Chapter 460 - Tamers War - After Storm
Hagen and what remained of the group continued the mission despite devastating losses.
Bloodwyn had sent a few warriors back with the bodies of the fallen and the most gravely wounded. Only fifteen soldiers remained who could still advance toward the objective. They were wounded and in a pathetic state compared to the force they had begun with, but Hagen maintained his fixed determination.
They pressed forward because turning back was not allowed and doing so would also make those losses meaningless.
He still felt wounds that abyssal power somehow couldn’t heal easily. The marks left by his encounter with the underground creature pulsed with constant pain, as if something in the wounds resisted corrupt regeneration.
The sensation was deeply unsettling... his enhanced healing had always been one of the primary benefits of abyssal corruption, but these injuries seemed to exist at levels beyond what his enhanced regeneration could address.
Still, he was the guide. The expert. Maybe he wasn’t the strongest in the group, but when it came to finding the way in the depths, he was the best they had.
Maybe even the only option.
The expertise was hard-won through decades of descents into places that would break lesser minds, learning to read patterns in chaos that would drive normal people insane. It was knowledge that couldn’t be taught, only earned through survival.
Abyssal creatures didn’t attack them.
They opened a path as always, moving aside with instinctive deference. It was something that felt strange for them; the creatures weren’t adorable at all.
Being surrounded by hundreds of them, with their twisted forms and eyes that glowed with constant hunger, wasn’t reassuring for almost anyone.
The atmosphere was suffocating and alien, it was never easy walking through a living nightmare where every shadow contained something that defied natural law.