Chapter 217 Behind The Seal

Shaman and Clara were the first to attack, targeting the greatsword elf. Shaman covered Kotetsu in ice and activated her sword domain, buffing herself. Clara charged her whips with lightning, also receiving the benefits of Shaman's domain.

The greatsword elf held out his weapon preparing to block both attacks simultaneously.

Clara swung her whips first, wrapping them around the elf's greatsword. Letting her whips overcharge, they released a powerful burst of lightning, striking the greatsword elf and paralysing him in place. Shaman leapt forward slashing Kotetsu at the elf's neck, however before her blade reached its neck a knife deflected her blade.

The knife was thrown by the dual-blade elf as he charged at Shaman to save the greatsword elf. However, Elysia intercepted him with her arrow, forcing the dual-blade elf to block with one of his knives and pushing him all the way back to the wall. Her attack deflected, Shaman jumped back before the greatsword elf regained control.

Clara retracted her whips and charged them once again, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Meanwhile, the greatsword elf was able to move again and focused its attention on Shaman who was the closest. Taking one step forward, the elf slammed his sword into the ground causing chucks of stone to fly out.

One of these fragments went straight for Shaman and she sliced it right through the middle. However, as the rock split apart, the greatsword elf was right in front of her striking down.

Clara swung to the side of the elf only to be blocked by the dual-blade elf.

Shaman raised her sword in an attempt to stop the blow from the greatsword elf, but she did not like her chances. Just before their swords collided, Silver appeared from the ground and stabbed into the chest of the elf, piercing its heart.

The greatsword elf's movements completely halted and his body fell limp on top of Shaman.

"Uh oh." Shaman wasn't quite ready for the dead body to fall on her and so she fell to the ground with the elf on top of her.

While Shaman was getting free from the body, Clara was keeping the dual-blade elf at bay. Elysia was also continuing to fire arrows over the top of the group trying to hit the archer elf that was by the priest.

"This. Damn. Archer. Doesn't. Want. To. Get. HIT!" With each word, Elysia fired an arrow that would either be dodged or countered with the archer's own arrow. Elysia got irritated by the second and was channelling more mana into her shots. This made them faster and stronger to the point that the hallway shook from the impact each arrow made.

Eventually, Elysia fired an arrow large enough that the elf couldn't dodge it in time. In a last ditch attempt, the elf fired his own wooden arrow towards the blood-red flame arrow. Before the wooden arrow even got close, it turned to ashes leaving no protection for the elf whatsoever.

With no time left to dodge, the archer took the full force of the arrow. In the end, the elf was hit square in his centre of mass and his body was launched back until it hit the wall next to the priest.

Flames burst out engulfing the elf, making quick work of the body while absorbing its vitality.

Back to Clara, who was holding off the dual-blade elf. She was still keeping him a safe distance away using her whips. Whenever the elf got close she would strike the ground, hitting it with the force of a lightning strike.

The elf was clearly getting agitated as it was unable to get close. Even if it threw knives at her, they would just be deflected easily. Clara wanted to stall as she saw Shaman was about to get out from under the body. As such, Clara intended to try to trap the elf and let Shaman get the final blow.

Stuck in a stalemate the elf stabbed its blades into the ground out of frustration. Clara took this opportunity to dash forward, trying to trap or even kill the elf.

Clara's whips were about to wrap themselves around the elf, when suddenly tree roots emerged from the ground and raced towards her.

"Shit!" Cursed Clara while sliding to a stop so as to not get impaled by the tree roots. With only a metre left she wasn't confident she would stop in time, but on the bright side, at least the roots were covered in ice now, stopping them from getting any closer. Clara finally came to a halt and was only a couple of centimetres away from the tree roots.

Shaman had freed herself from under the greatsword elf and froze the ground around her to stop the attack on Clara. The dual-blade elf averted its attention to Shaman and dashed forward. Shamam raised an ice wall in front of her, but before the elf could even reach it a fire arrow hit directly in its temple.

The elf's head was completely incinerated, finishing off the last of the 3 veteran elves. The only one left was the priest who had yet to move and was completely focused on keeping the seal up.

After killing the greatsword elf, Silver approached the priest, dropping down from the ceiling. Spinning with his scythe, he decapitated the priest with ease and suddenly the wall in front of which he was standing glowed green.

Everyone watched, wondering what it would uncover as the green light slowly faded from top to bottom. What was revealed was a massive open room that resembled the architecture of a cathedral. Green light emanated from an unknown source, but it was focused on one point. In the middle of the room was a sword that was covered in roots.

Everyone's first thought was of a final boss room which would likely be linked to the sword. Kiruya hadn't come out either so they wondered if she stayed back knowing it was potentially the boss's room.

"Before we enter, let's make sure we rest up. Don't want to go in with partially empty mana stores." Shaman called for a regroup and a quick break before going further as this was completely different from the rest of the dungeon.

"Sounds good to me, I don't like the eerie feeling I get from that room." Elysia wasn't going to complain as the only bit of light in the room came from the hallway and the green spotlight on the sword which gave an ominous feeling.

"Rea, am I able to get any information on that sword?" Shaman hoped she could get details from Rea as she couldn't use inspect from that far.

[Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Nope.] Giving Shaman a few moments of silence for some suspense, she was eventually met with rejection.

"Grrrr where did the shy Rea go!?" Shaman didn't like the suspense and could tell by the tone that Rea was back to her teasing self.

[She is right here, no idea what you mean.]

"Pfft, looks like we have to go in blind." Clara chuckled watching Shaman yell at the air as out of context she would seem pretty crazy.

"Well if KIRUYA would like to come out and tell us, it would be much appreciated." Elysia looked down the hallway and saw a pair of ears vanish, which showed that Kiruya was still around but was purposely not helping them.

"Well, it would be too easy if she just told us the answer." Silver liked the challenge as that was what he found the most enjoyable.

"True and if it was something she wasn't aware of then she would have most likely come forward to help." Shaman, remembering how Kiruya helped when they encountered the variant commander elf explained why she isn't coming out now.

"That makes sense, but I will say those elves were a lot easier than last time." Clara found it amazing how upgrading by one tier makes the battles that much easier.

"Well our attacks scale with our level, so it is expected the fights will become more evenly matched, since we are now closer to the elves' level." Shaman gave an explanation she wasn't 100% sure about, but it occurred to her that if it's like a video game then their strength should passively increase as they level.

"I wonder though, shouldn't it still be really hard since they are a whole tier higher?" Elysia didn't think too much about it, but it occurred to her that they always fight enemies of a higher tier rather than monsters at their own levels.

"Probably because it's just faster to level, no point in limiting ourselves if we can kill a tier 7. However, I am worried we might not be able to do that for much longer since the monsters will be getting way stronger at the higher tiers." Shaman thought of the future battles and couldn't imagine taking on a big group of tier 9 monsters. This thought also made her come to realise that the monsters in those tiers should be considerably less in numbers, but much stronger individually.

"Hope we don't have too much trouble when we get to the higher tiers, the main issue I see is getting a tier 10 core." Elysia wanting to get stronger as soon as possible hoped the opportunity would arise where they needed to kill a tier 10 monster.

"I hope so too, but we should get moving if we ever want to get to that point." Shaman looked at everyone's stats and saw they were all full, so it was time to move. Nodding their heads, they all did a few stretches and stood just outside the next room.

"Stick together until we figure out what this room is." Giving instructions, Shaman took the first step as the roots on the sword began to move.