Broadcasting Live From Inside An Eldritch Horror Game

Chapter 85: The Versatile Blood Magic. Part-1.

"So... do you have a plan?"

Although Zephyr could not fill the gap left behind by Layla with his current meager strength, he was not afraid to confront hardships.

Zephyr was now highly resistant to miasmic corruption due to the ’Obelisk,’ so unless absolutely necessary, he had no reason to retreat so easily.

"Kind of..."

Xinran frowned a bit as she replied in a calm voice,

"I think I know who must have been turned into the ’Vessel of Corrorosion’ by miasma..."

"If my guess is correct, we should be able to find the other party if we manage to reach the Royal Treasury located right beneath the Royal Palace..."

A look of helplessness and regret appeared in Xinran’s eyes, but it soon got replaced by determination and confidence!

’She’s already made up her mind to go to the royal palace despite the fact that it might bring her face to face with her past... Heh, she’s got some guts."

Xinran was already taking a risk by heading back to a place that was once deeply connected to her, so Zephyr had no reason to cower and back down either.

’The Royal Palace of such a massive nation must be quite a sight. I haven’t seen a palace before in my life; I wonder how much of it would still be intact after decades of corrosion...’

With various thoughts revolving in their heads, the two of them made their way to the main entrance node via the empty staff access corridor.

"So this is the entrance you were talking about... this is... a lift?"

Standing on a stone platform, Zephyr looked at the massive hole in the ground with a look of shock on his face.

After half an hour of walking, the corridor had opened up into a cylindrical empty space.

Looking up, Zephyr could see that the cylindrical open area had no ceiling, as the lift was likely broken and had fallen down into the deep darkness of this bottomless pit!

"This is one of the main entrance nodes from where the officers used to enter. In those times, they would use a lift to head downwards and access the entire area through various floors and levels."

"From the looks of it, we are at level 7 right now, which means we are at least 700 meters deep underground right now."

According to Xinran, this massive lift project was built using magic, years of precise engineering, and advanced planning!

This bottomless pit was created by pouring a tremendous amount of money into it!

"The lift broke several decades ago as a massive wyvern corrupted with miasma fell into the pit and smashed the lift into pieces, causing the entire structure to crash into the very bottom of this gigantic hole."

Hearing Xinran’s words, Zephyr had a feeling that this violent crash and the death of a wyvern likely had something to do with Xinran herself, but he didn’t bother asking about it.

"By the way, if we fly upwards through this giant hole, where will we end up?"

At that question, Xinran replied calmly,

"This hole and all the other similar access nodes are located in the outskirts of the city or farther away; we will not be able to enter the city if we just fly into the sky through here..."

"Flying straight into the city through the sky would be no different than suicide, as hundreds of thousands of unknown monsters will end up noticing you flying in the sky..."

"Why do you think the wyvern crashed here? During my first few expeditions I was curious like you and tried to fly up only to attract a wyvern swarm... I had to postpone my trip for a week back then due to that..."

A look of helplessness appeared on Xinran’s face, thinking about her reckless past self.

"I had to spend an entire week dealing with that wyvern swarm before I could retreat; it was an extremely annoying group of big lizards that kept pursuing me relentlessly..."

"Out of irritation, I slaughtered them all and the leader of that group ended up falling here..."

To Xinran, slaying wyverns and slaughtering entire monster tribes was not a big deal; she could even fight dragons, let alone a mere group of wyverns!

"By the way, we need to cross this hole and go to that corridor over there on the other side... let me cast the float spell on you."

"Using that corridor, we can head towards the sewers of the city."

Zephyr looked at the corridor located a few hundred meters up on the opposite side, and a sudden thought came to his mind.

"Wait... after observing the mana circulation and fluctuation patterns of those golems, I had a sudden realization... let me try something... catch me if I fall."

Without explaining much, Zephyr jumped into the bottomless pit with a calm expression on his face.

[Cloud Step Movement Art: First Form: Air Walk!]

*BOOM!!*

Using wind affinity and the cloud step skill in sync with the cloud step movement technique, Zephyr turned empty air into his foothold and rushed towards the corridor on the other side!

With just a single powerful kick, Zephyr launched himself forward like a rocket and easily managed to cross to the other side!

Seeing this, Xinran’s eyes widened in shock!

She flew over to Zephyr’s side and asked in a surprised tone,

"You managed to learn that movement art so fast!? It’s only been a day since you obtained it, and you have already managed to figure out its first form!?"

Xinran knew that Layla had placed a technique as a reward inside the trial area for the challenger.

Zephyr had completed the trial, so it was easy to guess that Zephyr had obtained the technique hidden inside.

But Xinran didn’t know which technique exactly Layla had placed inside the trial area; only when Zephyr used it in front of her right now did Xinran realize that he had obtained a movement art type technique!

"That unique mana fluctuation... that was ’Cloud Step Movement Art,’ wasn’t it?"

"To think Layla actually gave away one of her core skills so easily..."

Cloud Step Movement Art wasn’t of much use to mages like Xinran, as she could just cast the basic ’Float’ magic to deal with most situations that required flying.

And even without magic, Xinran was a vampire princess and had two powerful bat-like wings that could help her fly faster than a missile, so she had no need for this movement art.

But for martial artists and close-range weapon users like Layla, this technique was a ’God Tier Skill’!

Its first form alone was enough to grant the ability to walk on air to its users, completely eliminating the weakness of not being able to confront airborne enemies for the martial artists or other close-range weapon users!

Moreover, this was just the first form; the later forms were enough to bring an even stronger qualitative change to the user’s combat capabilities!

"Layla really poured her entire heart and soul into that trial, it seems. I once asked her to teach me that technique but she refused resolutely..."

"To think she would give it away to you so easily... and you would manage to learn it in less than a day... that’s quite impressive."

Xinran didn’t know that Zephyr was carrying a ’cheat code’ like existence, the ’System,’ inside of him and thus could easily upgrade or learn new skills without much trouble.

She misunderstood that Zephyr himself had powerful comprehension abilities to be able to learn such difficult skills in such a short time span.

"This is good; now I can rely on you even if flying monsters attack us... this way I can remain more low-key and avoid the-"

Before Xinran could even complete her sentence, a massive spear came flying straight towards her face and collided with her mana shield at an insanely fast speed!

*BOOOOOOM!!!!*

The entire tunnel shook from the sheer impact of that explosion, and a deafening sound wave spread in all directions!

The massive spear couldn’t break through Xinran’s powerful mana shield no matter what, and thus it shattered on impact, and its broken metal fragments flew out like bullets in every direction, causing tremendous damage!

Zephyr, who was standing nearby, ended up getting hit by those bullets, but thankfully his body was insanely sturdy and impenetrable, causing the metal fragments to bounce off him before falling onto the ground.

Ignoring the metal fragments hitting him, Zephyr turned his head toward the direction of the attack and realized that it came from so far away that his intuition couldn’t even react to it in time!

"Such range... Is this another Elite Golem?"

Hearing Zephyr’s question, Xinran shook her head.

"No, that’s not a golem... it’s something far worse than that..."

"The underground tunnels have become really unreliable nowadays... to think a rare creature like that would end up here..."

A look of doubt appeared on Xinran’s face as she muttered to herself,

"Is this all really because of the appearance of a new vessel or..."