Monarch Chapter 188 (Patreon)

Chapter 188

In the end, the meeting with Prince Caelan went on for almost the entire night.

There was simply too much to discuss, from the possible entrances into the sewers to the route they would have to take for that, the dangers they might encounter underground, and everything else that could make reaching the area where the Lost Sanctum was supposedly located more difficult.

At one point in the middle of the discussion, Caelan had even ordered one of the cooks to prepare a midnight meal for everyone, and they continued talking while eating.

By the time they had finally gone through nearly every possibility they could think of, Rayne felt as though he had learned enough about the plan to know exactly what they were getting themselves into.

Though, there was only one question that kept coming back to him throughout the entire meeting.

What were they going to do if they reached the supposed location of the Lost Sanctum and discovered that there was nothing there? Rayne never asked it.

Doing so would only make it sound as though he doubted the prince's information, and judging from the way everyone else spoke about the matter, they had far too much faith in it for Rayne to be the one person constantly questioning it.

Besides, Prince Caelan did not seem like the sort of person who would put this much effort into an expedition without having reliable information to begin with.

There was no reason for Rayne to assume otherwise unless something gave him a reason to doubt it.

So, he simply trusted the information he had been given. If the sewers really existed, then at the very least it would prove that the prince had access to information that adventurers and explorers had somehow failed to uncover for centuries.

And once they managed to clear a path through them and reach the inner city, they wouldn't need to remain there indefinitely.

They would only spend a few hours each day searching for the sanctum before returning to the outer city, which meant that even if the inner city was as dangerous as they expected, they wouldn't be throwing themselves into it without a way back.

Also, being allowed to choose Prince Caelan's two retainers to command during the expedition was a big help. With that much strength gathered together, Rayne was fairly confident that things wouldn't go too badly.

If nothing else, he believed they would be able to keep themselves alive, especially with [War Pulse] constantly warning him whenever something nearby moved.

That was what he was betting on, at least.

Once the meeting was finally over, Rayne barely managed to sleep for two hours before he was forced to get up again.

By the time he had properly realized that the night was already over, the warband was on its way toward the ruins once more.

By this point, the guards stationed at the gates of Blackstone knew them well enough that the gates were already being opened before the warband even reached them.

Usually, that small convenience would have been something Rayne appreciated, but today he barely noticed it. There was a different atmosphere hanging over everyone as they entered the ruins, because all of them knew that the familiar routes they had spent weeks learning would soon be left behind.

Before they had even begun moving, Prince Caelan had already spoken with Captain Edran, and the captain had apparently agreed to move deeper.

He had gathered the soldiers together and given them a speech before they left, explaining that they would be moving deeper into the ruins and that everyone needed to remain alert.

He also made it clear that they would not go deeper than necessary and would retreat if the situation became too dangerous, but Rayne knew that such assurances could only do so much.

The safe routes they had grown accustomed to would not be the ones they walked today, and the unknown had a way of frightening freshbloods no matter how many times they were told to remain calm.

Even Rayne's own squad, which had improved considerably over the past few weeks and had begun to gain confidence in their abilities, looked noticeably more tense.

They kept their weapons close and paid far more attention to their surroundings than usual even if they weren't in the ruins.

Seeing that, Rayne spoke to them from time to time as they walked. “You all don't have to worry so much. With me leading you, you're probably the safest squad in this entire warband.”

A few of them visibly brightened at that, while others simply nodded, but Rayne could understand the hesitation of those who remained nervous.

Knowing that something was targeting them from a certain direction meant very little if they were unable to react before it attacked.

Confidence was useful, but it couldn't replace the ability to survive an actual encounter.

Still, Rayne was certain that they would improve the more they explored the unknown streets.

That had been true for every soldier who had survived long enough in the ruins.

The first few days were always the hardest because every shadow could hide a monster and every unfamiliar sound could mean death, but eventually people learned what to fear and what they could safely ignore.

With that thought in mind, Rayne simply continued leading them forward.

They entered the ruins and for a while, they followed a route that they had always walked over the past weeks, but after some time they turned away from it and began taking a completely different path.

The difference was obvious almost immediately.

The streets here were far more destroyed, with collapsed buildings blocking entire roads and enormous pieces of stone scattered across the ground.

In several places, the destruction was so severe that the warband couldn't even continue through the streets and had to move through the remains of buildings instead.

They climbed through broken walls, crossed rooms whose ceilings had long since collapsed, and occasionally had to squeeze through narrow openings between piles of rubble.

Even the vegetation seemed thicker in these areas, growing through cracks in stone and covering sections of the ruined structures.

The farther they went, the less familiar everything became.

At the same time, they began coming across corpses.

There were a lot of them, but thankfully, none belonged to humans. Instead, the streets were littered with the remains of different monsters, most of them half-eaten or torn apart.

This part of the ruins was filled with territorial beasts that claimed entire sections as their hunting grounds, but there were also several weaker species living among them, creatures that mostly survived by eating bugs and plants, but were prey for the stronger monsters.

They came across the corpses of black goblins, a mutated species of goblin that could only be found within the Godless Ruins.

Their bodies were smaller than those of the red or green ones but had dark, almost black skin and several noticeable mutations.

There were also cat-like monsters known as duskclaws, agile creatures that normally avoided larger predators, as well as burrowtails, strange underground-dwelling monsters that looked somewhat like oversized squirrels with long claws made for digging through the ground.

They even came across a few of those creatures while they were still alive, but the moment they noticed the enormous warband moving through the ruins, they immediately fled.

None of them seemed interested in getting anywhere near so many humans, and Rayne was glad they had some intelligence.

Still, the half-eaten corpses remained everywhere they went, sometimes lying in the middle of streets and sometimes scattered beside the remains of collapsed buildings.

They were also not able to avoid fighting altogether.

About two hours after entering the unknown paths, a number of large shadows suddenly dropped from the buildings around them.

Rayne sensed them with [War Pulse] a moment before they attacked, giving him just enough time to realize what was coming and shout out a warning. The creatures crashed down onto the warband from the surrounding buildings, immediately throwing themselves toward the soldiers with frightening speed.

They were yakaras—Huge, bipedal beasts with thick, burly bodies covered almost entirely in coarse brown fur.

Their arms were long and heavily muscled, ending in large hands with curved claws, while their legs were thick enough to make their entire bodies look as though they had been built for explosive movement.

Their heads were somewhat ape-like, with broad jaws and small eyes that seemed almost buried beneath their fur.

Their most dangerous characteristic, however, was the way they fought.

Yakaras loved to jump down on their prey from above, using their weight and momentum to close the distance before their targets could react.

They preferred getting their hands on them rather than simply attacking from a distance. They would grab soldiers, smash them into the ground or nearby walls, and then tear into them with their claws.

Others would simply throw themselves forward and ram soldiers with their legs, using their enormous strength to crush whatever stood in their path.

Fortunately, Rayne had warned the others just in time. Lyra immediately sent vines shooting upward, wrapping around several yakaras and holding them suspended in the air before they could reach the soldiers. The others that managed to break through were met by shields, spells, and blades.

Even then, the beasts were relentless.

Spells and arrows struck the restrained bodies, while spellswords rushed forward to meet the others rushing at them, but the yakaras continued struggling toward the soldiers as though they barely felt the attacks.

One of them managed to reach the defensive formation and grabbed a soldier before smashing him into the ground. Then, it slammed its leg down with enough force to crush the man's armor completely.

Captain Edran's blade immediately took the beast's head before it could attack anyone else, but the soldier was already dead.

Even Rayne's own squad had trouble dealing with them.

One yakara landed directly in the middle of their formation, forcing the soldiers to scatter before it could grab anyone. They managed to create enough space to escape, but the monster immediately turned and charged toward another group.

Rayne moved before it could reach them.

He blocked the yakara alongside Jason, while Sakar also came rushing forward from the back to aim at its neck. For a moment, they managed to hold it back, but then two more yakaras landed nearby.

The situation immediately became far more dangerous.

Rayne had no choice but to use [Weaver's Protection], spreading its threads across the area to shield his men while he turned his attention toward the other two beasts.

He abandoned [War Pulse] temporarily and unleashed [Death Strike], striking the yakaras with concentrated death mana before they could reach the soldiers.

It was the right decision in the moment, but Rayne couldn't help wondering afterward whether abandoning [War Pulse], even temporarily, could have made things worse.

Thankfully, there were no more yakaras jumping off buildings after that.

Once Rayne managed to injure some of the yakaras badly enough, his squad was able to deal with them properly.

They hacked away at the beasts whenever they got close and immediately put distance between themselves and the monsters whenever they had the chance.

The archers ended up doing the most work, constantly firing arrows into the yakaras’s wounds and weakening them before the soldiers moved in for the kill.

In the end, the warband only lost two people during the attack.

Several others were injured, but none of their wounds were serious enough that they couldn't recover after using a healing potion. Even so, the encounter had shaken everyone enough that Captain Edran decided they would not move any deeper that day.

They gathered the wounded, made sure everyone was accounted for, and began the journey back toward Blackstone.

The atmosphere within the warband was much the same as it had been on the first day they had returned from the ruins.

Everyone was quieter, and there were barely any conversations.

Still, they couldn't simply sit inside the city forever, especially when the purpose of the expedition was to move deeper into the Godless Ruins.

So, the next morning, they went back. And the morning after that.

For the next week, the warband continued exploring the same general area, slowly pushing farther into the ruins while becoming more familiar with the monsters that lived there.

There were more deaths, and even Rayne ended up losing one of his own men.

His name was Hakar.

He was a forsaken who rarely spoke and usually kept to himself, but he was reliable enough that Rayne had never needed to worry about him during battle

Unfortunately, he was killed during an encounter with a monster known as a gorehound, a small four-legged beast with short, dense fur and an unusually large throat.

The creatures could gather mana inside their bodies and release it as a concentrated beam through their throats, and the attack was devastating enough to tear through armor if someone failed to evade it.

That night, Rayne actually drank with the others in Hakar's honour.

He didn't know much about the man's life outside the squad, but he intended to help Hakar’s remaining family out financially.

In the end, Hakar had been his responsibility, and Rayne felt that was the least he could do for one of his men.

He didn't even get much time to mourn him, though.

The next morning, they were back in the ruins.

At least, with every run, they were making progress. The soldiers were getting better at dealing with the monsters in the area, while also learning which creatures were best avoided altogether.

They even made a discovery along the way.

One group of soldiers searching through an old building found a hidden basement containing dozens of swords and spears of various shapes and sizes.

They were hundreds of years old, yet many were still in surprisingly good condition because parts of their construction had used mana-reinforced metals.

Captain Edran gave some of the weapons to the soldiers who had discovered them, while the rest were going to be sold back to the army.

The discovery even excited Rayne. If something as valuable as that could still be found in an ordinary building, then there was no telling what might be waiting deeper within the ruins.

Unfortunately, nine days after they had begun moving deeper, Prince Caelan finally played his hand.

The time had come for Rayne and his party to move ahead on their own.

And as they stood before the beginning of the route that would eventually lead them toward the sewers, Rayne felt a sense of dread settle over him.

They have barely dealt with the monsters aboveground, and now, they are going underground.