Chapter 602 Rejoining the fray
After packing up their stuff back into Evan's inventory, the group then left the Boss Room and headed back to the 98th floor.
However, the journey was a bit strange, especially since Evan was very silent all through, not making any silly quips even though they encountered another bootleg Ghidorah.
That was enough for them to know something was up with the teenage hero, but when asked, it turned out that even he wasn't too sure of things.
The voice and the image he saw when he accidentally touched that tube-like wire in the Dungeon core room; Evan was still pondering on it a dozen minutes later.
The whole situation felt strange, and even though he had asked Artemisia multiple times about it, the woman did not seem to have any clues regarding what he was talking about.
He could almost imagine the look of confusion on her face.
Eventually, the boy had no choice but to put the matter aside and focus on the more important one, dealing with the Hidden Boss that was definitely gonna be outside.
A part of him didn't want to be present when it appeared, but knowing that its appearance would result in the loss of valuable combat power, Evan knew he had to be present to prevent that.
With those thoughts in his mind, he asked Artemisia to open the monster room where the other S rankers were trapped.
"Well, hello there!"
"?!"
"You!!"
"Why ar-?! Don't tell me you went to the boss room!
"Where the heck were you guys?!"
In response to the questions of the S ranker group, Evan, seated on a void step, tossed the corpse of the Lizard Lord Bhak in front of them and spoke.
"Killing this guy."
The sight of the mutilated corpse of what was clearly a Peak Grandmaster beast silenced them all. Their gazes alternated between Evan's party and the corpse on the ground, and when they remembered the fact that the dungeon had trembled slightly earlier, it dawned on them that the Anomalies had really killed the boss on their own.
"Now that we're done with this Giant Lizard, shall we get the fuck outta here?"
He let the corpse fall into his inventory before turning around, muttering something about there 'not being dungeon teleporters like there were in a game'.
Some of the S rankers who were still in disbelief wanted to go to the Boss Room to confirm that the Lizard Lord was indeed defeated, and Evan let them go on their own, taking the rest back to the surface with him.
While he moved, he looked at his status and noticed that he now had an 'S- level 1' stat, something that he recalled wasn't supposed to be possible till he became a grandmaster.
Pride who was beside him, noticed this and voiced her confusion.
"Our limits in our current state should be 'A+ Level 100'. Our base stats should not be able to go above that."
"Limits? Perhaps…"
The word 'limit' struck a chord with Eliza and she looked at Evan, pointing her hand to his new forearm guard as she spoke.
"Your skill, 'Limit Break' was active when you killed that Lizard, right? Perhaps, that limit of A+ was broken in that moment?"
Her conjecture had Evan and Pride looking at her in silence, and then at each other, before nodding.
"That's probably it, right?"
"Definitely it."
The two agreed with her idea, as it was the most plausible explanation for the current situation.
"Limit Break is Broken."
[No shit, Evan.]
The boy chuckled lightly when he heard Artemisia's voice, before suddenly kicking off the ground and zooming up to the dungeon entrance in the distance.
"Wow…just wow."
That was all that escaped Evan's lips as he emerged from the dungeon into utter chaos.
The buffer zone was now a stage for a display of the highest form of violence—a warzone where monsters clashed with Lacertilia's defenders.
Tens of thousands of creatures attacked indiscriminately, met with the resistance of soldiers, adventurers, mercenaries, mages, and knights.
Magic spells and aura techniques illuminated the sky, tearing through the earth with destructive force, and the air was thick with the stench of battle.
Not a moment passed when at least one body did not drop to the ground dead.
In one part of the tumultuous battlefield, a platoon of soldiers faced a Level 380 three-headed hydra. The monstrous creature towered over them, its heads snapping and hissing while releasing breaths of green flames and poison.
Through seamless cooperation, the soldiers skilfully manoeuvred around the hydra's attacks. Working as one, they exploited its blind spots, distracting it while others struck precise blows. With tactical precision and coordinated strikes, they eventually overcame the hydra, each head collapsing in a gruesome defeat.
But this scene of victory was not what could be seen everywhere.
On another front, a wyvern wreaked havoc, mercilessly slaughtering an entire party of B and A-rank adventurers.
With swift and brutal movements, the wyvern tore heads off with its jaws and cleaved bodies in two with its razor-sharp claws.
The poor party had been surrounded, overwhelmed by monsters on all sides, and just when they were barely handling that, the wyvern joined the fray.
In a moment of desperation, the A ranker mage summoned all of his magic power and summoned a giant spear of fire, bringing it down on the wyvern.
It pierced its back, bursting out from its chest along with its heart.
The wyvern, now fatally wounded, spasmed before collapsing to the ground and, the fiery explosion that followed incinerated everything within a 500-meter radius, leaving behind a scorched aftermath with charred, unrecognizable bodies.
The only survivor was the A ranker who was simply durable enough to withstand the explosion, but even he was not in the state for combat anymore.
He would have perished soon enough If the summoned golem from another mage had not swooped in and rescued him.
Evan felt like he was watching a scene cut right out of a monster movie, as he saw the giant golems fighting with giant Lizardmen like the ones Bhak had summoned during the Boss battle.
"Welp, you guys go report that WE defeated the Lizard Lord. While WE would join the fray and help clean up the monsters."
The boy placed a lot of emphasis on the 'WE' part, as he didn't want there to be any assumptions that the Anomalies had external help in defeating Bhak.
As much as he'd have liked to go to make the report himself, he had to begin searching for the Hidden Boss' target; quite a chore on a battlefield as vast as this.
The moment he spoke, he kicked off the ground and jumped into the air, kicking off consecutive void steps to maintain his altitude as he blitzed towards one of the giant Lizardmen.
Summoning the unforged right into his hands, he encased it in his golden aura and thrust it at the creature's head while activating a skill.
"Vortex."
The spiralling mass of aura shredded the monster's scales apart and did the same to its flesh and then the bone underneath; successfully deleting its head from existence.
He landed on the shoulder of the golem who was fighting it, looking right at the mage standing beside it and spoke.
"You're welcome."
Without further ado, he boosted forward, with enough force that the golem's body dipped to one side for a moment, moving on to the other giant Lizardman and landing on its head.
However, he did not attack this one, as someone else already had their sights on it.
A massive shadow was cast over the ground as a humanoid upper body construct of strange energy that made one feel the sudden urge to 'hold money' appeared, wielding a giant great sword which it pierced through the back of the Lizard man and stabbed into the three-headed hydra on the ground.
"You missed the wyvern."
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