Chapter 1734: The Abandoned
The voice had been a particularly unusual foe, and yet it was not the worst of them. As Lex continued to lead the groups, they faced more and more enemies, each one either stranger or stronger than the previous one.
For a month, such a journey continued, and it came to the point where even Lex’s confidence began to waver. He began to seriously doubt their ability to complete the quest - until he realized that he was facing against the living personification of doubt, and killed that too.
That didn’t change the fact that their progress had slowed down significantly. Finally, Lex was forced to kill Jeziah because keeping such a prisoner with them was too much of a liability. It was a pity that Lex couldn’t read his locked memories, but a pity is all it was.
Lex was even debating stopping to set up the castle tavern and recovering, but his gut feeling told him that doing so would be the wrong move. If they stopped moving, they would lose all the progress they had made in search for the chalice, and would have to start again. So they kept going, beaten, battered, on the verge of collapse, but they kept going.
To be clear, it wasn’t that Lex was on the verge of collapse - but their armies. The Midnight mech was made up of hundreds of mortals, among others, and even in their mech form there was only so much damage they could take. Lex could step up to protect them, but even he could only do so much.
No one knew how immense the pressure was more than Z, mainly because he was the one to always pilot the mech. Although, in his mind, Lex only appeared to be going all out, forcing him to step up to the challenge, Z did indeed step up.
The Reaving Dread mercenaries were forced to activate some of the perks given to them by the Condottiere to keep up their stamina. It was only the sheer absurdity of the Condottiere’s powers which had been granted to them which kept the group on their feet and functioning.
For once, the living embodiment of doubt was not needed for doubt to creep in. Yet, just as they were on the verge of collapsing, a particular set of ruins appeared on the horizon, and all oddities seemed to vanish with its arrival.
All dangerous enemies stopped appearing, and even the Black Knight who loved to stalk them disappeared, as if he could no longer find them.
Not taking a single moment to rest, the group started to march towards the ruins, its appearance becoming clear as they approached.