134 Mana Absorption Source
Styx was following the events that were happening on multiple fronts through his residents.
In Whitecliff City, he watched as Duchess Euklid had her own husband imprisoned, the legitimate dungeon lord, imprisoned until he surrendered control over the dungeon.
Even as resolute as she was, she refused to kill her husband just to forcefully take over control of the dungeon core. Either way, Styx would be able to forcefully take over it via a dungeon war once his own region extended to this distant city.
Duke Euklid was unwilling to take this lying down though and forcefully halted all monster summoning circles in the cities underground dungeon training area. Even if he wasn't present before the dungeon core, he was still within the dungeon's territory and could freely operate the main functions at will.
Duchess Euklid had been tempted to have him moved out of the city before he could do something like this, but there were no outside facilities which were of an adequate security. Allowing him to escape was potentially a far worse consequence than the city's dungeon shutting down.
"Mother! Are the demons invading?!" Rebecca burst into the duke's study, where her mother was looking over the territory reports with a frown.
Several of Styx's residents stood guard inside of the room, including the evolved Third Step female tiger beastman. They all maintained complete silence whilst the females extended their mana senses in a large radius, ready to respond to any threat before it even arrived.
"Becca… you heard?"
"Yes! Styx was shocked too. The demons have launched a massive offensive into the kingdom and are destroying everything as they go. This is mainly from the south-eastern border, and is in direct line to strike at Lagoon Porter City."
"There are many more cities before they get there but… it appears they have launched an invasion in force that our country never suspected was possible from them."
"But why now?"
Rebecca was physically and mentally exhausted after a long day of socialising with local daughters and sons of the noble families in Whitecliff City, catching up on the latest news and making a return of her social presence among the nobles.
She pulled on the ribbon tie around the neck of her frilly blouse and undid the top button, exposing her slightly sweaty, large cleavage before sighing in relief and laying sideways across a chair in an overtly unladylike posture.
"Becca, as a noble, you must maintain your appearance at all times. Sit up straight and cover yourself properly, gossip would spread like wildfire amongst the noblewomen should your current appearance be seen."
"Then it's a good thing I am no longer a noble, but a dungeon wife. I think they would have for more juicy gossip than a loose blouse should they hear of that."
Duchess Euklid glanced at her daughter and audibly sighed before addressing the earlier question.
"As for this demon invasion. It appears the rest of the kingdom, at least the nobles I know, are unaware of this news, but it is likely due to the injury of Goddess Eve. I still don't understand how that occurred in which mortals can injure a god, but it has created a fatal weakness in our country until she can recover. They don't even need to act; the mere presence of a god is enough to stave off most invasions. Once that presence is gone though…"
"How could they have known though?"
"The Neth'rite Demon Kingdom have their own god, a Demon God who is only slightly weaker than Goddess Eve. He must have detected it and commanded his mortal kingdom to act."
"Styx is very upset…"
"...I imagine he is... I had thought the kingdom put up too little response to a city being captured, but it turns out they plan on using Styx as a shield."
"Styx says he has Monster Lords, the demons would be wise to avoid him altogether, let alone start a fight."
Duchess Euklid scribbled her signiture on several documents before placing the pen down and calling for some refreshments to be delivered to the room. One of the tiger beastrman guards quickly left the room and returned not long after with a trolley containing several small cakes and other pastries alongside two cups of tea.
"Goddess Eve was injured so he can act wilfully in this kingdom for the time being, but the demon god is very much in complete health. I'm not privy to what occurred with Goddess Eve, but violating the Treaty of Gods and giving the Demon God an excuse to act is very risky business."
~~~~~
⠀
Deep inside the ruined world of dust and ash, Ursala and the other two angels scrunched their brows and tried to make sense of the text in the books they deciphered.
"Wolf monster!" Ursula stared at Aura in frustration, lacking any intimidated from the Monster Lord. "Translate this page for me, this is such a primitive language it doesn't even have a proper structure!"
Ursula was correct in that it was a textual language closer to sharing concepts and thoughts, in which they could change and alter depending on the surrounding characters, but there were some rules to it.
Styx, being familiar with ancient babylonian and several other dead languages, due to being alive during that era, also had some difficulties due to the differences. He could still translate it at a high level given time though, a fact that Ursula and the other angels were fully aware of.
"Styx will translate it if you give him a show… What is a show?"
Ursula's soldier like calmness had slowly been crumbling inside the ruined world as Styx would make more and more unreasonable requests whenever she asked for translations.
Taking a deep breath to calm her emotions, Ursula closed her eyes and uttered, "Nevermind, I will use Heaven's information processing powers to analyze them once we leave here."
Styx clicked his tongue at this, a sound only audible to Aura in her mind.
The expedition force had long left the library and were investigating in the direction that the mana was absorbed.
They slowly travelled deeper into the city, clearing out any husks that attacked them as they moved. Aura was the most powerful not just due to being the only Fifth Step existence among the force, but her claws and godlike instincts allowed her to create enormous amounts of destruction without the assistance of any mana.
*clang* *clank* *clang* *crash*
Several behemoth like knights that stood fifty feet tall and were covered in thick plate mail pushed the corners of several large buildings as they came from around several corners.
The current location was a maze of giant houses with streets twisting, turning and crossing one another in an arrangement that made no sense. There were houses stacked on top of houses, broken ladders sprawled across the street and a persistent nose irritating ash that lingered in the air
As they moved deeper into the city, the husks they encountered varied more and more, and oftentimes were increasingly powerful too. These gigantic knights were monstrosities under their armor that were living on only the faintest spark of life, the same as the normal husks, but they were hundreds of times more powerful.
"Die!"
Ursula flapped her wings and darted off buildings, destroying ancient stone pillars between what were once windows. She held two pure white swords in her hands that left faint afterimages in the air, a trait caused by the heavenly metal rather than any mana application.
She released all her pent up stress on these giant heavily armored husk knights, her divine sword art slicing it apart with the utmost precision.
Without mana to fuel them or their armor, these giants had the strength of Third Step rankers and the expedition team had improved on their ability to avoid using mana under almost all circumstances.
Six giants appeared altogether. Ursula targeted one whilst the other two angels suppressed another. As powerful as they were as Fourth Step angels, they couldn't use any mana so their strength was restrained from their true capability.
Vivy and several other dungeon residents attacked a third giant plate armored knight, its enormous size proving a challenge to severely wound without the aid of mana.
Vivy struck its tendons behind the knee through the gaps as it walked, causing the monstrosity to fall down. The tiger beastman and elves then moved about to avoid the thrashing of the monstrosity as they targeted its joints and neck, creating a river of blood before it finally died.
Aura took on the remaining three enemies. She appeared before the first and hit it in the chest with her hand in the form of a claw grip.
It's chest armor completely caved in and blood was projected everywhere as the giant was sent cascading into a distant building.
"ROARRRR!" The remaining two roared at Aura, her hair fluttering behind her as she flashed from one position to another.
The giants swung maces and overswords, but their size made them slow enough even the Third Step elves could easily dodge them so long as they saw the attack coming with enough time.
Aura didn't bother to dodge these weapons, she fought back at them with her bare hands and feet. A colossal mace came crashing down above her when she dexterously flipped in the air and kicked it as hard as she could.
The mace cracked slightly from the blow but didn't shatter, a testament to how powerful the base metal alloy was. It was sent flying from the giants grip though and into the head of the third giant knight with a force that it continued on through several buildings as a giant headless corpse fell to the ground.
Without a weapon, the giant tried to crush Aura beneath its gauntlet, but the wolf Monster Lord flashed forward and kicked its legs out from under it. As it fell to the ground, she appeared again above its head and stomped down in a brutal force that crushed its helmet inwards and destroyed its head inside.
"…"
Ursula saw this gory scene and was a bit trepidatious. The most fearful fact wasn't that a Fifth Step Monster Lord had this level of physical strength, but that she had this much strength whilst only being in the early levels of the Fifth Step.
This was the strength typical of someone <Lv. 90> or higher, whilst Aura was currently only <Lv. 84>.
Aura didn't get any blood on her clothes from this brutal scene either, a feat of dexterity long practised since she used to only have one item of clothing.
~~~~~
⠀
Aura, Vivy, Ursula and the others arrived at the core region of the maze like clutter of residential homes, ash filled garden beds, and giant plazas, where a shocking sight presented itself to them.
"The mana got absorbed… into there?"
The expedition team stood before a gigantic abyss like sinkhole in the ground that was at least a dozen miles in diameter. Clock towers, high risers and countless buildings were already half fallen in to this bottomless hole.
The girls with mana sight could see faint will-o-wisps like tendrils of mana flowing into the ground and circling deep within its depths.
"It smells like old, dead meat…" Aura scrunched her nose and looked into the hole with distaste.
As dreary as it was, it seemed to hold a certain sense of sanctity, preventing onlookers from being hostile towards it.
Ursula and the other angels looked at their wings, considering using them to glide down, but a message from Styx was spoken by Vivy.
"If there is something down there absorbing mana, you will never be able to fly out."
"...I know." Ursula spoke methodically, but there was an obvious pause of hesitation at the start.
"Let's go back," Vivy plainly stated in a sense of helplessness. "There is nothing we can do to safely get down there and back out. Let's return with the books and other items that we have secured."
"Greed only leads to misery," Ursula stated with an approving nod, indicating she was of the same mindset to retreat for the time being.
Styx tried to send the hell gryphons, but before they even got close to the girls current position, they were shot down by a barrage of bone giant slaying arrows. Styx couldn't even tell where they were shot from, but he cringed that some powerful enemy is going to feast on the mana in the hell gryphons corpses.
With the option of being picked up out of the question, the expedition force could only retreat by foot until they reached the safer outskirts of this seemingly endless city. Once out, Styx would be able to plan a method of safely descending into and returning from the abyssal hole in the city.⠀
