Chapter 150: The Ghost of the Coffin

A scalpel flashed in the darkness, cutting through the swarming skeletons in a web of intersecting light. In the blink of an eye, the ferocious skeletons were instantly hacked into pieces, scattering across the ground. Vaelen held the scalpel in one hand while pressing down on his hat with the other, leaping backward to dodge enemies lunging at him from both sides. Pivoting nimbly, he was instantly followed by the cat-eared maid who pressed close behind him, swinging a massive, pitch-black mace with tremendous force. Accompanied by Delrine's motion, the whistling gale instantly dispersed into a towering wave that forcefully blasted the surrounding skeletons away.

"Thud, thud, thud—thud, thud, thud!"

On the other side, Aluca was far from idle. While frantically firing her laser rifle with one hand, she did not forget to pull a grenade from her waist and hurl it forward. Amidst a continuous chain of explosions and gunfire, the graveyard in front of Aluca was immediately torn apart by flying dirt and scattered bone fragments, resembling the aftermath of a mortar barrage.

However...

"Commander, do you have any good ideas?!"

Seeing a skull with its body blown to pieces flying toward her with its jaw wide open, Aluca shrieked as she unleashed a barrage of gunfire that completely pulverized it. Only then did she speak to Vaelen, who furrowed his brows in a somewhat troubled manner.

Among high-tier familiars, many possessed the ability to manipulate corpses, much like the ghouls from earlier. Of course, the corpses they controlled possessed no wisdom or intelligence of their own; an ordinary person armed with a stick could easily handle them as long as they ran fast enough. The problem, however... was that completely destroying them was no simple task.

With ordinary zombies, simply blowing up their heads would cause them to cease movement. Although the exact principle remained unclear, it was at least certain that a zombie's resurrection as a living corpse was connected to the stimulation of the brain by network energy. Yet these corpses and skeletons manipulated by familiars were inanimate objects to begin with. Blast their heads off, and they would still keep walking. Smash their bodies to pieces, and their jaws would still snap open and bite at you. Even severed arms could crawl forward on their own to seize an enemy's foot or neck at the first opportunity.

When dealing with such creatures, the best method was to smash them thoroughly into tiny fragments. That way, even if the remains continued to move under the influence of energy, the threat they posed would be drastically reduced.

Yet...

This truly was a headache-inducing trouble...

Vaelen gripped the scalpel in his hand, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the surroundings. For now, the best solution was naturally to find the familiar's hiding place and strike directly. By then, with the three of them joining forces, the familiar likely wouldn't have any spare energy left to keep manipulating these animated bones.

However... up until this moment, Vaelen had received no report from Kurona, indicating that she still hadn't located the familiar.

This couldn't really be blamed on Kurona. Although her [Mental Perception] had reached level five, effectively putting "everything under her control," familiars were inherently like cheaters. As pure agglomerations of energy, familiars possessed absolutely none of the characteristics of living beings. Therefore, as long as the familiar remained motionless, a mental-perception user like Kurona had no way of discovering its presence, and the same applied to Delrine. During the time she had followed Vaelen, Kurona had never once reported Delrine's movements to him; even when they operated separately, Delrine used the familiar-specific mental transmission to communicate with Vaelen, never relying on Kurona as a relay station.

Under such circumstances, if the familiar chose to stay put, Kurona would never be able to find it. And judging by the current situation... it clearly had no intention of moving.

Familiars of this kind were the most difficult to deal with.

A familiar's temperament could be bizarre and erratic, but their intelligence was classified just like their species. The lowest tier were like Jack-o'-Lanterns, possessing the intellect of a three-year-old child—curious about everything and crying for their mothers when struck. A tier higher were creatures like ghouls, who knew enough to shout battle cries like "I planted this tree, I own this road!" While a slight improvement over Jack-o'-Lanterns, they only advanced by a single age bracket.

Above them were beings like Delrine, whose intelligence equaled or even surpassed that of an adult. These familiars were the hardest to deal with. Devoid of the stubbornness and simplicity of lower familiars, they excelled at leveraging their own advantages in combat. Spotting danger and immediately fleeing to wage guerrilla warfare posed no problem for them; even more insidiously, they might deliberately lure the enemy deep into a trap before launching an ambush... much like the current situation.

"Delrine, we're falling back!"

"Understood, Master."

Hearing Vaelen's command, the cat-eared maid did not hesitate for a second. Raising her heavy mace high, she slammed it forcefully into the ground!

"Boom!!"

Accompanied by the mace's impact, everything within a fan-shaped radius of several hundred meters in front of Delrine was instantly blasted into the air. For a moment, clods of earth mixed with shattered skeletal remains rained down in a continuous clatter. Taking advantage of this opening, Vaelen grabbed Aluca and sprinted rapidly toward the exit.

Clearly, the enemy held the terrain advantage here, so they needed to change the battlefield... or so one would think!

"Boom!!"

Just as Vaelen, Delrine, and Aluca broke out of the skeletons' encirclement, the stone slab sealing the entrance of a nearby tomb suddenly flew off, spinning through the air directly toward the trio. Delrine, taking the lead, stepped forward without hesitation, thrusting her mace straight toward the incoming slab. With a deafening crash, the stone slab hurtling toward Vaelen and the others was shattered cleanly into two halves. Immediately afterward, the group watched as a massive shadow emerged from the burial chamber.

Upon laying eyes on the true form of this shadow, Aluca froze in shock.

"What on earth... is that?!"

It was no wonder Aluca was so astonished; the monster before her eyes was unimaginably hideous.

At first glance, it looked like the fused product of several human bodies, within which one could even spot upside-down or misaligned limbs. Amidst that bloated, colossal body, individual heads seemed as though they were still alive, constantly gaping open and emitting hoarse, piercing shrieks!

Then, the fleshy mass leaped forward, charging at Vaelen and the others like a rolling boulder!