Chapter : 106
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Chapter : 106
Ira looked at Ken with her usual flat expression. "Your contribution to this battle was precisely zero point zero percent."
"Ouch, Ira! You wound me again!" Ken laughed loudly, grabbing his chest as if he were hurt. "You are just jealous of my amazing hiding skills. It takes real talent to blend in with a boulder."
The girls couldn't help but chuckle at his ridiculous nonsense. The tension of the dungeon was completely gone, replaced by the easy, comfortable banter of their weird, mismatched family. Ken's silly behavior kept the mood incredibly light, totally making them forget about the heavy pressure of the Royal Succession War.
"Alright, enough joking around," Sayma said, picking up her notebook again. "This was just the first wave. The Core of Luminus is still waiting for us at the very bottom of this dungeon. We need to keep moving before the 9th Unit catches up."
"Or before the other Unit beats us to it," Naomi added, her competitive side returning instantly. "Let's go. I want to see the look on other Prince and Princess face when we snatch the prize right out from under her nose."
The team gathered their glowing torches and began to march deeper into the dark, misty caverns of the Blood Fault Dungeon. Ken happily trailed along at the very back, feeling incredibly satisfied with how perfectly normal and useless he appeared.
He didn't have to lift a finger, his secret was completely safe, and his teammates were doing all the heavy lifting. As far as Ken was concerned, this mission was going exactly according to his lazy plan.
---
Far away from where Princess Iris and her team were fighting, deep in a completely different tunnel of the Blood Fault Dungeon, the air felt entirely different.
In this part of the cave, there were no chaotic screams. There was no desperate running, and there was absolutely no one hiding behind a rock. There was only the sound of perfectly synchronized footsteps clicking against the stone floor.
Marching straight through the dark, damp cavern was the 16th Unit.
At the center of the group walked Princess Hestia. She was wearing a stunning, flowing white silk dress with elegant golden stitching. Even though they were walking through a dirty, muddy monster dungeon, her dress did not have a single speck of dirt on it. Her warm auburn hair was perfectly styled, bouncing lightly around her shoulders. She looked like she was taking a casual stroll through a high-end shopping mall instead of walking through a deadly underground cave.
Surrounding her were her nine elite female servants. They all wore matching, spotless white and gold combat uniforms. Their boots were polished to a mirror shine. They did not slouch, they did not complain, and they certainly did not have untucked shirts.
"This humidity is completely unacceptable," complained a girl named Elma. She was walking on the right side of the formation, spinning a pair of razor-sharp silver short-swords in her hands. Elma had perfectly curled blonde hair and a highly competitive, vain personality. "If one drop of nasty cave water falls from the ceiling and hits my collar, I am going to scream. I spent an hour ironing this uniform this morning."
"Keep your eyes on the shadows, Elma," Zaima replied sharply.
Zaima was walking at the absolute front of the group. She was Sayma’s lookalike, sharing the exact same tall height, long dark hair, and sharp jawline. But unlike Sayma, Zaima did not wear glasses, and she definitely did not have a polite, gentle smile. Zaima’s face was locked in a permanent, bitter scowl. She held a magical compass in her hand, watching the needle spin as it tracked the heavy radiation of the dungeon.
"We are not here to worry about your laundry," Zaima scolded, not even looking back at Elma. "We are here to secure the Core of Luminus. The Emperor has finally given us a chance to show the rest of the Royal families exactly how a top-tier unit operates. We are going to find that artifact, grab the ten points, and be back at our mansion in time for afternoon tea."
Elma rolled her eyes but kept her swords ready. "I know, I know. I just hate the outer districts. Speaking of garbage, I wonder how your sister is doing right now. Do you think the 13th Unit has already gotten lost in the dark?"
Zaima let out a cold, mocking laugh. "Sayma is probably standing in a mud puddle right now, trying to figure out how to build a dirt hut. And that absolute joke of a servant they brought with them? The messy farm boy? He is probably crying in a corner somewhere. They are pathetic. They rely on pure luck. We rely on perfection."
Princess Hestia smiled haughtily from the center of the group. "Let us not waste our breath talking about my dear sister Iris. She chose a team of misfits and strays. We chose excellence. Let them struggle. We have our own path to walk."
Just as Hestia finished speaking, the ground beneath their pristine white boots began to shake.
It wasn't a small vibration. It was a massive, rumbling earthquake that shook dust and loose pebbles from the cavern ceiling.
"Movement detected!" called out Celia, another servant who walked at the back of the group. She was a quiet, highly organized girl who specialized in setting magical traps. "We have multiple hostiles approaching from the front, the left flank, and the ceiling. It is an ambush."
From the dark shadows of the tunnel, a massive horde of monsters began to pour out. But these were not the giant frogs or wolves that Iris’s team had faced. The ambient mana in this part of the dungeon was entirely different.
Scurrying down the walls were giant, mutated spiders made of jagged, glowing red volcanic rock. They hissed loudly, spitting globs of boiling hot magma onto the floor. Marching heavily behind them were massive Ash-Trolls. They were hulking, ten-foot-tall beasts made entirely of burning ash and charred wood, holding giant clubs made of hardened lava.
There were dozens of them, completely blocking the path forward. The heat radiating from the monsters was intense, turning the cool, damp cave into a boiling oven.
Any normal team would have panicked at the sight of a sudden, fiery ambush.
The 16th Unit did not even flinch. They didn't scream, and they didn't break their formation. They operated like a perfectly oiled, terrifyingly organized machine.
"Formation Delta-Three!" Zaima barked, her voice cutting through the hissing of the magma-spiders. "Elma, take the vanguard. Celia, lock down the flanks. Do not let a single spark touch the Princess!"
"Understood!" the girls shouted in perfect unison.
The battle that followed was not a chaotic brawl. It was a flawless, mathematically perfect display of elite teamwork.
Two magma-spiders leaped from the ceiling, spitting burning lava directly at Hestia. Zaima did not panic. She raised her hands gracefully. Instead of the golden honeycomb barriers that Sayma used, Zaima summoned barriers made of sharp, glowing white triangles.