Monarch Chapter 196 (Patreon)

Chapter 196

It took them a while to get through all the mud grapplers, though in the end, the creatures weren't particularly difficult to kill.

As Lyra had said, their greatest strength came from their ability to grab and suffocate their enemies rather than from their actual durability.

Once Rayne and the others understood how they fought, keeping their distance and cutting through the tendrils before they could reach anyone, the battle became much more manageable.

It also turned out that there was a core hidden beneath all that mud covering their bodies.

Once the core was cracked, the creature was more or less dead, and Rayne quickly realized that targeting it was far more efficient than simply hacking away at the mud.

Even their sheer quantity didn't bother the party for too long.

There had been dozens of them, but the mud grapplers weren't coordinated enough to overwhelm a group that knew what to expect.

Rayne dealt with the majority of the creatures while Lyra, Bran, and Andrew provided support, making sure nothing managed to sneak around them.

Nate, Kesh, Heins, and Jason were more or less useless throughout most of the battle, though Jason did eventually move forward to hunt down two of the creatures when he found an opening.

The others mostly remained at a distance, watching for any tendrils that might suddenly come their way.

Honestly, Rayne thought that was probably for the better.

There was no point in having them rush forward. If one of them got caught and dragged away, it would only create more work for everyone else.

They were experienced soldiers, and while none of them were particularly happy about standing on the sidelines, they at least understood that much.

Surviving a battle wasn't always about proving that they could fight. Sometimes it was about knowing when not to put themselves in danger.

By the time the last mud grappler collapsed, Rayne had gained two stats from the battle, one in Vitality and another in Arcane.

No skills appeared.

Rayne wasn't particularly disappointed.

He didn't really want a unique skill from a mud grappler anyway. He supposed something that allowed him to cover his body in mud could potentially be useful for sneaking around, especially in an environment like this, but the thought of actually using such a skill made him uncomfortable.

It would also be extremely disgusting.

Rayne looked at the remains of the creatures scattered throughout the passage and decided that some skills simply weren't worth having.

At least the battle had answered one of their earlier questions.

The dirty water that filled so much of the sewer system hadn't simply remained there because of some ancient drainage problem.

The mud grapplers appeared to be one of the main reasons.

Their bodies were constantly covered in mud and filthy water, and they seemed to spend most of their time moving through the submerged sections of the sewer.

With so many of them living throughout the tunnels, it wasn't difficult to understand how the water had remained dirty and flowing for who knew how many years.

Once they were gone, the party didn't waste much time.

They moved through the next section of the sewer, expecting to encounter another group of monsters at any moment, but instead found themselves facing an entirely different problem.

The path ahead was terrible.

Large portions of the sewer were completely submerged, with water reaching their knees in some places and rising even higher in others.

Boulders had fallen from the ceiling and blocked entire sections of the passage, while thick layers of mud had hardened around the edges of the tunnels.

In several places, the only way forward was to physically clear a narrow path through the debris.

It was slow and irritating work.

They had to pick apart the larger obstacles one by one, sometimes shifting stones and sometimes digging through the mud just enough to create space for a person to pass.

There were no monsters in this section, which was a relief, but the terrain itself was enough to slow them down considerably.

The tunnels also seemed to branch more and more as they continued.

Every so often, another passage would split away from the one they were following, disappearing into darkness. Some were narrow enough that Rayne doubted a lot of people could fit through them, while others were wide enough to accommodate an entire group.

The sheer scale of the sewer system was beginning to become difficult to comprehend.

No wonder the sewers had supposedly encompassed the whole Godless Ruins. The city itself was enormous, but even then, Rayne couldn't help feeling that there was something strange about the network beneath it.

It was too extensive, and too complicated.

There were far too many passages, and some of them seemed to have been constructed with purposes that went beyond simply carrying waste and water away from the city.

And then there were the puppets.

Rayne still hadn't forgotten the bronze puppet they had found earlier.

The existence of something like that down here certainly meant something.

Puppets were expensive and difficult to create, and the one they had discovered hadn't been some crude construct thrown together by an ordinary mage.

Perhaps if they explored the sewers further, they would eventually find out what they were actually used for.

Maybe they would even discover who had built them. But that wasn't their goal right now.

Their objective was the inner city.

As tempting as it was to investigate every strange passage and mystery they encountered, Rayne knew better than to lose sight of the reason they had come here in the first place.

The Lost Sanctum was somewhere beyond the inner walls, and every hour they spent wandering through unexplored tunnels was another hour they would waste.

So they stayed on the straight path.

For the next two hours, they continued deeper into the sewer system.

There were a few smaller battles along the way, though nothing particularly dangerous.

A handful of creatures emerged from the submerged sections, but none possessed the strength of the mire devourer's or the numbers of the mud grapplers. The party dealt with them quickly and continued onward.

Eventually, the tunnels began to change again.

The water became shallower. The debris became less frequent. And then Rayne saw something ahead.

The others noticed almost immediately and followed his gaze.

At the end of the passage stood a steel ladder.

It climbed upward through a circular opening in the ceiling, disappearing into darkness.

For a moment, nobody said anything.

They had spent hours walking through the filthy, cramped tunnels beneath the Godless Ruins, and now, finally, there was an obvious way out.

Kesh was the first to react. He let out a long sigh of relief as he stared at the ladder.

"Is this really it?" he asked, sounding almost suspicious. "It won't open up into a beast chamber, right?"

Rayne almost told him that it just might.

After all, there hadn't been a single week since arriving in the Godless Ruins where he hadn't somehow ended up in unexpected danger.

If there was one thing he had learned about this place, it was that the moment something seemed convenient, there was a good chance that it was about to become troublesome.

Still, there was no point in guessing. They had come this far, and if this really was a way out of the sewers, they needed to check it for themselves.

Rayne looked at the others before speaking. "I'll go up and check it first. You all come after me. [War Pulse] will tell me if there's any danger above."

Everyone nodded, and Rayne stepped toward the ladder, placing one hand around the first rusted bar.

The moment he put his weight on it, the metal creaked loudly enough to make him pause.

The sound wasn't particularly reassuring. Rust covered almost every part of it, and several sections looked thin enough that Rayne wouldn't have been surprised if they broke under too much pressure.

"We should probably climb one at a time," Rayne said, and nobody argued.

He grabbed the next bar and began climbing. The rusted metal groaned beneath his weight, but it held, so he continued upward, moving carefully and making sure that he didn't put too much pressure on any individual section.

The space above him was completely dark, but that wasn't a problem for Rayne.

His [Umbral Sight] allowed him to see through the darkness well enough to make out the ladder and the surrounding stone, so he simply kept climbing, expecting the ladder to end fairly quickly.

It didn't.

Five minutes passed, and Rayne looked down to see the others far below him, their figures barely visible in the darkness.

He looked upward again, only to find that there was still no sign of the ladder ending.

The distance was beginning to become strange. He had expected the exit to be somewhere relatively close to the surface, but the longer he climbed, the more he realised how wrong he was.

Just how deep were these sewers?

The thought crossed his mind as he continued climbing. His arms weren't particularly tired, but the repetitive movement was beginning to become irritating.

The ladder itself continued to creak whenever he shifted his weight. Still, it was holding, and that was enough for him to continue.

[War Pulse] remained active throughout, constantly searching the area above him, but nothing appeared.

There was no monster, no creature, and no presence that suggested someone was waiting for them.

That should have been reassuring, but Rayne found himself becoming more cautious because of it.

The absence of monsters didn't necessarily mean the absence of danger, especially in a place like the Godless Ruins where they had already encountered things that made little sense anywhere else.

Then, suddenly, [War Pulse] changed.

Rayne stopped climbing and remained completely still, one hand wrapped around the rusted bar.

Something had entered the range of his skill, but it wasn't a presence. At least, not in the way he normally understood one.

There was no heartbeat, no movement, and no physical body for him to sense. Instead, there was pressure.

A strange and overwhelming pressure seemed to exist somewhere ahead of him, filling the space above the ladder without coming from any particular direction.

For a moment, [War Pulse] seemed unable to properly interpret what he was sensing, and then a sudden jolt went through his mind.

Rayne clenched his teeth as the skill flickered.

The sensation disappeared for a brief moment before returning with even greater force.

It felt almost as though something had reached into the skill itself and disrupted it, something so strange that Rayne couldn't even properly understand what he was detecting.

[War Pulse] wasn't telling him that there was an enemy ahead. It wasn't even telling him that something was physically blocking the path.

Instead, it was giving him a much simpler message.

He shouldn't proceed.

Rayne had never experienced anything like it before. The pressure seemed to be telling him that whatever lay above was beyond what he could currently endure, and for several seconds he considered climbing back down and warning the others.

If his skill was reacting like this, there was probably a good reason.

But he had already climbed this far.

Rayne gritted his teeth and continued upward. Whatever was waiting above, he needed to at least see what it was.

He didn't have to fight it, and he didn't even have to leave the tunnel. He simply needed information, and turning around without knowing anything would only leave them with more questions.

The strange pressure remained as he climbed. His [War Pulse] continued struggling to function under it, but Rayne ignored the warning and kept moving.

Another minute passed before he finally saw something above him.

The ladder was ending.

Rayne narrowed his eyes as he climbed the final few steps and saw a circular metal lid directly above him.

An exit.

He reached the top and placed one hand against the underside of the lid, searching for some kind of mechanism, but there didn't appear to be one. He simply pushed against it.

Nothing happened.

Rayne pushed harder, and the metal shifted slightly. He pushed again, forcing the lid upward until a narrow gap opened above him.

The pressure hit him immediately.

Rayne's body stiffened as an invisible weight suddenly seemed to fall onto his shoulders.

His hand nearly slipped from the ladder as he struggled to keep his balance, and for a moment he thought he might fall.

He quickly pushed the lid back into place, and the pressure disappeared almost immediately.

Rayne breathed heavily as he looked down at the ladder.

Falling from this height wouldn't necessarily kill him, but it would certainly break a few bones, and a bad landing could do considerably worse.

There was no way he could simply climb out and walk around while being subjected to that pressure.

But he still needed to know where the opening led.

Rayne took a slow breath before pushing mana through his body. He had used mana to reinforce specific parts of himself countless times, but he had never really tried to use it in this particular way.

Guiding mana into his arms or legs was relatively easy because he could focus it on a single area. Covering his entire body was different.

He concentrated and tried to push the mana outward, guiding it toward his shoulders, chest, and upper back before attempting to spread it across his body.

The mana resisted at first, almost like trying to push water through a narrow opening.

Rayne forced himself to remain patient and continued guiding it until the mana slowly began spreading across his upper body.

It wasn't perfect.

There were gaps, and some areas had considerably more mana than others.

The covering was nothing like the smooth reinforcement he could create around his arms or legs, but it was there, and for now, that was enough.

Rayne placed his hand against the lid again and pushed it upward.

The pressure returned immediately.

His body became heavier, and his shoulders tightened as though an invisible force was trying to crush them inward.

Rayne gritted his teeth and pushed through it, feeling the mana surrounding his upper body tremble under the pressure.

It held, though barely, and Rayne lifted the lid higher.

The pressure intensified.

His shoulders began to hurt, his chest felt compressed, and even breathing became slightly more difficult.

Still, Rayne continued, moving his foot onto the final section of the ladder before raising his head through the opening.

Then he saw it.

A clear road stretched out around them, running through the ruins and disappearing into the distance.

It wasn't another underground chamber, nor was it some kind of monster nest. It was an actual road, and for the first time since entering the sewers, Rayne felt a faint sense of relief.

They had actually found a way out.

He wanted to look around properly and determine exactly what part he had emerged into.

Unfortunately, he couldn't keep looking for long. The pressure was becoming too much, and a sharp pain had begun spreading through his head.

Rayne immediately pulled his head back and decided that he needed to return below.

He shifted his weight and prepared to climb down, but the moment he did, the ladder made a worrying, cracking sound.

Rayne's expression changed.

One of the ladder's legs suddenly snapped beneath him, causing his body to drop.

He reacted immediately, reaching for another section of the ladder and managing to wrap his fingers around it.

For a brief moment, he managed to stop himself, but the rusted metal couldn't withstand his weight.

Another crack echoed through the tunnel.

The second section broke as well.

Rayne's eyes widened as he suddenly lost his grip, the remaining ladder disappearing beneath his hands.

The next second, his body dropped straight down into the darkness.