Chapter 488: The Sea "Irielle?" Azel muttered, and the woman looked up at him. She had green eyes that glowed like gems in the dim light of the Underworld. "Yes Master." She said while looking up, her voice was steady despite her kneeling position. "Do you have an order for me...? I will accomplish it as long as you don’t send me back." He approached her, his boots crunching on the black stone. He was wondering why she didn’t want to go back. "Why? Why don’t you want to go back...?" She bit her lip as she kept kneeling, her green eyes dropping to the ground. "I have nothing to fight for, my Master... Nothing remains of my world." "I see." He said as he placed a hand on her head. She looked at him, and strangely her tensed body calmed down immediately at the touch. A golden light poured across her body, emanating from his palm like water flowing downward. It didn’t affect her directly as her skin remained unchanged, but her armor and weapon began to glow before transforming completely. The dust covering the black armor burned away first, revealing the metal underneath. Then the metal itself began to shift and reshape. Plates that had been thick and heavy thinned out, becoming sleeker. The pauldrons shrank as well and the breastplate became more form-fitting while somehow looking more durable than before. They seemed to become stronger and tougher than ever. Her strong armor that had once weighed her down became light armor that was still as tough, if not tougher than before, and her special lance also became stronger. The black weapon’s shaft straightened, and the blade at the tip sharpened to a point that looked like it could pierce through reality itself. She looked up at her Master, her green eyes wide with wonder. "If you’re going to defend me, then you must do it with the proper equipment." Azel said, his voice matter-of-fact. Her eyes shone as she looked at him and bowed with her face against the ground, her forehead pressing into the black stone. "I understand Master! I will defend you to the best of my abilities!" She shouted out, her voice echoing slightly in the vast darkness. Azel sighed. Gwendolyn looked at her before sighing in relief as well. Sure the woman had breasts, but they simply couldn’t compare to the cow breasts she had. The ghost felt smug about that fact and made a mental note of it. "Good, now you can stand." She immediately stood up, rising gracefully to her full height. She was tall but not nearly as tall as him. Azel flicked a finger at her. Immediately her armor and weapon was dismissed, vanishing into particles of light that faded into nothing. It left her standing naked in the darkness of the Underworld. She blinked but didn’t cover up. After all, if her Master wanted to see her naked... then he could. It was his right as he had given her a new life. She stood there without shame or hesitation, waiting for his next command. In the next instant, she was thrown an oversized shirt, trousers and a cloak that covered her naked body. The fabric hit her in the face and she caught them reflexively. She looked at Azel, whose cheeks were a bit red. "Cover yourself up... and join us at the camp site." He said and then turned away, beginning to walk toward the fire that he had set. She looked at the shirt in her hands and then forced it on, pulling it over her head. The fabric was soft and warm. She did the same for the trousers, stepping into them one leg at a time. Thankfully they were expandable, so they expanded to fit her perfectly around the waist and hips. It was the length that was the issue. A great deal of the fabric pooled on the floor around her feet, dragging on the ground. She slowly tore the extra fabric off, ripping it with her bare hands. The material came apart easily. But somehow, it had made the trousers become shorts that ended just above her knees. Then she wore the cloak, pulling it around her shoulders before hiding the remnants of the trouser under a rock, she folded them neatly and tucked them away as she did not want her Master to know that she just wasted it. ... Azel sat down near the fire. Nobody asked him how he had done that summoning, and he liked that. They needed to focus on the major mission at hand which was meeting the King Of The Underworld within a month. Time was already slipping away. He opened the store with a mental command and began looking for any map of the Underworld. The interface appeared in his vision, showing thousands of items. He scrolled through quickly, filtering by category. Just as he found the item, a detailed cartographer’s map of the Underworld’s major regions, Irielle chose to join them. She arrived and sat down across from him, settling onto the black stone with her legs crossed. Azel handed her a bowl immediately she sat down. She took it and brought it to her nose, sniffing deeply. Her eyes widened as she sniffed even more, her nostrils flaring. The scent of garlic and tomato sauce filled her senses. Mira scrunched her nose watching her... The woman really did have bad eating manners. ’I’m most certainly not jealous because she looks more hotter than me...’ Mira told herself, gripping her own empty bowl a bit tighter. ’Not jealous at all.’ Soon enough, Irielle took the bowl in both hands and then drank the spaghetti down completely, meat and all. She tilted the bowl back and let everything pour into her mouth, chewing sometimes when particularly large chunks of meat went down. Sauce dripped down her chin but she didn’t care. She dropped the bowl with a satisfied sound and extended it to Azel, who had just bought the map and was examining it. "Thank you for the food Master!" She said with a pure smile, her green eyes bright with genuine gratitude. Azel took the bowl before dropping it into his inventory and looking around at the group. Rene, Mira, Irielle, and Gwendolyn floating nearby. Everyone was watching him. "So first of all... I want to say what the mission is." Azel said and took a deep breath. "The world is in danger and if we don’t hurry, everybody will die." Irielle’s smile died instantly. Her expression went cold and distant. It would be the same thing that happened to her own world... she couldn’t let that happen again. "What’s happening?" Mira asked as she looked at him, her silver eyes reflecting the firelight. "The Prince of the Underworld is dead." Azel said. There was no shock because none of them knew who the Prince was. They just stared at him waiting for more context. "A woman... the concubine of the prince has more or less killed him and that resulted in hell bleeding into Earth on the King Of The Underworld’s command." Azel said. Now there was shock from Mira. Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened slightly. "Is everyone...?" "As we speak, in certain parts of the world especially the Empire... Monsters are falling out of a crimson sky and killing everyone in sight so we have to put a stop to it." Azel said. "The death toll is probably already very high by now." "You said it’s the King of the Underworld that’s doing it right?" Mira asked, leaning forward. "If he’s the King here... doesn’t that mean he’s on the level of a god?" Mira wanted to confirm. After all, if they were facing against a god... how were they expected to win? She was strong, Rank 4 but gods were on a completely different level. "Yes." Azel confirmed with a nod. "We will be facing against a god..." The weight of that statement hung in the air. "Master, I’ll fight a god for you!" Irielle shouted out confidently as she pumped her fist up into the air. Mira and Gwendolyn looked at her weirdly. The woman had just been summoned and was already declaring she’d fight a god. Either she was insane or incredibly loyal. Azel gave her a smile. "Good... I have a plan in place." He said while turning to Rene. "You’ll be the ace up our sleeve. I’ll explain later. For now... let’s move quickly." Rene nodded seriously, his young face set with determination. With that, Azel put the fire out with a wave of his hand. It was like the world returned to normal again. The warmth vanished and they could even see the flecks of blue light in the distance now, those strange bioluminescent things that dotted the landscape. He returned the cooking utensils and everything, including the bowls to his inventory with quick mental commands. Everything vanished in flashes of light. He stood up and picked up Rene in his arms, holding the boy securely. "Before the sea is upon us." ... They ran through the darkness. At this point, the darkness really didn’t affect them anymore. Their eyes had adjusted and the landscape was visible enough to navigate. Irielle was holding her lance in one hand as they moved, the weapon gleaming faintly with its ethereal quality. They had faced a few stragglers during the run, monsters that had survived the earlier explosion. She completely obliterated them with her lance skills, skewering them before they could get close. She was a mana user however she wasn’t dependent on mana at all. Her physical strikes packed enough power to bend steel itself. Azel had watched her crush a monster’s skull with the butt of her lance and no mana involved. "What did you mean by before the sea is upon us... Master?" She asked as they continued running toward a tall jagged cliff in the distance. In the map he’d bought, it was known as the Ascending Cliff. There was a very huge gap in it before the next bit of land, but it was a shortcut to the castle and also it would help them avoid the "sea" as the map coined it. "I think I can answer that..." Mira said as they continued moving. "It happens once every week and every monster in this goddamn place moves like a sea. They hunt each other and anything else that they consider prey. We were caught in a sea the first time we got here and on the second sea, I maintained my position on a rocky hill though they tried toe at me regardless." "I see..." Irielle said, adjusting her grip on her lance. "So the third one can happen at any time?" "Well this is the start of the third week." Mira said as they were finally close enough to the base of the cliff. "So yes, it can start at any time though with how many Azel killed, I doubt they would—" The ground began shaking. It wasn’t just here but everywhere. The vibrations ran through the black stone beneath their feet and the blue lights vanished again, winking out like candles in the wind. Azel pursed his lips as he looked at the distance and then at the top of the jagged cliff towering above them. It had to be at least fifty meters high, maybe more. "Let’s go." He said. He pressed mana into his legs, the energy flooding through his muscles. Then he jumped, launching himself upward with explosive force. He almost reached the top of the cliff with that single leap but he hadn’t put enough mana into it. He grabbed the edge with one hand and pulled himself to the surface, placing Rene there safely then he leapt back down without hesitation, dropping through the air. Mira hadn’t even made it halfway up the cliff face. He fell, grabbed her mid-descent with one arm around her waist, and threw her upward with all his strength. She yelped in surprise as she flew through the air. She reached the top and landed in a roll, coming up immediately. She moved protectively in front of Rene while backing off from the edge of the cliff. "Irielle, Let’s go!" Azel shouted up at her. She nodded, preparing to jump. But just then there was the sound of several screams from the distance. From the darkness, a sea of monsters surged in their direction. There were hundreds of them and they were killing each other in the chaos, tearing into anything nearby, but at the same time some were focused on them. Irielle took a step forward on the ground and mana coiled around her muscles and into the weapon, visible as golden threads. Before his very eyes, the lance turned ethereal. It became translucent, like looking at something through water. She threw the spear forward. It shot through the air, completely vanishing from sight. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. Monsters began tearing apart to some invisible force. The lance carved a straight line through their forces, cutting through flesh and bone like they weren’t even there. Bodies were split in half, limbs were separated from torsos and black blood sprayed in arcs. The lance returned to her hand a second later, materializing from nothing. She grinned at the carnage. "Like what I did Mas..." There was a ghostly explosion that followed immediately. The lance’s special property activated. A massive detonation of ethereal energy wiped out everything in a twenty-meter radius from where the lance had traveled. It wiped out a lot of monsters from the sea. What the Lance throw hadn’t done, the explosion finished. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦 "—ter?" Without words, Azel grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Then he leapt up, his legs burning with channeled mana. He landed on the cliff directly this time, his boots hitting stone with a heavy thud. "You were really cool Irielle." He said, setting her down gently. The woman blushed, her cheeks turning pink. "I... thank you Master." "It’s time for me to be cool too..." He raised an arm up. Before their eyes, hundreds of runes lit up on the ground below. Where they had been running, runes in the shapes of footsteps glowed with blue light. They stretched back along their entire path, marking every step they’d taken. The patterns were intricate and beautiful. They began drawing ambient mana from the air, pulling it in like whirlpools. "When did you...?" Mira asked, staring at the display with wide eyes. "Oh. I did it since we began running, though I stopped setting them before we hit the base of the mountains." He said casually, like it was the simplest thing in the world. "This should be strong enough to at least eliminate a huge chunk of those annoying monsters." The runes continued to gather power. Azel then left the runes until they were swelling from the sheer intensity of the mana. The blue light turned white, then started flickering between colors. They were reaching critical mass. He exhaled slowly. "Blow!" BOOM!!!!! What followed was a massive explosion that lit up everything. Fire and force erupted from every single rune simultaneously, creating a chain reaction that turned the entire path into an inferno. It set the monsters aflame, their bodies burning with ethereal fire that consumed them completely. The screams were deafening.