God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.

Taking a step back, Cain savored a moment of respite to catch his breath.

The creatures of the cove they had encountered so far were quite diverse. In fact,XCain was shocked that a species like the {Blood Skyray} had come from here. A creature that polluted the world around them making it a nightmare other creatures to survive, it didn't make sense for this place to be as diverse as it was.

Perhaps there were pieces of the puzzle he hadn't quite grasped, but that was of little consequence right now.

What did matter, thought, was that this diversity was a huge problem for them.

Because of the incredible variation between these abhorrent beasts, both physically and magically, the methods of dealing with them, as well as exercising caution against tehoe abilities, varied greatly.

Some of them required one to be up and close to safely kill, while others could only be death with safely from a distance.

Thanks to this absolute fluidity was required for them as they dove into the slaughter.

Twisting his neck, he dodged a sharp spike that had been shot out of the undulating flesh of a creature he believes to be some twisted mutation of a sea urchin, some form of shellfish, and a snail.

It looked absolutely horrendous, and its stench up close was enough to knock out even the hardest of wills should they stay too long.

He parried another spike with his left hand and unholstered the gun strapped to his right side.

Pulling the trigger back, the bullet broke through layers of air, smashing and not the creature's hard carapace.

Pieces of shell and flesh flew all around, but that was not enough to kill the thing.

Cain frowned, but he didn't stop until he had emptied the entire cartridge of bullets into the things.

The muzzle of his gun had turned red, and most of the thing's shell had been reduced to dust alongside mangled, bloodied, and slimy flesh.

'It takes so much to kill even a single one.'

He looked around. The ground was littered with similar looking creatures.

They had been down here for an hour already, and he had already gained a level.

As one neared a Tier checkpoint like Level 100 or 200, gaining levels became more and more tedious.

Although he had gained only a Level, the others had probably gained about two or three each some perhaps even more.

The meaning behind this, was that they had not gotten even a single moment of respite since they got down here, constantly being attacked by these beasts.

As they left a trail of smoldering bodies behind, their frustration and exhaustion was beginning to mount, solely due to the difficulty of killing these things.

His expression turned bitter,

'Had I know, I would have made better preparations before coming down here.'

This was the price of arrogance. Although he could tell himself that he wasn't, his failure to prepare accordingly was the reason they were having such a hard time.

But it wasn't all that bad.

Despite the danger, none of them seemed to complain. Instead, they just fought viciously, cutting down the abhorrent things one by one as they walked in deeper.

Wiping the blood off her face with a rag, Ignis approached Cain. She took a look at him, then at the cold corpse of the thing Cain had just slayed.

With a sigh, she leaned over and thrust a hand into its body, then dragged out a shiny gem a second later. Then, the gem disappeared in her hands.

"We've made it far, but this place is too expansive. In fact, I'd say it is a whole other world down here. Clearing it out today, or in any time less than a year is probably not feasible." Continue reading stories on empire

Cain nodded in agreement,

"Then we'll just gain as many levels as possible while trying to kill as much of them as we can."

His eyes narrowed, "Most importantly, we have to find that thing."

He glanced around. They had just finished one battle, and the others were taking a moment to gather up what they could from the beasts before taking a brief rest.

Steve curiously poked at the dead bodies, trying to convince Floki to help him freeze a whole corpse as a sample to take back, while Susan healed those that had been injured in the most recent battle.

Quite frankly, although they had been fighting for so long, they didn't seem to affected.

He smiled lightly.

Ignis frowned, a contemplative look on her face,

"Should we just blow the entire place up?"

Cain shook his head, "That won't do..."

He paused for a moment before signalling Vincent over.

Vincent sighed and walked over to them. He wasn't as messy as the others who fought on the frontlines, but one look at him would tell that he wasn't having the best of days.

Without waiting for Cain to ask, he brought out a sheet of yellowish paper. Pulling out a magic lamp from his inventory, the paper of illuminated to revealed a rather convoluted combination of squiggly lines and circles.

"The cove was merely a front for a system of underground caverns, which we have now officially enteredd the first layer of."

He frowned as he continued, "Even with my skill, {Cartographer}, I can't be certain how deep and wide this network of caverns go. But I am certain it goes deeper than this. In fact, we have barely scratched the surface."

Cain nodded, 'Then clearing this place out is certainly not a job for a single day.'

The sound of the water flowing down the stream that cut the cave in two filled his ears.

"We should make a set destination. Once we reach there, we'll turn back."

Vincent nodded and pointed at a certain point on the map.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

From what Cain could see, if one of those lines represented the stream of water, then that place would be where it dipped again to form a waterfall just like it had earlier.

Vincent lightly tapped that point,

"If you want a checkpoint, then that's your spot. It's the furthest and deepest parts of the first layer of cavernous networks. Any further than that's and even I don't know where you'll end up."

Cain nodded. This was what they needed.

He turned around,

"Alright, rest time is over. Let's move."