Chapter 80: .Underwater Fright (Part 1)

The invincible behemoths chased after them, and the sound of wave-like rumbling and sliding shook everyone’s eardrums, almost occupying all their senses, and stimulating them to move forward. They dare not stay here for a while. Out of the underground maze.
Eamon swung his sword to break through several layers of passages, and from time to time tossed spices to interfere with the smell of the monster. This method worked a little at first, but as the number of times increased, because the order could not be fulfilled, the groundworms were tortured almost madly by nature, no longer paying attention to the annoying irritating smell, just following their footsteps. Even learn to copy from four loaves, to besieged them heavily.
The indestructible behemoth gave Rhea a headache, the olfactory attack was no longer effective, and the divine power arrow could not pierce their blue-gray scales. Seeing the situation is getting more and more critical, what else can be done? She was immersed in her thoughts, and the little doctor beside her suddenly whispered: "Sister Riya, do you remember the cave channel? There must be a dark river underground. If we can find it, we can use the power of ice to flow down. And down!"
Underground river? This is a way, but the maze passage in front of them is not known how deep it is, and they don't even know where they are. Where can they find a dark river? Rhea remained silent, pulling him tighter, and was about to ask the swordsman who opened the road ahead, when the the other side suddenly shouted in a hurry.
"I have a way!" She raised her small face, her nervous expression couldn't hide her excitement, "I'm carrying a map mapping board. It shows the distribution of water systems near the fortress. Let me see..."
She dug into the cloak, and finally reached the alloy plate, and opened it with the light from the glasses. It was covered with dense colored lines and engineering cipher texts, and ordinary people would feel dizzy even at the first glance.
But the female craftsman is obviously too familiar. After a few glances, she found something, and she beamed her brows: "Found it! There is a big river in the southeast, um, probably there!" With the compass that comes with the drawing board and In the mapping records made when entering the fortress, she slightly discerned the direction, and when she reached out her hand, the Great Swordsman immediately changed direction, cutting through the walls all the way to the girl's clear prompt, and leading the team straight to the southeast.
In the tense chase, fatigue gradually accumulates, especially in the dark swamp that suppresses the divine power, this irreversible process becomes more and more obvious. Although Aimon's huge sword glowed with red light was sharp and undiminished, cutting gold and breaking stones was effortless, but Rhea still clearly felt that the team's speed was slowing down. As the roar gradually sounded behind her, she touched the Sacred Ice Sword on her waist, and was about to step forward to the helper, suddenly smelling a little damp smell in the air, and she refreshed.
"Not far away!" She whispered to remind her companions, and pulled the two teenagers tighter, for fear of any accident at this last moment.
When the team smashed the last rock barrier and came to a wide cave, the music-like flowing water in the distance was clearly audible, and everyone was relieved, but unexpected changes would suddenly occur. A few larvae less than half the size of ordinary ground-growing dragons suddenly descended from the sky without warning, rotating their bodies and thrusting straight towards the crowd. Fortunately, Rhea listened to the sound of the wind and took the teenagers to take a step backward, and luckily avoided. This fatal sneak attack.
When the monster missed a hit, it burrowed into the ground, and its sharp head kept hitting the ground, making wide or narrow gaps, forcing everyone to jump forward like a dance. The cave was dotted with fluorescent moss. With this light, they quickly realized that the upper and lower rock layers were covered with large and small cavities, just like broken giant hornet's nests.
Could it be that this is actually the Lair of the Ground Dragon! ? Everyone cried secretly in their hearts, and even seized the time, and went straight to the direction where the sound of running water came from. But after all these half a day, everyone is close to exhaustion, and it is inevitable that someone will make a mistake when tired.
The little doctor was holding the medicine box, and he had to stretch his nerves to guard against sudden attacks under his feet, and his energy was stretched out. The closer to the water source, the more slippery the uneven surface, as if it was covered with mucus, he accidentally didn't stop under his feet, and fell into the cracked hole beside him with a chuckle.
Fortunately, Rhea clenched his hand tightly. She twisted her waist and was about to lift him up. Unexpectedly, her feet trembled again. Two monsters flicked from the left and right holes, smashing the narrow body into pieces. . The scaly body of the ground-falling dragon gleaming slantingly inserted from both sides of the gap, entwining almost filling the entire field of vision, and the gravel surface, along with the three people in astonishment, fell straight toward the hole. Rhea grabbed her companion with both hands, unable to display her supernatural power. For an instant, she threw the girl up without even thinking about it, just to fly out of the monster circle from the only remaining vacancy.
"Take her first!" She looked at the pair of sharp drills that came on her head, and yelled as hard as she could. She hugged the young doctor who was still in shock, and gave her foot to the side of the rock wall. Under the action of the recoil, the two figures accelerated towards the bottomless abyss, and the blue light flashed immediately, and the white ice crystals quickly wrapped them in layers. In the blink of an eye, they escaped from the monster's attack range and sank into the darkness without a trace.
"Rhea!" Gloria flew upside down in the air, looking at the hole filled with the monster's body, shaking her whole body with shock, her eyes distraught with misery. But before she yelled the second sentence, she was caught in the arm and taken away by Eamon who turned around and leaped.
The pursuers followed and followed with rumbling steps, and the cave was quiet as before. Only the gurgling sound of water led to the only place to survive.
Rhea and Yuno were wrapped in a thick layer of ice, still in a state of weightlessness, falling continuously. She tried several times to make the ice block stretch and bond to the rock wall, but due to the excessive acceleration, the ice belt would be broken every time she released it, and she could not succeed. She didn't know where this huge tortuous crypt would lead. The only thing she was fortunate was that she had never encountered that terrifying behemoth again, otherwise she would be really powerless to fight.
After a few undulating landslides in the cave tunnel, it gradually tilted to the horizontal direction. Rhea took the opportunity to increase her supernatural power. After breaking the suction cup-like ice belt several times, the huge ice hockey finally slowly stopped, and finally leaned against a stalagmite. Jagged depressions.
"...Are you okay?" The shock was a little calm, Rhea waved away the supernatural ice crystals, helped the little doctor with stiff hands and feet to sit on the ground, and gently helped him move his limbs.
"Also... still able to hold it, no problem..." Yuno only felt that the sky was still spinning before his eyes, but in order to prevent his companions from worrying, he barely stabilized his swaying body and took a few breaths against the stalagmite pillar. The resounding buzz in the middle finally gradually subsided.
Seeing the trembling pale little face, Rhea knew that his mouth was stiff, but he didn't say anything. After putting away the longbow, he took out the portable lamp from the cloak and checked the situation at the bottom of the cave.
The dim light illuminates the damp cave that no one has ever reached. There is no black fog everywhere in the swamp, but no fluorescent plants survive. There are strange dead stalactites everywhere, and the surface of the uneven stone looks like One by one, the grotesque faces and the evil appearances are arranged randomly, which makes people feel chills.
She originally thought that this would be a deeper ground-growing dragon's lair. After scanning the rock wall nervously, she didn't find a hole, which really made her breathe a sigh of relief. The air still smelled of dampness, and she faintly heard the sound of water, louder than the upper level, and she was happy again.
"Let's find the water first. It should be not far away." She bent down and helped her companion involuntarily, listening to the sound of the water, pressing her footsteps and proceeding cautiously.
The closer you were to the water source, the sound of the water slowly turned from clear to deep, and finally roared like thunder. In this gradual urging, the two involuntarily speeded up their pace. There was no passage at the end of the cave. In front of the cliff was a snow-white waterfall, rushing straight down to the bottom, and the sound of bulging water mixed with thick splashing clouds swept past. Only a refreshing chill remained behind the body.
"This underground... there will be a waterfall?" Yuno raised his head blankly, the strange landscape in front of him did not bring him the slightest joy, but there was a kind of cold in a dream.
Rhea couldn't help being surprised, she took a few careful glances from the edge of the cliff, and there was no light at all in the cold mist. She didn't dare to hold it big, took out a flash from her pocket, pulled out the insurance and threw it downward. The explosion of the bomb was concealed by the sound of the current. As the fog rose, even the dazzling white light was much dim, but she probably saw the tumbling pool under the waterfall, which made her feel relieved instantly.
"I'm going to wrong you again." The female archer bit her lower lip to close the portable light, and clinging to Yuno who had not yet reacted, she flew out of the cliff with her feet. The heavy ice layer condensed next to him again, the hockey puck shining with blue light fell into a loud bang in the blink of an eye, drifted back and forth along the rushing water, and then crashed into a deep pool and hit ping-pong on the rock walls on both sides of the narrow river.
The little doctor closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. After a short period of weightlessness, there was another rolling ups and downs. Numerous golden stars mixed with bronze bells flew around in his brain and stirred into a mess of soup. It wasn't until the ice hockey shield finally calmed down and moved up and down like a fish float in the water that he managed to swallow the heart that mentioned his throat and the urge to retching into his abdomen, trembled his eyelashes, and shook his golden pupils. Long vision.
"Hold the light..." Rhea handed the fluorite lamp to Yuno, holding the ice hockey in both hands, and the ice cover extended outward with the blue light, bending into a willow-leaf boat. She scattered the ice layer above her head again, waved a simple ice paddle, lightly tapped the reef exposed from time to time around her, and grasped the direction of the boat.
The water in the underground river was extremely cold and bitter. Although standing on the ice boat and blowing the cold wind mixed with mist was very uncomfortable, the ice layer melted slowly due to the low temperature, which saved some extra effort. The monstrous waves have slowed down here, and the river surface becomes wider further forward. Layers of rock pillars screen the inferior torrents to be temperless and can only flow slowly. The waves on the water surface gradually subsided, and the cliffs on both sides stood tall, and there was only a little light on the ice boat in the darkness, shining lonely.
"This dark river... is quite deep, I don't know where it came from." Yuno leaned out with the lamp, and took a photo outside the bow of the boat. It was dark under the soothing flowing water. Bottomed out.
"Be careful, don't fall into the water." Rhea stood at the stern of the boat and slowly shook the ice paddle, teasing with a relaxed expression, leaving the fatal crisis, the two finally relaxed and began to chat.
"I don't know how Leah and the others are doing... But with Mr. J here, he knows how to deal with those monsters, he should be fine?" It was chilly on the ice boat, and the little doctor tightened his cloak against the side of the boat, rubbing With his almost freezing hand, he muttered to his companion.
"Seeing that the water is stable around here, they should have reached the end of the dark river. If they move fast enough, they should almost reach the waterfall." Rhea was also very worried about the safety of the lost partners, but they were already out of the water. Far away, as long as you can find the water flowing down the river, you will be able to get rid of the entanglement of the monsters smoothly...
"Speaking of... the guy who claims to be Faceless has created so many horrible monsters, what does he want to do?" Yuno thought of the weird man in the fortress cave again, still at a loss for his true purpose.
"Maybe I want to find a way to leave the cave, anyway, we can't speculate more now... or after returning to the city to report, wait for the guild's decision." Rhea didn't want to make a rash decision about that strange man's purpose. , Watching the surrounding silence, turned the oars away, and sat in meditation.
"I always think that guy... is too weird..." The little doctor absent-mindedly held up the light, staring at the river in a daze, and suddenly felt that a group of black shadows swayed back and forth like a spring in his vision, and he was shocked. Shrinked, "Sister Rhea, there seems to be something underwater!"
The female archer immediately opened her eyes, and the catapult pointed out countless sharp needle-like icy thorns, slammed into the water in front of him, ripples and ripples, and the water surface shook for a while and was as quiet as before, without the slightest abnormality.
"Did you see the shape? How big?" She stood next to Yuno and looked at the bottom of the water. There was only a small circle of gray lights illuminated by fluorescent light in the dark stream, and nothing was seen any further.
"I saw a dark mass of things swaying back and forth over there. The speed was very fast, but I didn't see any shape." The little doctor stretched out his hand to the water surface and gestured, his eyes rounded and he wanted to find another trace, but it was a pity. No matter how hard he tried, there was no gain.
"Maybe it is the native fish of the underground river..." Rhea said this, but did not relax her vigilance, quietly drew her longbow and looked around, but was interrupted by the soft voice of her companion.
"Look ahead!" Yuno held the lamp and compared it forward. Not far in front of the ice ship, his vision suddenly became wide and boundless, and the dark river seemed to slowly merge into a huge underground lake.
"Unexpectedly, there will be such a big..." Unexpectedly, the water system under the fortress would be so complicated, Riya sighed in amazement, but the sudden change appeared before he finished speaking.
As soon as the boat reached the entrance of the ice lake, a black shadow half a person tall suddenly jumped out of the water not far away, and pounced towards the two with a strong smell. Rhea caught its trajectory in an instant, waved a sharp icy spike, but after hitting the black shadow, it only shook slightly, and the speed did not slow down at all. The flat figure quickly entered the white light circle, and the two could clearly see a large curved mouth with jagged fangs on the front end, as well as the semicircular scales covering the whole body like graffiti with golden markings in the gray—this It is a huge strange fish.
"Back!" She didn't dare to take it lightly, her left hand was holding a longbow to protect Yuno, and the blue light flashed with her right hand to transform a half-meter-long thick popsicle, and she slapped it to the side of the strange fish's head. After a bang, the popsicles broke apart, and the strange fish was beaten by her and flew far away without any resistance. It fell into the water and swirled a few times before disappearing.
"Be careful, there can never be only one fish..." As soon as she finished her words, the lake in front of her was like boiling waves, and countless gray long fins protruded out of the water, like a giant net, towards this lonely The two in the boat rushed over.
Rhea tried to shoot a few arrows at the school of fish, but maybe because of the survival in this extremely cold lake, the strange fish is extremely resistant to the power of ice, and the long and thin ice arrows are hard to pierce them. The golden armor on the contrary caused the fish school to become more frantic.
"Hold me tight!" Seeing that the long-range attack couldn't work, she didn't want to sit still, and quickly closed the longbow, and released countless icy flakes of different widths on the surface of the water while waving. Holding the little physician in one hand, she pulled out the holy sword Aisalinger with the other, jumped out of the boat, and floated across the lake with the support of the ice floes, surrounded by countless coveted fishy mouths.