Chapter 633 – 633. Sinkhole (5)
“Ugh…”
As her hazy consciousness awoke, Delia frowned at the pain in her leg.
As she slowly opened her eyes, the darkness filled her field of vision.
And it is a light shining faintly in the darkness.
She belatedly stared at her right leg and realized that the cause of her pain was a fractured condition.
A scabbard was splinted on her fractured leg.
“Who… ?”
She has passed out so far, not the first aid she did herself.
Soon, a question popped up in Delia’s mind.
What is the light that illuminates the dark ant nest?
“Are you awake?”
She didn’t even have time to answer her question, when she heard her voice from nearby.
“Wow!?”
Startled by her heavy bass voice, Delia turned her head in the direction she heard it.
A torch to illuminate her vision was fixed on the wall, and a knight in armor was leaning against it to rest.
Delia recognized the knight’s face and hardened her face.
“Everything, Captain… ?”
The leader of the Knights of Artia, located far above her own.
It was Riod.
It didn’t take long for the stunned Delia to realize her circumstances bit by bit.
“Ah…”
Delia sighed lightly.
It was because in the collapse of the anthill, where her ceiling collapsed and the ground cracked, she remembered the face of Leo De, who had jumped to save herself from falling into the abyss.
Leo’s condition was not so good either.
The messy hair covered in dust and the dirty knight’s armor were far from the image of the kingdom’s strongest knight.
Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.
But even so, the reason he was here now was because of Delia herself.
“Sorry, sorry. Captain! Because of me… !”
Delia’s face turned contemplative and she hurriedly lowered her head.
She was driven by the thought that if she hadn’t acted carelessly, Leod wouldn’t have gone through this hardship.
“No.”
Riod shook his head calmly and refused to accept her apology.
“It was just a disaster. I couldn’t help it.”
Delia is a female knight who has just joined the Knights of Artia for a year.
In that situation, her isolation and her fall were too much of a disaster for her, who still lacked her experience and skills.
“If I were to judge right and wrong, it would be the fault of me and Cain, who organized you, who are still inexperienced here.”
When organizing the troops of the Exploration Expedition, in preparation for a dungeon raid that might pose any danger, Riod wanted to organize the troops with only the elite.
It was because he did not want to force unreasonable sacrifices on his new knights who were still inexperienced.
However, Cain’s thoughts were different from those of Lyod.
This is because he did not force them, but insisted that they should be given a chance.
The knights of Artia are all elite fighters who were allowed to join through strict examination by Riod, Cain, and senior knights of higher ranks.
All of them have basic skills to protect one’s own body, and what they desperately needed was the experience of risking their lives.
Riod respected the opinions of Cain and the other senior knights, and as a result, he received the support of his successor knights for this expedition.
So now, Riod has readily admitted his mistake in judgment.
“Oh no!”
Delia, who heard her self-blaming words, was taken aback and denied his opinion, but Leo couldn’t afford to keep listening to her.
“If you wake up, let’s move.”
“Yes yes… Ugh!”
Delia, who had finished her rest and tried to raise her body after Liod, moaned softly at the pain she felt in her right leg.
“Do you need help?”
“Oh, no. Not quite like that.”
Surprised, she declined Leo de’s help.
She couldn’t get any help until she was in this situation.
If a battle ever broke out, he would not be able to fight with one leg disabled.
Then at least it shouldn’t get in the way of Riod.
Fortunately, the pain is not so severe that it is tolerable.
His condition would get worse if he didn’t get treatment soon, but he was able to walk right now, perhaps thanks to first aid.
“Is it.”
Riod nodded his head slightly.
Slowly moving his steps, he moved inside the anthill.
“Everything, Captain, are you okay?”
“No problem.”
It’s not a lie.
His appearance covered in dust could not be called normal, but Riod calmly maintained his composure.
“…”
Delia absentmindedly lifted her head up and looked up at her ceiling.
Even with the light of a torch, I dare not gauge its height beyond the black hole in the ceiling that I can’t see the end of.
It was thanks to Leo that he, who might have fallen from a height higher than that, was able to survive with only one leg fractured.
Even so, Lyod suffered no significant trauma.
It is thanks to the fact that his extremely trained body was strengthened with an excellent amount of magic power and his defense power was raised to the limit.
It was a very simple task, but it is a shocking task that no one can do.
Delia walked by the light of the torch held by Leo in her vanguard.
Although she gave first aid by splinting the scabbard, her fractured right leg throbbed with every step she took.
The deterioration of the wound was progressing faster than expected.
Riod walked, adjusting her pace to match her gait.
Troubled by her such consideration, Delia called Leo de to her face solidifying her resolve.
“… Captain.”
“What.”
“If something happens… Please leave me and run away.”
“…”
Delia’s words made her resolve, and Leo de’s footsteps came to a halt.
Delia looked at Leode’s back, who stopped her gait, and spoke again.
“You don’t have to force yourself to take it. This… It is my negligence.”
“I can’t.”
Riod turned her back and met Delia’s gaze.
His hardened eyes were very straight.
“You are also my member whom I acknowledged and allowed to join.”
It means taking responsibility as her knight commander for bringing her here.
Even though Riod couldn’t help but let the wounded come out, he couldn’t tolerate the death of a single knight.
His beliefs and ideals were extremely arrogant and reckless, but it is also true that knights who admired him flocked to the Artia Knights because it was none other than Riod who embraced them.
“Move. Think of going back alive.”
“… All right.”
Delia’s eyes, which had once faded, regained their strength little by little and shone.
There was a desperate desire to survive here.
Even if it is close to impossible, the determination to struggle becomes the driving force to endure the pain felt in the right leg and move the gait.
Before long, he finally encountered the monsters roaming inside the ant nest.
Kyaaek!
With a sharp monster scream, dozens of human locusts appeared from the darkness and flew towards Riod and Delia.
In an instant, Riod pulled out a longsword from his waist and created a sword blade with magical energy around his blade.
Awesome!
A blade armed with a fierce sword was swung at the head of a human grasshopper that jumped up like a spring.
The sword strike, which accurately cuts the human locust in half, which was charging at a terrifying speed, had sharp cutting power and was unusually quiet.
‘… It’s frustrating.’
Riod’s original style is to crush and push enemies using overwhelming physical ability and magical power.
However, in this anthill, Riod’s swordsmanship was limited.
Although it boasts terrifying attack power, there was a risk that Riod’s sword attack, which swept a wide area, would collapse the weak anthill again.
So the method he chose was to imitate Eun-hyeon’s swordsmanship, which cuts the opponent in two with a sharp and vicious swordsmanship.
It wasn’t a swordsmanship that suited his own style, but he overpowered the monsters with a swordsmanship appropriate to this situation.
Even after slaughtering dozens of monsters in a series of sophisticated movements, Riod did not lose his breath.
Its marvelous appearance is truly the model of a knight itself.
Holding a torch in one hand and relying on the light in the dark, I swung a longsword with the other hand and proceeded to clear up the human locusts step by step.
However, even Riodra, who has tremendous power, was not able to clear all the human locusts with his hastily imitated swordsmanship, which was not his own style.
A human locust that had not been cleaned up passed by Riod and attacked Delia.
“Kuk!”
The sight of a human locust flying high into the air and opening its mouth wide to gnaw at its own flesh made a small moan of disgust.
However, forcing her embarrassment away and regaining her composure, Delia plunged the sword in her hand into the wide-open mouth of the human grasshopper.
Kirik!
Delia staggered as the human locust struggled as it pierced the inside of her throat with a blade and screamed out in pain.
Delia’s body, unable to maintain a stable posture due to her one leg being uncomfortable, eventually fell to the floor as she lost her balance.
“Nice… !”
Her human locust, who had died on her own body, drew her sword from her corpse’s mouth and put her body away.
She hurriedly raised her body and tried to reposition her, but her second human locust was opening her mouth at Delia’s head before she knew it.
“Ah…”
Without even time to swing her sword, Delia stared blankly at the monster’s drooling head as it prepared to devour her own head.
The head of a monster with no eyes and no nose, only a mouth and ears, is very grotesque and repulsive.
‘Not… Okay!’
Delia couldn’t move her body, even though she knew that if she stayed like this, she would end up with her own head being devastated and eaten.
Although she had been yelling at her to move with her reason dozens of times, her body wouldn’t listen to her.
It’s as if time passes slowly in her, but only time in her Delia’s head passes quickly.
Her body doesn’t move
‘So far… Is it?’
Delia instinctively sensed her own end.
After all, no matter how desperately Riod was to fend off the monsters in front of her, how she couldn’t handle even these few that she couldn’t handle was her current self limit.
Even with her injuries, she bitterly resented her own limitations for not being able to overcome them.
“Delia!”
She heard Liod’s voice urgently calling her, but Delia came up to her nose and turned her head away from the drooling monster’s head, closing her eyes tightly.
And then.
[Bryunak spearmanship]
[Skin Piercing]
Kwajik!
“… Uh?”
Delia felt the presence and sound of something in her gust sweeping right over herself.
She gave up on her life and closed her eyes tightly, but her sense of mercilessly tearing apart and blowing away the body of the human locusts that were about to eat her made Delia, who was about to give up her life, bewildered. .
“It just… Window?”
Riod, who belatedly dealt with all the human locusts, turned his head towards the direction of someone’s attack.
The attack was a javelin, aimed precisely at the body of her human locust, which passed by her own and was about to devour Delia.
The place that swept through the inside of the anthill with terrifying power was quiet as if nothing had happened.
Soon after hearing the footsteps of the two, Leod brought a torch in the direction from which the sound came from, revealing his sights.
“… It was you.”
Riod found Eunhyeon and Cha Hanseong appearing in the darkness and let out a small breath.
Eun-hyeon scolded Rio de, who reacted that he did not like something after seeing him.
“I’m here to help. Why do you look bad?”
“What kind of idiot would throw himself into a place like this?”
It was meant to point out Eunhyeon’s foolishness in bringing herself into danger, but in this situation, Eunhyeon was dumbfounded.
“You’re not. Did you know that the same applies to you now?”
In spite of Eun-hyun’s immediate criticism, Riod sneered and confidently protested.
“I have a duty to be responsible for my members. Cases are different.”
“It’s okay for me. The son-in-law also chooses a guy like Ji.”
The two men flinched and reacted to Eunhyun’s muttered words at the end.
One was, of course, Riod, and the other was Cha Han-seong, who would be the ‘son-in-law’ in this story.
“Ugh, Eunhyun! What to say… !”
“… Who is the son-in-law?”
Looking at the three men having a small scuffle, Delia put on a puzzled expression.
The gloomy situation in this anthill, which had been unpredictable until just now, became lighter in an instant as a white-haired man appeared in front of him.
‘That person… Who the hell is that?’
It was a very foreign figure to Delia, who saw Riod for the first time, not as the leader of the knights who commanded the knights with overwhelming charisma, but as an individual having a trivial quarrel with her friend.
