Chapter 588 Hi Maude, Bye Maude [Bonus]
But before they could even think about wanting to reach the exit on the other side before it closed, the ground suddenly began quivering, and in a horrifying twist of fate, it began to collapse right at the centre of the circular clearing.
The ground split open along a circular seam, creating a gaping chasm that extended in both directions, severing the party into two groups.
Evan, Pride, Greed and the spirits were on one side, whilst Eliza was on the other with the S Rankers.
Just when the girl had thought they'd be separated and wanted to shout for them to jump over, a bull-like monster suddenly surged with aura, knocking away the person it was fighting and charging straight towards her.
She tried moving out of the way to avoid its charge but to her surprise, her body could not move.
'This…Kuro?!'
An expression of pure shock manifested on her face as she could not comprehend why Kuro's shadows had wrapped around her legs, but she quickly snapped back to reality and created a barrier to block the monster's charge.
The creature slammed into the barrier and broke it, much to her disbelief, before crashing into her body and sending her flying over the still-forming chasm.
Everything happened so fast that she could not even fully understand what was going on, and neither could the S rankers who saw her get knocked away.
The girl's confusion only furthered, when she didn't even feel the monster hitting her body, and the way she flew through the air felt more like she was pulled from behind than she was knocked over.
When she landed not on the floor, but in Evan's arms, she instantly understood that everything that just happened was well within the boy's plans.
The lack of monsters around them only seemed to confirm that.
"Evan…explain."
"To deceive your enemy, you must first deceive your ally. -Sun Tzu, The Art of War."
The boy's 'explanation' was met with a punch to his gut from his very annoyed girlfriend.
◇ ◇ ◇
Evan took quite a while to placate Eliza who was quite miffed at being left out of the loop on his decision.
It was only after she decided to put the matter aside that they carried on to the dungeon's next floor.
This one was filled with Grandmaster Demonic Hand members and Peak Grandmaster Monsters, the kind of place where they were not even going to fight anything.
Artemisia did say she was going to mess with the 'No Monster Zones' so the Demonic Hand would be attacked by monster waves, so the group blitzed past them without hesitation.
The race between the trio continued, and at this point, they were evenly matched, running through Demonic Hand platoons and leaving behind trails of blood that attracted monsters.
As they got closer to the end of the 99th floor, a mischievous expression appeared on Kayla's face as she turned around, performing the feet of running backwards as she called out to the other two.
[Hey.]
When they glanced at her with questioning gazes, she held up two fingers and made a peace sign, before turning around and accelerating.
**BOOMM!!
The lightning spirit left behind a sonic boom as she blitzed into the distance.
From the start, she had always been the fastest of the trio. She just lowered her speed so things could be a lot more 'fun'.
But now that they were so close to the goal, there was no point in doing that anymore.
She blitzed past the Demonic Hand members faster than they could even realise that something had passed by them.
Kayla reached Floor 100 first, with Evan and Greed trailing behind at even speeds.
[Big sis!]
[I know.]
Artemisa replied as she used Kayla as a conduit to exert her influence on Aidos subtly, making the monsters of the 99th floor go mad and opening the closed Boss Room doors that were right in front of the spirit.
The instant they opened, Kayla dashed inside, stopping right in the middle before turning around and fist-pumping.
[Haha! I won!!]
The people inside the Boss Room were all dumbfounded upon her sudden appearance, when the rest of the party dashed into the Boss Room at sonic speed, with the doors closing behind them.
[To celebrate, an Ark Flash!]
Kayla injected the skill activation into her words, creating multiple compressed balls of static energy and releasing condensed lightning beams that grounded down on the foreheads of the five Senior Members present.
The lightning came too fast for them to even react, piercing their skulls and blasting their brains to bits in one go.
Five corpses dropped to the ground a second later, all wearing the same dumbfounded expression.
[I'm so going to level up!]
It was then that she finally turned around to take in the sight of the Boss Room around her.
The room was spacious, if anything. In fact, Kayla felt that there was far too much space.
Its walls are lined with dark, glistening scales that seem to have grown out of the very stone itself, giving the room an eerie and otherworldly appearance.
In the centre, there was a raised circular platform, made intricately of carved stone, resembling an ancient altar.
She ignored the entities on that altar for now and turned around to look at the massive arched ceiling with sharp stalactites hanging menacingly overhead, and the embedded gemstones in the ceiling served as the room's source of light.
'Shiny.'
After admiring the other parts of the room, she then returned her focus to the altar in the middle, where a giant spherical cocoon about five metres wide in diameter stood.
There was an intricate spell formation with multiple four-ringed magic circles underneath it, all connected with strange tentacle-like things that pulsed with energy.
The cocoon was almost transparent, and within it, she could see a towering reptilian figure with gleaming red scales atop it. A rough estimate of its height put it at least two metres tall, and a spear even longer than that was floating in the cocoon, not too far from its hands.
Swirling around the creature's body was a vortex of elemental energy, crackling with power that emanated an oppressive pressure to the surroundings.
Beside this cocoon, and with her hands placed on the magic circle formation on the floor, was a hazel-eyed and chestnut-haired woman. Her finely chiselled facial features were marked by an expression of slight confusion, but even so, there was an obvious wariness mixed with traces of annoyance in her eyes.
She donned a combat body suit in sleek black, accented with silver detailing. A utility belt laden with multiple magic tools was wrapped around her waist, and two sections of a staff holstered at her hip for swift access.
Her eyes scanned the people who just suddenly appeared in the room, her expression darkening as she saw they were all faces that she recognized.
People she had been ordered to kill on sight.
They all seemed to be looking around at the Boss Room, however, one of them had his eyes locked onto her, and the moment she met eyes with him, he broke into a bright smile and waved.
"Hi, Maude."
The boy vanished from his position, reappearing less than a metre away from her with a sword coated in a reddish gold aura raised overhead.
Despite the fact that he had a smile that could make women swoon on his handsome face, the pressure he emanated was one that shook her down to her soul's core.
Synchronous with him swinging his blade down towards her neck, his lips parted to voice two words.
"Bye, Maude."
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