"William, I have an idea, one that is a bit risky." Kraft looked away from the rocks blocking the road, drew a torch and handed it to William, "Don't rush to put down that stone, you'll be ready to use it right away." ”

"This is not a Faculty of Letters, you don't have to be so tactful, it's okay to remove the 'point'." William pressed the end of the fuel to the flame, lit the torch with the fire, and swept the feldspar in his hand.

It was too heavy for a one-handed grip to swing a few times, but they didn't have a chance to fight that thing for dozens or hundreds of rounds.

"The good news is that we don't have to dig through the rock formations by hand."

"How?"

"There's an expert in burrowing here, and I'm sure he won't skimp on a little help when the right situation is right." The sword was drawn from its sheath, and the silver light flowed around the unknown stubborn trace, which should not be human blood.

"First of all, monsters that like to coat themselves with human faces are everywhere, and the kind of sound they make has something to do with the appearance of the things that build these caves."

"In a way, it's pretty precise. I don't really understand how it works, but it doesn't prevent you from using it. Just passing through this place can easily help us turn these stones into pieces. ”

"So how can you guarantee that we don't fall apart?" The plan sounded pretty simple and crude, and William had no doubt that the rocks were no different from crispy brown bread in front of the thing.

"We can go to the next floor and come up again when it's done with this little favor."

"You said it takes time and the right environment." William pointed out the problem in a timely manner, and the timing that Kraft needed was quite clever.

Let's say it's a stupid bull, and if you want it to arch over the low wall behind it, you have to get it in the right place, and it's not too early or too late. Standing in front of the obstacle and waiting for it to come a moment before it arrives, this trick is likely to play itself into it.

"And you can't expect those faces to cooperate, why should they help you?"

"It's called risk." "Fortunately, I have an excellent way of persuasion that works even when the other person doesn't understand Norse. ”

"I guess you're not talking about persuasion."

"Broadly speaking, it's all about letting the other person do what we want, but not necessarily through language skills."

There is some truth, but William still feels that it is not very reliable, causing damage to them and retreating after dozens of rounds of fierce combat are completely two different concepts, "How exactly?" ”

……

[First of all, take the initiative to look for them]

It wasn't difficult, you didn't have to go far down the cavern, and at the depths where the cracks were fading, you could hear the sound of the hard crust crashing against the rock.

"Going both ways?"

The rhythm of the drums, the percussion rises from the bottomless darkness, and the peeled sharp objects support the body, perhaps the worm can hold this number of limbs.

Like a winter nightmare, the sound of ice and rain knocking on the tiles is between the virtual and the real, sounding in and out of the dream, the cold and the insects attracted by the body temperature burrow into the clothes, and the skin is itchy and uncomfortable. You gaze at the round opening, like an open door, inviting something to come.

And so it may have been, as promised, the drumbeat of the carapace and the rock rising, approaching, staggering at the climax, and stopping in front of the aperture one after another.

White peeked out of the darkness, a clean, old local face that had never been seen before, free of dust and skin pigment, and saggy. It is like an old cloth that has been washed and decolored repeatedly, barely stretched on an unsized wooden frame, and basically loses its human shape.

But on this face, Kraft still found the match in his memory, which had similar characteristics to the boy who was fetching water alone, but added traces of maturity and fatigue for more than ten years.

Next to it was a foreigner face, a burn scar from the left jaw to the corner of the eye, completely destroying the little bookish breath. Some kind of liquid is splashed and cauterized and corroded, and the mishandled contracture healing pulls the eyebrows and nose down to the left, and no matter how you adjust it, it only reveals a more horrible deformed smile.

[Then, don't wait for them to make the first move]

Kraft twisted William's back meat, and the tingling, tenderness and pain mixed with pain made him mentally prepared to shake off the effects and lift the long stone and slam it.

"Hell,!"

The stone embedded with green crystals is picked up by a thick arm, and the natural mace fits the essence of the battle. It may not be that easy to use, but it cannot be denied that its lethality is directly proportional to its weight.

The darkness behind the face moved, and it seemed to be prepared, a sharp shadow precipitated from the deep black background, and the invisible darkness turned into a tangible, lurking behind the face's ears into a tuft of inconspicuous existence.

It excels at this, the face is the part that induces and attracts attention, and is a trick to block the way in front of the ruthless moves.

The sharp, matte arthropods catapulted out and hooked into William's eyeballs, and it was not easy for those who were in a state of excitement to notice it, still wondering how the shadow could move on its own.

A sword tip interspersed between the two, intercepting the way, and the attack that would have pierced the back wall of the orbital bone and pierced through the frontal lobe before William swung the feldspar hit the spine of the sword, and the steel intersected with the chitin.

Sharp barbs scrape across the metal surface, and the harsh noise permeates the burning consciousness, making people feel the root of the tooth decay and sour.

But one of the two weapons has been castrated, and it only needs to be postponed by inertia. The other was in the hands of an experienced man, and after interception, he pulled away, slashed horizontally, and slashed at the spikes that poked at the lower half of his body from his feet, adding a gap to it.

At the same time, anger from the captain descended on the particularly abominable face of chemical burns.

The effect of the large blunt object was extraordinary, and the support behind the wide flat skin shattered and collapsed in response, and the aftermath of the sweep knocked back the local face next to it and fell back into the darkness.

The sword poked out again in time, picking off the counterattack that was already approaching William's flank.

"How did you see that?" Cold sweat dripped, William didn't expect to walk on the line of life and death twice with just a swing of the stick, and Kraft's side didn't even have half a side eye, the ghostly blade seemed to have eyes, and he could catch up with the attack of the stabbing sword in the dark with one hand.

"I don't have to look at it." The sword-wielder handed a sword into the air, his dilated pupils out of focus in the blurred light and shadow, and his moves were gratuitous.

In an instant, three faces emerge in parallel, and they collide with the steel blade that arrived early, and the timing is cleverly like a perfectly coordinated stage play, and the villain eats the protagonist's predetermined movements with precision, and the face is split in two, peeling off from the porous nest-like convex surface.

The small arthropods that quickly sank into the dark cavities moved and could be seen in the carved sword marks, small knobs shaped like hooks, structures that controlled a stiff smile instead of facial muscles.

The sight of a dense phobia gouging out his eyes on the spot made his disgust with things in the dark even higher, and he raised the feldsl and swung it, and it fell short on the spot.

Kraft reversed course and helped fill the gap with precise swordsmanship, knocking down the arthropod and breaking another face by the way.

Out of the realm of swordsmanship, it is purely an unreasonable prophecy, clarifying the darkness and obscuration, and the action precedes the eye. There is something incomprehensible that indicates this weapon.

"Look at it and shoot again, don't make a mess!" Taking time out to criticize teammates is a skilled skill of otherworldly souls, and Kraft's short voice is infused with elements such as anger and instructions, and the communication is very well placed.

His current situation is not as easy as it seems. Within the radiation range of spiritual senses, the tip of the iceberg spied is only enough to make a simple prediction.

Outside of the light, something was constantly changing, and some kind of interference prevented its outline from being clearly visible, except that there were multiple protrusions piled up in front of them, like a moving skull.

Some of the surfaces are covered with a thin layer, and there are at least a dozen of them, and compared with the first time, the difference in size in the population is far greater than imagined. They take turns with different faces, trying to find a familiar face with them.

Arthropods float around the amorphous body, as if they were really formed from the solidified darkness, sprouting like sprouts, showing dynamic growth.

The most tricky part was that the arthropods had a tendency to converge in this direction, and at first he only had to deal with two or three, and then dragged it on, and then he had three heads and six arms, and he would hate it today.

But fortunately, what Kraft needs is not to fight for life and death.

"William, right front!" Seizing the opportunity to move forward with a few more faces, Kraft threw aside his torch and slashed an arthropher with his sword in both hands, commanding William as it curled back in pain.

The feldspar slammed into the invisible, creating gaps between the faces. The carapace protection of the flexible parts was limited, and the blade of the sword went straight through, bypassing the honeycomb protrusions and inserting into the body, submerging halfway through.

The darkness of the growing faces and arthropods trembled, and after a moment of brewing, a huge horn erupted, and the arthropods that were about to retreat waved wildly.

Kraft tried to draw his sword for defense, but some of the tightened tissues, along with the carapace, delayed the process.

The correct choice should be to let go immediately and lose the sword, but this option has not been rehearsed in his mind, and his feelings for the weapon that has been with him for many years do not allow him to come up with such a decision in a short period of time.

At the first moment, he reflexively kicked out a kick and, in accordance with his training experience in fighting normal humans or beasts, used his leg to disarm the obstruction, kick away the seriously injured or dead target, and retrieve the weapon.

With one foot off the ground and reason taking over the high ground again, Kraft reacted that he was at this moment, influenced by emotion and conditioning, and made an irreproachable but very serious mistake - his opponent was not a normal creature, and no one knew how much risk it would take.

The sound of the horn resounded through the space, and the vibrations followed. William saw the mutilated arthropods scratching and cutting frantically in the raging shadows, the pale and flattened faces contorting synchronously into a shrunken, hideous inhuman form, and Kraft drew his sword from the darkness and hurried back.

(End of chapter)