax in the figure's hand would have cleaved their head off.

Arrora quickly took out her silver sword and attacked the shadow but her sword cut through him as nothing happened to the shadow.

Just before the shadow could attack again, Don sent a stream of hellfire at the shadow, and then, a loud scream came from the shadow.

"Use your flame attacks"

Hearing Don, Arrora and Knight conjured fireballs in their hands.

However, at the distance in the fog, Don noticed a flaming phoenix and realized that other contestants are not very far behind them as he decided to quicken up the pace so they could reach the mansion first and steal everything that's inside.

"Wolf, hell flame shield"

"Don't touch it"

The tigress tried to put her paw into the purple flame when Knight stopped her.

At the moment, Don didn't care about someone seeing the purple flame from a distance because the treasures inside the mansion were more important than hiding the hell flame.

With the hell flames covering them, Don and Knight soared through the air while the hell flames burnt every dark shadow in their way as wherever they passed, the screams of the shadows could be heard.

"There it is"

After a few minutes, the shape of a mansion vaguely appeared in their eyesight.

The mansion was nothing fancy but seemed to have only two floors. It couldn't be even compared to the fancy mansions of the nobles in Emir or Agoria.

When they reached the front door of the mansion, the door opened automatically.

"Get inside"

Knight instructed the tigress as everyone stepped inside and waited for Knight.

Standing outside Knight looked around and retrieved a human-sized sack from his space ring.

"What is that?"

Arrora asked as Knight opened the sack and let out the things inside.

"Eek"

The tigress almost squealed when she saw hundreds of centipedes with three human-like eyes crawled outside the sack.

Knight jumped inside the mansion as Don quickly shut the door before the centipedes could follow them.

"Are those Nordic Centipedes?"

The tigress asked as Knight nodded.

Just like the Hydra that Don faced in the arena, the Nordic centipedes were also immune to physical and magical attacks. The thing that made the nordic centipede a less threat than the hydra was their life span.

The Nordic Centipedes would live only a few hours after they have been woken up. But for Knight and Don, a few hours was enough to prevent the contestants from entering the dungeon while they loot everything inside.

Moreover, the Nordic centipedes had the ability to spew poison and their bite could paralyze a master level cultivator for hours so in this fiends and shadow ghosts filled the place, a few hours of paralyzed state meant nothing but warm food for fiends and shadow ghosts.

When Knight came inside, Arrora saw he took the lock and chain and put it on the door as the lock and chain let out a bright light.

"I'll check for other entrances, you clean this place out" 

Knight said to Don and went to check around the mansion.

"Aren't you two being too greedy?"

The tigress asked with a chuckle when she noticed how they made the other contestants' lives harder.

Arrora chuckled with the tigress as Don started to check for loot.

The mansion looked mostly cleaned out, probably by the previous contestants who entered seventy-five years ago.

"I'll take the upstairs"

Arrora said as Don nodded.

Everywhere Don went, he could only see termites ridden books and barely readable scrolls, yet, he took them anyway. The tigress however seemed picky about her loot since she had only a limited amount of space in her space ring.

The tigress looked for his permission when she saw a red orchid in the room which seemed like a bedroom because she couldn't have reached this place first if not for Don and Knight so she didn't try to take the things without his permission.

"History books, you want these"

Don noticed a rack full of ancient history books and the tigress seemed to be the character who loves reading.

"Let me see"

The tigress stood on her two legs and started to rummage through the books and picked a couple of books from the rack.

"You can take the rest"

The tigress put the books in her space rings as Don waved his hand and cleaned out the rack.

He would give them to Reghys since the dragon loved to horde knowledge rather than gold.

At the moment, Arrora was opening and closing the shelves in the kitchen upstairs. She found many seeds and a lot of alchemy ingredients from the rooms upstairs.

After checking every nook and corner upstairs, She realized that whoever came to this place before them didn't think much about the future generation.

"Am I being a hypocrite? Yes I am"

After cleaning the place out she thought about it and giggled.

"Hey, check this out"

Suddenly Don heard the tigress calling him as he went to her and saw her scratching the floor beneath her.

"What?"

"There must be treasures under this"

"How'd you know?"

The excitement was flowing out of her eyes as she kept scratching and punching the ground.

"How did you think I was able to find rare herbs for these little bastards? This grey can sense treasures, awesome isn't it?"

She proudly said and surprised Don because a treasure sensor like her could be a valuable asset for him.

"But it's weird that I can only sense them now?"

Don couldn't see any locks or handles on the floor or anything special but the usual concrete floor like everywhere else.

However the moment Don placed his hand on the floor, his shield came out of his space ring and started to vibrate.

Suddenly golden symbols and runes appeared on the ground and the tigress felt the ground beneath her moving.

"What's happening here?"

Knight and Arrora came after they felt the slight shaking beneath their feet.

"I bet super cool treasure inside"

The tigress was bouncing with excitement as Arrora and Knight looked at the ground with a grin.

After a few minutes, the ground beneath them moved completely away and they saw steps leading to the underground.

"Careful, there might be traps around"

Knight said and retrieved another sack from his space ring.

"What now?"

The tigress said as Knight tossed the sack down.

"Gross"

Arrora stepped back when she saw hundreds of sewer rats crawling out of the sacks and running down on the steps.

"Do you know how many diseases they spread?"

Arrora asked Knight with a frown as Knight created a line of fire so the rats would only run into the underground.

To their shock and surprise, while they were running through the stairs, streams of flame appeared out of the steps and roasted them. The surviving rats activated another trap as spikes emerged from the ground and ripped the rats apart.

In a few moments, the traps killed all the rats that Knight sent.

Still, Knight took another sack of rats and tossed it into the underground again to check if there's anymore traps.

"Poor bastards"

The tigress felt a little sympathy towards the rats and expected another massacre but surprisingly, the second batch of rats did not activate any traps as they roamed around the underground and made themselves home.

Since Don knew where the traps were, he waved his hand and shut the holes where the flames appeared as well as melted the spikes with his hell flame.

"Take your steps carefully"

Knight warned them because the place might still have some untriggered traps as Don created a powerful energy barrier around them in case they triggered a trap.